XIX It is reported, that as Cornelia, their mother, bore the loss of her two sons with a noble and undaunted spirit, so, in reference to the holy places in which they were slain, she said, their dead bodies were well worthy of such sepulchres. She removed afterwards, and dwelt near the place called Misenum, not at all altering her former way of living. She had many friends, and hospitably received many strangers at her house; many Greeks and learned men were continually about her; nor was there any foreign prince but received gifts from her and presented her again. Those who were conversant with her, were much interested, when she pleased to entertain them with her recollections of her father Scipio Africanus, and of his habits and way of living. But it was most admirable to hear her make mention of her sons, without any tears or sign of grief, and give the full account of all their deeds and misfortunes, as if she had been relating the history of some ancient heroes. This made some imagine, that age, or the greatness of her afflictions, had made her senseless and devoid of natural feelings. But they who so thought, were themselves more truly insensible, not to see how much a noble nature and education avail to conquer any affliction; and though fortune may often be more successful, and may defeat the efforts of virtue to avert misfortunes, it cannot, when we incur them, prevent our bearing them reasonably.
Having given an account severally of these persons, it remains only that we should take a view of them in comparison with one another.
As for the Gracchi, the greatest detractors and their worst enemies could not but allow, that they had a genius to virtue beyond all other Romans, which was improved also by a generous education. Agis and Cleomenes may be supposed to have had stronger natural gifts, since, though they wanted all the advantages of good education, and were bred up in those very customs, manners, and habits of living, which had for a long time corrupted others, yet they were public examples of temperance and frugality. Besides, the Gracchi, happening to live when Rome had her greatest repute for honor and virtuous actions, might justly have been ashamed, if they had not also left to the next generation the noble inheritance of the virtues of their ancestors. Whereas the other two had parents of different morals; and though they found their country in a sinking condition, and debauched, yet that did not quench their forward zeal to what was just and honorable.
The integrity of the two Romans, and their superiority to money, was chiefly remarkable in this; that in office and the administration of public affairs, they kept themselves from the imputation of unjust gain; whereas Agis might justly be offended, if he had only that mean commendation given him, that he took nothing wrongfully from any man, seeing he distributed his own fortunes, which, in ready money only, amounted to the value of six hundred talents, amongst his fellow-citizens. Extortion would have appeared a crime of a strange nature to him, who esteemed it a piece of covetousness to possess, though never so justly gotten, greater riches than his neighbors.
Their political actions, also, and the state revolutions they attempted, were very different in magnitude. The chief things in general that the two Romans commonly aimed at, were the settlement of cities and mending of highways; and, in particular, the boldest design which Tiberius is famed for, was the recovery of the public lands; and Caius gained his greatest reputation by the addition, for the exercise of judicial powers, of three hundred of the order of knights to the same number of senators. Whereas the alteration which Agis and Cleomenes made, was in a quite different kind. They did not set about removing partial evils and curing petty incidents of disease, which would have been (as Plato says), like cutting off one of the Hydra's heads, the very means to increase the number; but they instituted a thorough reformation, such as would free the country at once from all its grievances, or rather, to speak more truly, they reversed that former change which had been the cause of all their calamities, and so restored their city to its ancient state.
However, this must be confessed in the behalf of the Gracchi, that their undertakings were always opposed by men of the greatest influence. On the other side, those things which were first attempted by Agis, and afterwards consummated by Cleomenes, were supported by the great and glorious precedent of those ancient laws concerning frugality and leveling which they had themselves received upon the authority of Lycurgus, and he had instituted on that of Apollo. It is also further observable, that from the actions of the Gracchi, Rome received no additions to her former greatness; whereas, under the conduct of Cleomenes, Greece presently saw Sparta exert her sovereign power over all Peloponnesus, and contest the supreme command with the most powerful princes of the time; success in which would have freed Greece from Illyrian and Gaulish violence, and placed her once again under the orderly rule of the sons of Hercules.
From the circumstances of their deaths, also, we may infer some difference in the quality of their courage. The Gracchi, fighting with their fellow-citizens, were both slain, as they endeavored to make their escape; Agis willingly submitted to his fate, rather than any citizen should be in danger of his life. Cleomenes, being shamefully and unjustly treated, made an effort toward revenge, but failing of that, generously fell by his own hand.
On the other side it must be said, that Agis never did a great action worthy a commander, being prevented by an untimely death. And as for those heroic actions of Cleomenes, we may justly compare with them that of Tiberius, when he was the first who attempted to scale the walls of Carthage, which was no mean exploit. We may add the peace which he concluded with the Numantines, by which he saved the lives of twenty thousand Romans, who otherwise had certainly been cut off. And Caius, not only at home, but in war in Sardinia, displayed distinguished courage. So that their early actions were no small argument, that afterwards they might have rivaled the best of the Roman commanders, if they had not died so young.
In civil life, Agis showed a lack of determination; he let himself be baffled by the craft of Agesilaus; disappointed the expectations of the citizens as to the division of the lands, and generally left all the designs which he had deliberately formed and publicly announced, unperformed and unfulfilled, through a young man's want of resolution. Cleomenes, on the other hand, proceeded to effect the revolution with only too much boldness and violence, and unjustly slew the Ephors, whom he might, by superiority in arms, have gained over to his party, or else might easily have banished, as he did several others of the city. For to use the knife, unless in the extremest necessity, is neither good surgery nor wise policy, but in both cases mere unskillfulness; and in the latter, unjust as well as unfeeling. Of the Gracchi, neither the one nor the other was the first to shed the blood of his fellow-citizens; and Caius is reported to have avoided all manner of resistance, even when his life was aimed at, showing himself always valiant against a foreign enemy, but wholly inactive in a sedition. This was the reason that he went from his own house unarmed, and withdrew when the battle began, and in all respects showed himself anxious rather not to do any harm to others, than not to suffer any himself. Even the very flight of the Gracchi must not be looked upon as an argument of their mean spirit, but an honorable retreat from endangering of others. For if they had stayed, they must either have yielded to those who assailed them, or else have fought them in their own defense.
The greatest crime that can be laid to Tiberius's charge, was the deposing of his fellow tribune, and seeking afterwards a second tribuneship for himself. As for the death of Antyllius, it is falsely and unjustly attributed to Caius, for he was slain unknown to him, and much to his grief. On the contrary, Cleomenes (not to mention the murder of the Ephors) set all the slaves at liberty, and governed by himself alone in reality, having a partner only for show; having made choice of his brother Euclidas, who was one of the same family. He prevailed upon Archidamus, who was the right heir to the kingdom of the other line, to venture to return home from Messene; but after his being slain, by not doing anything to revenge his death, confirmed the suspicion that he was privy to it himself. Lycurgus, whose example he professed to imitate, after he had voluntarily settled his kingdom upon Charillus, his brother's son, fearing lest, if the youth should chance to die by accident, he might be suspected for it, traveled a long time, and would not return again to Sparta until Charillus had a son, and an heir to his kingdom. But we have indeed no other Grecian who is worthy to be compared with Lycurgus, and it is clear enough that in the public measures of Cleomenes various acts of considerable audacity and lawlessness may be found.
Those, therefore, who incline to blame their characters, may observe, that the two Grecians were disturbers even from their youth, lovers of contest, and aspirants to despotic power; that Tiberius and Caius by nature had an excessive desire after glory and honors. Beyond this, their enemies could find nothing to bring against them; but as soon as the contention began with their adversaries, their heat and passions would so far prevail beyond their natural temper, that by them, as by ill winds, they were driven afterwards to all their rash undertakings. What could be more just and honorable than their first design, had not the power and the faction of the rich, by endeavoring to abrogate that law, engaged them both in those fatal quarrels, the one, for his own preservation, the other, to revenge his brother's death, who was murdered without any law or justice?
From the account, therefore, which has been given, you yourself may perceive the difference; which if it were to be pronounced of every one singly, I should affirm Tiberius to have excelled them all in virtue; that young Agis had been guilty of the fewest misdeeds; and that in action and boldness Caius came far short of Cleomenes.
Graco Volume 1 The Lives in the first volume were translated for Dryden's edition, as follows:— Theseus, by R. Duke, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, (to whom two pages are given by Johnson in his Lives of the Poets). Romulus, by Mr. James Smallwood, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Lycurgus, by Knightly Chetwood, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.
Numa, by Sir Paul Rycaut, (the Turkey merchant, and author of the History of the Turks).
Solon, by Thomas Creech, of Wadham College, Oxford, (the translator of Lucretius).
Poplicola, by Mr. Johnson.
Themistocles, by Edward Brown, M. D.
Camillus, by Michael Payne, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Pericles, by Adam Littleton, D. D.
Fabius, by John Caryl, Esq.
The following notes may be added to those given with the text: Life of Theseus, page 1.—Beautiful and far-famed, or famed in song, are current epithets of Athens, originally given by Pindar. The two verses just above are from the scene in the Seven against Thebes of Æschylus, where Eteocles considers what captains he shall post against the assailants at each of the gates.
Page 2.—Both warriors, that by all the world's allowed, is from Iliad, VII. 281, said by the heralds of Ajax and Hector, when they come to part them after their single combat.
Page 4.—The Abantes of Eubœa wearing their hair long behind, are mentioned in the Catalogue, Iliad, II. 543; and Strabo speaks of Arabians, companions of Cadmus, who went into Eubœa. Page 11.—The hamlets of Marathon, Œnoë, Tricorythus, and Probalinthus, formed the Tetrapolis or Four-towns, which is reckoned with Sphettus, Aphidna, Eleusis, and others, in the list of the twelve old Attic towns or townships, all independent of each other.
Page 18.—Theseus, Pirithoüs, mighty sons of gods, is from Odyssey, XI. 630.
Page 25.—The pillar is mentioned by Strabo, who says it was removed when the Dorians of Peloponnesus invaded the Ionian country, and settled themselves in Megara. The translation should be altered; the original does not refer to the inscription as a still existing thing.
Page 32.—Cora, or the girl, is another name for Proserpine; the whole account being (like the story of Taurus) a late transformation of fable into something that might seem like history.
Page 35.—Æthra and Clymene are the two handmaids who attend Helen (Iliad, III., 143) from her chamber, when she goes to seek Priam and the elders of the city upon the walls at the Scæan gate.
Life of Romulus, page 49.—Remuria or Remoria is the name found elsewhere, instead of Remonium or Rignarium. The line from Æschylus below is out of The Suppliants (223). Page 56.—Sextius Sylla, the Carthaginian, was one of Plutarch's personal friends. He is one of the two speakers in the Dialogue on Controlling Anger; and in the Symposiaca (VIII. 7) he gives a dinner of welcome on Plutarch's returning, after some absence, to Rome. Plutarch says, Greek words not yet being overpowered by Italian, on the theory that the early language was Greek, which was gradually corrupted. By the Questions he means his little book of inquiry into points of Roman antiquity, his Roman Questions.
Page 64.—Caius Caesar is the emperor Caligula.
Page 66.—Periscylacismus, from peri, around, and scylax, a dog.
Page 69.—The wood called Ferentina, should be the gate. There was a wood (hulē in Greek), a Lucus Ferentinus, as well as a gate (pulē), but there seems no reason to change the latter into the former. Page 74.—The story of Aristeas comes from Herodotus (IV. 14, 15), that of Cleomedes, the hero of the islet of Astypalæa, is told also by Pausanias (VI. 9), who says the thing happened in the 71st Olympiad, 496 (B.C.). The passage from Pindar is quoted by Plutarch at greater length elsewhere (in his Consolation to Apollonius on the death of his son), as a part of one of his Funeral Odes. "These all with happy lot attain the end that releases from labor. And the body, indeed, in all cases, is taken by overmastering death; but a living shape (or image or form) yet remains of the life; (or of the unending existence;) this alone being from the gods; while our limbs are stirring, it slumbers, but when we sleep, in sundry dreams it foreshows good and evil things to come." Fragment 96, in Boeckh. Another piece which he quotes just before from these funeral songs or Threni, describes the Blessed as walking in their beautiful flowery suburb, diverting themselves with horses and gymnastics, games of draughts and the harp, and with converse on what has happened, and what is."—Fragment 95.
Page 79.—Comparison. The philosopher Polemon, one of the early successors of Plato, was the author of this definition of love; so Plutarch tells us, quoting it again in one of his Essays (Ad Principem Ineruditum, c. 3).
Life of Lycurgus, page 88.—Creophylus is the correct name, which the copies of Plutarch change into Cleophylus, and Dryden's coadjutor miswrote or misprinted Cleobulus. Creophylus was spoken of already in Plato's time as the companion of Homer.—(De Republica, X. p. 600.)
Pages 90 and 92.—Plato's criticisms are in the third book of the Laws, pages 691, 692.
Page 113.—The passage of Pindar is from a lost and unknown poem. One of their own poets is Alcinan.
Page 122.—For the reference to Plato, see the Timæus, p. 38, where the divine Creator, desirous to add to his works the resemblance of eternity, proceeds to create "this which we call Time." Life of Numa, page 132.—Plutarch speaks more at length of this distinction of the wise Egyptians in one of the Dinner Conversations.—On the sixth of Thargelion they kept the birthday of Socrates, and, on the seventh, met again to celebrate that of Plato. Apollo himself, according to the story, had been born on this seventh day; and it had been no disparagement to the god, said one of the company, to attribute to him, as many had done, the mortal procreation of one that had been, under the tuition of Socrates, a greater healer of human maladies and diseases than ever Æsculapius (Apollo's mythological son) had become under that of Chiron. And he referred, at the same time, to the warning which Ariston, Plato's acknowledged father, was said to have received in a dream, forbidding him the company of his wife during the ten months preceding Plato's birth. To this another of the party opposes the incorruptible nature of the godhead: yet that by some creative, not procreative, power, the eternal and unbegotten God is the father and maker of the world and all begotten things, Plato, he adds, himself admits, nor can we limit the modes in which such divine intervention may operate; and then he gives the Egyptian dogma.—(Symposiaca, VIII. 1).
Page 138, Note.—The Greek would, however, not be Aimulos or Æmylus, but Haimulos.
Page 139.—The stone bridge, the Pons Æmilius or Lapidens, seems to have been built, for the actual traffic, close alongside of the original wooden bridge, the Pons Sublicius, which was allowed to remain for religious purposes, but was not otherwise used. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says it was still remaining in his time.
Page 148.—Dacier, in his note on the Egyptian wheels, refers to a passage in Clement of Alexandria, to the effect, that the Egyptian priests gave those who came to the temples to pray, a wheel, which they were to turn, and flowers, both of them emblems of change and instability.
Page 152.—The correct name is not Mercedinus but Mercedonius.
Page 155.—The verses are from a Pæan, or song of triumphal rejoicing, of Bacchylides. The complete passage is found in Stobæus; it is Fragment 13 of Bacchylides, in Bergk's Poetæ Lyrici.
Page 156.—The saying which Plato ventured to pronounce, is the famous demand made with such fear and trembling in the fifth book of the Republic (p. 473) for the rule of the king-philosopher. It is repeated in the fourth book of the Laws, from which latter place come the words of the next sentence, the wise man is blessed in himself, and blessed also are the auditors who can hear and receive the words that flow from his mouth.
Page 163.—Comparison. These with the young men, &c., is from the Andromache of Euripides, (597). She also, the young maid, on the next page, is referred by some to the Hermione, by some to the Reclaiming of Helen, both of them lost plays of Sophocles. It is the Fragment No. 791 in Dindorf.
Life of Solon, page 168.—Hand to hand as in the ring, literally, like a boxer, hand to hand, is from the Trachiniæ of Sophocles (441); the line just above is the eighth of the Bacchæ of Euripides.
Page 170.—Work is a shame to none, the shame is not to be working, is the 309th line of Hesiod's Works and Days.
Page 179.—Munychia was best known to the Athenians of Plutarch's time, as one of the strong-holds invariably occupied by the garrisons by which the kings of Macedon had controlled the city.
Page 188.—The Tragedy is probably the Philoctetes, one of the lost tragedies of Euripides. Plutarch quotes it more fully elsewhere: "What bride, what young virgin would accept thee? Truly," &c.
Page 193.—The end and the beginning of the month, occurs twice in the Odyssey (XIV. 162, XIX. 307).
Page 199.—For Homer's Ulysses, see the fourth book of the Odyssey (235–264), where Helen relates, at Sparta, to Telemachus and Nestor's son, how Ulysses entered Troy, as a spy, in the dress of a beggar, and was recognized by her alone, and returned after killing many and procuring much information.
Page 201.—Plato, on the mother's side, claimed relationship with Solon, so that in this way, the story of the Atlantis came with some title to him. See the Timæus, pp. 21 to 26.
Life of Themistocles, page 232.—The Lycomedæ or Lycomidæ were an ancient Attic priestly family. Phlya is one of the Attic demi or townships; and the record found in Simonides was probably an epigram inscribed in the chapel.
Page 240.—The two lines from Pindar are quoted by Plutarch in three other places; they are one of the Fragments of his lost and uncertain poems, (Boeckh, Fragment 96). Olizon is one of the places whose warriors, in Homer's Catalogue, (Iliad, II. 716–718), are led by Philoctetes,—"The dwellers in Methone and Thaumacia, and the inhabitants of Melibœa and rocky Olizon, these Philoctetes commanded, skilful with the bow."
Page 243.—The guides in the time of Pausanias showed figures in a colonnade in the market-place of Trœzen, which they said were the representations of these Athenian women and children, erected in remembrance of their stay in the town (Pausanias, II. 31).
Page 247.—The verses are the 347th and following of the Persæ.
Page 249.—Simonides says it probably in an ode on the victory at Salamis, similar to those of which some fragments remain, on the battles of Artemesium and Thermopylæ. A few of the words—was ever known more glorious exploit on the seas, are pretty certainly a part of the original, but it is impossible to restore the verse.
Page 253.—The passage in Aristophanes is the 812th line of the Equites.
Page 259.—Nicogenes in Diodorus is called Lysithides, under which name the same account is given of his entertainment of Themistocles.
Page 267.—Plato in the Meno, arguing the question whether virtue or excellence is a tiling that can be learnt or attained by training and practice, or, on the contrary, comes to us by divine allotment, points out how Aristides and Pericles, and all the great Grecian statesmen, had failed to impart their political wisdom to their sons. You have often heard it said that Themistocles taught his son Cleophantus to be such an admirable rider, that he could stand upright on horseback, and could throw a javelin standing upright;—the son obviously was not without ability;—but did you ever hear it said by any one, that Cleophantus showed any virtue, skill, or wisdom in the same sort of things as did his father? Yet he, undoubtedly, had virtue been a tiling to be taught, would have taught his son the virtue and wisdom in which he himself excelled (pp. 93, 94). Nothing is known beyond what is here said, of the Address of Andocides to his Friends. But the Friends, or rather Companions, are evidently the members of the oligarchical associations or clubs, who united under that name towards the end of the Peloponnesian war.
Life of Camillus, page 273.—Matuta is quite confidently identified with Ino or Leucothea, by Ovid in the Fasti, (VI. 475-562), Leucotheë Graiis, Matuta vocabere nostris.
The words, they embrace their brothers' children instead of their own, ought perhaps to be, they take their sisters' children...up in their arms to present them to the goddess. Ino had been kinder to her sister's children than to her own. Thus Ovid says, Non tamen hane pro stirpe sua pia mater adoret: Ipsa parum felix visa fuisse parens: Alterius prolem melius mandabitis illi: Utilior Baccho quam fuit ipsa suis.
Page 288.—The twenty-fifth of Boëdromion, the day of the battle of Arbela, should be the twenty-sixth; and the day which the Carthaginians observe, the twenty-first of Metagituion, should, perhaps, be corrected to the twenty-second. Hesiod's account of fortunate and unfortunate days is appended to his Works and Days, from whence Virgil took the hint for his in the Georgics.
Page 290.—The Greek gives the past tense in the sentence, Others say that this fire was kept burning, &c.; but it should, probably, be altered all through into the present.
Page 291.—Doliola is the Latin name of the place called the Barrels. "It was thought best," says Livy (V. 40), "to bury them in barrels in the chapel adjoining the house of the flamen of Quirinus, in the spot where now it is considered an offence against religion to spit." Life of Pericles, page 327.—Plato's expression, "so strong a draught of liberty," occurs in the 8th book of the Republic (p. 562). The author of the verses that follow is unknown.
Page 328.—The quotation from Plato is from the passage in the Phædrus, where Socrates argues that the knowledge of nature, and, in particular, of the soul, is as necessary to the perfect master of rhetoric, as the knowledge of the body is to the physician. Pericles is said to thunder and lighten in the Acharnians of Aristophanes (530).
Page 337.—Socrates says he heard Pericles propose to the people the building of the long wall—more properly the middle wall, a subsequent addition to the long walls—in the Gorgias of Plato (p. 456 a). The Odeum was burnt in the time of the siege of Athens by Sylla, to be described in Sylla's life.
Page 341.—The quotation from Plato is again out of the Phædrus, (p. 261). Rhetoric is a psychagogia—a magic power of swaying and carrying about the souls of men by the use of words. Page 348.—The brazen wolf at Delphi was famous. A man who carried off some treasure from the temple, went to hide it in the thick woods of Parnassus. A wolf fell upon him and killed him; and for many days after came daily into the city and howled. At last the people followed him, discovered the gold, and set up this image of the wolf.—(Pausanias, X. 14.)
Page 353.—Aristophanes's line about the Samians is from his lost comedy of the Babylonians.
Page 354.—Most likely the engineer was called Periphoretus, or the carried-about, for the very reason that the name was already familiar from Anacreon's verses.
Page 356.—Cimon is said to have given these names to his sons in honor of the states whom he represented, as Proxenus, at Athens.
Page 358.—The story of Anthemocritus is not alluded to by any contemporary writer. Yet Pausanias also relates it, and speaks of his monument as still remaining on the Sacred Road, going to Eleusis; just as described here, outside the Dipylon. The famous verses in the Acharnians are the 524th and following.
Page 368.—Sold for slaves may have been Plutarch's expression, but the fact itself cannot be believed; and it would not be difficult to correct the one word in which the assertion is made. Page 370.—Olympus, where they say the gods have their ever secure abode, occurs in the Odyssey (VI. 42), and the phrase of the secure abode or seat is repeated by Pindar, (Nem. VI. 3).
Life of Fabius, page 393.—This is probably a fragment, of which no more is known. No existing line of Euripides can very well be identified with it.
Page 400.—This brazen colossal statue of Hercules was the work, we are told by Strabo (VI. c. 3), of Lysippus. He speaks of it as still standing in his time in the Capitol, as the offering of Fabius Maximus, the taker of the city.
Page 404.—"Long shaken on the seas restored the state," is said of Œdipus, in the beginning of the Œdipus Tyrannus.
Volume 2 The translations in this volume are by the following hands:— Alcibiades, by Mr. John Somers (Lord Somers, the statesman).
Coriolanus, by Thomas Blomer, D. D.
Timoleon, by the same.
Paulus Æmilius, by Mr. Joseph Arrowsmith, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Pelopidas, by Thomas Creech, of Wadham College, Oxford.
Marcellus, by Walter Charlton, M. D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
Aristides, by John Cooper, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Cato, by Sir John Litcott, late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.
Philopœmen, by Thomas Short, M. D. Flamininus, by Charles Whitaker, of the Inner Temple, Esquire.
The following are notes in addition to those in the text.
Life of Alcibiades, page 1.—Plato records it in the First Alcibiades, p. 122.
Page 2.—Of all fair things the autumn is most fair is Lord Somers's verse, going a little beyond the original. It seems probable, however, that the critics, who reduced the original words to the form of an iambic line, put themselves to unnecessary trouble. Plutarch quotes it elsewhere as said viva voce by Euripides at a supper party, when he was laughed at for putting his arms round Agathon, a bearded man, and kissing him. See Matthiæ's Euripides (Fragm. Incert., 124). The passage from Aristophanes, just below, is from the Wasps, 44th and following verses.
Page 5.—Dropped like the craven cock his conquered wing is quoted again in the life of Pelopidas, but is otherwise unknown. The words in the Phædrus of Plato (p. 255), alluded to presently, are simply Anteros the image of love, and admit of more than one interpretation. Plutarch, however, seems to take them to mean the reciprocation and return of love.
Page 7.—The expression used by Thucydides occurs in his account of one of Alcibiades's orations on the Sicilian War (VI., 15), where he speaks of it as one of the chief causes which ultimately led to the disasters of the city, that people, in alarm at the excessiveness of his personal licentiousness and scorn of all legal restrictions in his habits of life, would not trust themselves to his guidance, which was the best and wisest, in matters of public policy.
Page 10.—Demosthenes in his oration against Midias, whom he prosecuted for an assault upon himself, has a long passage about the way in which Alcibiades, in former times, in spite of all his great pretensions, high birth and wealth, capacity as a general, and skill as an orator, had not been tolerated in his insolence to private persons.
Page 17.—At Agraulos is the old reading, but in [the temple] of Agraulos is the early and certain correction. Agraulos, or Agraule, from whom the township of Agraule took its name, was one of the daughters of Cecrops, who, to fulfil an oracle which promised victory on such a condition, threw herself from the rocks of the Acropolis. The people built her a temple, and here the young Athenians, on first assuming arms, took this oath.
Page 18.—The quotations from Aristophanes are lines 1445, 1452 of the Frogs. Page 28.—'Tis not Achilles's son, but he himself, the very man, is quoted elsewhere by Plutarch, but is otherwise unknown. 'Tis the same woman still is said of Helen by Electra in the Orestes of Euripides (129), when, in making a funeral offering, she had, to save her beauty, cut off only the very ends of her hair.
Life of Coriolanus, page 69.—To beware of self-will, which belongs to the family of solitude, is Plato's phrase of caution to Dion (Epist. IV., p. 321). See the life of Dion, where it is repeated more than once.
Page 78.—The adage about wealth is from Heraclitus, and is quoted in two other places by Plutarch, as also by Aristotle. I have let the conplet stand, but the original, though it has the run of an iambic verse, was probably prose. The line from Homer is from Helen's description, in the fourth book of the Odyssey (IV., 246).
Page 85.—Bola, in the list with Toleria, Lavici, and Peda (or Pedum), is obviously meant for a different town from Bola, a few lines below,—a town not above ten miles from Rome. The spelling in the Greek differs, and there is little doubt that in the latter place Bolla, so written in the Greek, should be turned into Boïlla, the equivalent used for the Latin Bovillæ.
Page 90.—But him the blue-eyed goddess did inspire is the first line of the 21st book of the Odyssey, only that for him, we should have her; Minerva inspires Penelope with the thought of the trial by the bow. Plutarch no doubt quoted from memory. The next two lines are wholly different from any thing now to be found in Homer. The third quotation is from the ninth Odyssey (339), where the Cyclops is described coming home at evening to his cave, and were it some thought of his own, or so ordered him by a god, he left none of his flock outside, but drove them all into his hollow fold. In the same book (IX., 299), is also the line: But I consulted with my own great soul; Ulysses consulted with himself whether he should kill the Cyclops as he lay drunk and asleep, but reflected that there would then be no one to move away the stone from the door and let them out. He spoke; Achilles, with quick pain possessed, is from Iliad I., 188, and the lines about Bellerophon from Iliad VI., 161. Coray in his notes compares the doctrine given at the end of the first paragraph of the following page (91) with a passage in Plato's Critias (p. 109), where it is said, that we in our several tribes and cities are the flocks whom the divine beings severally tend, not by any bodily compulsion applied to our bodies, but by an intellectual agency operating on the rudder, to which all living things most aptly answer, of the soul.
Page 92.—Through all this narrative Plutarch appears to have made a mistake. The mother of Coriolanus was Veturia, and his wife Volumnia.
Page 98.—The divine nature, differing from us in all respects, may very well be conceived to differ in its acts and mode of agency yet more than in any thing else. The sense of the passage from Heraclitus, which is quoted also by Clement of Alexandria (Stromata V., cxiii), is very uncertain. It may merely mean that divine things transcend our powers of belief and knowledge.
Life of Timoleon, page 107.—As they sat at meat in the tent, after Achilles had consented to give Priam Hector's body, Priam, son of Dardanus, eyed Achilles, admiring his stature and his qualities, and his appearance, as it were of a god, and Achilles in turn looked with admiration upon Priam (Iliad, XXIV., 629). The line that follows is from a lost play, the Tympanistæ of Sophocles, a fragment found at great length elsewhere:— Ah, and what greater pleasure can one have, Landed from sea, safe in one's home, to list With slumbering sense the swift descending rain?
(Dindorf fragment 563.) Page 139.—The pine, sacred to Neptune, was the original Isthmian garland; then came parsley in its place, and then, not long before Plutarch's time, the pine was returned to again. There is a whole chapter in the Symposiaca (V., 3) devoted to a conversation on this subject. At a dinner at Corinth, given by Lucanius the priest, in the time of the games, the question is started, why the pine is used? One of the company, a pretender to learning, shows by numerous quotations that in old times it was parsley. Lucanius, when he has finished, quietly points out by other citations that originally it was pine, and that parsley came in at a later time.
Page 146.— "Corinthian women, coming out of doors, Blame not, if thus ye see me," are the words with which Medea first enters the stage and addresses the chorus in Euripides's tragedy.
Page 149.—The lines from Sophocles are a fragment of a lost play. (Dindorf, 710).
Life of Æmilius Paulus, page 181. The battle fought in Italy (rather, by the Italian Greeks), near the river Sagra, or Sagras, is that mentioned by Justin (XX., 3), Cicero (de Natura Deorum, II., 2), and Strabo (VI., 10), in which the Locrians gave a great defeat to the Crotoniats; it took place in early history, some time before the Persian wars.