Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4)

Plutarch, et al, Translated by Aubrey Stewart and George Long PLUTARCH'S LIVES. Translated from the Greek. WITH NOTES AND A LIFE OF PLUTARCH . BY AUBREY STEWART, M.A., Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge ; AND THE LATE GEORGE LONG, M.A., Formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge . IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK ST., COVENT GARDEN, AND NEW YORK. 1894. LONDON: REPRINTED FROM STEREOTYPE PLATES BY WM. CLOWES & SONS, LTD., STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. CONTENTS. PREFACE. PREFACE TO THE CIVIL WARS OF ROME. LIFE OF PLUTARCH. LIFE OF THESEUS. LIFE OF ROMULUS. COMPARISON OF THESEUS AND ROMULUS. LIFE OF LYKURGUS. LIFE OF NUMA. COMPARISON OF NUMA WITH LYKURGUS. LIFE OF SOLON. LIFE OF POPLICOLA. COMPARISON OF SOLON AND POPLICOLA. LIFE OF THEMISTOKLES. LIFE OF CAMILLUS. LIFE OF PERIKLES. LIFE OF FABIUS MAXIMUS. COMPARISON OF PERIKLES AND FABIUS MAXIMUS. LIFE OF ALKIBIADES. LIFE OF CAIUS MARCIUS CORIOLANUS. COMPARISON OF ALKIBIADES AND CORIOLANUS. LIFE OF TIMOLEON. LIFE OF AEMILIUS. COMPARISON OF PAULUS AEMILIUS AND TIMOLEON. PREFACE. No apologies are needed for a new edition of so favourite an author as Plutarch. From the period of the revival of classical literature in Europe down to our own times, his writings have done more than those of any other single author to familiarise us with the greatest men and the greatest events of the ancient world. The great Duke of Marlborough, it is said, confessed that his only knowledge of English history was derived from Shakespeare's historical plays, and it would not be too much to say that a very large proportion of educated men, in our own as well as in Marlborough's times, have owed much of their knowledge of classical antiquity to the study of Plutarch's Lives. Other writers may be read with profit, with admiration, and with interest; but few, like Plutarch, can gossip pleasantly while instructing solidly; can breathe life into the dry skeleton of history, and show that the life of a Greek or Roman worthy, when rightly dealt with, can prove as entertaining as a modern novel. No one is so well able as Plutarch to dispel the doubt which all schoolboys feel as to whether the names about which they read ever belonged to men who were really alive; his characters are so intensely human and lifelike in their faults and failings as well as in their virtues, that…