of the elder. His father in going into exile left him in command of
the citadel of Syracuse, which he was soon compelled to surrender.
He holds the third place, as Nisaeus the second, in Aelian’s list of
distinguished drunkards.
[45:5] These were both sons of Cassander. Philip succeeded his father
as king of Macedonia, but died almost immediately upon his accession to
the throne, leaving probably memory of his vices, of which Plutarch had
knowledge, but no record of which has come down to our time. Antipater,
his next younger brother, in some sort succeeded him, first murdering
his mother, who favored the claims of her still younger son. He himself
was murdered before he could obtain undisturbed possession of his
kingdom.
[46:1] These obsolete modes of medical practice can now only provoke
a smile; but the argument is complete, if we will substitute for them
the treatment cited at the close of the sentence,—blood-letting for
ophthalmia, which, if not in rule now, was so thirty years ago.
[48:1] The reference in this last clause is to the opinion largely
held by the Stoics, that the soul is not immortal, but is destined to
survive the body, and to live till the consummation of the existing
universe, which, after completing a cycle of many thousands of years,
will be destroyed by fire.
[48:2] This sentence is, as I believe, ironical. Some editors and
translators make it interrogative; but the grammatical construction, as
it seems to me, is opposed to this view.
[48:3] This term, as applied to vessels or shallow earth-beds, where
what is sown can only spring up and wither without coming to seed,
occurs in Plato’s Phaedrus. The very brief life and untimely end of
Adonis may perhaps account for this peculiar use of his name.
[49:1] Several hundred years ago. Archilochus, the earliest Ionian
lyric poet, flourished, and was killed in battle, in the seventh
century B. C. This entire passage may be regarded as an _argumentum de
concessis_, and as such it is perfectly legitimate. The inspiration of
the Delphian oracle and priestess was believed in by many of those for
whom Plutarch wrote; and to them he said, “Can you believe that all
these oracular utterances about expiations for the dead and posthumous
honors to be paid to them have had reference to beings that ceased to
exist when they ceased to breathe?”
[50:1] Or, “the home of the grasshopper”; for _tettix_ (τέττιξ) means
_grasshopper_. The oracle, as usual, was ambiguous. Calondas, _alias_
Corax, is represented as not understanding it at first, but finding
out afterward that a Cretan named Tettix had settled at Taenarus, or
Taenarum, he inferred that his home was designated by the oracle.
[50:2] This place was on the southernmost cape of Greece, now Cape
Matapan. The peninsula which forms this cape had a famous temple of
Poseidon, was sacred to the infernal gods, and was the site of an
avenue, through a cave, to and from the infernal regions,—the avenue by
which Hercules dragged Cerberus to the light of day.
[50:3] Pausanias, the Spartan, after a career of mingled glory and
shame, being detected in treasonable intrigues, took refuge in the
temple of Athene. When he was nearly exhausted by hunger the Ephori
dragged him out of the temple, and he died at its threshold. For their
sacrilege the Delphian oracle ordered that he should be re-interred on
the spot where he died, and that two brazen statues should be erected
in honor of the goddess in her temple at the public charge. Very
naturally, his ghost was supposed to haunt the sacred enclosure whence
he had been taken to die. See p. 28, n. 4.
[51:1] The clause, “than there is that they should be fully rendered in
this life,” has nothing in the original to correspond to it; but it is
necessary in order to convey the obvious meaning of the sentence.
[52:1] Probably, as it seems to me, not Bion the poet, but a
philosopher of that name,—a man of infamous character, an atheist
in his professed belief, and remarkable for pithy and epigrammatic
sayings, full of bitter humor and biting sarcasm, some of which are
still extant. Horace speaks of those who find pleasure in _Bioneis
sermonibus et sale nigro_.
[54:1] Or, “Is not God wiser than Hesiod?” With this interrogative
construction, which the sentence will bear, the sense is,—“Hesiod
teaches the hereditary transmission of character as a fact; God, still
more, traces these inherited traits before they appear to human view.”
According to the rendering that I have given, the sense is,—“The
transmission of character from father to son is recognized not only by
God in his providence, but equally by wise men, as, for instance, by
Hesiod.”
[57:1] Demetrius Poliorcetes, king of Macedonia, who was guilty of
great crimes, and in a not over-virtuous age was distinguished for
unbounded licentiousness. He died in captivity, having surrendered
to Seleucus, king of Syria, after expulsion from his own kingdom
and a series of consequent disasters. Antigonus, his son, was a man
of eminent virtue, had a diversified, but on the whole a prosperous
career, and died at the age of eighty, after a reign of nearly half a
century.
[57:2] Augeas, having made a contract with Hercules by which a tenth
part of his cattle were to be the price for cleansing his stables in
a day, refused to pay the price; and Hercules waged with him a war in
which he and all his sons but Phyleus perished. Hercules placed Phyleus
on his father’s throne, as king of the Epeians in Elis. The father’s
story is, of course, mythical, and the son hardly falls within the
domain of authentic history.
[57:3] The chief offence charged in Grecian myth against Neleus was his
refusing to perform expiatory rites for Hercules after he had killed
Iphitus, whose father was the friend of Neleus. Hercules, according to
some traditions, made war on Pylos, the kingdom of Neleus, and killed
him, with all his sons except Nestor.
[58:1] _Sparti_, from σπείρω, _the sown men_, i. e. the armed men that
sprang from the teeth of the dragon sown by Cadmus, from whom the
oldest families in Thebes—a large part of the Boeotian aristocracy—were
said to have descended. Something like this mythical birthmark had
probably made its appearance on the body of a member of one of these
ancient families. Nisibis was a Syrian city with an extensive commerce,
with many Greek, and probably some Boeotian immigrants.
[58:2] It may be that, in cases where the inheritance of a morbid
physical constitution, or of proclivity to moral evil, seems to lapse
in the first generation and to reappear in the second, the children of
the diseased or depraved father have the physical or moral traits of
their father, but are made and kept vigilant and faithful in self-care
and self-discipline by the memory of their father’s infirmities or
sins; while their children have the inheritance without the warning.
[59:1] If Plutarch made this story, as he probably did, it was
undoubtedly suggested by the story, unlike in its details, yet with not
dissimilar purpose, which Plato tells of Er, the Pamphilian, in the
tenth book of _The Republic_.
[59:2] Soli was a considerable city in Cilicia.
[59:3] Μεθ’ ἡμᾶς, _after us_, is the reading in all the manuscripts and
older editions; μεθ’ ἡμῶν, _with us_, is a conjectural emendation which
the sense seems to require.
[60:1] Amphilochus was one of the heroes of the Trojan war. He was
the son of a seer, and was believed to be endowed with the gift of
prophecy. The oracle bearing his name at Mallos in Cilicia was said
to have been founded by him, and it had a wider and more enduring
reputation for veracity than any other ancient oracle.
[60:2] Εἰ βέλτιον βιώσεται. The question related to his property,—to
his means of comfortable living. I therefore use in translating it
the familiar colloquialism, _better off_. The answer has a moral
significance. Βέλτιον is an ambiguous word,—applicable equally to
condition and to character.
[60:3] “Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy,” was sound
ethical doctrine, equally with Gentile and with Jew, until men saw in
the divine humanity of Jesus Christ the qualities of character which
had been most despised, transfigured and glorified.
[62:1] Thespesius means _divine_.
[63:1] Plutarch (Greek Questions, 39) writes: “The Pythagoreans say
that the souls of the dead neither give a shadow nor wink.”
[63:2] Ἀνάγκη. This mythical parentage may account for the name of
Adrasteia, which is probably derived from διδράσκειν, _to escape_, with
the α privative, and thus means _unescapable_.
[64:1] _Punishment._
[64:2] _Justice._
[64:3] One of the Erinnyes, or Furies. There are different myths as to
their number, though there were commonly said to be three. Their name
is probably derived from ἐρινύειν, _to be in a rage_. They were in
Grecian fable the type of implacable anger and unrelenting vengeance.
[64:4] Plutarch in his _Apophthegms_, says of Artaxerxes Longimanus,
who was not an unwise, but an over-indulgent king: “He first ordained
as a punishment for his nobles who had offended, that they should
be stripped and their garments scourged instead of their bodies;
and whereas their hair should have been plucked out, that the same
should be done to their turbans.” We do not learn that his example was
followed by any of his successors, or that he employed this method as
to criminals in general. But the illustration is a happy one.
[65:1] In these forms of punishment, it is the soul’s clothes, i. e.
the body, not the soul itself, that is punished.
[66:1] The body of a brute.
[67:1] There were in Naxos, on Parnassus, and elsewhere various caves
dedicated to Bacchus, i. e. to mirth and jollity; and the mouths of
these caves were, of course, decked with all of verdure and bloom that
could make them charming and attractive.
[67:2] Dionysus as the son of Zeus had a right to leave the abode of
the dead, and to claim his seat on Olympus. His mother Semele, being
a mortal woman, had no such right; but he rescued her from the dead,
and bore her to Olympus, where she became a goddess under the name of
Thyone.
[68:1] _Oblivion._
[68:2] Γένεσις. According to this derivation γένεσις comes from γῆ,
_the earth_, and νεύειν, _to incline toward_,—a fanciful derivation,
the genuineness of which there is good reason to doubt.
[69:1] Themis preceded Apollo as the inspirer of the Delphian oracle.
[69:2] The ancients imagined, as we easily may, something like the
outlines of a human face in the disk of the moon, and among their
myths, or rather poetical fancies, was this of a Sibyl revolving with
the moon, and singing, as she rides across the firmament, the fate of
men and nations.
[70:1] The great eruption of A. D. 79.
[70:2] The earlier name of Puteoli.
[70:3] Vespasian, who died in A. D. 79.
[73:1] Nero’s matricide is here referred to. Plutarch, no doubt, had in
his mind some then well-known figure or description in a poem of Pindar
now lost.
[73:2] Some interpreters suppose that this creature is a swan. I have
no doubt that it is a frog. Even had not the empire passed entirely out
of the possible reach of the Caesars, I do not believe that Plutarch
would have shown any tenderness to Nero’s memory, and certainly
there was no conceivable motive for it under the reign of Titus or
Domitian. There is a fine satire in this final destiny of Nero. He has
been horribly punished, and has been tortured into the likeness of
the reptile regarded by the ancients as the only matricide in their
zoölogy; and now for the one good act of his reign a little mercy is
shown him. He had prided himself and annoyed his subjects as a singer,
and now he is transformed into the singer that is a perpetual annoyance
to all dwellers near swamps and ponds.
[74:1] He freed the province of Achaia from taxes, and endowed it
with certain political rights and privileges. Vespasian restored the
province to its previous condition.
INDEX.
Adrasteia, presiding over the punishment of disembodied souls,
63.
Aesculapius, sprung from a vicious stock, 22.
Aesop, murder of, 34.
Ajax, crime of, 37 n.
Alexander, revenge of, on the Branchidae for the guilt of their
ancestors, 35.
Amphilochus, oracle of, 60 n.
Apollodorus, the prey of terrific visions, 28.
serving a cannibal feast to his associates in crime, 32.
Archytas, forbearance of, 12.
Aristo, punished for sacrilege, 23.
Aristocrates, treachery of, 4.
Artaxerxes Longimanus, penal discipline of, 64 n.
Bessus, the parricide, betraying his crime from remorse, 24.
Bion, the philosopher, cavils of, at the reality of inherited
punishment, 52.
character of, 52 n.
Brasidas, death of, 2.
Callippus, killed by the dagger with which he had procured Dion’s
death, 22.
Calondas, expiating the slaughter of Archilochus, 49.
Cassander, not punished till he had restored Thebes, 7.
Character, hereditary, 44.
Children, inheriting the rewards and punishments due to their
fathers, 39.
Cimon, infamy and fame of, 16.
Dionysius, left unpunished for the good that he might do, 18.
Forbearance, the Divine, affording space for repentance, 13.
Gelon, reformation of, 14.
Glaucus, fraud and punishment of, 32.
God, in his slowness to punish, an example to man, 11.
Hereditary transmission of punishment no more mysterious than
transitions in space, 42.
Heritage of moral qualities lapsing in the first, and reappearing in
some subsequent generation, 58.
Hieron, reformation of, 14.
Hipparchus, punishment of, anticipated in vision, 28.
Immortality, made probable by God’s retributive providence, 48.
Laws, human, often unintelligible, 9.
Lethe, cavern of, 67.
Lyciscus, treachery of, 5.
Lydiades, a tyrant, and afterward a patriot, 15.
Miltiades, a tyrant, yet a patriot, 16.
Mitius, the murderer of, punished, 23.
Municipal life and character, continuous, 43.
Nero, doom of, 73.
Odysseus, redeemed by his own virtues from the curse resting on his
father, 22.
Pausanias, haunted by the apparition of a victim of his lust and
cruelty, 29.
haunting the temple near which he died, 50.
Peisistratus, a usurper, yet a beneficent ruler, 15.
Periander, punishment of, deferred that he might first render
service, 17.
Pericles, of an accursed and infamous race, 28.
Plato, quoted as making God an example to man, 10.
forbearance of, 12.
Plutarch, birthplace and residence of, vii.
education of, viii.
family of, ix.
philosophy of, x.
theology of, xi.
ethics of, xii.
relation of, to Christianity, xiv.
“Lives” of, xvii.
“Moralia” of, xx.
letter of, to his wife on the death of their child, xxii.
“Apophthegms” of, xxv.
treatise of, on the Delay of the Divine Justice, xxvi.
Pompey the Great, son of a worthless father, 21.
Providence, the Divine, beyond man’s full comprehension, 8.
Ptolemy Ceraunus, punishment of, foretold in dreams, 28.
Punishment, alleged to be not recognized as such, when delayed, 6.
for the children of bad men, preceding and preventing guilt, 55.
Sibyl in the moon, predictions of, 69.
Sicyon, the people of, punished for wantonness and cruelty, 21.
Slowness of retribution, alleged to be disheartening to those who
suffer wrong, 3.
Souls cast no shadow, 63.
Sybaris destroyed for the guilt of its inhabitants, 37.
Themistocles, early profligacy and subsequent public services of,
16.
Thespesius, story of, 59.
Transformation of men into beasts, 71.
Wicked men, preserved for services that they may render, 18.
employed by God as executioners before their own destruction, 20.
punished not late, but long, 24.
punished most severely of all in their children, 51.
University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
In the Synopsis, the first numbered paragraph on each page was preceded
by a section symbol in the original. Only the first section symbol has
been retained.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain as in the original.
The following corrections have been made to the original text:
Page xxix: equally the postulate[original has “postulete”] of
the unsophisticated reason
Page 6: they place it to the account of misfortune[original has
“misforfune”]
[4:3] scene of the story was probably[original has “propably”]
Orchomenus
[57:3] Hercules, according[original has “accerding”] to some
traditions