as Empedocles says; this on the other hand unties, rends, and breaks
the bond, distracts our inclinations with too much variety; and the
agreeable just mixture of affection, the very cement of true friends,
is wholly lost in so loose and confused a conversation. Hence at once
arises great inequality with respect to the services of friendship,
and a foolish diffidence in the performance of them. For multiplicity
of friends renders those very parts of friendship vain and useless
whence advantage was most expected; neither can we hope it should be
otherwise, if we consider how “one man is acted upon by his nature and
another by his cares and anxieties.” Nature hath not bestowed the same
inclinations on all, nor are we all born to the same fortune; and the
occasions of our actions, like the wind, may often favor one of our
acquaintance while they stand cross to another.
6. However, suppose by great chance all should agree to crave
assistance in the same affair, whether at a consult, exercise of a
public trust in the government, canvassing for preferment, entertaining
guests, or the like; yet it is exceeding hard to satisfy all. But now
if they are engaged in diverse concerns at the very same moment of
time, and every one should make his particular request to you, one
to take a voyage with him, another to assist in pleading his cause, a
third to prosecute a criminal, a fourth to help in managing his trade,
another to celebrate his wedding, and another to attend a funeral,—
And the whole city’s filled with incense smoke,
And songs of triumph mixt with groans resound;[193]
I say, in this case, it is utterly impossible to answer the requests
of all, to gratify none is absurd, and to serve only one and disoblige
the rest is a thing grievous and intolerably rude;—“for no one, when
he loves a friend, will bear to be neglected.”[194] If indeed you could
persuade that inadvertency was the cause of the omission, you might
more easily hope a pardon; and to plead forgetfulness is a sort of
excuse which perhaps might pass without much angering your friend; but
to allege “I could not be advocate in your cause, being of counsel for
another,” or “I could not visit you in a fever, because I was invited
to a feast elsewhere,” while it is thus confessed that we neglect one
friend to pay our respects to another, is so far from extenuating the
offence, that it highly aggravates it, and adds all the jealousies of
rivalry.
But commonly men overlook these and such like inconveniences of a
numerous acquaintance, and take only a prospect of its advantages, not
in the least reflecting that whoever employs many assistants in his
affairs must in gratitude repay his service to as many when they need
it; and as Briareus, who with his hundred hands was daily obliged for
his bare subsistence to feed fifty stomachs, could thrive no better
than ourselves, who supply a single one with two hands, so a man of
many friends cannot boast any other privilege but that of being a slave
to many, and of sharing in all the business, cares, and disquiet that
may befall them. Nor can Euripides help him by advising that
Best suited to the state
Of mortal life are mutual friendships formed
With moderation, such as take not root
Deep in the soul, affections that with ease
May be relaxed, or closer bound at will,[195]
that is, we may pull in and let out our friendships like a sail, as the
wind happens to blow. Let us rather, good Euripides, turn this saying
of yours to enmity; for heats and animosities ought to be moderate, and
never reach the inmost recesses of the soul; hatred, anger, complaints,
and jealousies may with good reason be readily appeased and forgotten.
Therefore it is far more advisable, as Pythagoras directs, “not to
shake hands with too many,”—that is, not to make many friends,—nor to
affect that popular kind of easiness which courts and embraces every
acquaintance that occurs, but carries with it on the reverse a thousand
mischiefs; among which (as was before hinted) to bear part of the same
cares, to be affected with the same sorrows, and to be embroiled in the
same enterprises and dangers with any great number of friends will be a
sort of life hardly tolerable even to the most ingenuous and generous
tempers. What Chilon the wise man remarked to one who said he had no
enemies, namely, “Thou seemest rather to have no friends,” has a great
deal of truth; for enmities always keep pace and are interwoven with
friendships.
7. And it is impossible any should be friends that resent not mutually
the affronts and injuries offered unto either, and that do not hate
alike and in common. They also who are enemies to yourself will
presently suspect and hate your friend; nay, your other friends too
will often envy, calumniate, and undermine him. Wherefore what the
oracle foretold Timesias concerning his planting a colony, that an hive
of bees should be changed into a nest of wasps, may not impertinently
be applied to those who seek after a hive of friends, but light before
they know it upon a wasps-nest of enemies.
Besides, we should do well to consider that the kindest affections
of friends seldom compensate for the misfortunes that befall us from
the malice of enemies. It is well known how Alexander treated the
familiars of Philotas and Parmenio; Dionysius, those of Dion; Nero,
those of Plautus; and Tiberius, those of Sejanus; all shared the same
hard fate of being racked and tortured to death. For as the gold and
riches Creon’s daughter was adorned with could not secure the good old
father from being consumed in her flames, endeavoring too officiously
to rescue her; so not a few partake of the calamities and ruin of
their friends, before they have reaped the least advantage from their
prosperity; a misfortune to which philosophers and the best-natured men
are the most liable. This was the case of Theseus, who for the sake
of his dear Pirithous shared his punishment, and was bound with him
in the same eternal chains.[196] Thus in the plague of Athens, says
Thucydides,[197] the most generous and virtuous citizens, while without
regard to their own safety they visited their sick, frequently perished
with their friends.
8. Such accidents as these ought to admonish us not to be too prodigal
of our virtue, nor inconsiderately to prostitute our perfections to the
enjoyment of every little thing that pretends to be our humble admirer;
rather let us reserve them for the worthy, for those who can love
and share another’s joys and sorrows like ourselves. And truly, this
alone renders it most unlikely that many men should remain friends,
that real friendship has always its origin from likeness. For, we
may observe, even brute and inanimate beings affect their like, very
readily mixing and uniting with those of their own nature; while with
great reluctance and a kind of indignation they shrink from and avoid
whatever differs from themselves, and force can scarce oblige them to
the loathed embraces. By what motive then can we imagine any league of
amity can be kept inviolable amidst a multitude, where manners admit of
so much variety, where desires and humors will be perpetually jarring,
where the several courses of life must needs be almost as unlike as
constitutions and faces? A musical concord consists of contrary sounds,
and a due composition of flat and sharp notes makes a delightful tune;
but as for friendship, that is a sort of harmony all of a piece, and
admits not the least inequality, unlikeness, or discords of parts, but
here all discourses, opinions, inclinations, and designs serve one
common interest, as if several bodies were acted and informed by the
same soul.
9. Now is there any person living of that industrious, pliant, and
universal humor, who can take the pains exactly to imitate all shapes,
and will not rather deride the advice of Theognis[198] as absurd and
impossible, namely, to learn the craft of the polypus, which puts on
the hue of every stone it sticks to? However, the changes of this
fish are only superficial, and the colors are produced in the skin,
which by its closeness or its laxity receives various impressions from
neighboring objects; whereas the resemblance betwixt friends must be
far more than skin-deep, must be substantial, such as may be traced in
every action of their lives, in all their affections, dispositions,
words and purposes, even to their most retired thoughts. To follow the
advice of Theognis would be a task worthy of a Proteus, who was neither
very fortunate nor very honest, but could by enchantment transform
himself in an instant from one shape to another. Even so, he that
entertains many friends must be learned and bookish among the learned,
go into the arena with wrestlers, drudge cheerfully after a pack of
hounds with gentlemen that love hunting, drink with debauchees, and sue
for office with politicians; in fine, he must have no proper principles
of actions and humors of his own, but those of the present company
he converses with. Thus, as the first matter of the philosophers is
originally without shape or color, yet being the subject of all natural
changes takes by its own inherent forces the forms of fire, water, air,
and solid earth; so a person that affects a numerous friendship must
possess a mind full of folds and windings, subject to many passions,
inconstant as water, and easy to be transformed into an infinite
variety of shapes. But real friendship requires a sedate, stable, and
unalterable temper; so that it is a rare thing and next a miracle to
find a constant and sure friend.
THE FIRST ORATION OF PLUTARCH CONCERNING THE FORTUNE OR VIRTUE OF
ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
1. This is the oration of Fortune, asserting and challenging Alexander
to be her masterpiece, and hers alone. In contradiction to which it
behooves us to say something on the behalf of philosophy, or rather
in the defence of Alexander himself, who cannot choose but spurn away
the very thought of having received his empire as a gift at the hands
of Fortune, knowing that it was so dearly bought with the price of his
lost blood and many wounds, and that in gaining it,
Full many a bloody day
In toilsome fight he spent,
And many a wakeful night
In battle’s management;[199]
and all this in opposition to armies almost irresistible, numberless
nations, rivers before impassable, and rocks impenetrable; choosing,
however, for his chiefest guides and counsellors prudence, endurance,
fortitude, and steadiness of mind.
2. And now, methinks, I hear him speaking thus to Fortune, when she
signalizes herself with his successes:—
Envy not my virtue, nor go about to detract from my honor. Darius
was a fabric of thy own rearing, who of a servant and the king’s
courier was by thee advanced to be monarch of all Persia. The same
was Sardanapalus, who from a comber of purple wool was raised by
thee to wear the royal diadem. But I, subduing as I marched, from
Arbela forced my passage even to Susa itself. Cilicia opened me a
broad way into Egypt; and the Granicus, o’er which I passed without
resistance, trampling under foot the slain carcasses of Mithridates
and Spithridates, opened the way into Cilicia. Pamper up thyself, and
boast thy kings that never felt a wound nor ever saw a finger bleed;
for they were fortunate, it is true,—thy Ochi and thy Artaxerxes,—who
were no sooner born but they were by thee established in the throne
of Cyrus. But my body carries many marks of Fortune’s unkindness, who
rather fought against me as an enemy than assisted me as her friend.
First, among the Illyrians I was wounded in the head with a stone, and
received a blow in the neck with an iron mace. Then, near the Granicus
my head was a second time gashed with a barbarian scimitar; at Issus
I was run through the thigh with a sword; at Gaza I was shot in the
ankle with a dart; and not long after, falling heavy from my saddle, I
forced my shoulder out of joint. Among the Maracadartae my shinbone was
split with an arrow. The wounds I received in India and my strenuous
acts of daring courage will declare the rest. Then among the Assacani
I was shot through the shoulder with another arrow. Encountering the
Gandridae, my thigh was wounded; and one of the Mallotes drew his bow
with that force, that the well-directed arrow made way through my iron
armor to lodge itself in my breast; besides the blow in my neck, when
the scaling-ladders brake that were set to the walls, and Fortune left
me alone, to gratify with the fall of so great a person not a renowned
or illustrious enemy, but ignoble and worthless barbarians. So that
had not Ptolemy covered me with his shield, and Limnaeus, after he had
received a thousand wounds directed at my body, fallen dead before me;
or if the Macedonians, breathing nothing but courage and their prince’s
rescue, had not opened a timely breach, that barbarous and nameless
village might have proved Alexander’s tomb.
3. Take the whole expedition together, and what was it but a patient
endurance of cold winters and parching droughts; depths of rivers,
rocks inaccessible to the winged fowl, amazing sights of strange wild
beasts, savage diet, and lastly revolts and treasons of far-controlling
potentates. As to what before the expedition befell me, it is well
known that all Greece lay gasping and panting under the fatal effects
of the Philippic wars. But then the Thebans, raising themselves upon
their feet again after so desperate a fall, shook from their arms the
dust of Chaeronea; with them also joined the Athenians, reaching forth
their helping hands. The treacherous Macedonians, studying nothing
but revenge, cast their eyes upon the sons of Aeropus; the Illyrians
brake out into an open war; and the Scythians hung in equal balance,
seeing their neighbors meditating new revolutions; while Persian gold,
liberally scattered among the popular leaders of every city, put all
Peloponnesus into motion.
King Philip’s treasuries were at that time empty, and besides he was
in debt, as Onesicritus relates, two hundred talents. In the midst of
so much pressing want and such menacing troubles, a youth but new past
the age of childhood durst aspire to the conquest of Babylon and Susa,
or rather project in his thoughts supreme dominion over all mankind;
and all this, trusting only to the strength of thirty thousand foot
and four thousand horse. For so many there were, by the account which
Aristobulus gives; by the relation of King Ptolemy, there were five
thousand horse; from both which Anaximenes varying musters up the
foot to three and forty thousand, and the horse to five thousand five
hundred. Now the glorious and magnificent sum which Fortune had raised
up to supply the necessities of so great an expedition was no more than
seventy talents, according to Aristobulus; or, as Duris records it,
only thirty days’ provision.
4. You will say therefore that Alexander was too rash and daringly
inconsiderate, with such a slender support to rush upon so vast an
opposition. By no means: for who was ever better fitted than he
for splendid enterprises, with all the choicest and most excelling
precepts of magnanimity, consideration, wisdom, and virtuous
fortitude, with which a philosophical education largely supplied him
for his expedition? So that we may properly affirm that he invaded
Persia with greater assistance from Aristotle than from his father
Philip. As for those who write how Alexander was wont to say that
the Iliad and Odyssey had always followed him in his wars, in honor
to Homer I believe them. Nevertheless, if any one affirm that the
Iliad and Odyssey were admitted of his train merely as the recreation
of his wearied thoughts or pastime of his leisure hours, but that
philosophical learning, and commentaries concerning contempt of fear,
fortitude, temperance, and nobleness of spirit, were the real cabinet
provision which he carried along for his personal use, we contemn
their assertion. For he was not a person that ever wrote concerning
arguments or syllogisms; none of those who observed walks in the
Lyceum, or held disputes in the Academy; for they who thus circumscribe
philosophy believe it to consist in discoursing, not in action. And
yet we find that neither Pythagoras nor Socrates, Arcesilaus nor
Carneades, was ever celebrated for his writings, though they were the
most approved and esteemed among all the philosophers. Yet no such busy
wars as these employed their time in civilizing wild and barbarous
kings, in building Grecian cities among rude and unpolished nations,
nor in settling government and peace among people that lived without
humanity or control of law. They only lived at ease, and surrendered
the business and trouble of writing to the more contentious Sophists.
Whence then came it to pass that they were believed to be philosophers?
It was either from their sayings, from the lives they led, or from the
precepts which they taught. Upon these grounds let us take a prospect
of Alexander, and we shall soon find him, by what he said, by what he
acted, and by the lessons he taught, to be a great philosopher.
5. And first, if you please, consider that which seems the farthest
distant of all from the common received opinion, and compare the
disciples of Alexander with the pupils of Plato and Socrates. The
latter instructed persons ingenuous, such as speak the same speech,
well understanding (if nothing else) the Grecian language. But there
were many with whom their precepts did not prevail; for men like
Critias, Alcibiades, and Cleitophon shook off their doctrine like a
bridle, and followed the conduct of their own inclinations.
On the other side, take a view of Alexander’s discipline, and you shall
see how he taught the Hyrcanians the conveniency of wedlock, introduced
husbandry among the Arachosians, persuaded the Sogdians to preserve and
cherish—not to kill—their aged parents; the Persians to reverence and
honor—not to marry—their mothers. Most admirable philosophy! which
induced the Indians to worship the Grecian Deities, and wrought upon
the Scythians to bury their deceased friends, not to feed upon their
carcasses. We admire the power of Carneades’s eloquence, for forcing
the Carthaginian Clitomachus, called Asdrubal before, to embrace the
Grecian customs. No less we wonder at the prevailing reason of Zeno, by
whom the Babylonian Diogenes was charmed into the love of philosophy.
Yet no sooner had Alexander subdued Asia, than Homer became an author
in high esteem, and the Persian, Susian, and Gedrosian youth sang the
tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles. Among the Athenians, Socrates,
introducing foreign Deities, was condemned to death at the prosecution
of his accusers. But Alexander engaged both Bactria and Caucasus to
worship the Grecian Gods, which they had never known before. Lastly,
Plato, though he proposed but one single form of a commonwealth, could
never persuade any people to make use of it, by reason of the austerity
of his government. But Alexander, building above seventy cities among
the barbarous nations, and as it were sowing the Grecian customs and
constitutions all over Asia, quite weaned them from their former wild
and savage manner of living. The laws of Plato here and there a single
person may peradventure study, but myriads of people have made and
still make use of Alexander’s. And they whom Alexander vanquished were
more greatly blessed than they who fled his conquests. For these had
none to deliver them from their ancient state of misery; the others the
victor compelled to better fortune. True therefore was that expression
of Themistocles, when he was a fugitive from his native country, and
the king entertained him with sumptuous presents, assigning him three
stipendiary cities to supply his table, one with bread, a second with
wine, a third with all manner of costly viands; Ah! young men, said he,
had we not been undone, we had surely been undone. It may, however, be
more justly averred of those whom Alexander subdued, had they not been
vanquished, they had never been civilized. Egypt had not vaunted her
Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia her Seleucia; Sogdiana had not gloried in
her Propthasia, nor the Indians boasted their Bucephalia, nor Caucasus
its neighboring Grecian city; by the founding of all which barbarism
was extinguished and custom changed the worse into better.
If then philosophers assume to themselves their highest applause for
cultivating the most fierce and rugged conditions of men, certainly
Alexander is to be acknowledged the chiefest of philosophers, who
changed the wild and brutish customs of so many various nations,
reducing them to order and government.
6. It is true indeed that the so much admired commonwealth of Zeno,
first author of the Stoic sect, aims singly at this, that neither
in cities nor in towns we should live under laws distinct one from
another, but that we should look upon all men in general to be our
fellow-countrymen and citizens, observing one manner of living and one
kind of order, like a flock feeding together with equal right in one
common pasture. This Zeno wrote, fancying to himself, as in a dream,
a certain scheme of civil order, and the image of a philosophical
commonwealth. But Alexander made good his words by his deeds; for he
did not, as Aristotle advised him, rule the Grecians like a moderate
prince and insult over the barbarians like an absolute tyrant; nor did
he take particular care of the first as his friends and domestics, and
scorn the latter as mere brutes and vegetables; which would have filled
his empire with fugitive incendiaries and perfidious tumults. But
believing himself sent from Heaven as the common moderator and arbiter
of all nations, and subduing those by force whom he could not associate
to himself by fair offers, he labored thus, that he might bring all
regions, far and near, under the same dominion. And then, as in a
festival goblet, mixing lives, manners, customs, wedlock, all together,
he ordained that every one should take the whole habitable world for
his country, of which his camp and army should be the chief metropolis
and garrison; that his friends and kindred should be the good and
virtuous, and that the vicious only should be accounted foreigners. Nor
would he that Greeks and barbarians should be distinguished by long
garments, targets, scimitars, or turbans; but that the Grecians should
be known by their virtue and courage, and the barbarians by their vices
and their cowardice; and that their habit, their diet, their marriage
and custom of converse, should be everywhere the same, engaged and
blended together by the ties of blood and pledges of offspring.
7. Therefore it was that Demaratus the Corinthian, an acquaintance
and friend of Philip, when he beheld Alexander in Susa, bursting into
tears of more than ordinary joy, bewailed the deceased Greeks, who,
as he said, had been bereaved of the greatest blessing on earth, for
that they had not seen Alexander sitting upon the throne of Darius.
Though most assuredly, for my part, I do not envy the beholders this
show, which was only a thing of chance and a happiness of more ordinary
kings. But I would gladly have been a spectator of those majestic
and sacred nuptials, when, after he had betrothed together a hundred
Persian brides and a hundred Macedonian and Greek bridegrooms, he
placed them all at one common table within the compass of one pavilion
embroidered with gold, as being all of the same family; and then,
crowned with a nuptial garland, and being himself the first to sing an
epithalamium in honor of the conjunction between two of the greatest
and most potent nations in the world, of only one the bridegroom, of
all the brideman, father, and moderator, he caused the several couples
to be severally married. Had I but beheld this sight, ecstasied with
pleasure I should have then cried out: “Barbarous and stupid Xerxes,
how vain was all thy toil to cover the Hellespont with a floating
bridge! Thus rather wise and prudent princes join Asia to Europe. They
join and fasten nations together not with boards or planks, or surging
brigandines, not with inanimate and insensible bonds, but by the
ties of legitimate love, chaste nuptials, and the infallible gage of
progeny.”
8. But then, when he considered the Eastern garments, Alexander
preferred the Persian before the Median habit, though much the
meaner and more frugal garb. Therefore rejecting the gaudy and
scenical ornament of barbarian gallantry, such as were the tiara and
candys, together with the upper breeches, according to the report of
Eratosthenes, he ordered a mixture of the Macedonian and Persian modes
to be observed in all the garments which he wore. As a philosopher,
he contented himself with mediocrity; but as the common chieftain of
both and as a mild and affable prince, he was willing to gain the
affection of the vanquished by the esteem which he showed to the mode
of the country; that so they might continue the more steadfast and
loyal to the Macedonians, not hating them as their enemies, but loving
them as their princes and rulers. This behavior was contrary to that
of persons insipid and puffed up with prosperity, who wedded to their
own humors admire the single colored robe but cannot endure the tunic
bordered with purple, or else are well pleased with the latter and hate
the former, like young children, in love with the mode in which, as
another nurse, their country’s custom first apparelled them. And yet we
see that they who hunt wild beasts clothe themselves with their hairy
skins; and fowlers make use of feathered jerkins; nor are others less
wary how they show themselves to wild bulls in scarlet or to elephants
in white; for those creatures are provoked and enraged at the sight of
these colors. If then this potent monarch, designing to reclaim and
civilize stubborn and warlike nations, took the same course to soften
and allay their inbred fury which others take with wild beasts, and at
length brought them to be tame and tractable by making use of their
familiar habits and by submitting to their customary course of life,
thereby removing animosity from their breasts and sour looks from their
countenances, shall we blame his management; or rather must we not
admire the wisdom of him who by so slight a change of apparel ruled all
Asia, subduing their bodies with his arms and vanquishing their minds
with his habit? It is a strange thing; we applaud Socratic Aristippus,
because, being sometimes clad in a poor threadbare cloak, sometimes in
a Milesian robe, he kept a decency in both; but they censure Alexander,
because he gave some respect to the garb and mode of those whom he had
vanquished, as well as to that of his native country; not considering
that he was laying the foundation of vast achievements. It was not his
design to ransack Asia like a robber, or to despoil and ruin it, as
the prey and rapine of unexpected good fortune, as afterwards Hannibal
pillaged Italy, and before him the Treres ravaged Ionia and the
Scythians harassed Media,—but to subdue all the kingdoms of the earth
under one form of government, and to make one nation of all mankind.
So that if the same Deity which hither sent the soul of Alexander had
not too soon recalled it, one law had overlooked all the world, and one
form of justice had been as it were the common light of one universal
government; while now that part of the earth which Alexander never saw
remains without a sun.
9. Thus, in the first place, the very scope and aim of Alexander’s
expedition speaks him a philosopher, as one that sought not to gain for
himself luxurious splendor or riches, but to establish concord, peace,
and mutual community among all men.
Next, let us consider his sayings, seeing that the souls of other
kings and potentates betray their conditions and inclinations by their
expressions. Antigonus the Aged, having heard a certain poet sing
before him a short treatise concerning justice, said, Thou art a fool
to mention justice to me, when thou seest me thundering down the cities
belonging to other people about their ears. Dionysius the Tyrant was
wont to say that children were to be cheated with dice, but men with
oaths. Upon the monument of Sardanapalus this inscription is to be
seen:—
All I did eat and drink, and all that lust
To me vouchsafed, I have; all else is gone.
What now can a man say of these apophthegms, but that the first denotes
injustice and immoderate desire of sovereignty; the next impiety; and
the third sensuality? But as for the sayings of Alexander, set aside
his diadem, his claimed descent from Ammon, and the nobility of his
Macedonian extraction, and you would believe them to have been the
sayings of Socrates, Plato, or Pythagoras. For we omit the swelling
hyperboles of flattery which poets have inscribed under his images
and statues, studying rather to extol the power of Alexander than his
moderation and temperance; as, for example,—
The statue seems to look to Jove and say,
Take thou Olympus; me let Earth obey!
and that other,—
This is Alexander the son of Jove.
But these, as I said, were only the flashes of poetic adulation
magnifying his good success. Let us therefore come to such sentences
as were really uttered by Alexander himself, beginning first with the
early blossoms of his childhood.
It is well known that for swiftness in running he exceeded all
that were of his years; for which reason some of his most familiar
play-fellows would have persuaded him to show himself at the Olympic
games. He asked them whether there were any kings to contend with him.
And when they replied that there were none, he said, The contest then
is unequal, for I can conquer only private men, while they may conquer
a king.
His father, King Philip, being run through the thigh in a battle
against the Triballi, and, though he escaped the danger, being not a
little troubled at the deformity of his limping; Be of good cheer,
father, said he, and show yourself in public, that you may be reminded
of your bravery at every step.
Are not these the products of a mind truly philosophical, which by an
inspired inclination to what is noble already contemns the disfigurings
of the body? Nor can we otherwise believe but that he himself gloried
in his own wounds, which every time he beheld them called to his
remembrance the conquered nation and the victory, what cities he had
taken, what kings had surrendered themselves; never striving to conceal
or cover those indelible characters and scars of honor, which he
always carried about him as the engraven testimonies of his virtue and
fortitude.
10. Then again, if any dispute arose or judgment were to be given upon
any of Homer’s verses, either in the schools or at meals, this that
follows he always preferred above the rest,—