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-"mmi 4,7 S!7 :om "Ov The Baldwin Library University SRond 3~ -- -- _--- -- .----- _- -, ----_ - ,............. ~~~:M f 'i !"; q.1,--El TW-i .1~ '-:-s -! =: _..:_~ .:- --:- - i 'c -.- _ -' I *I Y.41 NORTH FRONT NORTH FRONT OF THE PARTHENON. THE BOYS' AND GIRLS' PLUTARCH BEING PARTS OF THE "LIVES" OF PLUTARCH EDITED FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN S. WHITE, LL.D. HEAD-MASTER BERKELEY SCHOOL WITH FORTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 27 AND 29 WEST 23D STREET LONDON: 25 HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN 1883 COPYRIGHT, 1883, By G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. CONTENTS. PAGE LIFE OF T HESEUS. ... ....... .... ....................................... 3 LIFE OF ROMULUS .................. .. ............ ........... . 28 COMPARISON OF THESEUS AND ROMULUS ........................... 47 LIFE OF LYCURGUS....... ......................... .............. 49 LIFE OF SOLON ............................... .............. 73 LIFE OF THEMISTOCLES ................ ............. ................. 88 LIFE OF CAMILLUS .. .......... .... .................................. 06 LIFE OF PERICLES. ............... ...................... ........ 136 LIFE OF DEMOSTHENES ....................................... ... 168 LIFE OF CICERO ................................................ .. 90 COMPARISON OF DEMOSTHENES AND CICERO ......................... 229 LIFE OF ALCIBIADES...................... .... ............ ... ....... 233 LIFE OF CORIOLANUS ....... ... ........ ... ........... .. ........ 260 COMPARISON OF ALCIBIADES AND CORIOLANUS ................ ..-... 284 LIFE OF ARISTIDES ............................................... 288 LIFE OF CIMON ....................... .... ....................... 306 LIFE OF POMPEY. . .............. ...... ....... . . .. 326 THE ENGINES OF ARCHIMEDES; FROM THE LIFE OF MARCELLUS....... 370 DESCRIPTION OF CLEOPATRA; FROM THE LIFE OF ANTONY. ........... 375 ANECDOTES FROM THE LIFE OF AGESILAUS ................... ...... 380 THE BROTHERS; FROM THE LIFE OF TIMOLEON....................... 383 THE WOUND OF PHILOPCEMEN.......................... ........ ... 386 A ROMAN TRIUMPH; FROM THE LIFE OF PAULUS EMILIUS. .......... 388 THE NOBLE CHARACTER OF CAIUS FABRICIUS; FROM THE LIFE OF PYRRHUS . ............ . ..... . . ..... .* * **. .. 393 FROM THE LIFE OF QUINTUS FABIUS MAXIUS. ............... ...... 396 THE CRUELTY OF LucIUs CORNELIUS SYLLA.......... ............. 398 THE LUXURY OF LUCULLUS .................... .... .......... ... 401 vi CONTENTS. PAGE FROM THE LIFE OF SERTORIUS THE ROMAN, WHO ENDEAVORED TO ESTAB- LISH A SEPARATE GOVERNMENT FOR HIMSELF IN SPAIN. ............. 406 THE SCROLL ; FROM THE LIFE OF LYSANDER........................ 410 THE CHARACTER OF MARCUS CATO ........................ ... 411 THE SACRED THEBAN BAND ; FROM THE LIFE OF PELOPIDAS.......... 416 FROM THE LIFE OF TITUS FLAMININUS, CONQUEROR OF PHILIP.......... 418 LIFE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT................................. 420 THE DEATH OF CNESAR ........................................... 446 WEIGHTS, MEASURES, ETC., MENTIONED BY PLUTARCH; FROM THE TA- BLES OF DR. ARBUTHNOT .................. .... ................ 449 A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, FROM DACIER AND OTHER WRITERS........ 450 INDEX FOR REFERENCE AS TO THE PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES.. 459 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE NORTH FRONT OF THE PARTHENON .................. Frontispiece. TEMPLE OF THESEUS AT ATHENS............................... 2 PORTICO OF TEMPLE OF HERCULES AT ATHENS ................. 7 THE ISLAND OF NAXOS ............... ................ ....... 15 GIRL PLAYING AT DICE .... .................................. 62 GIRL OF TANAGRA WEARING THE CHITON ........................ 63 YOUTH WITH CHLAMYS AND HAT............................... 64 YOUTH WITH CHLAMYS AND HAT. .............................. 65 THE GULF OF SALAMIS ..... ....... .... ..... ... ......... ........ 75 MILTIADES ...... ... ... .. .................. ............... 89 THEMISTOCLES. ....... .......................... ... ... ..... 94 THEMISTOCLES RECEIVING THE TROPHY OF VICTORY .............. 98 EXILE OF THEMISTOCLES. ............. .............. ......... ... I00 RESTORATION OF THE WEST END OF THE ACROPOLIS ............. 136 ATHENS FROM MOUNT HYMETTUS .... .......................... 137 ATHENS FROM THE ROAD TO ELEUSIS ... ........................ 146 THE PARTHENON IN THE TIME OF PERICLES....................... 149 TEMPLE OF HERCULES. ..... ... ..... .. ..... ....... .... ....... 150 TEMPLE OF MINERVA AT lEGINA ................................ 163 RUINS OF THE PARTHENON ................................... 167 D EMOSTHENES ................. ........ ...... ................... 170 T HE CAPITOL .............. ............ ......... ...... ....... .217 W IRITING IMPLEMENTS ........... .... ............. .... .. .... 228 A LCIBIADES ..................... ............................. 233 SPHACTERIA AND PYLOS FROM NAVARINO ....................... 241 MOUNTS OLYMPUS AND OSSA FROM THE PLAIN OF THESSALY. .... .305 PLAIN OF MARATHON .... ... ........... .. ..... .. .. ... 308 Viii LIST OF ILL USTRA TONS. PAGE GROVES OF THE ACADEMY .............. ..... .. ......... ...... 18 GATE OF LIONS AT 1MYCENE............................ ........ 325 POM PEY. ... ..... .... ..... .. .. ..... ...... .......... ... ....... 327 COIFFURES OF ROMAN LADIES .................................. 348 ARCH OF CONSTANTINE ........................................ 350 HARBOR OF BRUNDUSIUM .................. ..... .............. 353 RIVER PENEUS, LOOKING TOWARD MOUNT PINDUS. ............... 362 LADY OF TANAGRA WITH CHITON AND HAT ................... 376 GREEK WARRIOR. ....... ... ........................... ...... 380 GREEK WARRIOR. ........ .. ...... . ........... .... ... ... 381 W INE JUGS OR OINOCHOI ... .................................. 390 MIXING BOWLS OR KROTERES. .................................. 391 WALL DECORATIONS FROM POMPEII ............................. 402 GATE OF LIONS AT MYCENE (RESTORED). ........................ 417 ALEXANDER THE GREAT ....................................... 423 THERAMENES DRAGGED FROM THE ALTAR BY ORDER OF CRITIAS ...... 428 TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AT PAESTUM ............................... 445 THEATRICAL M ASKS. ................................. ... .'.... 448 MAPS. ASIA M INOR. ................................ .... ..... ........ 20 G REECE ..................................... . ... ........ .... 88 ROMAN EMPIRE ...................... ............ .......... 388 REGNUM ALEXANDRI MAGNI . . . . . . . . . . . .. .... 420 INTRODUCTION. WHAT! a book for girls as well as boys ?" Well, is it not high time, when almost every wholesome book made for young folks in the score of years just past has been dedicated to the boys alone ? I am afraid most of you will say right here-" I always skip the introduction to a book; it is so stupid !" But if I could only sketch so boldly for you this sweet and Christ-like pagan that the picture would afford you a little of the pleasure the study of his works has brought to me, you would fain read the last word. Plutarch wrote a hundred books and was never dull. Most of these have been lost, but the portions which remain have found, with the exception of Holy Writ, more readers through eighteen centuries than the works of any other writer of ancient times. Besides the fifty lives" and about twenty comparisons which are still extant, we have five large octavo volumes of essays, conversations, and dialogues, covering a vast range of topics. Lamprius, who is commonly thought to have been Plutarch's son, and who was himself something of a philosopher, has left us a catalogue of his father's writings; but, as Dryden capitally said, you cannot look upon the list without the same emotions that a merchant must feel in perusing a bill of freight after he has lost his vessel." The writings which no longer exist are these-a marvel in them- selves of human talent and industry: The Lives of Hercules, Hesiod, Pindar, Crates, and Dai- phantus, with a Parallel'; Leonidas, Aristomenes, Scipio Afri- canus Junior, and Metellus, Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, x INTRODUCTION. Nero, Caligula, Vitellius, Epaminondas and the Elder Scipio, with a Parallel. Four Books of Commentaries on Homer. Four Books of Commentaries on Hesiod. Four Books to Empedocles, on the Quintessence. Five Books of Essays. Three Books of Fables. Three Books of Rhetoric. Three Books on the Introduction of the Soul. Two Books of Extracts from the Philosophers. Three Books on Sense. Three Books on the Great Actions of Cities. Two Books on Politics. An Essay on Opportunity, to Theophrastus. Four Books on- the Obsolete Parts of History. Two Books of Proverbs. Eight Books on the Topics of Aristotle. Three Books on Justice, to Chrysippus. An Essay on Poetry. A Dissertation on the Difference between the Pyrrhonians and the Academicians. A Treatise to prove that there was but one Academy of Plato. Plutarch was born about the year 5o, A.D., at Chzeronea, in Bceotia-a little town, but of good repute, in which he spent nearly the whole of his three score years and ten, being loth, as he said, to make it less by the withdrawal of even one inhabitant." He learned philosophy under Ammonius at Athens. He traveled much and made many friends. But for his visit to Egypt we should know little or nothing of the worship of Isis and Osiris, and the Egyptian mysteries. Twice he went to Italy, apparently upon public business, and, while in Rome, lectured in the Greek language and taught philoso- phy. He appears to have learned the Latin tongue later on at his own home. We know very little else of his life except INTR OD AUCTION. xi that he was married, and was the father of five children, two of whom survived to manhood. We may judge from his occasional allusions to his private life that it was supremely happy; exhibiting," he writes in a letter to his wife, scarcely an erasure, as in a book well-written." But the pity is that, like Shakspeare, whom Plutarch greatly resembles in the universality of his genius, the story of his life was never told. Four centuries after his death Agathias wrote this memorable epitaph to be engraved upon a statue erected by the Romans to his memory : Chaeronean Plutarch, to thy deathless praise Does martial Rome this grateful statue raise, Because both Greece and she thy fame have shared- Their heroes written, and their lives compared. But thou thyself.couldst never write thy own; Their lives have parallels, but thine has none ! It is remarkable that Plutarch never mentions in his writ- ings the names of his great contemporaries,-Tacitus, Quin- tilian, Seneca, and both the Plinys, Martial, Suetonius, and Juvenal, nor, on the other hand, would you discover from their writings that such a man as Plutarch ever lived. But the greatest writers through all the years since the second century have told his praises and drawn at will from his cease- less fountain of wisdom. Taurus calls him a man of the most consummate learning; in the language of Sardianus he is the "divine Plutarch"; and when Theodorus Gaza, a learned classical scholar three hundred years ago, was asked what author he would save, if learning must suffer a general ship- wreck," he replied, Plutarch," because in preserving him he should secure the best substitute for all other books. Nobody ever read humah nature with a juster eye, and weighed character and merit in finer scales than our own Emerson. He chats most delightfully of Plutarch:-" No poet could illustrate his thought with more novel or striking xii INTR OD ACTION. similes or happier anecdotes. I do not know where to find a book-to borrow a phrase of Ben Jonson's-' so rammed with life.' His style is realistic, picturesque, and varied; his sharp objective eyes seeing everything that moves, shines, or threatens in nature or art, or thought or dreams. Indeed, twilights, shadows, omens, and spectres have a charm for him. He believes in witchcraft and the evil eye, in demons and ghosts-but prefers, if you please, to talk of these in the morning. His vivacity and abundance never leave him to loiter or pound on an incident. I admire his rapid and crowded style, as if he had such store of anecdotes of his heroes that he is forced to suppress more than he recounts, in order to keep up with the hasting history." The sentiment of Plutarch, like his heart, was always pure. "Truth," he says, is the greatest good that man can receive, and the goodliest blessing God can give." He was very plain- spoken, as were all the Greek and Roman authors, writing only for men to read. Not until women were educated to read, and think, and write, did literature become elevated and refined from impurity of subject and expression. In the selec- tions from the Lives which I have given you, I have pruned away whatever seemed indelicate for the young reader, or te- dious; some of the least interesting biographies I have, for lack of space, omitted altogether. But the selections .are given as nearly as possible in Plutarch's own words, following pretty closely the quaint but generally vivid translation called Dry- den's," made by many different scholars, corrected and revised a few years ago by Professor Clough, of London. In reading the Essays of Plutarch, the wonder constantly grows that his knowledge could be so extensive, and so sci- entific. He gives a lucid and correct explanation of the cause of the rainbow; he discusses the principles of gravita- tion as a subject of common information, so skilfully that Sir Isaac Newton must yield the palm of originality as to the dis- covery that all matter attracts all other matter. His discourse INTRODUCTION. xiii " Concerning the face that appeareth in the orb of the moon" evidences a marvelously profound understanding of astronomy, beyond which the science of the present day has made little advance. And Dr. Holmes himself will confess to you that in this same Plutarch of eighteen hundred years ago you may discover a veritable "Autocrat of the Breakfast-table." Among the subjects of which he discourses are: "Brotherly Love," "Bashfulness," "Chattering," How to know a Flatterer from a Friend," "That Brutes make use of Reason," Whether Sleep or Death appertains to the body or the soul," "On the Cure for Anger," and a vast number of others touching upon almost every sphere of human knowledge, and illustrated and adorned with a wealth of figure and anecdote that admit us uninten- tionally but surely into the very heart of the ancient home life. Horace bids the pin-feathered poet study to be unstudied," and Plutarch in his sphere deems it the highest object of am- bition to be a philosopher without seeming to be one. In his essay "Of Man's Progress in Virtue," he considers it an ar- gument of a generous and truly brave disposition in a scholar not to assume the name and character of one, and as some do, to. put 'philosopher' among his titles; but if any, out of respect, chance to give him that appellation, to be surprised, blush, and with a modest smile, answer him in the words of the poet : "'You compliment your friend: he whom you commend Must needs be more than man-far more than I pretend.'" * Plutarch believes heartily in the reasoning power of brutes. He loves animals, and his writings are full of tender allusions to instances of affection and sagacity among them that evidence the closest acquaintance with their habits and history. In the Conversation Whether Water or Land Animals are the more Sagacious," occurs this anecdote:- Odyssey, X VI. 187. xiv INTR OD AUCTION It happened that King Pyrrhus, traveling one day, found a dog watching over the carcass of a person slain; and hearing that the dog had been there three days without meat or drink, yet would not forsake his dead master, he ordered that the man should be buried, but that the dog should be preserved and brought to him. A few days after there was a muster of the soldiers, so that they were forced to march all in order by the king, with the dog quietly lying by him for a good while. But when he saw the murderers of his master pass by him, he flew upon them with a more than ordinary fury, barking and bay- ing and tearing their throats, and ever and anon turning about to the king; which did not only rouse the king's suspicion, but the jealousy of all that stood about him. Upon which the men were presently apprehended; and though the circumstances were very slight which otherwise appeared against them, yet they confessed the fact and were executed." There is nothing in the extant writings of Plutarch to indi- cate that he had any knowledge of the Christian religion, al- though the purity and humility of his life, his fearless cham- pionship of the right, and his broad humanity peculiarly adapted him to be a follower of the Great Teacher. His pro- found faith in divine Providence and in the immortality of the soul everywhere illuminates his pages, and I cannot give you a truer key to his heart and a closer acquaintance with the man himself whose Lives you are about to read than by quoting a few of the words from his beautiful Letter of consolation to Apollonius upon the death of a gifted son": That virtuous men die in the prime of their years by the kindness of the gods, to whom they are peculiarly dear, I have already told thee in the former part of my discourse, and will give a short hint of it now, bearing witness to that which is so prettily said by Menander,' He whom the gods do love dies young.' Thy Apollonius died in the beautiful flower of his years, a youth in all points perfect, who gained the love and provoked the emulation of all his contemporaries. He was i. .. ..'- ..-- ---__l-- .-..A .- __- - i ,.---- -; .... '. -- . i- ,, ," .... / , S" ' . .' f" . . _ ." ... '1'; ", : .l- .. - ., ! - '^ -- .......' .. "-^- "'1c A I "' - ^ .. ,,4-^3 ,.^,a. ^^ M..'i ...fo ^',? -j .. , . . : ". ... ...) --.- "- n t *, . m. r C IV, p*ill- I '-'''** iJl i i a I' 1 4.' 1 l '* , - -- '- lf- I ... . J . *A'.. i T-h ," 'i i.. "' - - * ; r1',- ",.. - 1I..a vJ ,,, d. -. I,,Pi- _. -- 1 - -.._- " ...... i-i- } -- .... ---'- I { ...... ,. - - N--i 11 " ....1% l l -1-- ,, ,. I S-: ..- ...,,, ,. I . ., -- '- , .- ,, ._ ,- (. -i I ,}, z, \ I.t,^ ,, ) . T , CA Us .- I I- -iI IN' I II "*~ ~ .. ,' --G,, '*P. - - ...- *.J' .m- -e i j , -- ' ^ '. . . I - I / r, - ., .- .." ia,. ; I, i ... '1 " I- fA'I I ..." -,, J,, J, "- I -I ," ."i"-. -- -.i E' N d i ' ,. .'. -,-. .-." ,, - I-.1. i ,~. i,~_ r ., , ~. ~. T L. T r- _. . . . usG ,.P.... SO1PS... .,A "N W, NEW I G. P. PUTMAN'S SONS, NEW YORK. INT.R OD AUCTION, xv dutiful to his father and mother, obliging to his domestics, was a scholar, and (to comprehend all in a word) he was a lover of mankind. He had a veneration for the old men that were his friends as if they had been his parents; he had an affection for his companions and equals, reverenced his instructors, was hospitable and mild to guests and strangers, gracious to all and beloved by all, as well for his attractive countenance as for his lovely affability. Therefore, being accompanied with the ap- plauses of thy piety and his. own, he hath only made- a digres- sion from this mortal life to eternity, as if he had withdrawn from the entertainment before he grew absurd, and before the staggering of drunkenness came upon him, which are incident to a long old age. Now if the sayings of the old philosophers and poets are true, as there is probability to think, that honors and high seats of dignity are conferred upon the righteous after they are departed this life, and if, as it is said, a particular region is appointed for their souls to dwell in, you ought to cherish very fair hopes that your son stands numbered among these blest inhabitants. Of the state of the pious after death, Pindar discourseth after this manner: "'There the sun shines with an unsullied light, When all the world below is thick with night. There all the richly scented plants do grow, And there the crimson-colored roses blow; Each flower blooming on its tender stalk, And all these meadows are their evening walk. There trees peculiarly delight the sense With their exhaled perfume of frankincense; The boughs their noble burdens cannot hold, The weight must sink them when the fruit is gold. * Death its efforts on the body spends; But the aspiring spirit upward tends- Nothing can damp that bright and subtile flame, Immortal as the Gods, from whence it came.' " : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -~:: .--.. --c~~I --I----~_L. ~~ -T__~--~-l~rj i-i i . ..4, "J. ..7- " -,111 _.. .... K, ~ .or,. *. ,7- - .4,~ "_ "b.. ". 7 -.. ," - .'. -.' 7 : ,. , ,, ,- ..'--, d o. t : 7~ ~ ~~~3 tr~e{ n2< it'.,,' ;p -:',,' -.. .,,,:A.'4... "3 .. ', '.',.-"". .. ~ l j14 _z a f=f=- - r - Z .- - i ;- WSF" 4 1 .," ' -I C -' '- ~ .... q4, 'f.. A.,;" -; , A -,-" --.r.5-t,1., :,. '- -II,, C- I ,-?Y:, :..K;. . B- 14 4..- ,-', -... 4 -.- '.- .a-- .... .' -. ,,,,,o .. .,. .- 0-1i-. 12. .--_. ;Q; C.,C-.,4 -. 2 . ....... . ... ... . S@ i !iiI~i" "... ":" . .... '-' -" -:7:: ... ..--- r,;, ,- .,,.-" .--". "--- C - ""I,--- - -i ,.. .- T E PL OF T A -Ir ;. ,,,f AAl TEMPLE- OF THEEU AT ATHENS,] Y z- -.:_ --,:'.-'- ::, -- ,.-- .... :. :;- 2. -:--- _ i .... .-" -" 1,-: ."- ,'i .-... ~ ,-,..- ~- .-, -- - -'_ _. = ,. ...; ..-.- i__A- .-i - I ..,....- ,, -. ...;_ '._. .. ~ . TEPL OFTEESA TES THESEUS. As geographers, Sosius,* crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so, in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off, Beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions; the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or cer- tainty any farther. Yet, after publishing an account of Lycur- gus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I thought I might, not without reason, ascend as high as to Romulus, being brought by my history so near to his time. Considering therefore with myself Whom shall I set so great a man to face ? Or whom oppose? who's equal to the place? (as zEschylus expresses it), I found none so fit as he who peopled the beautiful and far-famed city of Athens, to be set in opposition with the father of the invincible and renowned city of Rome. Let us hope that Fable may, in what shall fol- low, so submit to the purifying processes of Reason as to take the character of exact history. We shall beg that we may meet with candid readers, and such as will receive with indul- gence the stories of antiquity. Theseus seemed to me to resemble Romulus in many par- Sosius Senecio, Plutarch's friend at Rome, whom he addresses. 3 4 PLUTARCH 'S LIVES. ticulars. Both of them had the repute of being sprung from the gods. Both warriors; that by all the world's allowed. Both of them united with strength of body an equal vigor of mind; and of the two most famous cities of the world, the one built Rome, and the other made Athens be inhabited. Neither of them could avoid domestic misfortunes nor jealousy at home; but towards the close of their lives are both of them said to have incurred great odium with their country- men, if, that is, we ,may take the stories least like poetry as our guide to the truth. Theseus was the son of .Egeus and /Ethra. His lineage, by his father's side, ascends as high as to Erechtheus and the first inhabitants of Attica. By his mother's side he was de- scended of Pelops, who was the most powerful of all the kings of Peloponnesus. When Egeus went from the home of /Ethra in Troezen to Athens, he left a sword and a pair of shoes, hiding them under a great stone that had a hollow in it exactly fitting them; and went away making her only privy to it, and com- manding her that if, when their son came to man's estate, he should be able to lift up the stone and take away what he had left there, she should send him away to him with those things with all secrecy, and with injunctions to him as much as possible to conceal his journey from every one; for he greatly feared the Pallantidae, who were continually mutinying against him, and despised him for his want of children, they them- selves being fifty brothers, all sons of Pallas, the brother of IEgeus. When /Ethra's son was born, some say that he was imme- diately named Theseus, from the tokens which his father had put* under the stone; others that he received his name after- wards at Athens, when Egeus acknowledged* him for his son. Thesis, putting ; Thesthai, to take to oneself, to adopt or acknowledge, as a son. IHESE US. 5 He was brought up under his grandfather Pittheus, and had a tutor and attendant set over him named Connidas, to whom the Athenians, even to this time, the day before the feast that' is dedicated to Theseus, sacrifice a ram, giving this honor to his memory upon much juster grounds than to Silanio and Parrhasius, for making pictures and statues of Theseus. There being then a custom for the Grecian youth, upon their first coming to man's estate, to go to Delphi and offer first- fruits of their hair to the god, Theseus also went thither, and a place there to this day is yet named Thesea, as it is said, from 'him. He clipped only the fore part of his head, as Homer says the Abantes did. And this sort of tonsure was from him named Theseis. The Abantes first used it, not in imitation of the Arabians, as some imagine, nor of the Mys- ians, but because they were a warlike people, and used to close fighting, and above all other nations accustomed to engage hand to hand; as Archilochus testifies in these verses : Slings shall not whirl, nor many arrows fly, When on the plain the battle joins ; but swords, Man against man, the deadly conflict try, As is the practice of Euboea's lords Skilled with the spear.-- Therefore, that they might not give their enemies a hold by their hair, they cut it in this manner. They write also that this was the reason why Alexander gave command to his captains that all the beards of the Macedonians should be shaved, as being the readiest hold for an enemy. ,Ethra for some time concealed the true parentage of Theseus, and a report was given out by Pittheus that he was the son of Neptune; for the Trcezenians pay Neptune the highest veneration. He is their tutelar god, to him they offer all their first-fruits, and in his honor stamp their money with a trident. Theseus displaying not only great strength of body, but 6 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. equal bravery, and a quickness alike and force of understand- ing, his mother /Ethra, conducting him to the stone, and informing him who was his true father, commanded him to take from thence the tokens that /Egeus had left, and to sail to Athens. He without any difficulty set himself to the stone and lifted it up; but refused to take his journey by sea, though it was much the safer way, and though his mother and grand- father begged him to do so. For it was at that time very dangerous to go by land on the road to Athens, no part of it being free from robbers and murderers. That age produced a sort of men, in force of hand, and swiftness of foot, and strength of body, excelling the ordinary rate, and wholly incapable of fatigue; making use, however, of these gifts of nature to no good or profitable purpose for mankind, but rejoicing and priding themselves in insolence, and taking the benefit of their superior strength in the exercise of inhumanity and cruelty, and in seizing, forcing, and committing all manner of outrages upon everything that fell into their hands; all respect for others, all justice, they thought, all equity and humanity, though naturally lauded by common people, either out of want of courage to commit injuries or fear to receive them, yet no way concerned those who were strong enough to win for themselves. Some of these Hercules destroyed and cut off in his passage through these countries, but some, escaping his notice while he was passing by, fled and hid themselves, or else were spared by him in contempt of their abject submission; and after that Hercules fell into misfortune, and, having slain Iphitus, retired to Lydia, and for a long time was there slave to Omphale, a punishment which he had imposed upon himself for the murder. Then, indeed, Lydia enjoyed high peace and security, but in Greece and the countries about it the like villanies again revived and broke out, there being none to repress or chastise them. It was therefore a very hazardous journey to travel by land from Athens to. Peloponnesus; and Pittheus, giving him an exact THESE US. 7 account of each of these robbers and villains, their strength, and the cruelty they used to all strangers, tried to persuade Theseus to go by sea. But he, it seems, had long since been secretly fired by the glory of Hercules, held him in the highest estimation, and was never more satisfied than in listening to any that gave an account of him; especially those that had seen him, or had been present at any action or saying of his. So that he was altogether in the same state of feeling as, in after ages, Themistocles was, when he said that he could not sleep for the trophy of Miltiades; enter- - taining such admiration for the virtue of -- -- Hercules that in the night his dreams were all of that hero's actions, and in the day a continual emulation stirred him up to perform the like. Besides, they were _ related, being born of own cousins. For AzEthra was daughter of Pit- theus, and Alcmena of Lysi- *dice; and Lysidice and Pit- 1 "1 theus were brother and I', ", 7 -"Fl sister, children of Hippo- ,L-1--1 .-'- -i;r-.d ^rf SIS=i^^^- S PORTICO OF TEMPLE OF HERCULES AT ATHENS. (It is erroneously called Temple of Theseus in W. Gr.) 8 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. damia and Pelops. He thought it therefore a dishonorable thing, and not to be endured, that Hercules should go out every- where, and purge both land and sea from wicked. men, and he himself should fly from the like adventures that actually came in his way; not showing his true father as good evidence of the greatness of his birth by noble and worthy actions, as by the tokens that he brought with him, the shoes and the sword. With this mind and these thoughts, he set forward with a design to do injury to nobody, but to repel and revenge him- self of all those that should offer any. And first of all, in a set combat he slew Periphetes, in the neighborhood of Epi- daurus, who used a club for his arms, and from thence had the name of Corynetes, or the club-bearer.; who seized upon him, and forbade him to go forward in his journey. Being pleased with the club, he took it, and made it his weapon, continuing to use it as Hercules did the lion's skin, on whose shoulders that served to prove how huge a beast he had killed; and to the same end Theseus carried about him this club; overcome indeed by him, but now, in his hands, invincible. Passing on further towards 'the Isthmus of Peloponnesus, he slew Sinnis, often surnamed the Bender of Pines, after the same manner in which he himself had destroyed many others before. And this he did without having either practiced or ever learnt the art of bending these trees, to show that natural strength is above all art. This Sinnis had a daughter of re- markable beauty and stature, called Perigune, who, when her father was killed, fled, and was sought after everywhere by Theseus; and coming into a place overgrown with brushwood, shrubs, and asparagus-thorn, there, in a childlike, innocent mannr, prayed and begged them, as if they understood her, to give her shelter, with vows that if she escaped. she would never cut them down nor burn them. But Theseus calling upon her, and giving her his promise that he would use her with respect, and offer her no injury, she came forth. Whence THESE US. 9 it is a family usage amongst the people called loxids, from the name of her grandson, loxus, both male and female, never to burn either shrubs or asparagus-thorn, but to respect and honor them. The Crommyonian sow, which they called Phaea, was a savage and formidable wild beast, by no means an enemy to be despised. Theseus killed her, going out of his way on pur- pose to meet and engage her, so that he might not seem to perform all his great exploits out of mere necessity; being also of opinion that it was the part of a brave man to chastise villanous and wicked men when attacked by them, but to seek out and overcome the more noble wild beasts. Others relate that Phaea was a woman, a robber full of cruelty, that lived in Crommyon, and had the name of Sow given her from the foulness of her life and manners, and afterwards was killed by Theseus. He slew also Sciron, upon the borders of Megara, casting him down from the rocks, being, as most report, a notorious robber of all passengers, and, as others add, accus- tomed, out of insolence and wantonness, to stretch forth his feet to strangers, commanding them to wash them, and then while they did it, with a kick to send them down the rock into the sea. In Eleusis he killed Cercyon, the Arcadian, in a wrestling match. And going on a little farther, in Erineus, he slew Damastes, otherwise called Procrustes, forcing his body to the size of his own bed, as he himself was used to do with all strangers; this he did in imitation of Hercules, who always returned upon his assailants the same sort of violence that they offered to him; sacrificed Busiris, killed Anteus in wrestling, and Cycnus in single combat, and Termerus by breaking his skull in pieces (whence, they say, comes the proverb of "a Termerian mischief"), for it seems Termerus killed passengers that he met by running with his head against them. And so also Theseus proceeded with the punishment of evil men, who underwent the same violence from him which they had inflict- 10 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. ed upon others, justly suffering after the manner of their own injustice. As he went forward on his journey, and was come as far as the River Cephisus, some of the race of the Phytalidse met him and saluted him, and, upon his desire to use the purifica- tions, then in custom, they performed them with all the usual ceremonies, and, having offered propitiatory sacrifices to the gods, invited him and entertained him at their house, a kind- ness which, in all his journey hitherto, he had not met. On the eighth day of Cronius, now called Hecatombaeon, he arrived at Athens, where he found the public affairs full of all confusion, and divided into parties and factions, /Egeus also, and his whole private family, laboring under the same distem- per; for Medea, having fled from Corinth, was living with him. She first was aware of Theseus, whom as yet /Egeus did not know, and he being in years, full of jealousies and sus- picions, and fearing everything by reason of the faction that was then in the city, she easily persuaded him to kill him by poison at a banquet, to which he was to be invited as a stranger. He, coming to the entertainment, thought it not fit to discover himself at once, but, willing to give his father the occasion of first finding him out, the meat being on the table, he drew his sword as if he designed to cut with it; /Egeus, at once recog- nizing the token, threw down the cup of poison, and, question- ing his son, embraced him, and, having gathered together all his citizens, owned him publicly before them, who, on their part, received him gladly for the fame of his greatness and bravery. The sons of Pallas, who before were quiet, upon expectation of recovering the kingdom after Egeus's death, who was with- out issue, as soon as Theseus appeared and was acknowledged the successor, highly resenting that zEgeus first, an adopted son only of Pandion, and not at all related to the family of Erechtheus, should be holding the kingdom, and that after him, Theseus, a visitor and stranger, should be destined to succeed THESEUS. to it, broke'out into open war. And, dividing themselves into two companies, one part of them marched openly from Sphet- tus, with their father, against the city; the other, hiding them- selves in the village of Gargettus, lay in ambush, with a design to set upon the enemy on both sides. They had with them a crier of the township of Agnus, named Leos, who discovered to Theseus all the designs of the Pallantida. He immediately fell upon those that lay in ambuscade, and cut them all off; upon tidings of which Pallas and his company fled and were dispersed. From hence they say is derived the custom among the peo- ple of the township of Pallene to have no marriages or any al- liance with the people of Agnus, nor to suffer the criers to pronounce in their proclamations the words used in all other parts of the country, AcouitA Leoi (Hear ye people), hating the very sound of Leo, because of the treason of Leos. Theseus, longing to be in action, and desirous also to make himself popular, left Athens to fight with the bull of Marathon, which did no small mischief to the inhabitants of Tetrapolis. And having overcome it, he brought it alive in triumph through the city, and afterwards sacrificed it to the Delphinian Apollo. The story of Hecale, also, of her receiving and entertaining Theseus in this expedition, seems to be not altogether void of truth; for the townships round about, meeting upon a certain day, used to offer a sacrifice, which they called Hecalesia, to Jupiter Hecaleius, and to pay honor to Hecale, whom, by a diminutive name, they called Hecalene, because she, while entertaining Theseus, who was quite a youth, addressed him, as old people do, with similar endearing diminutives; and having made a vow to Jupiter for him as he was going to the fight, that, if he returned in safety, she would offer sacrifices in thanks of it, and dying be- fore he came back, she had these honors given her by way of return for her hospitality, by the command of Theseus, as Philochorus tells us. Not long afterwards came the third time from Crete the col- 12 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. lectors of the tribute which the Athenians paid them upon the following occasion. Androgeus having been treacherously murdered in the confines of Attica, not only Minos, his father, put the Athenians to extreme distress by a perpetual war, but the gods also laid waste their country; both famine and pesti- lence lay heavy upon them, and even their rivers were dried up. Being told by the oracle that if they appeased and recon- ciled Minos, the anger of the gods would cease and they should enjoy rest from the miseries they labored under, they sent her- alds, and with much supplication were at last reconciled, enter- ing into an agreement to send to Crete every nine years a trib- ute of seven young men and as many virgins, as most writers agree in stating; and the most poetical story adds that the Minotaur destroyed them, or that, wandering in the Labyrinth, and finding no possible means of getting out, they miserably ended their lives there; and that this Minotaur was (as Eurip- ides hath it) A mingled form, where two strange shapes combined, And different natures, bull and man, were joined. Now when the time of the third tribute was come, and the fathers who had any young men for their sons were to proceed by lot to the choice of those that were to be sent, there arose fresh discontents and accusations against IEgeus among the people, who were full of grief and indignation that he, who was the cause of all their miseries, was the only person exempt from the punishment; adopting and settling his kingdom upon a foreign son, he took no thought, they said, of their destitu- tion and loss of their lawful children. These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow-citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness, and with love for the good- ness, of the act; and /Egeus, after prayers and entreaties, find- ing him inflexible and not to be persuaded, proceeded to the THESEUS. 13 choosing of-the rest by lot. Hellanicus, however, tells us that the Athenians did not send the young men and virgins by lot, but that Minos himself used to come and make his own choice, and pitched upon Theseus before all others; according to the conditions agreed upon between them, namely, that the Athe- nians should furnish them with a ship, and that the young men who were to sail with him should carry no weapon of war; but that if the Minotaur was destroyed the tribute should cease. On the two former occasions of the payment of the tribute, entertaining no hopes of safety or return, they sent out the ship with a black sail, as to unavoidable destruction; but now, Theseus encouraging his father and speaking greatly of himself, as confident that he should kill the Minotaur, he gave the pilot another sail, which was white, commanding him, as he returned, if Theseus were safe, to make use of that; but if not, to sail with the black one, and to hang out that sign of his misfortune. Simonides says that the sail which AEgeus delivered to the pilot was not white, but Scarlet, in the juicy bloom Of the living oak-tree steeped. The lot being cast, and Theseus having received out of the Prytaneiim those upon whom it fell, he went to the Delphinium, and made an offering for them to Apollo of his suppliant's badge, which was a bough of a consecrated olive tree, with white wool tied about it. Having thus performed his devotion, he went to sea, the sixth day of Munychion, on which day even to this time the Athenians send their virgins to the same temple to make sup- plication to the gods. It is farther reported that he was com- manded by the oracle at Delphi to make Venus his guide, and to invoke her as the companion and conductress of his voyage, and that, as he was sacrificing a she goat to her by the sea- side, it was suddenly changed into a he, and for this cause that goddess had the name of Epitragia. I4 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. When he arrived at Crete, as most of the ancient historians as well as poets tell us, having a clue of thread given him by Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, and being instructed by her how to use it so as to conduct him through the wind- ings of the Labyrinth, he escaped out of it and slew the Mino- taur, and sailed back, taking along with him Ariadne and the young Athenian captives. Pherecydes adds that he bored holes in the bottoms of the Cretan ships to hinder their pur- suit. Demon writes that Taurus, the chief captain of Minos, was slain by Theseus at the mouth of the port, in a naval combat, as he was sailing out for Athens. But Philochorus gives us the story thus : That at the setting forth of the yearly games by King Minos, Taurus was expected to carry away the prize, as he had done before; and was much grudged the honor. His character and manners made his power hateful, and he was accused, moreover, of too near familiarity with Pasiphae, for which reason, when Theseus desired the combat, Minos readily complied. And as it was a custom in Crete that the women also should be admitted to the sight of these games, Ariadne, being present, was struck with admiration of the manly beauty of Theseus, and the vigor and address which he showed in the combat, overcoming all that encountered with him. Minos, too, being extremely pleased with him, especially because he had overthrown and disgraced Taurus, voluntarily gave up the young captives to Theseus, and re- mitted the tribute to the Athenians. There are yet many traditions about these things, and as many concerning Ariadne, all inconsistent with each other. Some relate that she hung herself, being deserted by Theseus. Others that she was carried away by his sailors to the isle of Naxos, and married to CEnarus, priest of Bacchus; and that Theseus left her because he fell in love with another, For AEgle's love was burning in his breast. Now Theseus, in his return from Crete, put in at Delos, and, " '-. : ._ '.- -.. . --- _- .- -.-- -_ ;- '- "- - " - "- " - -. - ...... ,.-- ----'----" ,-- - -.- =-"- ---- "-- --- --: I~~~~ 7 t1, 4." , Mm '" r? TE IN O NAXOS -1- ... '... .... ": ii S~x~-, .-:l:..-- --=- ---=-" -;:--'-='-. = = .--;:- :- :~1' -:.- -.; ;', . -:- "" ,:.=I'.-...+ : .. - ,. "t":. ...... r . .~~CI'Pr ,.,,,,!.+,, i , :,, ,.. ,,~ ;~ ..., ,.. '~ 't," , :; ~r. ,, 4 P. ..+.. ,: ... .,0 THE.ISLAND OF NAX.-, , . =_ ++ ++ .... ,... p~ .~:3 THEo ISAN F AXS 16 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. having sacrificed to the god of the island, dedicated to the temple the image of Venus which Ariadne had given him, and danced with the young Athenians a dance that, in memory of him, they say is still preserved among the inhabitants of Delos, consisting in certain measured turnings and returning, imita- tive of the windings and twistings of the Labyrinth. And this dance, as Dicaearchus writes, is called among the Delians, the Crane. This he danced round the Ceratonian Altar,* so called from its consisting of horns taken from the left side of the head. They say also that he instituted games in Delos, where he was the first that began the custom of giving a. palm to the victors. When they were come near the coast of Attica, so great was the joy for the happy success of their voyage, that neither Theseus himself nor the pilot remembered to hang out the sail which should have been the token of their safety to /Egeus, who, in despair at the sight, threw himself headlong from a rock, and perished in the sea. But Theseus, being arrived at the port of Phalerum, paid there the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods at his'setting out to sea, and sent a herald to the city to carry the news of his safe return. At his entrance, the herald found the people for the most part full of grief for the loss of their king, others, as may well be believed, as full of joy for the tidings that he brought, and eager to welcome him and crown him with garlands for his good news, which he indeed accepted of, but hung them upon his herald's staff; and thus returning to the seaside before Theseus had finished his libation to the gods, he stayed apart for fear of disturbing the holy rites, but, as soon as the libation was ended, went up and related the king's death, upon the hearing of which, with great lamentations. and a confused tumult of grief, they ran with all haste to the city. And from hence, they say, it comes that at this day, in the feast of Oschophoria, Kiras, a horn. THESEUS. 17 the herald is not crowned, but his staff, and all who are pres- ent at the libation cry out eleleu, iou, iou, the first of which confused sounds is commonly used by men in haste, or at a triumph, the other is proper to people in consternation or disorder of mind. Theseus, after the funeral of his father, paid his vows to Apollo the seventh day of Pyanepsion; for on that day the youth that returned with him safe from Crete made their entry into the city. They say, also, that the custom of boiling pulse at this feast is derived from hence; because the young men that escaped put all that was left of their provision together, and; boiling it in one common pot, feasted themselves with it, and ate it all up together. Hence, also, they carry in proces- sion an olive branch bound about with wool (such as they then made use of in their supplications), which they call Eiresione, crowned with all sorts of fruits, to signify that scarcity and barrenness was ceased, singing in their procession this song: Eiresione bring figs, and Eirsione bring loaves ; Bring us honey in pints, and oil to rub on our bodies, And a strong flagon of wine, for all to go mellow to bed on. The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger tim- ber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question as to things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the came. Now, after the death of his father /Egeus, forming in his mind a great and wonderful design, he gathered together all the inhabitants of Attica into one town, and made them one people of one city, whereas before they lived dispersed, and were not easy to assemble upon any affair for the common in- terest. Nay, differences and even wars often occurred between 2 18 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. them, which he by his persuasions appeased, going from town- ship to township, and from tribe to tribe. And those of a more private and mean condition readily embracing such good advice, to those of greater power he promised a common- wealth without monarchy, a democracy, or people's govern- ment, in which he should only be continued as their com- mander in war and the protector of their laws, all things else being equally distributed among them;-and by this means brought a part of them over to his proposal. The rest, fearing his power, which was already grown very formidable, and knowing his courage and resolution, chose rather to be per- suaded than forced into a compliance. He then dissolved all the distinct state-houses, council halls, and magistracies, and built one common state-house (the Prytaneiim) and council hall on the site of the present upper town, and gave the name of Athens to the whole state, ordaining a common feast and sacrifice, which he called Panathenama, or the sacrifice of all the united Athenians. He instituted also another sacrifice, called Metoecia, or Feast of Migration, which is yet celebrated on the sixteenth day of Hecatombaeon. Then, as he had promised, he laid down his regal power and proceeded to order a com- monwealth, entering upon this great work not without advice from the gods. For having sent to consult the oracle of Delphi concerning the fortune of his new government and city, he received this answer: Son of the Pitthean maid, To your town the terms and fates My father gives of many states. Be not anxious nor afraid: The bladder will not fail to swim On the waves that compass him. Which oracle, they say, one of the sibyls long after did in a manner repeat to the Athenians, in this verse, The bladder may be dipt, but not be drowned. THESEUS. 19 Farther yet designing to enlarge his city, he invited all strangers to come and enjoy equal privileges with the natives, and it is said that the common form, Come hither allye people, was the words that Theseus proclaimed when he thus set up a commonwealth, in a manner, for all nations. Yet he did not suffer his state, by the promiscuous multitude that flowed in, to be turned into confusion and be left without any order or degree, but was the first that divided the. commonwealth into three distinct ranks, the noblemen, the husbandmen, and artificers. To the nobility he committed the care of religion, the choice of magistrates, the teaching and dispensing of the laws, and interpretation and direction in all sacred matters; the whole city being, as it were, reduced to an exact equality, the nobles excelling the rest in honor, the husbandmen in profit, and the artificers in number. And that Theseus was the first, who, as Aristotle says, out of an inclination to popular govern- ment, parted with the regal power, Homer also seems to testify, in his catalogue of the ships, where he gives.the name of People to the Athenians only. He also coined money, and stamped it with the image of an ox, either in memory of the Marathonian bull, or of Taurus, whom he vanquished, or else to put his people in mind to fol- low husbandry; and from this coin came the expression so frequent among the Greeks, as a thing being worth ten or a hundred oxen. After this he joined Megara to Attica, and erected that famous pillar on the Isthmus, which bears an in- scription of two lines, showing the bounds of the two countries that meet there. On the east side the inscription is,- Peloponnesus there, Ionia here, and on the west side,- Peloponnesus here, Ionia there. He also instituted the games, in emulation of Hercules, being ambitious that as the Greeks, by that hero's appointment, cel- 20 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. ebrated the Olympian games to the honor of Jupiter, so, by his institution, they should celebrate the Isthmian to the honor of Neptune. At the same time he made an agreement with the Corinthians, that they should allow those that came from SAthens to the celebration of the Isthmian games as much space of honor before the rest to behold the spectacle in as the sail of the ship that brought them thither, stretched to its full ex- tent, could cover; so Hellanicus and Andro of Halicarnassus have established. Concerning his voyage into the Euxine Sea, Philochorus and some others write that he made it with Hercules, offering him his service in the war against the Amazons, and had Antiope given him for the reward of his valor; but the greater number, of whom are Pherecides, Hellanicus, and Herodorus, write that he made this voyage many years after Hercules, with a navy under his own command, and took the Amazon prisoner, -the more probable story, for we do not read that any other, of all those that accompanied him in this action, took any Amazon prisoner. Bion adds, that, to take her, he had to use deceit and fly away; for the Amazons, he says, being naturally lovers of men, were so far from avoiding Theseus when he touched upon their coasts, that they sent him presents to his ship.; but he, having invited Antiope, who brought them, to come aboard, immediately set sail and carried her away. An author named Menecrates, that wrote the History of Nicea in Bithynia, adds, that Theseus, having Antiope aboard his vessel, cruised for some time about those coasts, and that there were in the same ship three young men of Athens, that accompanied him in this voyage, all brothers, whose names were Euneos, Thoas, and Soloon. The last of these fell desperately in love with Antiope; and, escaping the notice of the rest, revealed the secret only to one of his most intimate acquaintance, and employed him to disclose his passion to Antiope. She rejected his pretences with a very positive denial, yet treated the matter with much gentleness and discretion, and made no complaint THESEUS. 21 to Theseus of anything that had happened; but Soloon, the thing being desperate, leaped into a river near the seaside and drowned himself. As soon as Theseus was acquainted with his death, and his unhappy love that was the cause of it, he was extremely distressed, and, in the height of his grief, an oracle which he had formerly received at Delphi came into his mind; for he had been commanded by the priestess of Apollo Pythius, that, wherever in a strange land he was most sorrowful and under the greatest affliction, he should build a city there, and leave some of his followers to be governors of the place. For this cause he there founded a city, which he called, from the name of Apollo, Pythopolis, and, in honor of the unfor- tunate youth, he named the river that runs by it Soloon, and left the two surviving brothers intrusted with the care of the government and laws, joining with them Hermus, one of the nobility of Athens, from whom a place in the city is called the House of Hermus; though by an error in the accent it has been taken for the House of Hermes, or Mercury, and the honor that was designed to the hero, transferred to the god. This was the origin and cause of the Amazonian invasion of Attica, which would seem to have been no slight or womanish enterprise. For it is impossible that they should have placed their camp in the very city, and joined battle close by the Pnyx and the hill called Museum, unless, having first conquered the country round about, they had thus with impunity ad- vanced to the city. That they made so long a journey by land, and passed the Cimmerian Bosphorus when frozen, as Hellanicus writes, is difficult to be believed. That they en- camped-all but in the city is certain, and may be sufficiently confirmed by the names that the places thereabout yet retain, and the graves and monuments of those that fell in the battle. Both armies being in sight, there was a long pause and doubt on each side which should give the first onset; at last Theseus, having sacrificed to Fear, in obedience to the command of an oracle he had received, gave them battle, in which action a 22 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. great number of the Amazons were slain. At length, after four months, a peace was concluded between them by the me- diation of Hippolyta (for so this historian calls the Amazon whom Theseus married, and not Antiope), though others write that she was slain with a dart by Molpadia, while fighting by Theseus's side, and that the pillar which stands by the temple of Olympian Earth was erected to her honor. Nor is it to be wondered at, that in events of such antiquity, history should be in disorder. This is as much as is worth telling concerning the Amazons. The celebrated friendship between Theseus and Pirithouis is said to have been begun as follows: The fame of the strength and valor of Theseus being spread through Greece, Pirithoiis was desirous to make a trial and proof of it himself, and to this end seized a herd of oxen which belonged to Theseus, and was driving them away from Marathon, and, when news was brought that Theseus pursued him in arms, he did not fly, but turned back and went to meet him. But as soon as they had viewed one another, each so admired the gracefulness and beauty, and was seized with such a respect for the courage of the other, that they forgot all thoughts of fighting; and Pirithoiis, first stretch- ing out his hand to Theseus, bade him be judge in this case himself, and promised to submit willingly to any penalty he should impose. But Theseus not only forgave him all, but en- treated him to be his friend and' brother in arms; and they ratified their friendship by oaths. After this Pirithoiis married Deidamia, and invited Theseus to the wedding, entreating him to come and see his country, and make acquaintance with the Lapithae; he had at the same time invited the Centaurs to the feast, who, growing hot with wine and beginning to be insolent and wild, the Lapithae took immediate revenge upon them, slay- ing many of them upon the place, and afterwards, having over- come them in battle, drove the whole race of them out of their country, Theseus all along taking the part of the Lapithae, and fighting on their side. THESES. 23 Theseus was now fifty years old, as Hellanicus states, when he carried off Helen, who was yet too young to be married. Some writers, to take away this accusation of one of the greatest crimes laid to his charge, say that he did not steal away Helen himself, but that Idas and Lynceus brought her to him, and committed her to his charge, and that, therefore, he refused to restore her at the demand of Castor and Pollux; or, indeed, they say her own father, Tyndarus, had sent her to be kept by him, for fear of Enarophorus, the son of Hippocoon, who would have carried her away by force when she was yet a child. But the most probable account, and that which has most witnesses on its side, is this: Theseus and Pirithois went both together to Sparta, and, having seized the young' lady as she was dancing in the temple of Diana Orthia, fled away with her. There were pres- ently men in arms sent to pursue, but they followed no farther than to Tegea; and Theseus and Pirithoius being now out of danger, having passed through Peloponnesus, made an agree- ment between themselves, that he to whom the lot should fall should have Helen to his wife, but should be obliged to assist in procuring another for his friend. The lot fell upon Theseus, who conveyed her to Aphidnae, not being yet marriageable, arid delivered her to one of his allies, called Aphidnus, and having sent his mother, iEthra, after to take care of her, de- sired him to keep them so secretly that none might know where they were; which done, to return the same service to his friend Pirithoiis, he accompanied him in his journey to Epirus, in order to steal away the king of the Molossians' daughter. The king, his own name being Aidoneus, or Pluto, called his wife Proserpina, and his daughter Cora, and a great dog which he kept Cerberus, with whom he ordered all that came as suitors to his daughter to fight, and promised her to him that should overcome the beast. But having been informed that the design of Pirithoius and his companion was not to court his daughter, but to force her away, he caused them both to be 24 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. seized, and threw Pirithoiis to be torn to pieces by the dog, and put Theseus into prison, and kept him. About this time Menestheus, the son of Peteus, grandson of Orneus, and great-grandson to Erechtheus, the first man that is recorded to have affected popularity and ingratiated himself with the multitude, stirred up and exasperated the most emi- nent men of the city, who had long borne a secret grudge to Theseus, conceiving that he had robbed them of their several little kingdoms and lordships, and, having pent them all up in one city, was using them as his subjects and slaves. He put also the meaner people into commotion, telling them, that, de- luded with a mere dream of liberty, though indeed they were deprived both of that and of their proper homes and religious usages, instead of many good and gracious kings of their own, they had given themselves up to be lorded over by a new- comer and a stranger. Whilst he was thus busied in infecting the minds of the citizens, the war that Castor and Pollux brought against Athens came very opportunely to further the sedition he had been promoting, and some say that he by his persuasions was wholly the cause of their invading the city. At their first approach they committed no acts of hostility, but peaceably demanded their sister Helen ; but the Athenians re- turning answer that they neither had her there nor knew where she was disposed of, they prepared to assault the city, when Academus, having, by whatever means, found it out, disclosed to them that she was secretly kept at Aphidnae. For which reason he was both highly honored during his life by Castor and Pollux, and the Lacedaemonians, when often in after times they made incursions into Attica, and destroyed all the coun- try round about, spared the Academy for the sake of Acade- mus. Hercules, passing by the Molossians, was entertained in his way by Aidoneus the king, who, in conversation, accidentally spoke of .the journey of Theseus and Pirithoiis into his country, of what they had designed to do, and what they were forced THESEUS. 25 to suffer. Hercules was much grieved for the inglorious death of the one and the miserable condition of the other. As for Pirithois, he thought it useless to complain; but begged to have Theseus released for his sake, and obtained that favor from the king. Theseus, being thus set at liberty, returned to Athens, where his friends were not yet wholly suppressed, and dedicated to Hercules all the sacred places which the city had set apart for himself, changing their names from Thesea to Heraclea, four only excepted, as Philochorus writes. And wishing immediately to resume the first place in the common- wealth, and manage the state as before, he soon found himself involved in factions and troubles; those who long had hated him had now added to their hatred contempt; and the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expected to be flattered into their duty. He had some thoughts to have reduced them by force, but was overpowered by demagogues and factions. And at last, despairing of any good success of his affairs in Athens, he sent away his children privately to Euboea, com- mending them to the care of Elephenor, the son of Chalcodon; and he himself, having solemnly cursed the people of Athens in the village of Gargettus, in which there yet remains the place called Araterion, or the place of cursing, sailed to Scyros, where he had lands left him by his father, and friendship, as he thought, with those of the island. Lycomedes was then king of Scyros. Theseus, therefore, addressed himself to him, and desired to have his lands .put into his possession, as de- signing to settle and to dwell there, though others say that he came to beg his assistance against the Athenians. But Lyco- medes, either jealous of the glory of so great a man, or to gratify Menestheus, having led him up to the highest cliff of the island, on pretence of showing him from thence the lands that he desired, threw him headlong down from the rock and killed him. Others say he fell down of himself by a slip of his foot, as he was walking there, according to his custom, 26 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. after supper. At. that time there was no notice taken, nor were any concerned for his death, but Menestheus quietly possessed the kingdom of Athens. His sons were brought up in a private condition, and accompanied Elephenor to the Trojan war, but, after the decease of Menestheus in that ex- pedition, returned to Athens, and recovered the government. But in succeeding ages, beside several other circumstances that moved the Athenians to honor Theseus as a demigod, in the battle which was fought at Marathon against the Medes, many of the soldiers believed they saw an apparition of The- seus in arms, rushing on at the head of them against the barbarians. And after the Median war, Phsedo being. archon of Athens, the Athenians, consulting the oracle at Delphi, were commanded to gather together the bones of Theseus, and, laying them in some honorable place, keep them as sacred in the city. But it was very difficult to recover, these relics, or so much as to find out the place where they lay, on account of the inhospitable and savage temper of the barbarous people that inhabited the island. Nevertheless, afterwards, when Cimon took the island (as is related in his life), and had a great ambition to find out the place where Theseus was buried, he, by chance, spied an eagle upon a rising ground pecking with her beak and tearing up the earth with her talons, when on the sudden it came into his mind, as it were by some divine inspiration, to dig there, and search for the bones of Theseus. There were found in that place a coffin of a man of more than ordinary size, and a brazen spear-head, and a sword lying by it, all which he took aboard his galley and brought with him to Athens. Upon which the. Athenians, greatly delighted, went out to meet and receive the relics with splendid proces- sions and with sacrifices, as if it were Theseus himself return- ing alive to the city. He lies interred in the middle of the city, near the present gymnasium. His tomb is a sanctuary and refuge for slaves, and all those of mean condition that fly from the persecution of men in power, in memory that The- THESEUS. 27 seus while he lived was an assister and protector of the dis- tressed, and never refused the petitions of the afflicted that fled to him. The chief and most solemn sacrifice which they celebrate to him is kept on the eighth day of Pyanepsion, on which he returned with the Athenian young men from Crete. Besides which, they sacrifice to him on the eighth day of every month, either because he returned from Trcezen the eighth day of Hecatombaeon, as Diodorus the geographer writes, or else thinking that number to be proper to him, because he was reputed to be born of Neptune, because they sacrifice to Nep- tune on the eighth day of every month. The number eight being the first cube of an even number, and the double of the first square, seemed to be an emblem of the steadfast and im- movable power of this god, who from thence has the names of Asphalius and Gaeiochus, that is, the establisher and stayer of the earth. ROMULUS. FROM whom, and for what reason, the city of Rome, a name so great in glory, and famous in the mouths of all men, was so first called, authors do not agree. But the story which is most believed and has the greatest number of vouchers in general outline runs thus: the kings of Alba reigned in lineal descent from IEneas, and the succes- sion devolved at length upon two brothers, Numitor and Amulius. Amulius proposed to divide things into two equal shares, and set as equivalent to the kingdom the treasure and gold that were brought from Troy. Numitor chose the kingdom; but Amulius, having the money, and being able to do more with that than Numitor, took his kingdom from him with great ease, and, fearing lest his daughter might have children who would supplant him, made her a Vestal, bound in that condition forever to live a single and maiden life. This lady some call Ilia, others Rhea, and others Silvia; however, not long after, contrary to the established laws of the Vestals, she had two sons of more than human size and beauty, whom Amulius, becoming yet more alarmed, commanded a servant to take and cast away; this man some call Faustulus, others say Faustulus was the man who brought them up. He put the children, however, in a small trough, and went towards the river with a design to cast them in; but, seeing the waters much swollen and coming violently down, was afraid to go nearer, and, dropping the children near the bank, went away. The river overflowing, the flood at last bore up the trough, and, gently wafting it, landed them on a smooth piece R OMUL US. 29 of ground, which they now call Cermanus, formerly Germanus, perhaps from Germani, which signifies brothers. While the infants lay here, history tells us, a she-wolf nursed them, and a woodpecker constantly fed and watched them. These creatures are esteemed holy to the god Mars; the wood- pecker the Latins still especially worship and honor. Which things, as much as any, gave credit to what the mother of the children said, that their father was the god Mars. Meantime Faustulus, Amulius's swineherd, brought up the children without any man's knowledge; or, as those say who wish to keep closer to probabilities, with the knowledge and secret assistance of Numitor; for it is said, they went to school at Gabii, and were well instructed in letters, and other accomplishments befitting their birth. And they were called Romulus and Remus (from ruma, the dug), because they were found sucking the wolf. In their very infancy, the size and beauty of their bodies intimated their natural superiority; and when they grew up, they both proved brave and manly, attempting all enterprises that seemed hazardous, and show- ing in them a courage altogether undaunted. But Romulus seemed rather to act by counsel, and to show the sagacity of a statesman, and in all his dealings with their neighbors, whether relating to feeding of flocks or to hunting, gave the idea of being born rather to rule than to obey. To their com- rades and inferiors they were therefore'dear; but the king's servants, his bailiffs and overseers, as being in nothing better men than themselves, they despised and slighted, nor were the least concerned at their commands and menaces. They used honest pastimes and liberal studies, not esteeming sloth and idleness honest and liberal, but rather such exercises as hunting and running, repelling robbers, taking of thieves, and delivering the wronged and oppressed from injury. For doing such things they became famous. A quarrel occurring betwixt Numitor's and Amulius's cow- herds, the latter, not enduring the driving away of their cattle a 30 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. by the others, fell upon them and put them to flight, and rescued the greatest part of the prey. At which Numitor be- ing highly incensed, they little regarded it, but collected and took into their company a number of needy men and runaway slaves,-acts which looked like the first stages of rebellion. It so happened, that when Romulus was attending a sacrifice, being fond of sacred rites and divination, Numitor's herds- men, meeting with Remus on a journey with few companions, fell upon him, and, after some fighting, took him prisoner, carried him before Numitor, and there accused him. Numitor would not punish him himself, fearing his brother's anger, but went to Amulius and desired justice, as he was Amulius's brother and was affronted by Amulius's servants. The men of Alba likewise resenting the thing, and thinking he had been dishonorably used, Amulius was induced to deliver Remus up into Numitor's hands, to use him as he thought fit. He there- fore took and carried him home, and, being struck with admi- ration of the youth's person, in stature and strength of body exceeding all men, and perceiving in his very countenance the courage and force of his mind, which stood unsubdued and un- moved by his present circumstances, and hearing further that all the enterprises and actions of his life were answerable to what he saw of him, but chiefly, as it seemed, a divine influence aiding and directing the first steps that were to lead to great results, out of the mere thought of his mind, and casually, as it were, he put his hand upon the fact, and, in gentle terms and with a kind aspect, to inspire him with confidence and hope, asked him who he was, and whence he was derived. He, tak- ing heart, spoke thus: I will hide nothing from you, for you seem to be of a more princely temper than Amulius, in that you give a hearing and examine before you punish, while he condemns before the cause is heard. Formerly, then, we (for we are twins) thought ourselves the sons of Faustulus and Larentia, the king's servants;- but since we have been accused and aspersed with calumnies, and brought in peril of our lives ROMUL US. 31 here before you, we hear great things of ourselves, the truth of which my present danger is likely to bring to the test. Our birth is said to have been secret, our fostering and nurture in our infancy still more strange; by birds and beasts, to whom we were cast out, we were fed-by the milk of a wolf, and the morsels of a woodpecker, as we lay in a little trough by the side of the river. The trough is still in being, and is preserved, with brass plates round it, and an inscription in letters almost effaced, which may prove hereafter unavailing tokens to our parents when we are dead and gone." Numitor, upon these words, and computing the dates by the young man's looks, slighted not the hope that flattered him, but considered how to come at his daughter privately (for she was still kept under re- straint), to talk with her concerning these matters. Faustulus, hearing Remus'was taken and delivered up, called on Romulus to assist in his rescue, informing him then plainly of the particulars of his birth-not but he had before given hints of it-and told as much as an attentive man-might make no small conclusions from; he himself, full of concern and fear of not coming in time, took the trough, and ran instantly to Numitor; but giving a suspicion to some of the king's sentry at his gate, and being gazed upon by them and perplexed with their questions, he let it be seen that he was hiding the trough under his cloak. By chance there was one among them who was at the exposing of the children, and was one employed in the office; he, seeing the trough and knowing it by its make and inscription, guessed at the business, and, without further delay, telling the king of it, brought in the man to be ex- amined. Faustulus, hard beset, did not show himself altogether proof against terror; nor yet was he wholly forced out of all: confessed indeed the children were alive, but lived, he said, as shepherds, a great way from Alba; he himself was going to carry the trough to Ilia, who had often greatly desired to see and handle it, for a confirmation of her hopes of her children. As men generally do who are troubled in mind and act either 32 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. in fear or passion, it so fell out Amulius now did; for he sent in haste as a messenger, a man, otherwise honest and friendly to Numitor, with commands to learn from Numitor whether any tidings were come to him of the children's being alive. He, coming and seeing how little Remus wanted of being re- ceived into the arms and embraces of Numitor, both gave him surer confidence in his hope, and advised them, with all expe- dition, to proceed to action; himself too joining and assisting them, and indeed, had they wished it, the time would not have let them demur. For Romulus was now come very near, and many of the citizens, out of fear and hatred of Amulius, were running out to join him; besides, he brought great forces with him, divided into companies, each of an hundred men, every captain carrying a small bundle of grass and shrubs tied to a pole. The Latins call such bundles manipuli, and from hence it is that in their armies still they call their captains manipu- lares. Remus rousing the citizens within to revolt, and Rom- ulus -making attacks from without, the tyrant, not knowing either what to do, or what expedient to think of for his secu- rity, in this perplexity and confusion was taken and put to death. This narrative, for the most part given by Fabius and Diodes of Peparethos, who seem to be the earliest historians of the foundation of Rome, is suspected by some because of its dramatic and fictitious appearance ; but it would not wholly be disbelieved, if men would remember what a poet Fortune some- times shows herself, and consider that the Roman power would hardly have reached so high a pitch without a divinely ordered origin, attended with great and extraordinary circumstances. Amulius' now being dead and matters quietly disposed, the two brothers would neither dwell in Alba without governing there, nor take the government into their own hands during the life of their grandfather. Having therefore delivered the dominion up into his hands, and paid their mother befitting honor, they resolved to live by themselves, and build a city in the same place where they were in their infancy brought up. J ROMUL US. 33 This seems the most honorable reason for their departure; though perhaps it was necessary, having such a body of slaves and fugitives collected about them, either to come to nothing by dispersing them, or if not so, then to live with them else- where. For that the inhabitants of Alba did not think fugi- tives worthy of being received and incorporated as citizens among them plainly appears from the matter of the women, an attempt made not wantonly but of necessity, because they could not get wives by good-will. For they certainly paid unusual respect and honor to those whom they thus forcibly seized. Not long after the first foundation of the city, they opened a sanctuary of refuge for all fugitives, which they called the temple of the god Asyleus, where they received and protected all, delivering none back, neither the servant to his master, the debtor to his creditor, nor the murderer into the hands of the magistrate, saying it was a privileged place, and they could so maintain it by an order of the holy oracle; insomuch that the city grew presently very populous, for, they say, it consisted at first of no more than a thousand houses. But of that here- after. Their minds being fully bent upon building, there arose presently a difference about the place where. Romulus chose what was called Roma Quadrata, or the Square Rome, and would have the city there. Remus laid out a piece of ground on the Aventine Mount, well fortified by nature, which was from him called Remonium, but now Rignarium. Concluding at last to decide the contest by a divination from a flight of birds, and placing themselves apart at some distance, Remus, they say, saw six vultures, and Romulus double the number; others say Remus did truly see his number, and that Romulus feigned his, but, when Remus came to him, that then he did, indeed, see twelve. Hence it is that the Romans, in their divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture, though Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules'was always very joy- ful when a vulture appeared to him upon any occasion. For 3 34 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only upon carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own fellow-creatures; yet, as IEschylus says,- What bird is clean that preys on fellow bird ? Besides, all other birds are, so to say, never out of our eyes; they let themselves be seen of us continually; but a vulture is a very rare sight, and you can seldom meet with a man that has seen their young; their rarity and infrequency has raised a strange opinion in some, that they come to us from some other world; as soothsayers ascribe a divine origination to all things not produced either of nature or of themselves. When Remus knew the cheat, he was much displeased; and as Romulus was casting up a ditch, where he designed the foundation of the city wall, he turned some pieces of the work to ridicule, and obstructed others: at last, as he was* in con- tempt leaping over it, some say Romulus himself struck him, others Celer, one of his companions; he fell, however, and in the scuffle Faustulus also was slain, and Plistinus, who, being Faustulus's brother, story tells us, helped to bring up Romulus. Celer upon this fled instantly into Tuscany, and from him the Romans call all men that are swift of foot Celeres; and be- cause Quintus Metellus, at his father's funeral, in a few days' time gave the people a show of gladiators, admiring his expe- dition in getting it ready, they gave him the name of Celer. Romulus, having buried his brother Remus, together with his two foster-fathers, on the mount Remonia, set to building his city; and sent for men out of Tuscany, who directed him by sacred usages and written rules in all the ceremonies to be observed, as in a religious rite. First, they dug a round trench about that which is now the Comitium, or Court of Assembly, and into it solemnly threw the first-fruits of all things either ROMUL US. 35 good by custom or necessary by nature; lastly, every man taking a small piece of earth of the country from whence he came, they all threw them in promiscuously together. This trench they call, as they do the heavens, Mundus; making which their centre, they described the city in a circle round it. Then the founder fitted to a plough a bronze ploughshare, and, yoking together a bull and a cow, drove himself a deep line or furrow round the bounds; while the business of those that followed after was to see that whatever earth was thrown up should be turned all inwards towards the city, and not to let any clod lie outside. With this line they described the wall, and called it, by a contraction, Pomoerium, that is, post murum, after or beside the wall; and where they designed to make a gate, there they took out the share, carried the plough over, and left a space; for which reason they consider the whole wall as holy, except where the gates are; for had they adjudged them also sacred, they could not, without offence to religion, have given free ingress and egress for the necessaries of human life, some of which are in themselves unclean. As for the day they began to build the city, it is universally agreed to have been the twenty-first of April,/and that day the Romans annually keep holy, calling it their country's birthday. At first, they say, they sacrificed no living creature on this day, -thinking it fit to preserve the feast of their country's birthday pure and without stain of blood. Yet before ever the city was built, there was a feast of herdsmen and shepherds kept on this day, which went by the name of Palilia. The Roman and Greek months have now little o4 no agreement; they say, however, the day on which Romulus' began to build was quite certainly the thirtieth of the month, at which time there was an eclipse of the sun which they conceive to be that seen by Antimachus, the Teian poet, in the third year of the sixth Olympiad. In the times of Varro the philosopher, a man deeply read in Roman history, lived one Tarrutius, his familiar acquaintance, a good philosopher and mathematician, and one, 36 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. too, that out of curiosity had studied the way of drawing schemes and tables, and was thought to be a proficient in the art; to him Varro propounded to cast Romulus's nativity, even to the first day and hour, making his deductions from the several events of the man's life which he should be informed of, exactly as in working back a geometrical problem; for it belonged, he said, to the same science both to foretell a man's life by knowing the time of his birth, and also to find out his birth by the knowledge of his life. This task Tarrutius under- took, and first looking into the actions and casualties of the man, together with the time of his life and manner of his death, and then comparing all these remarks together, he very confi- dently and positively pronounced that Romulus was born the twenty-first day of the month Thoth, about sun-rising; and that the first stone of Rome was laid by him the ninth day of the month Pharmuthi, between the second and third hour. For the fortunes of cities as well as of men, they think, have their certain periods of time prefixed, which may be collected and foreknown from the position of the stars at their first foundation. But these and the like relations may perhaps not so much take and delight the reader with their novelty and curiosity as offend him by their extravagance. The city now being built, Romulus enlisted all that were of age to bear arms into military companies, each company con- sisting of three thousand footmen and three hundred horse. These companies were called legions, because they were the choicest and most select of the people for fighting men. The rest of the multitude he called the people; an hundred of the most eminent he chose for counsellors; these he styled patri- cians, and their assembly the senate, which signifies a council of elders. In the fourth month after the city was built, as Fabius writes, the adventure of stealing the women was attempted. It would seem that, observing his city to be filled by a con- fluence of foreigners, few of whom had wives, and that the ROMUL US. 37 multitude in general, consisting of a mixture of mean and obscure men, fell under contempt, and seemed to be of no long continuance together, and hoping farther, after the women were appeased, to make this injury in some measure an occa- sion of confederacy and mutual commerce with the Sabines, Romulus took in hand this exploit after this manner. First, he gave it out that he had found an altar of a certain god hid under ground, perhaps the equestrian Neptune, for the altar is kept covered in the Circus Maximus at all other times, and only at horse-races is exposed to public view. Upon discovery of this altar, Romulus, by proclamation, appointed a day for a splendid sacrifice, and for public games and shows, to entertain all sorts of people; many flocked thither, and he himself sat in front, amidst his nobles, clad in purple. Now the signal for their falling on was to be whenever he rose and gathered up his robe and threw it over his body; his men stood all ready armed, with their eyes intent upon him, and when the sign was given, drawing their swords and falling on with a great shout, they stole away the daughters of the Sabines, the men themselves flying without any let or hindrance. Some say there were but thirty taken, and from them the Curiae or Fra- ternities were named; but Valerius Antias says five hundred and twenty-seven, Juba, six hundred and eighty-three. It continues a custom at this very day for the bride not of herself to pass her husband's threshold, but to be lifted over, in memory that the Sabine virgins were carried in by violence, and did not go in of their own will. Some say, too, the custom of parting the bride's hair with the head of a spear was in'token their marriages began at first by war and acts of hostility. The Sabines were a numerous and martial people, but lived in small, unfortified villages, as it befitted, they thought, a colony of the Lacedaemonians to be bold and fearless; never- theless, seeing themselves bound by such hostages to their good behavior, and being solicitous for their daughters, they 38 PLUTARCH S LIVES. sent ambassadors to Romulus with fair and equitable requests, that he would return their young women and recall that act of violence, and afterwards, by persuasion and lawful means, seek friendly correspondence between both nations. Romulus would not part with the young women, yet proposed to the Sabines to enter into an alliance with them; upon which point some consulted and demurred long, but Acron, king of the Ceninenses, a man of high spirit and a good warrior, who had all along a jealousy of Romulus's bold attempts, and consider- ing particularly from this exploit upon the women that he was growing formidable to all people, and indeed insufferable, were he not chastised, first rose up in arms, and with a powerful army advanced against him. Romulus likewise prepared to receive him; but when they came within sight and viewed each other, they made a challenge to fight a single duel, the armies standing by under arms, without participation. And Romulus, making a vow to Jupiter, if he should conquer, to carry, him- self, and dedicate his adversary's armor to his honor, overcame him in combat, and, a battle ensuing, routed his army also, and then took'his city; but did those he found in it no injury, only commanded them to demolish the place and attend him to Rome, there to be admitted to all the privileges of citizens. And indeed there was nothing did more advance the greatness of Rome, than that she did always unite and incorporate those whom she conquered into herself. Romulus, that he might perform his vow in the most acceptable manner to Jupiter, and withal make the pomp of it delightful to the eye of the city, cut down a tall oak which he saw growing in the camp; which he trimmed to the shape of a trophy, and fastened on it Acron's whole suit of armor disposed in proper form; then he himself, girding his clothes about him, and crowning his head with a laurel-garland, his hair gracefully- flowing, carried the trophy resting erect upon his right shoulder, and so marched on, singing songs of triumph, and his whole army following after, the citizens all receiving him with acclamations of joy and ROMULUS. 39 wonder. The procession of this day was the origin and model of all after triumphs. But the statues of Romulus in triumph are, as may be seen in Rome, all on foot. After the overthrow of the Ceninensians, the other Sabines still protracting the time in preparations, the people of Fidenae, Crustumerium, and Antemna, joined their forces against the Romans; they in like manner were defeated in battle, and surrendered up to Romulus their cities to be seized, their lands and territories to be divided, and themselves to be transplanted to Rome. All the lands which Romulus acquired he distributed among the citizens, except only what the parents of the stolen virgins had; these he suffered to possess their own. The rest of the Sabines, enraged threat, choosing Tatius their captain, marched straight against Rome. The city was almost inaccessible, having for its for- tress that which is now the Capitol, where a strong guard -was placed, and Tarpeius their captain. But Tarpeia, daugh- ter to the captain, coveting the golden bracelets she saw them wear, betrayed the fort into the Sabines' hands, and asked, in reward of her treachery, the things they wore on their left arms. Tatius conditioning thus with her, in the night she opened one of the gates and received the Sabines in. And truly Antigonus, it would seem, was not solitary in saying he loved betrayers, but hated those who had betrayed; nor Caesar, who told Rhymitalces the Thracian that he loved the treason, but hated the traitor; but it is the general feeling of all who have occasion for wicked men's service, as people have for the poison of venomous beasts; they are glad of them while they are of use, and abhor their baseness when itis over. And so then did Tatius behave towards Tarpeia, for he commanded the Sabines, in regard to their contract, not to refuse her the least part of what they wore on their left arms; and he himself first took his bracelet off his arm, and threw that, together with his buckler, at her; and all the rest following, she, being borne down and quite buried with the 40 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. multitude of gold and their shields, died under the weight and pressure of them; Tarpeius also himself, being prosecuted by Romulus, was found guilty of treason, and that part of the Capitol they still call the Tarpeian Rock, from which they used.to cast down malefactors. The Sabines being possessed of the hill, Romulus, in great fury, bade them battle, and Tatius was confident to accept it. There were many brief conflicts, we may suppose, but the most memorable was the last, in which Romulus having re- ceived a. wound on his head by a stone, and being almost felled to the ground by it, and disabled, the Romans gave way, and, being driven out of the level ground, fled towards the Palatium. Romulus, by this time recovering from his wound a little, turned about to renew the battle, and, facing the fliers, with a loud voice encouraged them to stand and fight. But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, he prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but main- tain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence. The place they first stood at was where now is the temple of Jupiter Stator (which may be translated the Stayer) ; there they rallied again into ranks, and repulsed the Sabines to the place called now Regia, and to the temple of Vesta; where both parties, preparing to begin a second battle, were prevented by a spectacle, strange to behold, and defying description. For the daughters of the Sabines, who had been carried off, came running, in great confusion, some on this side, some on that, with miserable cries and lamentations, like creatures possessed, in the midst of the army, and among the dead bodies, to come at their husbands and their fathers, some with their young babes in their arms, others their hair loose about their ears, but all calling, now upon the Sabines, now upon the Romans, in the most tender and endearing words. ROM UL US. 41 Hereupon both melted into compassion; and fell back, to make room for them betwixt the armies. The sight of the women carried sorrow and commiseration upon both sides into the hearts of all, but still more their words, which began with expostulation and upbraiding, and ended with entreaty and supplication. Wherein," say they, "have we injured or offended you, as to deserve such sufferings, past and present ? We were rav- ished away unjustly and violently by those whose now we are; that being done, we were so long neglected by our fathers, our brothers, and countrymen, that time, having now by the strictest bonds united us to those we once mortally hated, has made it impossible for us -not to tremble at the danger and weep at the death of the very men who once used violence to us. You did not come to vindicate our honor, while we were virgins, against our assailants; but do come now to force away wives from their husbands and mothers from their children, a succor more grievous to its wretched objects than the former betrayal and neglect of them. Which shall we call the worst, their love-making or your compassion? If you were making war upon any other occasion, for our sakes you ought to withhold your hands from those to whom we have made you fathers-in-law and grandsires. If it be for our own cause, then take us, and with us your sons-in-law and grandchildren. Restore to us our parents and kindred, but do not rob us of our children.and husbands. Make us not, we entreat you, twice captives." Having spoken many such words as these, and earnestly praying, a truce was made, and the chief officers came to a parley; the women, in the meantime, brought and presented their husbands and children to their fathers and brothers; gave those that wanted, meat and dtink, and carried the wounded home to be cured, and showed also how much they governed within doors, and how indulgent their husbands were to them, in demeaning themselves towards them with all 42 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. kindness and respect imaginable. Upon this, conditions were agreed upon, that what women pleased might stay where they were, exempt from all drudgery and labor but spinning; that the Romans and Sabines should inhabit the city together; that the' city should be called Rome, from Romulus; but the Romans, Quirites, from the country of Tatius; and that they both should govern and command in common. The place of the ratification is still called Comitium, from coire, to meet. The city being thus doubled in number, an hundred of the Sabines were elected senators, and the legions were increased to six thousand foot and six hundred horse; then they divided the people into three tribes: the first, from Romulus, named Ramnenses; the second, from Tatius, Tatienses ; the third, Luceres, from the lucus, or grove, where the Asylum stood, whither many fled for sanctuary, and were received into the city. And that they were just three, the very name of tribe and tribune seems to show. They then constituted many things in honor to the women, such as to give them the way wherever they met them; to speak, no ill word in. their pres- ence; that their children should wear an ornament about their necks called the bulla (because it was like a bubble), and the pratexta, a gown edged with purple. The princes did not immediately join in council together, but at first each met with. his own hundred; afterwards all as- sembled together. Tatius dwelt where now the temple of Moneta stands, and Romulus, close by the steps, as they call them, of the Fair Shore, near the descent from the Mount Palatine to the Circus Maximus. There, they say, grew the holy cornel tree, of which they report that Romulus once, to try his strength, threw a dart from the Aventine Mount, the staff of which was made of cornel, which struck so deep into the ground that no one of many that tried could pluck it up; and the soil, being fertile, gave nourishment to the wood, which sent forth branches, and produced a cornel-stock of considera- ble bigness. This did posterity preserve and worship as one R OMUL US. 43 of the most sacred things; and, therefore, walled it about; and if to any one it appeared not green nor flourishing, but inclin- ing to pine and wither, he immediately made outcry to all he met, and they, like people hearing of a house on fire, with one accord would cry for water, and run from all parts with buck- etfuls to the place. But when Gaius Caesar, they say, was repairing the steps about it, some of the laborers digging too close, the.roots were destroyed, and the tree withered. The Sabines adopted the Roman months, of which whatever is remarkable is mentioned in the Life of Numa. Romulus, on the other hand, adopted their long shields,, and changed his own armor and that of all the Romans, who before wore round targets of the Argive pattern. Feasts and sacrifices they par- took of in common, not abolishing any which either nation ob- served before, and instituting several new ones. This, too, is observable as a singular thing in Romulus, that he appointed no punishment for real parricide, but called all murder so, thinking the one an accursed thing, but the other a thing ime possible; and, for a long time, his judgment seemed to have been right; for in almost six hundred years together, nobody committed the like in Rome; Lucius Hostius, after the wars of Hannibal, is recorded to have been the first parricide. Let thus much suffice concerning these matters. In the fifth year of the reign of Tatius, some of his friends and kinsmen, meeting ambassadors coming from Laurentum to Rome, attempted on the road to take. away their money by force, and, upon their resistance, killed them. So great a vil- lany having been committed, Romulus thought the malefactors ought at once to be punished, but Tatius shuffled off and de- ferred the execution of it; and this one thing was the begin- ning of open quarrel betwixt them; in all other respects they were very careful of their conduct, and administered affairs to- gether with great unanimity. The relations of the slain, being debarred of lawful satisfaction by reason of Tatius, fell upon him as he was sacrificing with Romulus at Lavinium, and slew 44 PL UTARCH'S LIVES. him; but escorted Romulus home, commending and extolling him for a just prince. Romulus took the body of Tatius, and buried it very splendidly in the Aventine Mount. The Roman cause daily gathering strength, their weaker neighbors shrunk away, and were thankful to be left un- touched; but the stronger, out of fear or envy, thought they ought not to give way to Romulus, but to curb and put a stop to his growing greatness. The first were the Veientes, a people of Tuscany, who had large possessions, and dwelt in a spacious city; they took occasion to commence a war, by claiming Fidenae as belonging to them. But being scorn- fully retorted upon by Romulus in his answers, they divided themselves into two bodies; with one they attacked the garri- son of Fidenae, the other marched against Romulus; that which went against Fidenae got the victory, and slew two thousand Romans; the other was worsted by Romulus, with the loss of eight thousand men. A fresh battle was fought near Fidense, and here all men acknowledge the day's success to have been chiefly the work of Romulus himself, who showed the highest skill as well as courage, and seemed to manifest a strength and swiftness more than human. But what some write, that, of fourteen thousand that fell that day, above half were slain by Romulus's own hand, verges too near to fable, and is, indeed, simply incredible: since even the Messenians are thought to go too far in saying that Aristomenes three times offered sacrifices for the death of a hundred enemies, L'acedaemonians, slain by himself. The army being thus routed, Romulus, suffering those that were left to make their escape, led his forces against the city; they, having suffered such great losses, did not venture to oppose, but, humbly suing to him, made a league and friendship for an hundred years; surrendering also a large district of land called Septem- pagium, that is, the seven parts, as also their salt-works upon the river, and fifty noblemen for hostages. He made his triumph for this on the Ides of October, leading, among the ROMULUS. 45 rest of his many captives, the general of the Veientes, an elderly man, but who had not, it seemed, acted with the prudence of age; whence even now, in sacrifices for victories, they lead an old man through the market-place to the Capitol, apparelled in purple, with a bulla, or child's toy, tied to it, and the crier cries, Sardians to be sold; for the Tuscans are said to be a colony of the Sardians, and the Veientes are a city of Tuscany. This was the last battle Romulus ever fought; afterwards he, as most, nay all men, very few excepted, do, who are raised by great and miraculous good-haps of fortune to power and greatness, so, I say, did he: relying upon his own great actions, and growing of an haughtier mind, he forsook his popular behavior for kingly arrogance, odious to the people; to whom in particular the state which he assumed was hateful. For he dressed in scarlet, with the purple-bordered robe over it; he gave audience on a couch of state, having always about him some young men called Celeres, from their' swiftness in doing commissions. He suddenly disappeared on the Nones of July, as they now call the month which was then Quintilis, leaving nothing of certainty to be related of his death; the senators suffered the people not to search, or busy themselves about the matter, but commanded them to honor and worship Romulus as one taken up to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince, now a propitious god. The multitude, hearing this, went away believing and rejoicing in hopes of good things from him; but there were some, who, canvassing the matter in a hostile temper, accused the pa- tricians, as men that persuaded the people to believe ridiculous tales, when they themselves were the murderers of the king. Things being in this disorder, one, they say, of the patri- cians, of noble family and approved good character, and a faithful and familiar friend of Romulus himself, having come with him from Alba, Julius Proculus by name, presented him- 46 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. self in the forum; and, taking a most sacred oath, protested before them all, that, as he was travelling on the road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, looking taller and comelier than ever, dressed in shining and flaming armor; and he, being affrighted at the apparition, said, Why, O king, or for what purpose, have you abandoned us to unjust and wicked surmises, and the whole city to bereavement and endless sor- row ?" and that he made answer, It pleased the gods, O Proculus, that we, who came from them, should remain so long a time amongst men as we did; and, having built a city to be the greatest in the world for empire and glory, should again return to heaven. But farewell; and tell the Romans, that, by the exercise of temperance and fortitude, they shall attain the height of human power; we will be to you the pro- pitious god Quirinus." This seemed credible to the Romans, upon the honesty and oath of the relator, and laying aside all jealousies and detractions, they prayed to Quirinus and saluted him as a god. This is like some of the Greek fables of Aristeas the Pro- connesian, and Cleomedes the Astypalxean; for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's workshop, and his friends, coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him trav- elling towards Croton. And that Cleomedes, being an extraor- dinarily strong and gigantic man, but also wild and mad, com- mitted many desperate freaks; and at last, in a schoolhouse, striking a pillar that sustained the roof with his fist, broke it in the middle, so that the house fell and destroyed the children in it; and being pursued, he fled into a great chest, and, shut- ting to the lid, held- it so fast that many men, with their united strength, could not force it open; afterwards, breaking the chest to pieces, they found no man in it alive or dead. And many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal; for though alto- gether to disown a divine nature in human virtue were impious ROMUL US. 4 and base, so again to mix heaven with earth is ridiculous. Let us believe with Pindar, that All human bodies yield to Death's decree : The soul survives to all eternity. For that alone is derived from the gods, thence comes, and thither returns. It was in the fifty-fourth year of his age and the thirty-eighth of his reign that Romulus, they tell us, left the world. COMPARISON OF THESEUS AND ROMULUS. BOTH Theseus and Romulus were by nature meant for gov- ernors; yet neither lived up to the true character of a king, but fell off, and ran, the one into popularity, the other into tyranny, falling both into the same fault out of different pas- sions. For a ruler's first end is to maintain his office, which is done no less by avoiding what is unfit than by observing what is suitable. Whoever is either too remiss or too strict is no more a king or a governor, but either a demagogue or a despot, and so becomes either odious or contemptible to his subjects. Though certainly the one seems to be the fault of easiness and good-nature, the other of pride and severity. But Romulus has, first of all, one great plea, that his per- formances proceeded from very small beginnings; for both the brothers, being thought servants and the sons of swine- herds, before becoming freemen themselves gave liberty to almost all the Latins, obtaining at once all the most honorable titles, as, destroyers of their country's enemies, preservers of their friends and kindred, princes of the people, founders of cities; not removers, like Theseus, who raised and compiled only one house out of many, demolishing many cities bearing 48 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. the names of ancient kings and heroes. Romulus, indeed, did the same afterwards, forcing his enemies to deface and ruin their own dwellings, and to sojourn with their conquerors; but at first, not by removal, or increase of an existing city, but by foundation of a new one, he obtained himself lands, a country, a kingdom, wives, children, and relations. And, in so doing, he killed or destroyed nobody, but benefited those that wanted houses and homes, and were willing to be of a society and become citizens. Robbers and malefactors he slew not; but he subdued nations, he overthrew cities, he tri- umphed over kings and commanders. As to Remus, it is doubtful by whose hand he fell; it is generally imputed to others. His mother he clearly retrieved from death, and placed his grandfather, who was brought under base and dis- honorable vassalage, on the ancient throne of ZEneas, to whom he did voluntarily many good offices, but never did him harm even inadvertently. But Theseus, in his forgetfulness and neglect of the command concerning the flag, can scarcely, methinks, by any excuses, or before the most indulgent judges, avoid the imputation of parricide. And, indeed, one of the Attic writers, perceiving it to be very hard to make an excuse for this, feigns that /Egeus, at the approach of the ship, run- ning hastily to the Acropolis to see what news there was, slipped and fell down; as if he had no servants, or none would attend him on his way to the shore. LYCURGUS. THOSE authors who are most worthy of credit deduce the genealogy of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, as follows: Aristodemus. Patrocles. I Solis. Eurypon. Eunomus. Polydectes by his first wife. Lycurgus by Dionassa his second. Soiis certainly was the most renowned of all his ancestors, under whose conduct the Spartans made slaves of the Helots, and added to their dominions, by conquest, a good part of Arcadia. There goes a story of this king Sous, that, being besieged by the Clitorians in a dry and stony place so that he could come at no water, he was at last constrained to agree with them upon these terms, that he would restore to them all his conquests, provided that himself and all his men should drink of the nearest spring. After the usual oaths and ratifications, he called his soldiers together, and offered to him that would forbear drinking, his kingdom for a reward; and when not a man of them was able to forbear, in short, when they had all drunk their fill, at last comes king Sous himself to the spring, and, having sprinkled his face only, without swal- 4 50 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. lowing one drop, marches off in the face of his enemies, refus- ing to yield up his conquests, because himself and all his men had not, according to the articles, drunk of their water. Although he was justly had in admiration on this account, yet his family was not surnamed from him, but from his son Eurypon (of whom they were called Eurypontids); the reason of which was that Eurypon relaxed the rigor of the monarchy, seeking favor and popularity with the many. They, after this first step, grew bolder; and the succeeding kings partly in- curred hatred with their people by trying to use force, or, for popularity's sake and through weakness, gave way ; and anarchy and confusion long prevailed in Sparta, causing, moreover, the death of the father of Lycurgus. For as he was endeavoring to quell a riot, he was stabbed with a butcher's knife, and left the title of king to his eldest son Polydectes. He, too, dying soon after, the right of succession (as every one thought) rested in Lycurgus; and reign he did for a time, but declared that the kingdom belonged to the child of his sis- ter-in-law the queen, and that he himself should exercise the regal jurisdiction only as his guardian; the Spartan name for which office is prodicus. Soon after, an overture was made to him by the queen, that she would herself in some way destroy the infant, upon condition that he would marry her when he came to the crown. Abhorring the woman's wickedness, he nevertheless did not reject her proposal, but, making show of closing with her, despatched the messenger with thanks and expressions of joy, with orders that they should bring the boy baby to him, wheresoever he were, and whatsoever doing. It so fell out that when he was at supper with the principal mag- istrates, the queen's child was presented to him, and he, taking him into his arms, said to those about him, Men of Sparta, here is a king born unto us;" this said, he laid him down in the king's place, and named him Charilaus, that is, the joy of the people; because that all were transported with joy and with wonder at his noble and just spirit. His reign had lasted only LYCURGUS. 51 eight months, but he was honored on other accounts by the citizens, and there were more who obeyed him because of his eminent virtues, than because he was regent to the king and had the royal power in his hands. Some, however, envied and sought to impede .his growing influence while he was still young; chiefly the kindred and friends of the queen-mother, who pretended to have been dealt with injuriously. Her brother Leonidas, in a warm debate which fell out betwixt him and Lycurgus, went so far as to tell him to his face that he was well assured that ere long he should see him king; sug- gesting suspicions and preparing the way for an accusation of him, as though he had made away with his nephew, if the child should chance to fail, though by a natural death. Words of the like import were designedly cast abroad by the queen- mother and her adherents. Troubled at this, and not knowing what it might come to, he thought it his wisest course to avoid their envy by a volun- tary exile, and to travel from place to place until his nephew came to marriageable years, and, by having a son, had secured the succession. Setting sail, therefore, with this resolution, he first arrived at Crete, where, having considered their several forms of government, and got an acquaintance with tle princi- pal men amongst them, some of their laws he very much ap- proved of, and resolved to make use of them in his own country; a good part he rejected as useless. Amongst the persons there the most renowned for their learning and their wisdom in state matters.was one Thales, whom Lycurgus, by importunities and assurances of friendship, persuaded to go over to Lacedaemon; where, though by his outward appearance and his own profes- sion he seemed to be no other than a lyric poet, in reality he performed the part of one of the ablest lawgivers in the world. The very songs which he composed were exhortations to obe- dience and concord, and the very measure and cadence of the verse, conveying impressions of order and tranquillity, had so great an influence on the minds of the listeners that they were 52 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. insensibly softened and civilized, insomuch that they renounced their private feuds and animosities, and were reunited in a common admiration of virtue. So that it may truly be said that Thales prepared the way for the discipline introduced by Lycurgus. From Crete he sailed to Asia, with design, as is said, to ex- amine the difference betwixt the manners and rules of life of the Cretans, which were very sober and temperate, and those of the Ionians, a people of sumptuous and delicate habits, and so to form a judgment; just as physicians do by comparing healthy and diseased bodies. Here he had the first sight of Homer's works, in the hands, we may suppose, of the posterity of Creophylus; and, having observed that the few loose expres- sions and actions of ill example which are to be found in his poems were much outweighed by serious lessons of state and rules of morality, he set himself eagerly to transcribe and digest them into order, as thinking they would be of good use in his own country. They had, indeed, already obtained some slight re- pute amongst the Greeks, and scattered portions, as chance conveyed them, were in the hands of individuals; but Lycur- gus first made them really known. The Egyptians say that he took a voyage into Egypt, and that, being much taken with their way of separating the sol- diery from the rest of the nation, he transferred it from them to Sparta; a removal from contact with those employed in low and mechanical occupations giving high refinement and beauty to the state. Some Greek writers also record this. But as for his voyages into Spain, Africa, and the Indies, and his con- ferences there with the Gymnosophists, the whole relation, as far as I can find, rests on the single credit of the Spartan Aris- tocrates, the son of Hipparchus. Lycurgus was much missed at Sparta, and often sent for, " For kings indeed we have," they said, "who wear the marks and assume the titles of royalty, but as for the qualities of their minds, they have nothing by which they are to be distinguished LYCUR GUS. 53 from their subjects;" adding that in him alone was the true foundation of sovereignty to be seen, a nature made to rule, and a genius to gain obedience. Nor were the kings them- selves averse to see him back, for they looked upon his pres- ence as a bulwark against the insolencies of the people. Things being in this posture at his return, he applied himself, without loss of time, to a thorough reformation, and resolved to change the whole face of the commonwealth; for what could a few particular laws and a partial alteration avail? He must. act as wise physicians do, in the case of one who labors under a complication of diseases,-by force of medicines reduce and exhaust him, changehis whole temperament, and then set him upon a totally new regimen of diet. Having thus projected things, away he goes to Delphi to consult Apollo there; which having done, and offered his sacrifice, he returned with that renowned oracle, in which he is called beloved of God, and rather God than man: that his prayers were heard, that his laws should be the best, and the commonwealth which observed them the most famous in the world. Encouraged by these things, he set himself to bring over to his side the leading men of Sparta, exhorting them to give him a helping hand in his great undertaking: he broke it first to his particular friends, and then by degrees gained others, and animated them all to put his design in execution. When things were ripe for action, he gave order to thirty of the principal men of Sparta to be ready armed at the market-place at break of day, to the end that he might strike a terror into the opposite party. Her- mippus hath set down the names of twenty of the most emi- nent of them: but the name of him whom Lycurgus most con- fided in, and who was of most use to him both in making his laws and putting them in execution, was Arthmiadas. Things growing to a tumult, king Charilaus, apprehending that it was a conspiracy against his person, took sanctuary in the temple of Athena of the Brazen House; but, being soon after unde- ceived, and having taken an oath of them that they had no de- 54 PLUTARCH S LIVES, signs against him, he quitted his refuge, and himself also en- tered into the confederacy with them; of so gentle and flexible a disposition he was, to which Archelaus, his brother-king, al- luded, when, hearing him extolled for his goodness, he said: "Who can say he is anything but good?- he is so even- to the bad." Amongst the many changes and alterations which Lycurgus made, the first and of greatest importance was the establish- ment of the senate, which, having a power equal to the kings' in matters of great consequence, and, as Plato expresses it, al- laying and qualifying the fiery genius of the royal office, gave steadiness and safety to the commonwealth. For the state, which before had no firm basis to stand upon, but leaned one while towards an absolute monarchy, when the kings had the upper hand, and another while towards a pure democracy, when the people had the better, found in this establishment of the senate a central weight, like ballast in a ship, which always kept things in a just equilibrium; the twenty-eight always adhering to the kings so far as to resist democracy, and, on the other hand, supporting the people against the establishment of abso- lute monarchy. As for the determinate number of twenty- eight, Aristotle states that it so fell out because two.of the original associates, for want of courage, fell. off from the en- terprise; but Sphaerus assures us that there were but twenty- eight of the confederates at first; perhaps there is some mys- tery in the number, which consists of seven multiplied by four, and is the first of perfect numbers after six, being, as that is, equal to all its parts.* For my part, I believe Lycurgus fixed upon the number of twenty-eight, that, the two kings being reckoned amongst them, they might be thirty in all. So eagerly set was he upon this establishment, that he took the trouble to obtain an oracle about it from Delphi; and the Rhetra (or sacred ordinance) runs thus : After that you have built a temple to Jupiter Hellanius, and to Minerva Hellania, 14, 2, 7, 4, I, make by addition 28 ; as 3, 2, I, make 6. LYCURGUS. 55 and after that you have fhyle'd the people into phyles, and obe'd them into obes, you shall establish a council of thirty elders, the leaders included, and shall, from time to time, as- semble the people betwixt Babyca and Cnacion, there pro- pound and put to the vote. The commons have the final voice and decision." By phyles and obes are meant the divisions of the people; by the leaders, the two kings; Aristotle says Cnacion is a river, and Babyca a bridge. Betwixt this Babyca and Cnacion, their assemblies were held, for they had no coun- cil-house or building to meet in. Lycurgus was of opinion that ornaments were so far from advantaging them in their councils, that they were rather an hinderance, by diverting their attention from the business before them to statues and pictures, and roofs curiously fretted, the usual embellishments of such places amongst the other Greeks. The people then being thus assembled in the open air, it was not allowed to any one of their order to give his advice, but only either to ratify or reject what should be propounded to them by the king or senate. After the creation of the thirty senators, his next task, and, indeed, the most hazardous he ever undertook, was the making of a new division of their lands. For there was an extreme in- equality amongst them, and their state was overloaded with a multitude of indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had centred upon a very few. To the end, therefore, that he might expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity, he obtained of them to renounce their properties, and to consent to a new division of the land, and that they should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure of difference between man and man. Upon their consent to these proposals, proceeding at once to put them into execution, he divided the country of Laconia in general into thirty thousand equal shares,, and the part 56 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. attached to the city of Sparta into nine thousand; these he distributed among the Spartans, as he did the others to the country citizens. A lot was so much as to yield, one year with another, about seventy bushels of grain for the master of the family, and twelve for his wife, with a suitable proportion of oil and wine. And this he thought sufficient to keep their bodies in good health and strength; superfluities they were better without. It is reported, that, as he returned from a journey shortly after the division of the lands, in harvest time, the ground being newly reaped, seeing the stacks all standing equal and alike, he smiled, and said to those about him, "Me- thinks all Laconia looks like one family estate just divided among a number of brothers." Not contented with this, he resolved to make a division of their movables too, that there might be no odious distinction or inequality left amongst them; but finding that it would be very dangerous to go about it openly, he took another course, and defeated their avarice by the following stratagem: he commanded that all gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only a sort of money made of iron should be current, a great weight and- quantity of which was worth but very little; so that to lay up a hundred or two dollars there was required a pretty large closet, and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen. With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished from Lacedaemon ; for who would rob another of such a coin ? Who would un- justly detain or take by force, or accept as a bribe, a thing which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, nor indeed of any use to cut in pieces ? For when it was just red-hot, they quenched it in vinegar, and by that means spoilt it, and made it almost incapable of being worked. In the next place, he declared an outlawry of all needless and superfluous aits; but here he might almost have spared his proclamation; for they of themselves would have gone with the gold and silver, the money which remained being not LYCURGUS. 57 so proper payment for curious work; for, being of iron, it was scarcely portable, neither, if they should take the pains to ex- port it, would it pass amongst the other Greeks, who ridiculed it. So there was now no more means of purchasing foreign goods and small wares; merchants sent no shiploads into La- conian ports; no rhetoric-master, no itinerant fortune-teller, or gold or silversmith, engraver, or jeweler, set foot in a country which had no money; so that luxury, deprived little by little of that which fed and fomented it, wasted to nothing, and died away of itself. For the rich had no advantage here over the poor, as their wealth and abundance had no road to come abroad by, but were shut up at home doing nothing. And in this way they became excellent artists in common necessary things; bedsteads, chairs, and tables, and such like staple utensils in a family, were admirably well made there; their cup, particularly, was very much in fashion, and eagerly sought for by soldiers, as Critias reports ; for its.color was such as to prevent water, drunk upon necessity and disagreeable to look at, from being noticed; and the shape of it was such that the mud stuck to the sides, so that only the purer part came to the drinker's mouth. For this, also, they had to thank their law- giver, who, by relieving the artisans of the trouble of making useless things, set them to show their skill in giving beauty to those of daily and indispensable use. The third and most masterly stroke of this great lawgiver, by which he struck a yet more effectual blow against luxury and the desire of riches, was the ordinance he made that they should all eat in common, of the same bread and same meat, and of kinds that were specified, and should not spend their lives at home, laid on costly couches at splendid tables, deliver- ing themselves up into the hands of their tradesmen and cooks, to fatten them in corners, like greedy brutes, and to ruin not their minds only but their very bodies, which, enfeebled by in- dulgence and excess, would stand in need of long sleep, warm bathing, freedom from work, and, in a word, of as much care 58 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. and attendance as if they were continually sick. It was cer- tainly an extraordinary thing to have brought about such a result as this, but a greater yet to have taken away from wealth, as Theophrastus observes, not merely the property of being coveted, but its very nature of being wealth. For the rich, being obliged to go to the same table with the poor, could not make use of or enjoy their abundance, nor so much as please their vanity by looking at or displaying it. So that the com- mon proverb, that Plutus, the god of riches, is blind, was no- where in all the world literally verified but in Sparta. There, indeed, he was not only blind, but, like a picture, without either life or motion. Nor were they allowed to take food at home first, and then attend the public tables, for every one had an eye upon those who did not eat and drink like the rest, and re- proached them with being dainty and effeminate. . This last ordinance in particular exasperated the wealthier men. They collected in a body against Lycurgus, and from ill words came to throwing stones, so that at length he was forced to run out of the market-place, and make to sanctuary to save his life; by good-hap he outran all excepting one Alcander, a young man otherwise not ill accomplished, but hasty and violent, who came up so close to him, that, when he turned to see who was near him, he struck him upon the face with his stick, and put out one of his eyes. Lycurgus, so far from being daunted and discouraged by this accident, stopped short and showed his disfigured face and eye beat out to his countrymen; they, dismayed and ashamed at the sight, de- livered Alcander into his hands to be. punished, and escorted him home, with expressions of great concern for his ill usage. Lycurgus, having thanked them for their care of his person, dismissed them all, excepting only Alcander; and, taking him with him into his house, neither did nor said anything severe to him, but dismissing those whose place it was, bade Alcander to wait upon him at table. The young man, who was of an in- genuous temper, did without murmuring as he was commanded; LYCURGUS. 59 and, being thus admitted to live with Lycurgus, he had an op- portunity to observe in him, beside his gentleness and calm- ness of temper, an extraordinary sobriety and an indefatigable industry, and so, from an enemy, became one of his most zealous admirers, and told his friends and relations that Lycurgus was not that morose and ill-natured man they had formerly taken him for, but the one mild and gentle character of the world. And thus did Lycurgus, for chastisement of his fault, make of a wild and passionate young man one of the discreetest citi- zens of Sparta. In memory of this accident, Lycurgus built a temple to Minerva. Some authors, however, say that he was wounded, indeed, but did not lose his eye from the blow; and that he built the temple in gratitude for the cure. Be this as it will, certain it is, that, after this misadventure, the Lacedaemonians made it a rule never to carry so much as a staff into their public assemblies. But to return to their public repasts. They met by com- panies of fifteen, more or less, and each of them stood bound to bring in monthly a bushel of meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two pounds and a half of figs, and some very small sum of money to buy flesh or fish with. Besides this, when any of them made sacrifice to the gods, they always sent a dole to the common hall; and, likewise, when any of them had been a-hunting, he sent thither a part of the venison he had killed; for these two occasions were the only excuses al- lowed for supping at home. The custom of eating together was observed strictly for a great while afterwards; insomuch that king Agis himself, after having vanquished the Athenians, sending for his commons at his return home, because he de- sired to eat privately with his queen, was refused them by the polemarchs; and when he resented this refusal so much as to omit next day the sacrifice due for a war happily ended, they made him pay a fine. They used to send their children to these tables as to schools 60 PLUTARCI'S LIVES. of temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to experienced statesmen; here they learnt to con- verse with pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility, and take them without ill humor. In this point of good breeding, the Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint given there was no more to be said to him. It was customary also for the eldest man in the company to say to each of them, as they came in, " Through this" (pointing to the door), "no words go out." When any one had a desire to be admitted into any of these little societies, he was to go through the following probation: each man in the company took a little ball of soft bread, which they were to throw into a deep basin, that a waiter carried round upon his head; those that liked the person to be chosen dropped their ball into the basin without altering its figure, and those who disliked him pressed it betwixt their fingers, and made it flat; and this signified as much as a negative voice. And if there were but one of these flattened pieces in the basin, the suitor was rejected, so desirous were they that all the mem- bers of the company should be agreeable to each other. The basin was called caddichus, and the rejected candidate had a name thence derived. Their most famous dish was the black broth, which was so much valued that the elderly men fed only upon that, leaving what flesh there was to the younger. They say that a certain king of Pontus,- having heard much of this black broth of theirs, sent for a Lacedaemonian cook on purpose to make him some, but had no sooner tasted it than he found it extremely bad, which the cook observing, told him, "Sir, to make this broth relish, you should have bathed your- self first in the river Eurotas." After drinking moderately, every man went to his home without lights, for the use of them was, on all occasions, for- bid, to the end that they might accustom themselves to march boldly in the dark. Such was the common fashion of their meals. LYCURGUS. 6 Lycurgus would never reduce his laws into writing; nay, there is a Rhetra expressly to forbid it. For he thought that the most material points, and such as most directly tended to the public welfare, being imprinted on the hearts of their youth by a good discipline, would be sure to remain, and would find a stronger security, than any compulsion would be, in the principles of action formed in them by their best law- giver, education. One, then, of the Rhetras was, that their laws should not be written ; another is particularly leveled against luxury and expensiveness, for by it it was ordained that the ceilings of their houses should only be wrought by the axe, and their gates and doors smoothed only by the saw. Epaminondas's famous dictum about his own table, that Treason and a din- ner like this do not keep company together," may be said to have been anticipated by Lycurgus. Luxury and a house of this kind could not well be companions. For a man must have a less than ordinary share of sense that would furnish such plain and common rooms with silver-footed couches and purple coverlets and gold and silver plate. Doubtless he had good reason to think that they would proportion their beds to their houses, and their coverlets to their beds, and the rest of their goods and furniture to these. It is reported that King Leotychides, the first of that name, was so little used to the sight. of any other kind of work, that, being entertained at Corinth in a stately room, he was much sur- prised to see the timber and ceilings so finely carved and paneled, and asked his host whether the trees grew so in his country. A third ordinance or Rhetra was that they should not make war often, or long, with the same enemy, lest they should train and instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves. And this is what Agesilaus was much blamed for a long time after; it being thought that, by his continual incursions into Boeotia, he made the Thebans a match for 62 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. the Lacedaemonians; and therefore Antalcidas, seeing him wounded one day, said to him that he was very well paid for taking such pains to make the Thebans good soldiers, whether they would or no. These laws were called the Rhetras, to intimate that they were divine sanctions and revelations. In order to the good education of their youth (which, as I said before, he thought the most important and noblest work of a lawgiver), he took in their case all the care that was pos- sible; he ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that they might have strong and healthy bodies. It was not in the power of the father to dispose of his child as he thought fit; he was obliged to carry it before certain " triers" at a place called Lesche ; these were some of the elders of the tribe to which the child belonged; their business it was care- fully to view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing, and allot- ted to it one of the nine thousand shares of 1 a nd above men- tioned for IRL PLAM-I-G AT DICE. GIRL PLAYING AT DICE. 64 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. father himself to raise his children after his own fancy; but as soon as they were seven years old they were to be enrolled in certain companies and classes, where they all lived under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and taking their play together. Of these he who showed the most con- duct and courage was made captain; they had their eyes always upon him, obeyed his Al / orders, and underwent patient- "ly whatsoever punishment he inflicted; so that the whole S \ course of their education was one continued exercise of a ready and perfect obedience. SThe old men, too, were spec- tators of their performances, and often raised quarrels and disputes among them, to have a good opportunity of finding out their different characters, \ and of seeing which would be / valiant, which a coward, when they should come to more dangerous encounters. Read- ing and writing they gave them, just enough to serve their turn; their chief care was to make them good sub- YOUTH WITH CHLAMYS AND HAT. jects, and to teach them to endure pain and conquer in battle. To this end, as they grew in years, their discipline was proportionally increased; their heads were close-clipped; they were accustomed to go bare- foot, and for the most part to play naked. After they were twelve years old they were no longer allowed LYCUR G US. 65 to wear any under-garment; they had one coat to serve them a year;" their bodies were hard and dry, with but little ac- quaintance of baths and unguents; these human indulgences they were allowed only on some few particular days in the year. They lodged to- gether in little bands upon beds made of the rushes which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, which they (I were to break off with their hands without a knife; if it were winter, they mingled some thistledown with their rushes, which it was thought had the property of giving warmth. Besides all this, there was always one of the best and most honest men in the city appointed to undertake the charge and governance of them; he again arranged them into their several bands, and set over each of them for their- captain the most tem- perate and bold of those they called Irens, who were usually twenty years old, two years out of boyhood; and the eldest of the boys, again, were Mell-Irens, as much as to YOUTH WITH CHLAMYS AND HAT. say, "who would shortly be men." This young man, therefore, The chitdn and the himation, one inside and one out, constituted the ordinary Greek dress; corresponding in use to the Roman tunic and toga. The chlamys, a short garment of Thessalian origin, thrown over the left shoulder and fastened upon the right with a brooch, was the ordinary dress of youths, the chiton of boys. 5 66 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. was their captain when they fought, and their master at home, using them for the offices of his house; sending the oldest of them to fetch wood, and the weaker and less able, to gather salads and herbs, and these they must either go without or steal; which they did by creeping into the gardens, or convey- ing themselves cunningly and closely into the eating-houses ; if they were taken in the act, they were whipped without mercy, for thieving so ill and awkwardly. They stole, too, all other meat they could lay their hands on, looking out and watching all opportunities, when people were asleep or more careless than usual. If they were caught, they were not only punished with whipping, but hunger, too, being reduced to their ordinary allowance, which was but very slender, and so contrived on purpose, that they might set about to help them- selves, and be forced to exercise their energy and address. So seriously did the Lacedaemonian children go about their stealing, that a youth, having stolen a young fox and hid it under his coat, suffered it to tear out his very bowels with its teeth and claws, and died upon the place, rather than let it be seen. What is practised to this very day in Lacedxemon is enough to gain credit to this story, for I myself have seen several of the youths endure whipping to death at the foot of the altar of Diana surnamed Orthia. The Iren, or under-master, used to stay a little with them after supper, and one of them he bade to sing a song, to an- other he put a question which required an advised and deliber- ate answer; for example, Who was the best man in the city ? What he thought of such an action of such a man ? They accustomed them thus early to pass a right judgment upon persons and things, and to inform themselves of the abilities or defects of their countrymen. If they had not an answer ready to the question, Who was a good or who an ill-reputed citizen? they were looked upon as of a dull and careless dis- position, and to have little or no sense of virtue and honor; besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they 4. E-- I i .- ,I-.. . . .'.- , '0 41 ,., t'-,.rF k ,'.. -- ' '' .3 .......... -< '. .. I -' . .. .. . , ' ', "' '- '- i '-y-:-" ,' - ' '-" ^ / " 1 "I S. I . S-- .. --- . IN --', ; : - ""j, "6. P ry r,,. ..' ,r.- I .i .,,... .. Kt" 3. i..- ,- -l if-- -. I-t-.. n- , c.- '. "A. y.A44 1- - 3".,F f *^ ^ ^^ " 2 <- j- (. \T2 A. 4 "". - -- --..-- - -- - ...... ...... .... ........ .. .. ...... 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'; '" . 1, ..,--..--J -" '" ,' ,1 ++......t ,., ._j ... .,-", " ,~~~~~~~ lsI.~ __ = .- ,; ..:, -r, --- "+o l" ~~~-r .. . . .. . ... .. . .. .. . . . . . .._ ." . ...t. ..... . . .. ....+ + == .....-- - LYCURGUS. 67 said, and in as few words and as comprehensive as might be; he that failed of this, or answered not to the purpose, had his thumb bit by his master. They taught them, also, to speak with a natural and graceful raillery, and to comprehend much matter of thought in few words. For Lycurgus, who ordered, as we saw, that a great piece of money should be but of an inconsiderable value, on the contrary would allow no discourse to be current which did not contain in few words a great deal of useful and curious sense; children in Sparta, by a habit of long silence, came to give just and sententious answers; for, indeed, loose talkers seldom originate many sensible words. King Agis, when some Athenian laughed at their short swords, and said that the jugglers on the stage swallowed them with ease, answered him, We find them long enough to reach our enemies with;" and as theii swords were short and sharp, so, it seems to me, were their sayings. They reach the point and arrest the at- tention of the hearers better than any others. Lycurgus him- self seems to have been short and sententious, if we may trust the anecdotes of him; as appears by his answer to one who by all means would set up democracy in Lacedaemon. "Begin, friend," said he, "and set it up in your family." Another asked him why he allowed of such mean and trivial sacrifices to the gods. He replied, "That we may always have some- thing to offer to them." Being asked what sort of martial exercises or combats he approved of, he answered, All sorts, except that in which you stretch out your hands." * SOf their dislike to talkativeness, the following apophthegms are evidence. King Leonidas said to one who held him in discourse upon some useful matter, but not in due time and place, "Much to the purpose, sir, elsewhere." King Chari- laus, the nephew of Lycurgus, being asked why his uncle had made so few laws, answered, "Men of few words require but "* The form of crying quarter among the ancients. 68 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. few laws." When one blamed Hecateus the sophist because that, being invited to the public table, he had not spoken one word all supper-time, Archidamidas answered in his vindica- tion, He who knows how to speak, knows also when." The sharp, and yet not ungraceful, retorts which I mentioned may be instanced as follows. Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon ? answered at last, He, sir, that is the least like you." Some, in company where Agis was, much extolled the Eleans for their just and honorable management of the Olympic games; "Indeed," said Agis, "they are highly to be commended if they can do justice one day in five years. We may see their character, too, in their very jests. For they did not throw them out at random, but the very wit of them was grounded upon something or other worth thinking about. For instance, one, being asked to go hear a man who exactly counterfeited the voice of a nightingale, answered, "Sir, I have heard the nightingale itself." Another, having read the following inscription upon a tomb,- Seeking to quench a cruel tyranny, They, at Selinus, did in battle die, said, it served them right; for instead of trying to quench the tyranny they should have let it burn out. A lad, being offered some game-cocks that would die upon the spot, said he cared not for cocks that would die, but for such as would live and kill others. In short, their answers were so sententious and pertinent, that one said well that intellectual, much more truly than athletic, exercise was the Spartan characteristic. Nor was their instruction in music and verse less carefully attended to than their habits of grace and good breeding in conversation. And their very songs had a life and spirit in them that inflamed and possessed men's minds with an enthu- siasm and ardor for action; the style of them was plain and LYCURGUS. 69 without affectation; the subject always serious and moral; most usually it was in praise of such men as had died in defence of their country, or in derision of those that had been cowards; the former they declared happy and glorified.; the life of the latter they described as most miserable and abject. There were also vaunts of what they would do, and boasts of what they had done, varying with the various ages, as, for example, they had three choirs in their solemn festivals, the first of the old men, the second of the young men, and the last of the children; the old men began thus: We once were young, and brave and strong; the young men answered them, singing, And we're so now, come on and try; the children came last and said, But we'll be strongest by and by. Before they engaged in battle, the Lacedxemonians abated a little the severity of their manners in favor of their young men, suffering them to curl and adorn their hair, and to have costly arms, and fine clothes; and were well pleased to see them, like proud horses, neighing and pressing to the course. And therefore, as soon as they came to be well grown, they took a great deal of care of their hair, to have it parted and trimmed, especially against a day of battle, pursuant to a say- ing recorded of their lawgiver, that a large head of hair added beauty to a good face, and terror to an ugly one. The senate, as I said before, consisted of those who were Lycurgus's chief aiders and assistants in his plan. The vacan- cies he ordered to be supplied out of the best and most deserv- ing men past sixty years old. The manner of their election was as follows: the people being called together, some selected persons were locked up in a room near the place of election, 70 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. so contrived that they could neither see nor be seen, but could only hear the noise of the assembly without; for they decided this, as most other affairs of moment, by the shouts of the peo- ple. This done, the competitors were not brought in and pre- sented all together, but one after another by lot, and passed in order through the assembly without speaking a word. Those who were locked up had writing-tables with them, in which they recorded and marked each shout by its loudness, without knowing in favor of which candidate each of them was made, but merely that they came first, second, third, and so forth. He who was found to have the most and loudest acclamations was declared senator duly elected. When he perceived that his more important institutions had taken root in the minds of his countrymen, that custom had rendered them familiar and easy, that his commonwealth was now grown up and able to go alone, then, as Plato somewhere tells us the Maker of the world, when first he saw it existing and beginning its motion, felt joy, even so Lycurgus, viewing with joy and satisfaction the greatness and beauty of his politi- cal structure, now fairly at work and in motion, conceived the thought to make it immortal too, and as far 'as human forecast could reach, to deliver it down unchangeable to posterity. He called an extraordinary assembly of all the people, and told them that he now thought everything reasonably well estab- lished, both for the happiness and the virtue of the state ; but that there was one thing still behind, of the greatest importance, which he thought not fit to impart until he had consulted the oracle; in the meantime, his desire was that they would observe the laws without even the least alteration until his return, and then he would do as the god should direct him. They all con- sented readily, and bade him hasten his journey; but, before he departed, he administered an oath to the two kings, the, senate, and the whole commons, to abide by and maintain the established form of polity until Lycurgus should come back. This done, he set out for Delphi, and, having sacrificed to LYCURGUS. 71 Apollo, asked him whether the laws he had established were good and sufficient for a people's happiness and virtue. The oracle answered that the laws were excellent, and that the people, while it observed them, should live in the height of renown. Lycurgus took the oracle in writing, and sent it over to Sparta, and, having sacrificed a second time to Apollo, and taken leave of his friends and his son, he re- solved that the Spartans should not be released from the oath they had taken, and that he would, of his own act, close his life where he was. He was now about that age in which life was still tolerable, and yet might be quitted without regret. Everything, moreover, about him was in a sufficiently pros- perous condition. He, therefore, made an end of himself by a total abstinence from food; thinking it a statesman's duty to make his very death, if possible, an act of service to the state, and even in the end of his life to give some example of virtue and effect some useful purpose. Nor was he deceived in his expectations, for the city of Lacedaemon continued the chief city of all Greece for the space of five hundred years, in strict observance of Lycurgus's laws; in all which time there was no manner of alteration made, during the reign of fourteen kings, down to the time .of Agis, the son of Archidamus. King Theopompus, when one said that Sparta held up so long because their kings could command so well, replied, Nay, rather because the people know so well how to obey." For people do not obey, unless rulers know how to command; obedience is a lesson taught by commanders. A true leader himself creates the obedience of his own followers; as it is the greatest attainment in the art of riding to make a horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of government to inspire men with a willingness to obey. It is reported that when his bones were brought home to Sparta his tomb was struck with lightning, an accident which befell no eminent person but himself and Euripides. But Aristocrates, the son of Hipparchus, says that he died in Crete, 72 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. and that his Cretan friends, in accordance with his own re- quest, when they had burned his body, scattered the ashes into the sea, for fear lest, if his relics should be transported to Lacedaemon, the people might pretend to be released from their oaths, and make innovations in the government. SOLON. SOLON, as Hermippus writes, when his father had ruined his estate in doing benefits and kindnesses to other men, though he had friends enough that were willing to contribute to his relief, yet was ashamed to be beholden to others, since he was descended from a family who were accustomed to do kind- nesses rather than receive them; and therefore applied him- self to merchandise in his youth; though others assure us that he traveled rather to get learning and experience than to make money. It is certain that he was a lover of knowledge, for when he was old he would say that he Each day grew older, and learnt something new. But that he accounted himself rather poor than rich is evident from the lines, Some wicked men are rich, some good are poor, We will not change our virtue for their store ; Virtue's a thing that none can take away, But money changes owners all the day. It is stated that Anacharsis and Solon and Thales were fa- miliarly acquainted, and some have quoted parts of their dis- course; for, they say, Anacharsis, coming to Athens, knocked at Solon's door, and told him that he, being a stranger, was come to be his guest, and contract a friendship with him; and Solon replying, "It is better to make friends at home," Ana- charsis replied, "Then you that are at home make friendship with me." Solon, somewhat surprised at the readiness of the repartee, received him kindly, and kept him some time with 74 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. him, being already engaged in public business and the compila- tion of his laws; which when Anacharsis understood, he laughed at him for imagining the dishonesty and covetousness of his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which were like spiders' webs, and would catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but easily be broken by the mighty and rich. To this Solon rejoined that men keep their promises when neither side can get anything by the breaking of them; and he would so fit his laws to the citizens, that all should understand it was more eligible to be just than to break the laws. But the event rather agreed with the conjecture of Anacharsis than Solon's hope. Anacharsis, being once at the assembly, expressed his wonder that in Greece wise men spoke and fools decided. ,Now, when the Athenians were tired with a tedious and dif- ficult war that they conducted against the Megarians for the island Salamis, and made a law that it should be death for any man, by writing or speaking, to assert that the city ought to endeavor to recover it, Solon, vexed at the disgrace, and per- ceiving thousands of the youth wished for somebody to begin, but did not dare to stir first for fear of the law, counterfeited a distraction, and by his own family it was spread about the city that he was mad. He then secretly composed some ele- giac verses, and getting them. by heart, that it might seem ex- tempore, ran out into the market-place with a cap upon his head, and, the people gathering about him, got upon the her- ald's stand, and sang that elegy which begins thus :- I am a herald come from Salamis the fair, My news from thence my verses shall declare. The poem is called Salamis"; it contains a hundred verses, very elegantly written. When it had been sung, his friends commended it, and especially Pisistratus exhorted the citizens to obey his directions; insomuch that they recalled the law, and renewed the war under Solon's conduct. The popular tale is, that with Pisistratus he sailed to Colias, and, finding the z :Z: :14! .. .. ... _ . 71- 1_- _Xo - T _ -_..__ .._.- T-HE.-GULF.OF.SALAMI ;i~ ~~ m. in:: :: ;,, .. _- - __ -. - ". - .- ,,.' -; ";,. . ; .. . .. ,... ,' r- el ..,' . . "-.isi,'" : ::~~T1 ,f ,!.. ;""' .~ -- ": ___ i ~ ~ ;- _.-i:FI:i1 :.;._.--- -- - L -;ca~~iia -- _~ .... r---- . _.--__-._._-- __ccccccccc~~ --i--; -- __---~- THE GULF OF SALAMIS. 76 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. women, according to the custom of the country there, sacrific- ing to Ceres, he sent a trusty friend to Salamis, who should pretend himself a renegade, and advise them, if they desired to seize the chief Athenian women, to come with him at once to Colias; the Megarians presently sent off men in the vessel with him, and Solon, seeing it put off from the island, com- manded the women to be gone, and some beardless youths, dressed in their clothes, their shoes, and caps, and privately armed with daggers, to dance and play near the shore till the enemies had landed and the vessel was in their power. Things being thus ordered, the Megarians were allured with the ap- pearance, and, coming to the shore, jumped out, eager who should first seize a prize, so that not one of them escaped; and the Athenians set sail for the island and took it. For this Solon grew famed and powerful; but his advice in favor of defending the oracle at Delphi, to give aid, and not to suffer the Cirrhaeans to profane it, but to maintain the honor of the god, got him most repute among the Greeks: for upon his persuasion the Amphictyons undertook the war. Now the Cylonian pollution had a long time disturbed the commonwealth, ever since the time when Megacles the archon persuaded the conspirators with Cylon that took sanctuary in Athena's temple to come down and stand to a fair trial. And they, tying a thread to the image, and holding one end of it, went down to the tribunal; but when they came to the temple of the Furies, the thread broke of its own accord, upon which, as if the goddess had refused them protection, they were seized by Megacles and the other magistrates; as many as were with- out the temples were stoned, those that fled for sanctuary were butchered at the altar, and only those escaped who made sup- plication to the wives of the magistrates. The Athenians, now the Cylonian sedition was over and the polluted gone into banishment, fell into their old quarrels about the government, there being as many different parties as there were diversities in the country. The Hill quarter favored SOLON. 77 democracy; the Plain, oligarchy; and those that lived by the Sea-side stood for a mixed sort of government, and so hindered either of the parties from prevailing. And the disparity of for- tune between the rich and the poor at that time also reached its height; so that the city seemed to be in a truly dangerous con- dition, and no other means for freeing it from disturbances and settling it to be possible but a despotic power. Then the wisest of the Athenians, perceiving Solon was of all men the only one not implicated in the troubles, that he had not joined in the exactions of the rich, and was not involved in the necessities of the poor, pressed him to succor the com- monwealth and compose the differences. Solon, reluctantly at first, engaged in state affairs, being afraid of the pride of one party and the greediness of the other; he was chosen archon, however, after Philombrotus, and empowered to be an arbitra- tor and lawgiver; the rich consenting because he was wealthy, the poor because he was honest. There was a saying of his current before the election, that when things are even there never can be war, and this pleased both parties, the wealthy and the poor; the one conceiving him to mean, when all have their fair proportion; the other, when all are absolutely equal. Thus, there being great hopes on both sides, the chief men pressed Solon to take the government into his own hands, and, when he was once settled, manage the business freely and according to his pleasure; and many of the commons, perceiving it would be a difficult change to be effected by law and reason, were willing to have one wise and just man set over the affairs; and some say that Solon had this oracle from Apollo: Take the mid-seat, and be the vessel's guide; Many in Athens are upon your side. From which it is manifest that he was a man of great reputa- tion before he gave his laws. The several mocks that were put upon him for refusing the power, he records in these words : 78 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. Solon surely was a dreamer, and a man of simple mind ; When the gods would give him fortune, he of his own will declined ; When the net was full of fishes, over-heavy thinking it, He declined to haul it up, through want of heart and want of wit. Had but I that chance of riches and of kingship for one day, I would give my skin for flaying, and my house to die away. Thus he makes the many and the low people speak of him. Yet, though he refused the government, he did not show him- self mean and submissive to the powerful, nor make his laws to pleasure those that chose him. For the first thing which he settled was, that what debts remained should be forgiven, and no man, for the future, should engage the body of his debtor for security. Though some, as Androtion, affirm that the debts were not canceled, but the interest only lessened, which sufficiently pleased the people; so that they named this benefit the Seisacthea, together with the enlarging of their measures, and raising the value of their money; for he made a pound, which before passed for seventy-three drachmas, go for a hundred; so that, though the number of pieces in the pay- ment was equal, the value was less; which proved a consider- able benefit to those that were to discharge great debts, and no loss to the creditors. While he was designing this, a most vexatious thing hap- pened; for when he had resolved to take off the debts, and was considering the proper form and fit beginning for it, he told some of his friends, Conon, Clinias, and Hipponicus, in whom he had a great deal of confidence, that he would not meddle with the lands, but only free the people from their debts; upon which, they, using their advantage, made haste and borrowed some considerable sums of money, and purchased some large farms; and when the law was enacted, they kept the posses- sions, and would not return the money; which brought Solon into great suspicion and dislike, as if he himself had not been abused, but was concerned in the contrivance. But he pres- ently stopped this suspicion, by releasing his own debtors of five SOLON. 79 talents (for he had lent so much), according to the law; others, as Polyzelus the Rhodian, say fifteen. Soon becoming sensible of the good that was done, the peo- ple laid by their grudges, made a public sacrifice, and chose Solon to new-model and make laws for the commonwealth, giv- ing him the entire power over everything, their magistracies, their assemblies, courts, and councils; that he should appoint the number, times of meeting, and what estate they must have that could be capable of these, and dissolve or continue any of the present constitutions, according to his pleasure. First, then, he repealed all Draco's laws, except those con- cerning homicide, because they were too severe and thepun- ishments too great; for death was appointed for almost all offences, insomuch that those that were convicted of idleness were to die, and those that stole a cabbage or an apple to suffer even as villains that committed sacrilege or murder. So that Demades, in after time, was thought to have said very happily, that Draco's laws were written not with ink, but blood; and he himself, being once asked why he made death the punish- ment of most offences, replied: Small ones deserve that, and I have no higher for the greater crimes." Next, Solon, being willing to continue the magistracies in the hands of the rich men, and yet receive the people into the other part of the government, took an account of the citizens' estates, and those that were worth five hundred measures of fruits, dry and liquid, he placed in the first rank; those that could keep a horse, or were worth three hundred measures, were made the second class; those that had two hundred measures, were in the third; and all the other were called Thetes, who were not admitted to any office, but could come to the assembly, and act as.jurors; which at first seemed noth- "ing, but afterward was found an enormous privilege, as almost every matter of dispute came before them in this latter capacity. Besides, it is said that he was obscure and ambiguous in the wording of his laws, on purpose to increase the honor of his 80 PLUTARCH'S LIVES. courts; for since their differences could not be adjusted by the letter, they would have to bring all their causes to the judges, who thus were in a manner masters of the laws. Of this equalization he himself makes mention in this manner: Such power I gave the people as might do, Abridged not what they had, now lavished new. Those that were great in wealth and high in place, My counsel likewise kept from all disgrace. Before them both I held my shield of might, And let not either touch the other's right. When he had constituted the Areopagus of those who had been yearly archons, of which he himself was a member there- fore, observing that the people, now free from their debts, were unsettled and imperious, he formed another council of four hundred, a hundred out of each of the four tribes, which was to inspect all matters before they were propounded to the peo- ple, and to take care that nothing but what had been first ex- amined should be brought before the general assembly. The upper council, or Areopagus, he made inspectors and keepers of the laws, conceiving that the commonwealth, held by these two councils like anchors, would be less liable to be tossed by tumults, and the people be more at quiet. Such is the general statement that Solon instituted the Areopagus. Amongst his other laws, one is very peculiar and surprising, which disfranchises all who stand neuter in a sedition ; for it seems he would not have any one remain insensible and regard- less of the public good, but at once join with the good party and those that have the right upon their side, assist and vent- ure with them, rather than keep out of harm's way and watch who would get the better. Another commendable law of Solon's is that which forbids men to speak evil of the dead. Since the country has but few rivers, lakes, or large springs, and many used wells which they had dug, there was a law At SOLON. 81 made, that, where there was a public well within a hizpicon, that is, four furlongs, all should draw at that; but when it was farther off, they should try and procure a well of their own; and, if they had dug ten fathoms deep and could find no water, they had liberty to fetch a pitcherful of four gallons and a half in a day from their neighbors'; for he thought it prudent to make provision against want, but not to supply laziness. He showed skill in his orders about planting, for any one that would plant another tree was not to set it within five feet of his neighbor's field; but if a fig or an olive, not within nine, for their roots spread farther, nor can they be planted near all sorts of trees without damage, for they draw away the nourish- ment, and in some cases are noxious by their effluvia. He that would dig a pit or a ditch was to dig it at the distance of its own depth from his neighbor's ground; and he that would raise stocks of bees was not to place them within three hun- dred feet of those which another had already raised. He permitted only oil to be exported, and those that ex- ported any other fruit, the archon was solemnly to curse, or else pay an hundred drachmas* himself; and this law was written in his first table, and, therefore, let none think it in- credible, as some affirm, that the exportation of figs was once unlawful. He made a law also, concerning hurts and injuries from beasts, in which he commands the master of any dog that bit a man to deliver him up with a log about his neck four and a half feet long-a happy device for men's security.. All his laws he established for an hundred years, and wrote them on wooden tables or rollers, named axones, which might be turned round in oblong cases; some' of their relics were in my time still to be seen in the Prytaneum, or common hall, at Athens. These, as Aristotle states, were called cyrbes, and there is a passage of Cratinus the comedian, By Solon, and by Draco, if you please, Whose Cyrbes make the fires that parch our peas. "* A drachma was about twenty cents. 6 |