GREEK HISTORY

FROM

PLUTARCH

LONDON

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.

NEW-STREET SQUARE

It is not without reason that Plutarch's Lives, which formerly were so much read, have in the last twenty years been so much neglected. Plutarch wrote in the time of Trajan; and we have learnt the value of cotemporary statements: it is justly felt that for the time of Pericles, his evidence is not to be compared to that of Thucydides. Plutarch is a biographer and a moralist; and our recent curiosity has been rather for the politics of the ancient world. Plutarch, in writing lives, to illustrate a point of character, very naturally neglects the order of time; but we have been busy to establish an accurate chronology. The desire of the last twenty years has been to have the entire evidence, and receive a judgment upon it. It has been but little to this purpose to read a book of selected