Ancient Classics

it is, in my opinion, of no other disadvantage to be of a mean, obscure country, than to be born of a small or plain looking woman. For it were ridiculous to think that Iulis, a little part of Ceos, which itself is no great island, and Aegina, which an Athenian once said ought to be removed, like a small eyesore, from the port of Piraeus should breed good actors and poets, and yet should never be able to produce a just,

temperate, wise, and high mindedman. Other arts, whose end it is to acquire riches or honour, are likely enough to wither and decay in poor and undistinguished towns; but virtue,like a strong and durable plant, may take root and thrive in any place where it can lay hold of an ingenuous nature, and a mind that is industrious. I, for my part, Continue reading

IF it be true, Sosius Senecio, that, as Simonides tells us:-

"Of the Corinthians Troy does not complain" for having taken part with the Achaeans in the siege, because the Trojans also had Corinthians (Glaucus, who sprang from Corinth) fighting bravely on their side,so also it may be fairly said that neither Romans nor Greeks can quarrel with the Academy, each nation being equally represented in the following pair of lives,

which will give an account of Brutus and of Dion, Dion, who was Plato's own hearer, and Brutus, who was brought up in his philosophy. They came from one and the self same school, where they had been trained a like to run the race of honour; nor need we wonder that in the performance of actions often most nearly allied and akin, they both bore evidence to the truth of what their guide and teacher said, that, without the concurrence of power and success,

and showing signs of intelligence and bravery, Philip was so pleased with him as to take him into his service. But they seem to speak more probably who tell us that Philip advanced Eumenesfor the friendship he bore to his father, whose guest he had sometime been. After the death of Philip, he continued in the service of Alexander, with the title of his principal secretary, but in as great favour

as the most intimate of his familiars, being esteemed as wise and faithful as any person about him, so that he went with troops under his immediate command as general in the expedition against India, and succeeded to the post of Perdiccas, when Perdiccas was advancedto that of Hephaestion, then newly deceased. And therefore, after the death of Alexander, when Neoptolemus, who had been captain of his lifeguard, Continue reading

and fossa for a ditch, and that in process of time, by the change of the two letters, they grew to be called Fabii. But be these things true or false, certain it is that this family for a long time yielded a great number of eminent persons. Our Fabius, who was fourth in descent from that Fabius Rullus who first brought the honourable surname of Maximus into his family, was also, by way of personal nickname, called Verrucosus,

from a wart on his upper lip; and in his childhood they in like manner named him Ovicula, or The Lamb, on account of his extreme mildness of temper. His slowness in speaking, his long labour and pains in learning, his deliberation in entering into the sports of other children, his easy submission to everybody, as if he had no will of his own, made those who judge superficially of him, the greater number, Continue reading

What Titus Quintius [Flamininus], whom we select as a parallel to Philopoemen, was in personal appearance, those who are curious may see by the brazen statue of him, which stands in Rome near that ofthe great Apollo, brought from Carthage, opposite to the Circus Maximus,with a Greek inscription upon it. The temper of his mind is said to have been of the warmest both in anger and in kindness, not indeed equally so in both respects;

as in punishing he was ever moderate, never inflexible; but whatever courtesy or good turn he set about, he went through with it, and was as perpetually kind and obliging to those on whom he had poured his favours, as if they, not he, had been the benefactors; exerting himself for the security and preservation of what he seemed to consider his noblest possessions, those to whom he had done good.

and findingthem talkative and impertinently busy, as though they were all commanders, issued out his orders that they should have only ready hands and keens words, and leave the rest to him. And Plato, who can discern use of a good ruler or general if his men are not on their part obedient and conformable (the virtue of obeying, as of ruling, being, in his opinion, one that does not exist without first a noble nature, andthen a philosophic education,

where the eager and active powers areallayed with the gentler and humaner sentiments), may claim in confirmationof his doctrine sundry mournful instances elsewhere, and, in particular, the events that followed among the Romans upon the death of Nero, in which plain proofs were given that nothing is more terrible than a military force moving about in an empire upon uninstructed and unreasoning impulses. Continue reading

This thing was much takennotice of among the Romans, who commended it as an act of high merit. Even without the provocation the accusation was esteemed no unbecoming action, for they delighted to see young men as eagerly attacking injusticeas good dogs do wild beasts. But when great animosities ensued, in so much that some were wounded and killed in the fray, Servilius escaped.

Lucullus followed his studies and became a competent speaker, in both Greek and Latin, in so much that Sylla, when composing the commentaries of his own life and actions, dedicated them to him, as one who could have performed the task better himself. His speech was not only elegant and ready for purposes of mere business, like the ordinary oratory which will in the public market-place- Continue reading

There is so much uncertainty in the accounts which historians have left us of Lycurgus, the law giver of Sparta, that scarcely anything is asserted by one of them which is not called into question or contradicted by the rest. Their sentiments are quite different as to the family he came of, the voyages he undertook, the place and manner of his death, but most of all when they speak of the laws he made and the commonwealth which he founded.

They cannot, by any means, be brought to an agreement as to the very age in which he lived; for some ofthem say that he flourished in the time of Iphitus, and that they two jointly contrived the ordinance for the cessation of arms during the solemnity of the Olympic games. Of this opinion was Aristotle; and for confirmation of it, he alleges an inscription upon one ofthe copper quoits used in those sports, upon which the name of Lycurgus continued uneffaced to

after their great defeat, shaved themselves for sorrow, that the Spartans contrariwise triumphing in their achievements, suffered their hair to grow; neither did the Spartans come to be ambitious of wearing long hair, because the Bacchiadae, who fled from Corinth to Lacedaemon, looked mean and unsightly, having their heads all close cut. But this, also, is indeed one of the ordinances of Lycurgus, who, as it is reported, was used to say,

that long hair made good looking men more beautiful, and ill looking men more terrible.

Lysander's father is said to have been Aristoclitus, who was not indeed of the royal family but yet of the stock of the Heraclidae. He was brought up in poverty, and showed himself obedient and conformable, as ever any one did, to the customs of his country; Continue reading

and so far studious of Greek learning and discipline, as to honour and admire those that excelled in it, though he did not himself attain a proficiency in them equal to his desire, by reason of his employments. For if ever there were any men whom, as Homer says, Heaven

"From their first youth unto their utmost age
Appointed the laborious wars to wage,"

certainly they were the chief Romans of that time; who in their youth had war with the Carthaginians in Sicily, in their middle age with the Gauls in the defence of Italy itself; and at last, when now grown old, struggled again with Hannibal and the Carthaginians, and wanted in their latest years what is granted to most men, exemption from military toils; Continue reading

Marcus Brutus was descended from that Junius Brutus to whom the ancient Romans erected a statue of brass in the capitol among the images of their kings with a drawn sword in his hand, in remembrance of his courage and resolution in expelling the Tarquins and destroying the monarchy. But that ancient Brutus was of a severe and inflexible nature, like steel of too hard a temper, and having never had his characters oftened by study and thought,

he let himself be so far transported with his rage and hatred against tyrants that, for conspiring with them, he proceeded to the execution even of his own sons. But this Brutus, whose life we now write, having to the goodness of his disposition added the improvements of learning and the study of philosophy, and having stirred up his natural parts, of themselves grave and gentle,

of some men who wished to have themselves derived from some ancient and noble lineage, though in reality withno claim to it. And though it be commonly reported that Numa was a scholar and a familiar acquaintance of Pythagoras, yet it is again contradicted by others, who affirm that he was acquainted with neither the Greek language nor learning, and that he was a person of that natural talent and ability as of himself to attain to virtue,

or else that he foundsome barbarian instructor superior to Pythagoras. Some affirm, also, that Pythagoras was not contemporary with Numa, but lived at least five generations after him; and that some other Pythagoras, a native of Sparta, who, in the sixteenth Olympiad, in the third year of which Numa became king, won a prize at the Olympic race, might, in his travel through Italy, have gained acquaintance with Numa, Continue reading

Upon which they were both of them admired by those that were present, and applauded by the soldiers.

In the senate, Otho said much in a gentle and popular strain. He was to have been consul for part of that year himself, but he gave the office to Virginius Rufus, and displaced none that had been named for the consul ship by either Nero or Galba.

Those that were remarkable for their age and dignity he promoted to the priesthoods; and restored the remains of their fortunes, that had not yet been sold, to all those senators that were banished by Nero, and recalled by Galba. So that the nobility and chief of the people, who were at first apprenhensive that no human creature, but some supernatural, or penal vindictive power had seized the empire, Continue reading