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Plutarch's Morals By: Unknown (46-120?) |
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PLUTARCH'S MORALS
GEORGE BELL & SONS,
LONDON: YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN
NEW YORK: 66, FIFTH AVENUE, AND
BOMBAY: 53, ESILANADE ROAD
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
PLUTARCH'S MORALS ETHICAL ESSAYS TRANSLATED WITH NOTES AND INDEX BY ARTHUR RICHARD SHILLETO, M.A. Sometime Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge,
Translator of Pausanias. [Illustration] LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1898 CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
Transcriber's note: The original book uses often colons
instead of semicolons. Spelling of proper names is
different in different pages and some words occur in
hyphemated and unhyphenated forms. These have not been
changed. A couple of commas and periods have been added or
removed to improve the reading and only obvious spelling
errors have been corrected.
PREFACE.
Plutarch, who was born at Chæronea in Boeotia, probably about A.D. 50,
and was a contemporary of Tacitus and Pliny, has written two works still
extant, the well known Lives , and the less known Moralia . The
Lives have often been translated, and have always been a popular work.
Great indeed was their power at the period of the French Revolution. The
Moralia , on the other hand, consisting of various Essays on various
subjects (only twenty six of which are directly ethical, though they
have given their name to the Moralia ), are declared by Mr. Paley "to
be practically almost unknown to most persons in Britain, even to those
who call themselves scholars."[1] Habent etiam sua fata libelli. In older days the Moralia were more valued. Montaigne, who was a great
lover of Plutarch, and who observes in one passage of his Essays that
"Plutarch and Seneca were the only two books of solid learning he
seriously settled himself to read," quotes as much from the Moralia as
from the Lives . And in the seventeenth century I cannot but think the
Moralia were largely read at our Universities, at least at the
University of Cambridge. For, not to mention the wonderful way in which
the famous Jeremy Taylor has taken the cream of "Conjugal Precepts" in
his Sermon called "The Marriage Ring," or the large and copious use he
has made in his "Holy Living" of three other Essays in this volume,
namely, those "On Curiosity," "On Restraining Anger," and "On
Contentedness of Mind," proving conclusively what a storehouse he found
the Moralia , we have evidence that that most delightful poet, Robert
Herrick, read the Moralia , too, when at Cambridge, so that one cannot
but think it was a work read in the University course generally in those
days. For in a letter to his uncle written from Cambridge, asking for
books or money for books, he makes the following remark: "How kind
Arcisilaus the philosopher was unto Apelles the painter, Plutark in his
Morals will tell you."[2] In 1882 the Reverend C. W. King, Senior Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge, translated the six "Theosophical Essays" of the Moralia ,
forming a volume in Bohn's Classical Library. The present volume
consists of the twenty six "Ethical Essays," which are, in my opinion,
the cream of the Moralia , and constitute a highly interesting series
of treatises on what might be called "The Ethics of the Hearth and
Home." I have grouped these Essays in such a manner as to enable the
reader to read together such as touch on the same or on kindred
subjects... Continue reading book >>
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