BOHN'S CLASSICAL LIBRARY
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.
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1898
CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKSCOURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
Transcriber's note: The original book uses often colonsinstead of semicolons. Spelling of proper names isdifferent in different pages and some words occur inhyphenated and unhyphenated forms. These have not beenchanged. A couple of commas and periods have been added orremoved to improve the reading and only obvious spellingerrors have been corrected.
PREFACE.
Plutarch, who was born at Chæronea in Bœotia,probably about A.D. 50, and was a contemporary of Tacitus andPliny, has written two works still extant, the well-knownLives, and the less-known Moralia. The Liveshave often been translated, and have always been a popular work.Great indeed was their power at the period of the FrenchRevolution. The Moralia, on the other hand, consisting ofvarious Essays on various subjects (only twenty-six of which aredirectly ethical, though they have given their name to theMoralia), are declared by Mr. Paley "to be practicallyalmost unknown to most persons in Britain, even to those who callthemselves scholars."1Habent 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 passageof his Essays that "Plutarch and Seneca were the only two books ofsolid learning he seriously settled himself to read," quotes asmuch from the Moralia as from the Lives. And in theseventeenth century I cannot but think the Moralia werelargely read at our Universities, at least at the University ofCambridge. For, not to mention the wonderful way in which thefamous Jeremy Taylor has taken the cream of "Conjugal Precepts" inhis Sermon called "The Marriage Ring," or the large and copious useviiihe has made in his "Holy Living" ofthree other Essays in this volume, namely, those "On Curiosity,""On Restraining Anger," and "On Contentedness of Mind," provingconclusively what a storehouse he found the Moralia, we haveevidence that that most delightful poet, Robert Herrick, read theMoralia, too, when at Cambridge, so that one cannot butthink it was a work read in the University course generally inthose 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 TrinityCollege, Cambridge, translated the six "Theosophical Essays" of theMoralia, forming a volume in Bohn's Classical Library. Thepresent volume consists of the twenty-six "Ethical Essays," whichare, in my opinion, the cream of the Moralia