PLUTARCH'S LIVES.

Translated from the Greek

WITH

NOTES AND A LIFE OF PLUTARCH.

BY

AUBREY STEWART, M.A.,

Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,

AND THE LATE

GEORGE LONG, M.A.,

Formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:

GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK ST., COVENT GARDEN, AND NEW YORK.

1892.

LONDON:

REPRINTED FROM THE STEREOTYPE PLATES BY WM. CLOWES & SONS, LTD.,

STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

CONTENTS.

PLUTARCH'S LIVES.

LIFE OF NIKIAS.

As it appears to me that the life of Nikias forms a good parallel to that of Crassus, and that the misfortunes of the former in Sicily may be well compared with those of the latter in Parthia, I must beg of my readers to believe that in writing upon a subject which has been described by Thucydides with inimitable grace, clearness, and pathos, I have no ambition to imitate Timæus, who, when writing his history, hoped to surpass Thucydides himself in eloquence, and to show that Philistius was but an ignorant bungler, and so plunges into an account of the speeches and battles of his heroes, proving himself not merely one

as Pindar has it, but altogether unfit for the office of historian, and, in the words of Diphilus,

He often seeks to shelter himself behind the opinions of Xenarchus, as when he tells us that the Athenians thought it a bad omen that the general whose name was Victory refused to command the expedition to Sicily; and when he says that by the mutilation of the Hennas the gods signified that the Athenians would suffer their chief disasters at the hands of Hermokrates the son of Hermon; or, again, when he observes that Herakles might be expected to take the side of the Syracusans because of Proserpine, the daughter of Demeter, who gave him the dog Kerberus, and to be angry with the Athenians because they protected the