The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch Being Parts of the "Lives" of Plutarch, Edited for Boys and Girls
by 46- Plutarch
- Pages
- about 517
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 9.5 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
As geographers crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world
which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect
that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts,
unapproachable bogs, Seythian ice, or frozen sea, so, in this great work
of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one
another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning
can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well
say of those that are farther off, Beyond this there is nothing but
prodigies and fictions; the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors
of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther. Yet, after
publishing an account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I
thought I might, not without reason, ascend as high as to Romulus, being
brought by my history so near to his time. Considering therefore with
myself
Whom shall I set so great a man face to face?
Or whom oppose? Who's equal to the place?
(as Aeschylus expresses it), I found none so fit as he who peopled the
beautiful and far-famed city of Athens, to be set in opposition with
the father of the invincible and renowned city of Rome. Let us hope that
Fable may, in what shall follow, so submit to the purifying processes of
Reason as to take the character of exact history. We shall beg that we
may meet with candid readers, and such as will receive with indulgence
the stories of antiquity.
Theseus seemed to me to resemble Romulus in many particulars. Both of
them had the repute of being sprung from the gods.
Both of them united with strength of body an equal vigor of mind; and of
the two most famous cities of the world, the one built in Rome, and the
other made Athens be inhabited.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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