“The first which with unwearied steeds I clime, Is such a iourney that their ceaseless toyle Can scarcily reach before the morrowes prime; The next is highest heau’n from whence the soyle And spacious seas, I see with dreadfull eye And fearfull heart; the next whereto I hie Is steep and prone and craues a cunning guide; And then dothe Thetis shake herselfe for dread, Lest headlong I should fall and downward glide, And burie in her waues my golden head.” “And that thou mayst continue in the way, Be carefull lest thy posting steeds doe stray; Yet shalt thou pass by Taurus, who will bend His hornes to cross thee, whither thou dost tend; Th’ Aemonian Archer and the Lion fell Shall stay thy course and fright thee where they dwell.” See also the classical dictionary under Phaethon. VI. 6. An inclined plane down which an object may be easily started to roll. 8. The final sentence more literally translated would read, Are you not ashamed? what is so quickly done you fear so long? PLUTARCH AND THE GREECE OF HIS AGE. Ever since I have known enough about Greek literature to form an opinion of my own on its merits, it has been a matter of surprise to me that the authors who flourished in the century or two immediately preceding and succeeding the Christian era, are treated with so much neglect. The histories of Greek literature, whose name is legion, frequently end with Grecian independence; or if they continue the subject some centuries longer, treat the later periods in a half-hearted and perfunctory manner, as if they were deserving of nothing better. While it is true, that in some departments the field is relatively infertile, there are many writers well worth a careful study, and several eminently so. The storm and stress period is over; the centuries of vigorous productions well-nigh past; yet the Greek mind is not dead; the field of authorship still bears many fine ears and occasionally a large sheaf for the careful gleaner. The times that could produce a Polybius, a Plutarch, an Epictetus, an Arrian, a Dion Chrysostomus, a Lucian, to say nothing of Josephus and Philo, together with others, a score or more in number, cannot justly be charged with intellectual stagnation. If the form in which the later writers express their thoughts has no longer the elegance, nor the thoughts themselves the profundity, of their predecessors, they are far from being unworthy of painstaking study. If men reflected less, they did more, or were at least active in a larger sphere. Greeks were now to be found in all parts of the civilized world; they still provided its intellectual nourishment; Athens was still its university and it is of the Greeks of these centuries more than of the earlier that Horace could say,