The last named contains a revised text only; from it my translation of the De Sera was made. The German translation of Bähr, the well-known Heidelberg professor, in the collection above cited, follows the original very closely and has been of much service to me by its interpretation of obscure passages. A complete catalogue of Plutarch’s Moralia is given in the appendix. The list is borrowed from the edition of Bernardakis and the question of authenticity is not taken into account. NOTE:—To translate Plutarch is a very different task from that of translating Seneca. The style of the latter is terse and epigrammatic; clauses and sentences often follow each other without connectives, and are in the main short. That of the former is the reverse. Most of his sentences are long, many of them very long. These, as well as clauses and words, are often strung together with the participles καὶ and γὰρ, or other connectives, until the reader sometimes wonders whether they will ever end. Seneca is full of pithy sayings well suited for quotation; in Plutarch they are rare. The style of both writers is highly rhetorical, but, if we except the evident striving after effect, they have little else in common. As in the case of Seneca, it has been my aim to preserve for the English reader the peculiarities of the Greek, so far as possible. There is much to be said in favor of making a translation, above everything else, readable; but in the effort to do so, the translator is constantly exposed to the danger of displacing the style of the original with his own. I hope I have in a measure, at least, succeeded in putting before the English reader, not only what Plutarch said in the following Tract, but also how he said it. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” CONCERNING THE DELAY OF THE DEITY IN PUNISHING THE WICKED. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. PLUTARCH. PATROCLEAS, his son-in-law. TIMON, his brother. OLYMPICHUS. The scene is the portico of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The tract is dedicated to a certain Quintus, whose name seems to indicate that he was a Roman, but of whom nothing definite is known.