Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and RomansPlutarch
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
Plutarch
Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
the enemy being weary of the slaughter, stole by night to Veii, giving
up Rome and all that was in it for lost.
This battle was fought about the summer solstice, the moon being at
full, the very same day in which the sad disaster of the Fabii had
happened, when three hundred of that name were at one time cut off by
the Tuscans. But from this second loss and defeat the day got the name
of Alliensis, from the river Allia, and still retains it. The question
of unlucky days, whether we should consider any to be so, and whether
Heraclitus did well in upbraiding Hesiod for distinguishing them into
fortunate and unfortunate, as ignorant that the nature of every day is
the same, I have examined in another place; but upon occasion of the
present subject, I think it will not be amiss to annex a few examples
relating to this matter. On the fifth of their month Hippodromius,
which corresponds to the Athenian Hecatombaeon, the Boeotians gained two
signal victories, the one at Leuctra, the other at Ceressus, about three
hundred years before, when they overcame Lattamyas and the Thessalians,
both which asserted the liberty of Greece. Again, on the sixth of
Boedromion, the Persians were worsted by the Greeks at Marathon; on the
third, at Plataea, as also at Mycale; on the twenty-fifth, at Arbela.
The Athenians, about the full moon in Boedromion, gained their sea-
victory at Naxos under the conduct of Chabrias; on the twentieth, at
Salamis, as we have shown in our treatise on Days. Thargelion was a
very unfortunate month to the barbarians, for in it Alexander overcame
Darius's generals on the Granicus; and the Carthaginians, on the twenty-
fourth, were beaten by Timoleon in Sicily, on which same day and month
Troy seems to have been taken, as Ephorus, Callisthenes, Damastes, and
Phylarchus state. On the other hand, the month Metagitnion, which in
Boeotia is called Panemus, was not very lucky to the Greeks; for on its
seventh day they were defeated by Antipater, at the battle in Cranon,
and utterly ruined; and before, at Chaeronea, were defeated by Philip;
and on the very same day, same month, and same year, those that went
with Archidamus into Italy were there cut off by the barbarians. The
Carthaginians also observe the twenty-first of the same month, as
bringing with it the largest number and the severest of their losses. I
am not ignorant, that, about the Feast of Mysteries, Thebes was
destroyed the second time by Alexander; and after that, upon the very
twentieth of Boedromion, on which day they lead forth the mystic
Iacchus, the Athenians received a garrison of the Macedonians. On the
selfsame day the Romans lost their army under Caepio by the Cimbrians,
and in a subsequent year, under the conduct of Lucullus, overcame the
Armenians and Tigranes. King Attalus and Pompey died both on their
birthdays. One could reckon up several that have had variety of fortune
on the same day. This day, meantime, is one of the unfortunate ones to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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