Transcriber’s notes: Italic text is denoted _thus_. The spelling, hyphenation, punctuation and accentuation are as the original, except for apparent typographical errors which have been corrected. [Illustration: _Pandora’s Box._ _From the painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti._] PLUTARCH’S ESSAYS AND MISCELLANIES Comprising all his Works Collected under the Title of “Morals” · Translated from the Greek by Several Hands Corrected and Revised by WILLIAM W. GOODWIN, Ph.D., Professor of Greek Literature in Harvard University In Five Volumes · Volume One [Illustration: HONOS ET VIRTVS] BOSTON · LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY · MCMXI Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, By LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. Copyright, 1898, 1905, By LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. Printers S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. EDITOR’S PREFACE. The translation of Plutarch’s Morals “by Several Hands” was first published in London in 1684-1694. The fifth edition, “revised and corrected from the many errors of the former editions,” published in 1718, is the basis of the present translation. The earlier translation made by Philemon Holland, Doctor of Physick, published in London in 1603 and again in 1657, has often been of great use in the revision. It hardly need be stated, that the name “Morals” is used by tradition to include all the works of Plutarch except the Lives. The original editions of the present work contained translations of every grade of merit. Some of the essays were translated by eminent scholars like William Baxter (nephew of Richard Baxter) and Thomas Creech, whose work generally required merely such revision as every translation of such an age would now need. But a large number, including some of the longest and most difficult treatises, were translated by men whose ignorance of Greek—or whatever language was the immediate ancestor of their own version—was only one of their many defects as translators. Perhaps we may gain a better idea than we have had of the scholars of Oxford whom Bentley delighted to torment, from these specimens of the learning of their generation; and it may have been a fortunate thing for some of our translators that Bentley was too much occupied with the wise heads of Christ Church to be able to notice the blunders of men who could write notes saying that the Parthenon is “a Promontory shooting into the Black Sea, where stood a Chappel dedicated to some Virgin God-head, and famous for some Victory thereabout obtain’d;” or who could torture a plain statement that a certain water when stirred produced _bubbles_ (πομφόλυγες) into a story of a new substance called _Pompholyx_, “made by Mixture of Brass with the Air”! See Vol. V. p. 337, and Vol. III. p. 517, of the original translation.