infancy of the study of Greek in England, Philemon threw off, among other trifles, translations of all the _Moralia_ of Plutarch, the whole of Livy, the enormous _Natural History_ of Pliny, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus, the _Cyropædia_ of Xenophon, and Camden's _Britannia_. Southey is more just to the assiduous labours of a life of study carried to the age of eighty-five, when he calls Philemon "the best of the Hollands." But the most discerning criticism of Holland, as "translator generall in his age" (Fuller), is contained in Owen's epigram on Holland's translation of the _Natural History_, that he was both _plenior_ and _planior_ than Plinius. To judge from the _Romane Questions_, Philemon must have used as his text the edition of 1560-70, Venet., for he evidently avails himself of Xylander's emendations of the Aldine _editio princeps_, 1509-19. One cannot, however, be quite certain on this point, for the title-page of Holland's translation of the _Moralia_ runs: "The Philosophie, commonly called the Morals, written by the learned philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea, translated out of Greek into English, and conferred with Latin and French." Now the Latin translation must have been Xylander's; and the only edition of the text used by Holland may have been that of H. Stephens, with which Xylander's Latin translation and notes were published. The French with which Philemon conferred was of course that of Jacques Amyot, who had already translated Plutarch's _Lives_ in 1559, and followed up that translation with one of the _Moralia_ in 1574. Philemon's translation of the _Morals_ appeared in 1603 ("revised and corrected" in 1657). The _Morals_ in general and the _Romane Questions_ in particular have received little attention from commentators. The only notes I have succeeded in getting hold of, besides those of Xylander and Reiske (complete edition of Plutarch, Lips., 1774-82), are some by Boxhorn (in the fifth volume of the _Thesaurus_ of Grævius, 1696), which includes one sensible remark (quoted p. xxxii. below), and those by Wyttenbach (Oxford, 1821), which, if I had looked at them before instead of after writing my Introduction, would have provided me with a good many classical references that, as it is, I have had to put together myself. INTRODUCTION. I. THE SUBJECT OF THE "ROMANE QUESTIONS" AND OF THIS INTRODUCTION.