The Rome with which Plutarch was immediately acquainted was the Rome of Vespasian and of the earlier half of Domitian’s reign. Had his sojourn in the capital taken place some fifteen or twenty years later, it is in the highest degree probable that he would have been further known to us through an acquaintance with Pliny or some other Roman writer of that date. That a Greek, and especially one who had a difficulty in reading Latin, should make no mention of contemporary Latin authors—that in his heart he should rather despise them—is only characteristic of the Hellenic attitude of the time. But that the amiable Pliny, who has an appreciative word to say of almost every one within his social horizon, including comparatively obscure philosophers like Euphrates, should say nothing of so eminent a figure as Plutarch, amounts to evidence that the two had never met. A man who could make close friends of consulars like Sosius Senecio and Mestrius Florus, and who enjoyed an intimacy with Paccius and Fundanus, could not have failed to win the notice of the Horace Walpole of his day. Quintilian, Silius, Statius, Martial, Pliny, Suetonius, and Juvenal were all writing when Plutarch was already the coryphaeus of Greek culture, and if not one of them mentions his name, it is because he was living in remote Chaeronea and forgathering only with his chosen circle of philosophers, men of letters, artists, or musicians in that town or in Athens, Corinth, and other Greek centres near at hand. To Chaeronea Plutarch must have retired by middle life. There he married Timoxena, a lady of position, but of quiet tastes, had issue four sons and a daughter, identified himself with the civic and religious concerns of his town, delivered lectures, imparted instruction on the lines of a modified or latitudinarian Platonic philosophy, industriously read the books in his moderate but useful library, made copious extracts therefrom, wrote his _Lives_ and those occasional papers known as his _Ethica_ or _Moral Essays_, and enjoyed the discussion of many a knotty question—often perhaps of little or no importance beyond the fact of its forming a problem—in the agreeable society of his relatives or his cultivated friends and guests. At such gatherings he was the leader, doubtless dominating the conversation—though in his more courteous way—somewhat as Johnson dominated the coterie described by Boswell. Often, we gather, he varied this quiet course of life by means of excursions to other Greek cities—Athens, Sparta, Aedepsus—where he most probably delivered an occasional lecture, and where, as we are certain, he thoroughly enjoyed himself in table-talk.[3]