The _Symposiacs_ are arranged in nine books, each of which contains ten conversations of unequal length, but all short, except the last which has fifteen. On the other hand nine, viz. four of the fourth book and five of the last, are missing, only the titles being preserved. All the books are dedicated to Sossius Senecio, who was consul first in A.D. 99; and as there is no reference to the dignity, we may perhaps infer that all were written before that year.[8] There is not a single reference in all the nine books to any public or personal event which might help us to a date. We hear of the ‘year’ of officials of the Greek games, of Plutarch’s return from a visit to Alexandria, and of a marriage in his family, which Sossius Senecio attended, but we cannot follow these clues.[9] Many of the discussions are about wine and wine-parties; in others the range of subject is very wide, from ‘What Plato meant by saying, if he did say, that God geometrizes’ to ‘Whether the table should be cleared after dinner’, or ‘Why truffles grow after thunder’. A good many are on medical subjects; in one of them the promising problem, ‘Whether new diseases can arise, and from what causes’, is well argued. The physicians present show a full knowledge of the Natural History found in the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, and the laymen seem to argue with them on equal terms. There is little or no pleasantry about professional habits, the fees or the pedantry, except that in one party a physician is host, and sets on the table an inordinately good dinner, while certain young men of severe habits put him to a great deal of trouble to produce some cheese to eat with their dry bread.[10] In the first dialogue of the First Book the question is raised, ‘Whether philosophy may be discussed over wine’. The answer appears to be ‘Why not?’ but probably none of the following dialogues would be called ‘philosophical’ by philosophers. Plutarch loved a vigorous set-to, with no quarter given, ‘nothing for hate, but all for honour’, as much as did Montaigne.[11] But he felt deeply about the matters at issue between Stoics and Epicureans, the two schools which mattered. Believing himself in a Providence, kindly and particular, associated by him with the Apollo of Delphi, he disliked equally the Epicurean who flouted a Providence, and the Stoic who lowered it by his pedantry and contradictions. He would not have a scene over the wine. Even in the daylight dialogues now before us, the cynic ‘Planetiades’ is skilfully bowed out before there is trouble, and ‘Epicurus’ takes himself off before the reported discussion begins, leaving the company surprised rather than angry.