None of the conversations in the _Symposiacs_ turn upon points which were Plutarch’s interest when he wrote the _Lives_; the study of character in stirring times, of the reaction of circumstances upon character and of character upon circumstances, of the insoluble problem which is always solving itself, as to ‘Virtue’ on the one hand and ‘Fortune’ on the other, determining success. The elaborate introduction to the _Genius of Socrates_, put side by side with that to the _Life of Pericles_, shows that the author wished to turn from subjects which made good talk over wine in hours of leisure, to others of a more virile stamp. The most convenient hypothesis would be that the success of the _Symposiacs_ suggested to the author to try his hand on more elaborate dialogue, and that, still later on, he settled to the _Lives_ in the spirit, not of an historian, but of an artist, filling his canvas with themes inspired by that great art, Virtue. The lost _Life of Epaminondas_, his favourite hero, would have told us a great deal about the artist himself. It was not Plutarch’s habit to sum up in such brilliant character sketches as stand out in other historians: this has been done for Epaminondas, on broad and generous lines, by Sir Walter Raleigh, and before him, not less generously, by Montaigne; and much material will be found scattered among Plutarch’s other _Lives_. Such an hypothesis can only be ventured in the broadest outline, for no one date covers all the _Lives_ or all the _Dialogues_, and some of the facts are perplexing. In the _Second Pythian Dialogue_ Diogenianus appears as a very young man, and is introduced as the son of a father known to the company; and Diogenianus of Pergamum takes part in several of the _Symposiacs_, but there is no mention of a son old enough to be brought with him. On the other hand, Boethus in the same dialogue is ‘on his way to the camp of the Epicureans’; in one of the _Symposiacs_ he is ‘an Epicurean’ simply. In the last book of the _Symposiacs_ Theon’s sons come in, but we do not hear of him elsewhere as a father of grown-up sons.