Of all the biographies contained in his work, none might excite greater suspicion of incorrectness than that of Timoleon, on account of the extraordinary character both of the man and of the incidents of his career. His story reads like a romance of the ancient times, like a legend of some half-mythical hero, rather than like the true account of an actual man. There is, perhaps, none among his Lives which Plutarch has written with greater spirit, with livelier sympathies, than this. And yet, in spite of all its seeming improbability, there is little reason to question its essential truth. It corresponds, with some minor exceptions, with all that can be ascertained from other ancient authors who wrote concerning the deliverer of Sicily; and even Mitford, with all his zeal in the cause of tyrants, can find little to detract from the praise of Timoleon, or to diminish our confidence in the truth of Plutarch's account of him. But, in addition to the interest that belongs to these biographies, from their intrinsic qualities, as affected by the character of Plutarch,--beside the interest which the common reader or the student of biography and history may find in them, they possess a still deeper interest for the student of human nature, in its various modifications, under varying influences, and in different ages, from exhibiting to him, in a long series, many of the chief characters of the heathen world in such form as fits them for comparison with the prominent men of Christian times. The question of the effect of Christianity upon the characters and lives of the leading actors in modern history is not more important than it is difficult of solution. Plutarch, better than any other ancient writer, affords the means of estimating the motives, the principles, the objects, of the men of the old time. We see in his pages what they were; we see the differences between them and the men of later days. How far are those differences exhibitions of inferiority or of superiority? How far do they result from the influence of secondary causes? how far from the change in religious belief?