FROM THE

ORIGINAL GREEK,

WITH NOTES,

CRITICAL, HISTORICAL, AND CHRONOLOGICAL.

AND A

NEW LIFE OF PLUTARCH.

TRANSLATED BY

JOHN LANGHORNE, D. D. AND WILLIAM LANGHORNE, M.A.

WITH

Explanatory Tables of Chronology, History, and comparative

Geography.

COMPLETE IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

Printed by W. M'Dewall, Pemberton Row, Gough Square, Fleet Street,

FOR J. DAVIS, MILITARY CHRONICLE OFFICE, ESSEX STREET, STRAND; AND

TO BE HAD OF THE BOOKSELLERS.

1812.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HON. LORD FOLKESTONE.

MY LORD. THE style and genius of Dedications, in general, have neither done honour to the Patron nor to the Author. Sensible of this, we intended to have published a work, which has been the labour of years without the usual mode of soliciting protection. An accident has brought us into the number of Dedicators. Had not you accompanied your noble father to our humble retreat, we should still have been unacquainted with your growing virtues, your extraordinary erudition, and perfect knowledge of the Greek language and learning; and Plutarch would have remained as he did in his retirement at Chæronea, where he sought no patronage but in the bosom of philosophy.

ACCEPT, my Lord, this honest token of respect from men, who, equally independent and unambitious, wish only for the countenance of genius and friendship. Praise,

my Lord, is the usual language of Dedication: But will our praise be of value to you? Will any praise be of value to you, but that of your own heart? Follow the example of the EARL of RADNOR, your illustrious father. Like him, maintain that temperate spirit of policy which consults the dignity of Government, while it supports the Liberty of the Subject. But we put into your hands the best of Political Preceptors, a Preceptor who trained to virtue the greatest monarch upon earth; and, by giving happiness to the world, enjoyed a pleasure something like that of the benevolent Being who created it. We are

My LORD,

Your Lordship's

Most obedient, and

Very humble Servants,

J. & W. LANGHORNE.

THE PREFACE.

IF the merit of a work may be estimated from the universality of its reception, Plutarch's Lives have a claim to the first honours of literature. No book has been more generally sought after, or read with greater avidity. It was one of the first that were brought out of the retreats of the learned, and translated into the modern languages. Amiot, Abbé of Bellozane, published a French translation of it in the reign of Henry the Second; and from that work it was translated into English, in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

It is said by those who are not willing to allow Shakespeare much learning, that he availed himself of the last-mentioned translation; but they seem to forget, that, in order to support their arguments, it is necessary for them to prove that Plato, too, was translated into English at the same time; for the celebrated soliloquy, "To be, or not to be," is taken, almost verbatim, from that philosopher; yet we have never found that Plato was translated in those days.

AMIOT was a man of great industry and considerable learning. He sought diligently in the libraries of Rome and Venice for those Lives of Plutarch which are lost; and though his search was unsuccessful, it had this good effect, that, by meeting with a variety of manuscripts, and comparing them with the printed copies, he was enabled in many places to rectify the text. This was a very essential circumstance; for few ancient writers had suffered more than Plutarch from the carelessness of printers and transcribers; and, with all his merit, it was his fate, for a long time, to find no able restorer. The Schoolmen despised his Greek, because it had not the purity of Xenophon, nor the Attic terseness of Aristophanes; and, on that