1 REESE LIBRARY OI-- llIK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 'Received , igo . Accession No. 90220 • Class No. ''Wl i PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES NEWLY TRANSLATED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY BERNADOTTE PERRIN Professor in Yale University Wie schwer sind nicht die Mittel zu erwerben, Durch die man zu den Ouellen steigt ! Goethe's Faust, I. i, 209 f. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1901 Copyright, 1901, By Charles Scribner's Sons Published, September, iqor. UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. •TO JOHN HAY FRIEND OF HELLENISM 90220 A5pLn PREFACE In writing this book, I have had in mind as possible friends to be won by it, first, all lovers of Plutarch, whose name, it is to be hoped, is still legion. Knowing how im- possible it is to reproduce in English the illusive qualities which distinguish one Greek style from another, they will commend my work of translation if it brings out clearly the spirit of Plutarch as a writer of Lives : the easy and com- fortable movements of his thought ; his attitude toward men who are struggling with gi-eat problems of life and destiny ; his amiable weaknesses as a judge of historical evidence ; his relish for the personal anecdote and the mot ; his disregard of the logic and chronology of events ; his naive appropriation of the literary product of others ; his consummate art in making deeds and words, whether authentic or not, portray a pre- conceived character, — a more or less idealized character. They will welcome my introductions and explanatory notes also, in so far as these enable the English reader to repro- duce, even though faintly, the atmosphere of bountifid. liter- ary tradition which Plutarch amply breathed before and as he wrote. It should be possible, in some degree, at least, for the student of these notes and introductions to penetrate, as it were, into the very studio of the greatest of ethical portrait- painters, and watch him mix his colors and apply them to the canvas. I have had in mind, second, all lovers of Greek history, and especially of the story of the Greek Wars of Freedom, wherein Salamis and Plataea must always be the glorious names. Translation and notes together will show how suc- cessive generations of Greeks told and retold the stories of X PREFACE these battles ; how new and civil hates obscured the laurels won against foreign foes ; how genius was discredited and mediocrity rewarded ; and how for six centuries romance and invention went on weaving their unsubstantial robes around the dim figures of the man of genius and the man of medi- ocrity. It may possibly be that some students of Greek his- tory in our high schools, academies, and colleges have come to love it, as their teachers doubtless all do, and that both students and teachers may welcome the opportunity which this book affords them of getting behind the stereotyped phrases of the ordinary manual of Greek history into that stimulating atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty before conflicting testimonies which nourishes the judgment rather than the memory; where witnesses who desired to tell an attractive story can be confronted with witnesses who desired to tell the same story truly, or perhaps even with the witness of imperishable monuments ; where even the earliest oral testimonies show that the story-teller's delight in the form of the story was apt to affect the matter of the story, in ancient as well as in the latest history. To the professional and learned student of Greek history I should scarcely venture to appeal with this book, unless he might wish to compare with his own opinions on contro- verted points the opinions which I have reached after weigh- ing the same evidence which he has himself weighed. There is always interest, if not profit, in such comparisons. But to the professional and learned student of other history than Greek, and especially of modern history, I do confidently appeal for enough attention to this book to con\dnce himself, if he is not already convinced, of the substantial identity of the problems and methods of historical research in fields so remote from each other as this from his. It is quite as diffi- cult, probably, in 1901 a.d. for an intelligent historian, without recourse to the official documents of the War Office, to get true accounts of the battles at Gettysburg in 1863 as it was for Herodotus in 440-430 B.C. to get true accounts of the battles at Platsea in 479 ; and even contemporary accoimts of im- PREFACE xi portant engagements in the current war in South Africa, given by leading participants, are sharply conflicting. I do not forget Niebuhr's quotation from Wilhelm von Humboldt : " Es soil mir AUes recht sein, wenn man Plutarch nur nicht als Geschichtsschreiber betrachtet," and I neither regard Plutarch as an historian nor would I have others do so. We must admire and love Plutarch for what he is, not rely upon him or criticise him for what he is not and did not try to be. But, in the dearth of testimony for obscure events in ancient history, Plutarch will often be brought to the stand as a witness ; in that case only those who know him thor- oughly as the artist in ethical portrait-painting which he tried to be, can judge of the worth of his witness on an historical question. On such hotly controverted points as the authenticity of the tract On the Malignity of Herodotus, ascribed to Plutarch ; the extent and worth of the biographical tract of Stesimbrotus of Thasos ; the date of the archonship of Themistocles, and many others like them, I have, of course, simply taken the position to which my studies have led me, without arguing the questions out fully. The authorities cited in the notes are not always, or often, indeed, the final authorities, but such as my English readers wUl find most accessible and convenient. Great storehouses of classical scholarship have been opened to the English reader in the translations of Herodotus by Eawlinson, of Thucydides by Jowett, and of Pausanias by Frazer. These I quote, and to these I refer often, in the hope of bringing many a reader under the larger spell of their entire works. But, though I may not profitably cite them much in the current notes, it would be unfair not to express my constant obligation to such works as Busolt's Griechische Geschichte, Wilamowitz- Moellendorffs Aristoteles unci Athen, Adolf Schmidt's ec- centric but useful Periklcische Zeitalter, Eduard Meyer's Forschungen zur alien Geschichte, — particularly the second volume (1899), — Adolf Bauer's TJicmistoUes (1881) and Plutarchs Themistokles (1884), and Ivo Bruns' Das litera- Xll PREFACE risclie Portrdt der Gricchen. While my book was passing through the press I had, through the kindness of Professor Gudeman, the tantalizing pleasure of reading Friedrich Leo's Gricchisch-Bomische Biographie (1901), a work of which I would gladly have made more use. I am largely indebted to it for one section of my Introduction (Biography before Plutarch). It will be seen at once, then, that I have not tried to write a learned book for the learned, but one wliich may attract an ordinary English reader of culture and taste toward learning, and Greek learning in particular. From such recruits the Greek scholar of the future may come by promotion. And yet I should like to get the approval of scholars also. My highest reward would be to have truly said of me, as represented by this book, what Ivo Bruns said of Henri \Yeil and his last edition of the Medea of Euripides : " Er belehrt den Anfanger, und regt den Kenner an." It is a pleasure to acknowledge the courtesy of Frau Heimpel, daughter of the late Professor Ehousopoulos, of Athens, in allowing the Magnesian coin which her father had published to be photographed for my use ; of Dr. von Prott, Librarian of the German Institute at Athens, in allowing me the use of the drawing which illustrated the coin of Professor Ehousopoulos, as published in the Mittheilungen of the Insti- tute ; of Dr. Ddrpfeld, Dnector of the Institute, in furnish- ing me with a photograph of the Themistocles-os^raA-ow ; of my pupil, Mr. Samuel E. Bassett, at present the Soldiers' Memorial Fellow of Yale, at Athens, in assisting me to secure the illustrations mentioned; and of Mons. Babelon, Conservateur du Cabinet des M^dailles in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, in supplying me with impressions of the Magnesian didrachm of Themistocles. B. P. New Haven, June, 1901. CONTENTS Page Preface ix List and Explanation of Illustrations and Maps . xv Introduction : I. Plutarch, the Biographer 1 11. Themistocles, and the Tradition of his History IN Plutarch's Life 25 (a) Outline Sketch of the Persian Wars (b) The Sources of Phitarch in his Themistocles (c) Analysis of the Tliemistocles III. Aristides, and the Tradition of his History in Plutarch's Life 49 (a) Aristides in the Persian Wars (b) The Sources of Plutarch in his Aristides (c) Analysis of the Aristides IV. Biography before Plutarch 64 Alphabetical List of Authorities cited by Plu- tarch IN THE TUEMI3T0CLE3 68 Alphabetical List of Authorities cited by Plu- tarch IN THE Aristides 69 The themistocles 71 The aristides 121 Notes on the Themistocles 171 Notes on the Aristides 263 Index 333 LIST AND EXPLANATION OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS 1. An Athenian Strateoos Frontispiece A marble herra, the so-called " Themistocles " of the Vatican. It is now generally recognized to be in a style later than the time of Pheidias, as late, perhaps, as the first part of the fourth century b. c. Furtwangler speaks of it {Masterpieces of Greek Sculpttire, p. 122, note) as "a copy of a beautiful head by some artist closely akin to Cresilas," who was active at Athens during the age of Pericles. The Corinthian helmet betokens a Strategos, or Athenian Commander-in-chief. The point of the vizor has been restored, and the face shows signs of reworking. Friederichs- Wolters, Bausteine, No. 482 ; Helbig, Guide to the Public Collec- tions of Classical Antiquities in Rome, I. p. 134* BernouilH, Griechische Ikonographie, I. pp. 95-100. 2. A Tiiv:mistocli:s- OsTRAKoy 104 Found in January, 1897, during excavations by the German Archseological Institute, in a trial-trench dug northwest of the Areiopagus, near the modern carriage-road, on the site, probably, of the ancient agora. It is a fragment of a large crater, with letters carefully incised. It was used to vote for the ostracism of Themistocles either in 483 b. c, when he was successful against Aristides, or in 472 (? ), when he was unsuccessful against Cimon. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII. (1897), pp. 345-8. 3. (a) A DiDRACHM OF Themistocles 254 Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Cabinet des Me'dailles. A silver didrachm of the Attic standard, the coinage of Themistocles at Magnesia, 464-458 (? ) b. c. Obverse : Apollo, standing toward right, chlamys over shoulders and depending at either side, right hand stemmed against thigh, left supported by long branch of olive; inscription, 0EMI2TOKAEO5. Reverse: incuse, within which raven, or hawk (as bird of augury), in full flight upwards, MA (Magnesia) beneath the wings at either side. Waddington, Revue Numismatique, 1856, pp. 47 ff., Plate III. 2 ; Baumeister, Denkmaler, III. p. 1762. There is a plated imitation of this coin in the British Museum. Head, Catalogue of Greek Coins, Ionia, p. 158. xvi ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS Page (b) An Attic Didrachm 254 British Museum ; period, 527-430 b. c. Obverse : head of Athena, toward right, of archaic style, wearing round ear-ring and close-fitting crested helmet. Reverse : incuse square, within which an owl with closed wings, toward right ; behind owl, an olive spray ; in front, A0E (Athens). Head, Catalogue of Greek Coins, Attica, p. 8, Plate IV. 4. For comparison with (a). (c) Athenian Bronzes of the Roman Imperial Period 254 British Museum. Obverse (not here given): bust of Athena, with Corinthian helmet. Reverse (two types) : (1) Themistocles, wearing cuirass and helmet, striding to right on galley, carry- ing wreath and trophy ; on prow of galley, owl and serpent. (2) Similar features, turned toward left. " In Salamis there is a sanctuary of Artemis and a trophy of the victory which The- mistocles, son of Neocles, was instrumeutal in winning for the Greeks. There is also a sanctuary of Cychreus. It is said that while the Athenians were engaged in the sea-fight with the Medes a serpent appeared among the ships, and God announced to the Athenians that this serpent was tlie hero, Cychreus " (Pausanias, I. 36, 1). Head, Catalogue of Greek Coins, Attica, p. 108, Plate XIX. 1 and 2 ; Imhoof-Blumer and Percy Gardner, Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias, Plate EE, xxii., xxi. 4. A Magnesian Bronze, coinage of Antoninus Pius . 258 In the private collection of the late Professor Rhousopoulos, Athens. Very much worn, pliotographs therefore indistinct ; cuts from accurate drawings. Obverse : bust of Antoninus Pius, toward right, wearing wreath of laurel, the ends of which hang down into the neck ; mantle (paludamentum) on breast and shoul- ders; inscription, [ ] KAISAPANTflNEINGS. Reverse: nude man of stately presence, with short beard, wearing on the head a wreath or fillet, the ends of which fall into the neck. He stands, toward the left, before a blazing circular altar. In his right hand, which is stretched out over the altar, he holds a saucer (patera), from which he makes a libation (of blood). With his left hand he grasps the hilt of a sword, which hangs in a sheath at his left side. At the foot of the altar lies the slain victim of the sacrifice, with outstretched head and open mouth, — an Asiatic bison (zebu). The inscription encircling the field is EniAIOSKOTPIAOrrPATOTMHTPMArNHT, and is found on two other Magnesian coins. The Dioskonrides is other- wise unknown. A second inscription, in the left of the field, above and below the outstretched hand, reads 0EMI20OKAE2. It was held by Rhousopoulos that the monument erected by the Magnesians to Themistocles in the market-place of their city is here copied. It represented Themistocles as Hero of Magnesia, sacrificing. The original monument, judged to have been of bronze, must have been extant in the time of Antoninus Pius. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXI. (1896), pp. 18 ff. ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS xvii Page Maps : (a) Attica and the Saronic Gulf ; (b) The Straits of Salamis 206 The upper map is made after Kiepert ; the lower, after the map in Papers of the A7nerican School at Athens, I. p. 240. Maps : (a) BcBotia and Confines ; (J) The Battle-field of Platoea 287 The upper map is made after Kiepert ; the lower, after the map in Papers of the American School at Athens, V. p. 256. INTRODUCTION I. PLUTAECH, THE BIOGRAPHERS For the study of human character no true biogi-aphy can properly come amiss. But for the study of human history, of the great institutions of society, of the sweep and reach of civilization, and especially for the study of the history of a particular people, the biographical method has its disad- vantages and may easily be abused. There is great fascina- tion in the touch of a living personality with one which is past and gone ; a certain excitement in calling back from death and the grave into life and action before the eyes, as it were, the once potent spirits who enriched human life, whether by good or evil courses. The biographical study of history lifts the student into an enjoyment like that of the melancholy Bavarian king, when he sat alone in the opera house and had the musical dramas of Wagner produced before him with all the pomp of royal resource. It is pre- cisely because the biographical method is so fascinating, so exciting, so dramatic, that it must be used with caution, with the constant corrective of the best historical criticism, so that even while the reader yields to the charm of great historical dramas re-enacted for his individual benefit, he may be well aware how ideal or how real the characters moving before him are ; how far they are the genuine products of their own time, and how far they have been clothed upon by the more or less false and perverting interpretations of subsequent times, through the dense medium of which the original, personal spirit shines down to the present day. 1 R. W. Emerson, Introduction to Plutarch's Morals, edited by "W. W. Goodwin, Boston, 1870, 1889. R. C. Trench, Pbitarch, Five Lectures, London, 1873, 1874. George Wyndhara, Introduction to the "Tudor" Edition of North's translation of the Lives, London, 1895. 1 2 INTRODUCTION The biographical method, then, by its dramatic charm and power, may give unreal and even false ideas of historical processes and evolutions; it may obscure them altogether. The larger personalities who achieve the distinction of biog- rapliy often strive against tendencies which are sure to be victorious in the end, and sure to bring the richer blessing on the world. And yet the keen sympathy aroused by the special study of their personal endeavors may make the reader oblivious to the nan-owness and error of such endeav- ors. It may keep him from distinguishing between creative and moulding personalities, who shape the history of their time and of all times by initiating and guiding torrents of accumulated human desire ; representative personalities, who simply mirror the average desire, or echo the prevalent voices ; and obstructive personalities, who stem and thwart for a while the great currents of human desire, but are finally, after changing somewhat the channel of the stream, swept along with the stream or drowned by it. But the advantages of the biographical method of studying history will always outweigh the disadvantages, if due care is exercised. " There is one mode," says Frederic Harrison (The Meaning of History, p. 22), " in which history may be most easily, perhaps most usefully approached. Let him who desires to find profit in it, begin by knowing something of the lives of great men. Not of those most talked about, not of names chosen at hazard ; but of the real great ones who can be shown to have left their mark upon distant ages. Know their lives, not merely as interesting studies of char- acter, or as persons seen in a drama, but as they represent and influence their age." And let us know them, one may surely add, not merely as they represent and influence their own age and people, but as they stand related to the history of the race. Nothing is harder than for a modern to throw himself into the mental attitude of an ancient. Fortunately for us moderns, the great biographer of the ancient Greek and Roman world, while an ancient himself and an " encyclo- PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 3 psedia of Greek and Eoman antiquity," as Emerson called him, was also a man of the largest possible humanity, and lias always appealed with marvellous power to the greatest and best modern minds. From the fifteenth century on, the leading men of the world have been more influenced by Plutarch's Lives than by any book of classical antiquity. These biographies have been " the pasture of great souls," the favorite reading of kings and commanders ; but also the delight of simple folk, of plain, " self-made " men, of pure women, of aspiring youth. A tone of affection runs through the appreciations of Plutarch made by such differ- ent types of men as Emerson, Archbishop Trench, and the Honorable George Wyndham; and many an unknown man could speak of Plutarch's Lives as the eccentric Thomas Hollis did : " a work which at school he read avidly at times he might have slept, and to which he afterwards became indebted for the honestest and fairest dispositions of his mind." When the student disentangles himself from dates and names and minor details, and tries to take into one view the whole sweep of ancient Greek and Eoman history, he sees a constant pressure of great streams of humanity conquering from North to South and East, but periodically stayed and even forced back by refluent waves of conquest toward North and West. The eastern world-empire of the Persians is pressed upon too hard by the warlike peoples along its northern boundary, and the Scythian expedition of Darius, and the invasion of Europe by Xerxes, the epic prose tale of which is told us by the Father of History, are refluent waves from the southern sea of accumulated human culture, inundating for a while, but driven slowly back by fresher national vigor under Miltiades, Themistocles, Pausanias, and Cimon. Again the southward-flowing stream gathers head, and, under the Macedonian Alexander, sweeps over the eastern world. Eefluent billows from the southern penin- sulas check or reverse the Gallic inroads from the North, and then the Eoman flood of conquest in its turn sweeps 4 INTRODUCTION over Greece and the East. Eefluent billows, again, of Roman legions under Caesar, Agricola, and Trajan, surge over Germany, Gaul, Britain, and Dacia, but the next gi-eat southward-heading flood, that of Goths and Visigoths, ^submerges the Eoman Empire. Plutarch lived after the Eoman flood of conquest had swept over his native Greece, and while the Eoman Empire was making successful headway against the ever accu- mulating streams of vigorous barbarism from the North. He lived, that is, at a period of poise in the vast conflicts between the races of the South and North which constitute ancient history, when the culture and wealth which man had won were stUl able to defend themselves. He lived to do his best work on the threshold of that fairest of ages since the fabled age of gold, the age of the Antoniues. The years 50 — 120 A. D. probably cover his life. As a university student of sixteen at Athens, he saw bloody Nero wear the imperial purple ; as a young man, the gloomy Domitian ; in his middle age, great Trajan; and in his last days he must have welcomed to the succession the brilliant Hadrian, Of this age, of the better life which stUl survived in Greece and the Greek world in this Indian summer of its history, Plutarch is the best spokesman. He tells better than any one else of that last renascence of all the good forces in the ancient world wliich followed a long carnival of " scarlet vices" and swift decay, and preceded, or even paved the way for the gradual and unsuspected assumption of control by the new, lowly, and therefore most comprehensive religion of the Christ. Plutarch shows no sign of acquaintance with Christianity. Longer residence at Eome, and greater famil- iarity with the many lines of influence diverging from and converging upon that focus of the world, might have brought this gentle, devout pagan, this "anima naturaliter Christi- ana," into contact with that principle of religious life which absorbed the best of paganism into its vigorous, supplanting growth. He would certainly have brought to the contact a soul readier for reception of the essence of the new world- PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 5 religion than did the brilliant Lucian, who followed him by only a few years. Plutarch was one of those lights of the ancient world whose fate in the hereafter was matter of affectionate concern to kindred spirits of a later time who had accepted the Christian dogmas of the Judgment. " It was his severe fate," says the editor of the Morals in 1718, in a sentence which Emerson is unwilling to have lost, " to flourish in those days of ignorance which, 'tis a favor- able opinion to hope that the Almighty will sometime wink at; that our souls may be with these philosophers together in the same state of bliss." Plutarch was Greek to the core. He gloried in the past history of his country, and in the heritage of his race, and all the more because of present poverty and degradation. He looked upon the Roman conquest much as Polybius did, as a beneficent necessity. Polybius introduced their conquerors to the Greeks, in the hope that futile resistance to inevitable conquest might cease. Plutarch introduced the Greeks to their conquerors, when conquest had bred forgetfulness and contempt ; when the vast upheavals of the civil wars, and the gigantic figures of Sulla and Marius, of Pompey and Csesar, of Antony and Augustus had dwarfed older protag- onists in the drama of history. But though his relations to Athens and Rome were like those of an Alsatian of to-day to Paris and Berlin, there is not the faintest trace of bitterness, in all that he has written, toward the relentless and masterful policy of Rome. Athens was still the intel- lectual centre of the world, though Rome had become the political centre. To both centres Plutarch was perfectly true. Familiar as he was with both, he was born, spent the most of his days, and probably died in a small country town of Bceotia called Chseroneia. It overlooked a plain on which many armies had fought, so that, even before Philip's victory there in 338 B.C., Epaminondas called it the " dancing-floor of Ares ; " but the town itself was of no prominence. Small and humble as it was, Plutarch loved 6 INTRODUCTION it, and even after the years and his philosophical essays had brought liim a modest fame, and his plans for literary labor m-gently demanded that he make his home in some literary' centre, he would not leave it, lest he diminish its small population by one. " If any man," he says, in the introduction to his Demosthenes, " undertake to write a his- tory, that has to be collected from materials gathered by observation and the reading of works not easy to be got at in all places, nor written always in his own language, but many of them foreign and dispersed in other lands, for him, undoubtedly, it is in the first place and above all things most necessary to reside in some city of good note, addicted to liberal arts, and populous ; where he may have plenty of all sorts of books, and upon enquiry may hear and inform him- self of such particulars as, having escaped the pens of writers, are more faithfully preserved in the memories of men, lest his work be deficient in many things, even those which it can least dispense with. But as for me, I live in a little town, where I am willing to continue, lest it should grow less" (Dryden-Clough translation). The few facts in the unobtrusive career of this Prince of Biographers which can be gleaned from his own voluminous writings are as follows. He was educated, as we should say, at Athens, — an attractive university-town in his day for both Greeks and Eomans. He was once a deputy from his native town to the Eoman governor of the province of Greece. He travelled extensively over Greece, visited Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, and resided some time at Rome. Here he was in charge of public business, — for the eyes of all Greeks were turned on Rome in political matters, — so that he had not time to learn thoroughly the Latin language, as he himself confesses in the introduction to his Demosthenes. But he did not need it. Greek was the language of literary and polite society at Rome, and cultivated Greeks, especially philosophers, were welcome there. As philosopher, a pop- ularizer of Platonism, Plutarch read and lectured at Rome, much as he did in the small circle of his intimates and PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 7 friends at home. He made and retained acquaintance with prominent Eomans of his day, although in this regard his good fortune was not so remarkable as that of Polybius, who was the intimate friend and follower of Scipio the Younger. After Athenian education, generous travel, mild diplomacy, modest literary celebrity, and considerable residence at Rome, Plutarch seems to have retired to his little country town with his books, notes, lectures, essays, and gentle phil- osophy, and there, in a leisure not greatly encroached upon by local magistracies and certain religious offices at neigh- boring Delphi, to have elaborated the sketches of his lectures and essays, and composed the work on which his fame chiefly rests, — the Parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans. Before speaking of these, however, a word must be said, and, under the limitations of this brief introduction, hardly more than a word, of that collection of Plutarch's writings which has come down to us under the name of Morals. These are miscellaneous essays, chiefly of an ethical range, on a great variety of topics. In comparison with the Lives, they are now much neglected, and yet one never reads from them without protesting against the neglect. As composed, for the greater part, before the Lives, they are an invaluable prelude to and commentary on them, especially if we would know just what manner of man the author of the Lives was. They tell us, as the Lives do not, " of the points of view, moral and religious, from which he contemplated not this man's life, or the other's, but the whole life of men. Nor is it too much to affirm that of the two halves of Plutarch's writings, of his Lives and his Morals, each constitutes a com- plement of the other ; the one setting forth to us, and, so far as this was possible, from ideal points of view, what the ancient world had accomplished in the world of action, and the other what, in like manner, it had aimed at and accom- plished in the world of thought" (Trench, Plutarch, p. 90). For fuller description of these essays the reader should go to Emerson or Trench. The sphere in which they move, however, can be shown by citing freely from the titles 8 INTRODUCTION which they bear. There are some eighty-three in all. It is impossible to classify them accm^ately. Some are distinctly ethical, some philosophical, some scientific, in om* narrower sense of the word, some theological, some social, some aesthetic and literary, — a well-read man's causeries, some historical and political. Many are evidently mere collections of material for subsequent elaboration. The range of subject in them fully justifies Emerson's summary : " "VVliatever is eminent in fact or in fiction, in opinion, in character, in institutions, in science — natural, moral, or metaphysical, or in memorable sayings, drew his attention and came to his pen with more or less fulness of record." There are essays on The Training of Children, Tranquillity of Soul, Brotherly Love, Parental Love, Garrulity, Curiosity, Love of Wealth, Bashfulness, Self-praise, Fortune, Oracles, Delays in the Divine Judgment ; How to know a Flatterer from a Friend, How one can be aided by one's Enemies ; Beading, Exile, Old Age and Politics ; Apothegms and Symposia, antiquarian Questions, political, conjugal, and military Precepts ; analyses of mysterious religious cults ; a tender letter of consolation to his wife on the death of a child; philosophical treatises against Stoics and Epicureans and in defence of Platonism ; literary critiques on Herodotus and Aristophanes ; a collec- tion of love stories ; a tract on the avoidance of debt ; another on the eating of meats ; a Discourse to an Un- lettered Prince ; discussions of questions which might have occupied the attention of old-fashioned debating societies, such as ^Vliether Atliens was more distinguished in Letters or in War, Whether Water or Fire be most useful. Whether 't were rightly said : " Live concealed." The gamut of the Morals is astonishing in its range. But it is with the Lives that we are now chiefly concerned, and even in these, as will be seen, Plutarch is far more moralist than historian. The Greece of which he was so loyal a son, after passing under Eoman sway, lost sight grad- ually of her great men of action, and contented herself with the glories of her men of thought. Here sm-ely the dominant PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 9 Eomans could not vie with her. With Eoman law, Eoman armies, Komau statesmanship and oratory in the ascendancy, it was of Numa, Caesar, Cato, and Cicero that men most readily thought in Plutarch's time. In order to prove that the more remote past of Greece could show its lawgivers, commanders, statesmen, patriots and orators as well as the nearer and therefore more impressive past of Eome, the Parallel Lives were wiitten. With Scipio Africanus the Elder, the greatest man of Eome, Plutarch matched Epamin- ondas, the greatest man of Greece. This pair, or " book " of lives is unfortunately lost. With Camillus, who saved Eome from the Gauls, he matched Themistocles, who saved Athens from the Persians. Then followed, as nearly as the order can be determined,^ — for the order of the Lives in our col- lection is not the original one, — the Cimon and Lucullus, the Lycurgus and Numa, the Demosthenes and Cicero, the Felopidas and Marcellus, the Lysander and Sulla, the Aratus and the lost Scipio Africanus the Younger, the PMlopoimen and Flamininus, the Pericles and Fahius Maximus, the Aristides and Cato Major, and thirteen other pairs. Eigh- teen of the twenty-two pairs which have come down to us close with a formal comparison of the two careers and char- acters, often fanciful and forced, seldom of any special value. There are also three single Lives in our collection, Artaxerxes, Galba, and Otlio, and we get traces of twelve more that are now lost. One of the pairs is a double one, where, to match the two Gracchi, Plutarch selects the two reforming Spartan kings Agis and Cleomenes. How impartially Plutarch holds the scales between Greek and Eoman, may be seen from the fact that it is still a dis- puted question whether his object in writing the Parallel Lives was to convince reluctant Greeks that there were Eomans who could well bear comparison with the greatest Greeks, or to remind the too complacent Eomans that, though the world was now in their strong hands, subject ^ See Adolf Schmidt, Das Pcriklcische Zcitalter, II. 108 ff. ; \yachsmuth, AUe Geschichte, pp. 215 f. Y 10 INTRODUCTION Greece could show on her roll of honor men with whom the greatest Eomaus might be proud to be compared. The latter view is probably the correct one. With all his friendli- ness to Eome and acquiescence m the great mission which she was performing, Plutarch remained still a Hellenic patriot. Archbishop Trench puts the case none too strongly when he says : " Plutarch remains ever a Greek, a Theban still more than a Greek, and a Chseroneian still more than a Theban " (^Plutarch, p. 85). Plutarch was a voluminous writer, an extensive reader, and a good talker, — a conversationalist of the highest rank. His sources were monumental, — the eloquent material struc- tures of the many places which he visited ; literary, — the Greek poets, philosophers, orators, biographers, and historians, with whom he was amazingly familiar ; and oral, — the polite gossip of the literary circle, the secrets of familiar intercourse, the oral transmissions of family history not yet recorded for public use. He quotes from some two hundred and fifty Greek authors, eighty of whom are known to us only by name, and many more only by the citations from them which he makes. The extract from the introduction to his Demosthenes made above (p. 6) shows clearly that in his retire- ment at Chseroneia he lacked library facilities, and was forced to depend on his memory or his note-books for much of the material which he dispenses with so generous a hand. We must expect therefore to find in him, what the investigation of his sources for each particular Life will show in greater or less degree, a tendency to cite at second hand. This practice can be proved in his use of so gi^eat an authority as Aristotle, and must not unduly surprise us in his use of Herodotus and Thucydides. Literary property, literary methods, and literary ethics were all in a rudimentary stage of develop- ment in Plutarch's time. But when compared with some of his contemporaries or successors, he is conspicuous for his fidelity and trustworthiness in dealmg with his sources. It is true, as Emerson says (^Introduction, p. xiii), that " in his immense quotation and allusion, we quickly cease to dis- PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 11 criminate between what he quotes and what he invents." And Plutarch does unquestionably invent, even when he would appear to be recounting history. Moreover, it must be frankly admitted that he has little if any scientilic method as a historian. He will be found preferring an anecdotical history, crammed with the inventions and accretions of cen- turies of transmission from an original source, to the original source itself, even though that be easily accessible. This for detail ; on vital points he will also be found true to the best sources at his command. And he is more particular than I almost any other ancient writer to let his reader know what i~authority he is following. By careful study the later tradi- tion which he uses can be separated from the earlier, at least in a majority of cases, and his reader thus put in a position to correct undue bias, and eliminate error. How exacting Plutarch can be of others in the matter of giving authority for startling statements, may be seen in his Aristidcs, xxvi. 2. For the story that Aristides died somewhere in Ionia, and under sentence for bribery, Craterus, a Macedonian compiler of legal decrees, who wrote in the third century B.C., is responsible. " But Craterus furnishes no documentary proof of this, — no judgment of the court, no decree of indictment, — although he is wont to record such things with all due ful- ness, and to adduce his authorities." And yet Plutarch is at a long remove from dogmatism. On disputed points he cites his evidence fully, and takes his stand, as in the opening chapter of his Aristides, but he has no menace for the reader who cannot stand with him. To sum up briefly, then, on this all-important point, Plutarch's sources are manifold, though not always cited directly ; they are frequently to be made out, in one way or another, so that the late and secondary can be separated from the original and primary sources ; and they are not imposed dogmatically on the reader. What is still more worthy of note, Plutarch's use of his sources often contributes our only knowledge, or increases our scanty knowledge of them. " He is a direct authority, in his Biographies, for nothing. 12 INTRODUCTION but the only substitute we can get for a crowd of lost writers of the highest authority " (Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, p. 222). The aims and methods of Plutarch in writing biography may best be learned from his own statements, and from analysis of his Lives. " It was for the sake of others," he says in the introduction to his Timoleon, " that I first com- menced writing biographies ; but I find myself proceeding and attaching myself to it for my own; the virtues of these great men serving me as a sort of looking-glass, in which I may see how to adjust and adorn my own life. Indeed, it can be compared to nothing but daily living and associating together ; we receive, as it were, in our enquir}'', and enter- tain each successive guest, view ' their stature and their qual- ities,' and select from their actions all that is noblest and worthiest to know." In the introduction to his Alexander he says : " It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories but lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or ^^.ce in men ; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, inform us better of their characters and inclinations than the famous sieges, the greatest arma- ments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more par- ticular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and, while I endeavor by these to portray then- lives, may be fi'ee to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others." "When he begins his Nicias and finds his chief authority to be the matchless story of Thucydides, he entreats his reader " in all courtesy not to think that I contend with Thucydides in matters so pathetically, vividly, and eloquently, beyond all imitation, and even beyond him- self, expressed by him. Such actions in Nicias' life as Thucydides and Philistus have related, since they cannot be passed by, illustrating as they do most especially his char- PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 13 acter and temper under his many and great troubles, that I may not seem altogether negligent, I shall briefly run over. And such things as are not commonly known, and lie scattered here and there in other men's writings, or are found among the old monuments and archives, I shall endeavor to bring together, not collecting mere useless pieces of learning, but adducing what may make his disposition and habit of mind understood." That Plutarch was kind though not blind to the failings of his heroes, may be seen from the charming confession in the opening of his Cimon (c. iL). " As we would wish that a painter who is to draw a beautiful face, in which there is yet some imperfection, should neither wholly leave out, nor yet too pointedly express what is defective, because this would deform it, and that would spoil the resemblance ; so, since it is so hard, and perhaps impossible, to show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it fully ; and lapses or faults that occur, through human passions or political necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of some particular virtue than as the natural effects of vice ; and may be content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into our narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature, which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect in virtue as to be free from all admixture and open to no criticism." Plutarch's Lives, then, are not historical, but ethical, and to a large extent ideally ethical portraits, like the Platonic Socrates. Their author culls from the mass of tradition at his disposition those items which serve him as effective colors for his portraits. For consecutive, consistent narra- tive of events ; for chronology, political evolutions, diplomatic combinations, social problems ; for the processes of history, in a word, Plutarch has no eye. But for the moral products of history he is carefully on the watch. His Lives therefore illustrate his Morals. They are to some extent ethical romances, like Xenophon's Cyropccdia. If used as historical X. X A- 14 INTRODUCTION authority, therefore, it is necessary to sift their fact from their fancy, so far as it is now possible to do it. But the sifting process must not be allowed to mar the work of art. It is no surprise to find that the personal anecdote plays a great part in Plutarch's biographies. Indeed, herein lies, in great measure, their undying charm. But the personal anec- dote, even in our own times, is the most suspicious part of historical tradition. Anecdotes are so readily invented, or transferred from one personality to another with the nec- essary adaptations, or from one purpose in illustration to another, that more than the usual amount of good evidence is demanded to establish their authenticity. Around a great personality, like that of Abraham Lincoln, for instance, per- sonal anecdotes multiply without limit, until it is impossible to separate the true from the fictitious. An eminent person- ality attracts the anecdote. And as eminence usually comes late in life, the invented personal anecdote deals largely with details of the earlier life, before eminence had brought fuller record of the career, and therewith greater possibility of con- futing inventions. The humble acquaintances of the early and obscure days are stimulated by the flattering attentions of eminence-worshippers to tell all, and often more than they know about those early days when future eminence went in and out among them unsuspected. Forgotten or fancied incidents must at all hazards be made early prophecy, late discerned, of future greatness. More doubt still attaches to the personal anecdote about such far-away personalities as Themistocles and Aristides, not simply because they are so much farther away from their biographers than men of later times, but because his- torical interest in the individual as distinguished from the state did not begin until Thucydides, toward the close of the century, and Xenophon, in the following century, and did not flourish imtil after the state was merged in great personalities, or swayed and dominated by them. History at last became biography in Suetonius' Lives of the Ccesars. The personal anecdote about Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 15 Nicias, Alcibiades, not only reached Plutarch through cen- turies of literary tradition ; it was likely, almost always, to have started late on its career, to have been warped from its original form, or invented outright. The lack of personal details for the history of these great personalities was eagerly supplied by the invention, more or less plausible, of later writers. As political activities were denied the Greeks after the Macedonian and Roman conquests, their active minds turned to the fields of speculation, rhetoric, and romance. Old histories like those of Herodotus and Thucydides were rewritten in conformity with later rhetorical tastes. Embellishments of every sort were invented outright, not with intent to deceive, but because embellishment was demanded at any cost. Next to the set speech, — a standard literary embellishment in Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides, — the personal anecdote was most cultivated, by historians, rhetoricians, and philosophers. It is a natural impulse to cast aside this element of the personal anecdote, unless its tradition from a contemporary source can be clearly established, as worthless historical material. Material of the highest grade it certainly is not; but it is by no means worthless. The better the story, the more it must conform to the prevailing concep- tion of the character upon whom it is fixed. "If this was really done by Alexander," says the conscientious and criti- cal Arrian (Anabasis, ii. 12, 8), " then I commend him for it; and if it merely seems credible to his biographers that he might have done and said these things, then on this basis too I commend Alexander." "People who invent a story," says Freeman {Methods of Historical Study, p. 129), " will commonly invent a story that is likely, or at least one which they think is likely, not one which is manifestly unlikely." The personal anecdotes in Plutarch may therefore serve to show what eminent writers of a later day thought was likely in the case of such distant personalities as Themistocles and Aristides. The stories are like garments, — good or bad, likely or imlikely, according as they fit the forms for which they 16 INTRODUCTION were intended. What those forms were, in the eyes of the story-makers, can be determined, in no small measure, by the stories. It need not therefore be fatal to the usefulness, much less to the enjoyment of Plutarch's stories, if his reader know that they are invented. It is now matter of history that Lincoln, after great travail of spirit, as leader of a people struggling in the agony of a civil war, gave the official death- blow to human slavery in the United States. A ready hear- ing is therefore given to one John Hanks, a companion of Lincoln's early and humble days, when he says that on one of their flat-boat trips to New Orleans, Lincoln was so dis- gusted by the scenes at a slave auction in that city that he said to Hanks with an oath : " If ever I get a chance to hit slavery, I '11 hit it hard." This is a good story, because it is, on the face of it, a likely story. But it is not a true story. It can be proved that Lincoln was never in New Orleans with Hanks. The story was clearly invented after Lincoln had " hit slavery hard." It contains a " vaticinium post eventum." On the other hand, it is not to be denied that authentic personal anecdote may have escaped or been ignored by primary authorities like Herodotus and Thucydides, and made its way essentially unchanged down to so late a writer as Plutarch. An invading Lacedajmonian army imder the command of the youthful Spartan king Pleistoanax, in 445 B.C., apparently had Attica and Pericles at its mercy, but retired mysteriously without effecting anything, and left Pericles' hands free to subject Euboea. In the discreet words of Thucydides (i. 114), "they advanced as far as Eleusis and Thria, but no farther, and after ravaging the country, returned home." In Sparta, King Pleistoanax " was thought to have been bribed." So much Thucydides is will- ing to say (ii. 21 ; v. 16), and it looks like an apocryphal story which Plutarch tells in his Pericles (c. xxiii.) : " Wlien Pericles, in giving up his accounts of this expedition, stated a disbursement of ten talents, as ' laid out for sundry needs,' the people, without any question, nor troubling themselves PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 17 to investigate the mystery, freely allowed of it." If true, the story gives us the very phraseology of a great fiscal joke. It seems too good to be true. But it gets striking corrobora- tion in the joke which Aristophanes introduces into his Clouds (v. 859), a comedy brought out only a few years after the death of Pericles. A cynical, spendthrift son asks his dishevelled, half crazy father what has become of his slippers, and the answer is : " As Pericles once, I ' laid them out for sundry needs.' " About 423 B. c, therefore, the story told by Plutarch must have been current at Athens. Even in his Greek Lives Plutarch relies much on oral tradition, and when it starts with contemporaries of the men whose biographies he is writing, the testimony is most valu- able. In his Koman Lives, from the nature of the case, he depends yet more on such testimony. In his Antony, a contemporary tradition can be clearly traced down to Plu- tarch himself, and then from Plutarch to Shakespeare. Plu- tarch's grandfather, Lamprias, was the intimate friend of a certain physician, named Philotas. This Philotas, when a young fellow, studied medicine in Alexandria, while Antony was there, under the full witchery of Cleopatra. The young medical student was intimately acquainted both with Antony's son, and with one of Antony's cooks, and dined often at Antony's table. There could be no better authority for the luxury of that table. " I have heard my grandfather report," says Plutarch in his Antony (xxviii. 2, 3, North's version), " that one Philotas, a physician, born in the city of Amphissa, told him that he was at that time in Alexandria, and studied physic ; and that having acquaint- ance with one of Antony's cooks, he took him with him to Antonius' house to show him the wonderful sumptuous charge and preparation of one only supper. Wlien he was in the kitchen, and saw a world of diversities of meats, and amongst others eight wild boars roasted whole, he began to wonder at it, and said : * Sure you have a great number of 2 18 INTRODUCTION guests to supper.' The cook fell a-laugliing, and answered him : ' No, not many guests, not above twelve in all.' " Tliis bit of kitchen gossip the yoimg medical student, Philotas, tells his friend Lamprias, on returning to Greece ; Lamprias tells it to his grandson Plutarch, who records it in his Antony ; Plutarch's Life is translated into Latin in the fifteenth century, this Latin version into the French of Amyot in the sixteenth century, the French of Amyot into the English of Sir Thomas North, and at last the magician Shakespeare, in his Antony and CleoiKitra, seizes upon the kitchen detail and puts it into the mouth of Maecenas, the friend of Octavius : " You stayed well by 't in Egypt," says Maecenas to Enobarbus (ii. 2) ; "Aye, sir, we did sleep day out of countenance, and made the night light with drinking." (Msecenas) " Eight wild boars roasted whole at a break- fast, and but twelve persons there ; is this true ? " (Enobarbus) " This was but as a fly by an eagle ; we had much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting." After such consideration of the sources of Plutarch in writing his Lives, of his aims and methods, and of the nature of the personal anecdote which forms so large a part of his work, the question may be asked, What is the value of Plu- tarch as an historian ? N^^ As the best exponent, in his Morals, of the better side of the rich classical culture which was then approaching or enjoying its Indian summer, he is invaluable and indispens- able to the historian of that time, but as a direct historian of his own or any times, and particularly of times long before his own, he is valuable as a recorder and transmitter of the histoiy of history, rather than of history itself. We may find from him what men in successive generations have thought and said of Themistocles and Aristides, but not so well what Themistocles and Aristides really were and did and said. To do this, — to get at the real Themistocles and Aristides behind the ideal ethical portraits of them which Plutarch paints, — it is necessary to follow the stream of his- PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 19 torical tradition back to its earliest sources, to determine if possible the natui-e and peculiarities of those sources, and to reconstruct the later estimates of the men from the testimony of those nearest to them and best qualified to judge them. In this long, laborious, but fascinating process, Plutarch himself will be the best guide, from the very fulness of the material which he has heaped together. His memory teemed with illustrative incidents, and he does not hesitate to digress pleasantly at the slightest suggestion, or even without any apparent suggestion. Speaking of Aspasia, in his Pericles (xxiv. 7), he is reminded of Milto, the concubine of the younger Cyrus, who was re-named Aspasia. " She was a Phocsean by birth, the daughter of one Hermotimus, and when Cyrus fell in battle, was carried to the King, and had great influence at court. These things coming into my memory as I am writing this story, it would be unnatural for me to omit them." It is clear that even when he is basing his work on stand- ard and easily accessible authorities, like Herodotus, Thu- cydides, or Plato, he sometimes relies upon his memory instead of fresh reading. His formal citations also are often seen to be from memory. It is free-hand drawing in which he delights. N"o one who comes from reading the Morals can believe in the fixed and arbitrary methods of citation and borrowing which are fastened on Plutarch by much recent criticism of the Lives. The intermediate biographi- cal source so often postulated for the changes in the form of earlier tradition which appear in Plutarch, — a source sometimes known hardly more than by name, sometimes wholly imaginary, — has been credited with much of Plu- tarch's own genial improvement of the generous material stored in his mind from various reading. Such chapters in the Themistocles as vii. and xi. read like a free combination and blend by Plutarch himself of material from several authors, and not like an excerpt from any single source in which he finds the combining and blending ready to his copying hand. It is true that his method of composition is 20 INTRODUCTION different in the Eoman and Greek Lives ; that even in the Greek Lives it changes from group to group, and from book to book ; and that in the Aristides, between which and the Themistocles eight Greek Lives were probably composed, he is bj no means so generously eclectic as in the Themistocles. But even in the Aristides, where the original sources fur- nished him scant personal material, it can never be granted that he forsook the original sources entirely, — writers like Herodotus and Thucydides, — and copied exclusively a blend of those writers made by Idomeneus, a writer who is little more than a name to us. Such a chapter in the Aristides as xviii. is a composite of Herodotus, Thucydides, Ephorus, and possibly Idomeneus, but the composition is that of Plutarch, and contains much that is original with him. Plutarch's methods are by no means those of Diodorus Siculus. These positions, and others kindred to them, will be constantly illustrated and defended in the current notes. It is in this fulness of material, served up to us with the prodigality of a wealthy and experienced host, that Plutarch differs most strikingly from the only other biogi-apher of antiquity whom we need now compare with him, — Cor- nelius Nepos. Nepos was a Eoman, writing brief compends of pragmatic rather than ethical biography for Eomans of the first century before Christ. Like Suetonius, his desire is to transmit the material, rather than to make that material attractive in its form. He throws no speaking picture on his canvas ; is brief, dry, annalistic, sparing and arbitrary in the citation of his authorities, and shows nothing like the literary zest which characterizes Plutarch. He is a Latin compiler, from Greek sources rather poorly controlled. At times, however, he will be fovmd to supply items of tradition which would have been lost but for him. Attractive as are the personality and the teachings of Plutarch, voluminous and varied as are his writings, fas- cinating and provocative of analysis as are his maimer and his methods of composition, his Greek style in itself is not specially attractive. For this reason, as well as because PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 21 any popular Greek author must be more widely read in translation than in the original, but above all because the early translations of Plutarch into English, like the trans- lations of the Scriptures, are important literary monuments of the English language, — for all these reasons Plutarch has been mostly read by English-speaking people in Eng- lish translations. Both Morals and Lives were very for- tunate in then- first introduction to readers of English. The translation of the Morals by Doctor Philemon Holland, pub- lished in London in 1603, and again in 1657, is an English classic, and was of great use to Professor Goodwin in his revision of the translation " by Several Hands," published in London in successive editions from 1684 to 1718. So the translation of the Lives by Sir Thomas North, which appeared as early as 1579, served as a mine of resource and suggestion to Clough in his revision of the so-called " Dryden " translation, as it has served and always will serve every and any trans- lator of the Lives. It is true that North did not render from the original Greek, but from Amyot's French version, and that he reproduced Amyot's errors, and made errors of his own. But Amyot's version was of the highest order. It is the earliest French classic recognized by the French Academy. And North's English translation of this French classic is a monu- ment of the English language second only in importance to the Authorized Version of the Bible. It is a translation by the earliest master of great English prose from the earliest mas- ter of great French prose. Of it George Wyndham says, at the close of his Introduction to the Tudoi- edition : " Of good English prose there is much, but of the world's greatest books m great English prose there are not many. Here is one, worthy to stand with Malory's Morte Darthur on either side of the English Bible." This version by Sir Thomas North was current for nearly a century. It was the Elizabethan Plutarch. But the changed literary tastes of the age of Queen Anne demanded a new version of Plutarch as of Homer. Pope supplied the new version of Homer's Iliad, supplanting Chapman, and lent his 22 INTRODUCTION great name to a version of the Odyssey in his style by other hands. Dryden was " prevailed upon by his necessities " to head a company of translators of Plutarch's Lives. He him- self supplied merely the Preface and Life of Plutarch, but the version was called by his name. Strange to say, in spite of great inferiority in many ways to the version of North, it held its own, aided by two revisions of more or less thorough- ness, and even superseded North's. Both the North and the " Dryden " translations were made, either wholly or in part, at second hand, and before the Greek text of Plutarch had been well edited. The first scholar's translation of the Lives from the original Greek into English was published in 1770 by the brothers John and William Langhorne, and this was the English version most current, perhaps, from that time down to 1850. The aim of the translators was rather to be faithful to the original Greek than to write representative and idiomatic English. Com- pared with North's spirited version, the Langhorne version is dull and pedantic, though more accurate. The notes, how- ever, are wholly antiquated. But the inheritance of natural, representative English even in so inaccurate a translation as the so-called " Dryden," was too precious to be lost, and in Boston's noteworthy attempt to furnish the English-speaking world with a satisfactory translation of the entire body of Plutarch's writings, the revised seventeenth-century version of the Morals "by Many Hands," was given to Professor Goodwin for further revision, and the revised seventeenth-centurj^ version of the Lives, — the " Dryden " translation, — to Arthur Clough, that winning representative of Oxford's best culture in the days of the great Tractarian controversy. He began the work during the year of his residence in this country, 1852, and completed it after his return to England. It was more or less perf mictory work for him, — a " pot-boiler," — but still his letters show that he gradually became interested in the work for its own sake. His revision of the " Dryden " translation was published in five volumes, by Little, Brown, PLUTARCPI, THE BIOGRAPHER 23 and Co., in 1859, and afterwards in one large volume by the same firm in 1876 and 1880. It is no insignificant sign of the earnestness of the young literary life of America in the days of the so-called " transcendentalists," that a Boston house should successfully carry out so large an undertaking as a complete edition in ten octavo volumes of Plutarch's Lives and Morals, — an edition which still remains the best, i'or the Dryden-Clough version of the Lives is undoubtedly the best extant English version for all purposes. There is a ver- sion more recently published, that of Stewart and Long, in the Bohn's Classical Library, of four volumes. This incor- porated the scholarly translation of thirteen Ptoman Lives published by Professor Long in 1844, the notes to which are of great value even now. But the translation of the Greek Lives is distinctly inferior to that of the Dryden- Clough edition. And it is still true, as Professor Goodwin said in his review of the first volume of the Stewart and Long translation (New York Nation, vol. xxxi. pp. 395 ff.), that we need a translation of the Lives " which, without sacrific- ing the sprightly flavor of the old translations, shall yet answer the demands of modern scholarship more fully than these in accuracy of thought and expression." But Clough's revision of the " Dryden " translation comes nearer to doing this than any other. The old version of Sir Thomas North, aside from its many intrinsic excellencies, will always have one charm which no other translation can have. It was the version which Shakespeare used. Shakespeare certainly found Plutarch's ethical portraits full of the best dramatic suggestion and material. His Coriolanus, Julius Ca:sar, and Antony and Clecpatra are largely based on incidents in Plutarch's Lives of these and other Eomans, and the very phraseology of the great dramatist shows the influence of the language of North's translations. Mr. Skeat published in 1875 " Shakespeare's Plutarch," a selection from the Lives in North's Plutarch which illustrate Shakespeare's plays. His text of the Lives is based on what he believed to be the very copy of North which 24 INTRODUCTION Shakespeare once owned, and which contains marginal notes in what may well have been Shakespeare's handwriting. Shakespeare took from North's Plutarch not merely iso- lated details, like the detail of kitchen gossip cited above (p. 18), but whole pictures, like that voluptuous picture, — perhaps Plutarch's best, — of Cleopatra coming up the Cydnus to meet Antony. Here the dramatist is content merely to put North's prose into metrical form. And this is surpris- ingly different from his treatment of other sources, as Arch- bishop Trench has well pointed out (Plutarch, pp. 65 f.). From others he takes a hint, an outline, a suggestion, a name or two, a situation, an incident. But Plutarch he dramatizes. " What a testimony we have to the artistic sense and skill which with all his occasional childlike simplicity the old biographer possesses, in the fact that the mightiest and completest artist of all times should be content to resign himself into his hands, and simply to follow where the other leads." Of the popularity and influence of the Parallel Lives, little more need be said. For the last three centuries the current ideas about ancient history among English-speaking folk have been drawn from them, and there have been all this while, and still are, as Professor Goodwin says, " countless friends of classical learning whose only bond of union with Greece and Eome has been their English Plutarch." For such, Plutarch needs only to be translated. But it will heighten the general enjoyment of such a genial guide if those who have studied his methods and materials more closely will add to their translations of this or that Life some sug- gestions of the bovmdless wealth of literary tradition, out of the confusion of which so shining a precipitate at last emerged. And in these days when many who are called to study the humanities are not chosen, or do not choose to do so, the friends of the old humanitarian culture must put well to the fi-ont of their line " the legate, the ambassador, and the orator in behalf of those institutions whereby the old-time men were rendered wise and virtuous." OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE PERSIAN WARS 25 11. THEMISTOCLES, AND THE TEADITION OF HIS HISTOEY IN PLUTAECH'S LIFE. (a) Outline Sketch of the Peesian Waes. In the early years of the fifth century B.C., the great eastern empire of the Persians made three unsuccessful attempts to crush the European Hellenes, whom we now call the Greeks. The struggle lasted twenty years, and abounded in contrasts and surprises. The attack was made by a perfectly centralized oriental despotism of the great river- valley type, — such as had flourished for ages independently along the Nile, — upon scattered mountain peoples whose bonds of union were religious and sentimental merely. The conflict was partly between large masses of undisciplined and light-armed infantry, aided by superb cavalry, and small bodies of heavily -armed and well-trained footmen; partly between great numbers of war-ships propelled by fighting oarsmen, and much smaller numbers of similar, but lighter i^t^ [/ and nimbler ships. Land and sea forces acted in conjunc- tion along a rugged and strongly indented coast. On the side of the East were boundless resources in men, money and equipment, — the accumulated resources of a world- empire under beneficent sway. The sole limitation here was in the ability to ma!nage resources. On the side of the West were inaccessibility, hardy moimtaineer vigor, and the ardor of souls contending for the most sacred objects in life. The alleged cause of the three invasions was the inter- ference of Athens and Eretria in the struggle between the Ionian Greeks of the west coast of Asia Minor and the imperial government of Darius. But this was only one of many causes, — an occasion rather than a cause. Since the floods of human life kept encroaching from North and West upon South and East, the collision between Europe and Asia was inevitable. It was in this larger sense that the Persian 26 INTRODUCTION invasions were retaliatory. The surprising result of the col- lision was that the world-empire which stood guard over the accumulated treasures of South and East, not only failed to push its defensive barriers farther to the North and West, but actually lost ground, and left its gates open to the inundating floods of the next century. The first of the three unsuccessful attempts to punish and subdue European Hellas was made by Mardonius, a son-in- law of the Persian king Darius, toward the close of the first decade of the fifth century b. c, in 492. It was a mag- nificent combined movement by land and sea, in the grand manner of Darius himself when he invaded Scythia some twenty years earlier. Eleet and army moved around the northern shore of the ^gean sea, mutually supporting each other. But a disastrous storm off Mount Athos, and the hardy mountain tribes of southern Macedonia, thwarted the attempt. Learning wisdom from this failure, the Great King sent a second expedition in 490, this time straight across the ^gean, lessening distance, economizing time, and elimi- nating the complications of the more spectacular combined movement by land and sea, but restricting the number of the forces which could operate on land to the possibilities of transportation by sea. Even thus restricted, however, the numbers of the invaders far surpassed any which Athens and Eretria, the ostensible objects of attack, could put into the field. Eretria was taken and utterly destroyed. Then, under the guidance of Hippias, the expelled tyrant of Athens, whose famdy had strong adherents still, both in the city of Athens and especially in the district of Marathon, to the northwest of the city, a landing of troops was made in that plain. Here some ten thousand Athenians and Platseans, under the brilliant generalship of Miltiades, defeated the invaders, drove them upon their ships, confronted them boldly after they sailed round and threatened Athens from the South, and so at last forced them to go home with the more important half of their errand unaccomplished. No OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE PERSIAN WARS 27 victory for freedom has produced such a huge sum total of inspiration among men. In the third attempt, the Great King returned to the more spectacular but less manageable combined movement by land and sea. " All Asia thundered for three years," as Herodotus says (vii. 1), with his vast preparations, and so the Greeks liked to believe. The punishment of Athens was doubt- less merged in a scheme for establishing a strong European frontier-line for the Persian Empire, since the intervening sea invited rather than stayed aggression. But a revolt of Egypt in 486, and the death of Darius in 485, delayed the Em'opean expedition. Xerxes received it as part of his heritage, and, after quelling the Egyptian revolt, passed, in the spring and summer of 481, with vast displays of power on land and sea, beyond the point where the first expedition under Mardonius, in 492, had been checked. His multi- tudes, whom certainly no man now can number, whatever may have been the contemporary possibilities, were engineered past the great barriers of nature, and frightened into submis- sion or neutrality all the larger Greek states except Athens and Sparta. These, with their faithful allies, were crushed back from their heroic stand on land and sea at Thermopylae and Artemisium, and Athens was captured and utterly de- stroyed. But the Persian expedition was stopped from farther and final success by the sea-fight in the straits of Salamis, just ten years after Marathon. " Ten years later," says Thucydides (i. 18), "the Barbarian returned with the vast armament which was to enslave Hellas." The victory at Salamis saved Hellas, as that at Marathon had saved Athens. The crippled Persian fleet withdrew for the season with the disappointed king, and Mardonius was left with large forces of picked infantry to quarter himself for the winter in that part of Hellas already won, and to resume the offensive by land in the spring. But Sparta, Athens, and their allies, under the consummate generalship of Pausanias, crushed Mardonius in the spring of 479, at Plataea; then the fleet of the Hellenic allies cleared the vEgean sea of 28 INTRODUCTION Persian galleys, and Hellas was free to expand into imperial dimensions. With the first of these great Hellenic victories, that of the Athenian and Platsean heavy-armed infantry at Marathon, the name of Miltiades will always be associated above all other names ; with the second, that of the allied fleet at Salamis, the name of Themistocles ; with the third, that of the allied infantry at Platcea, the name of Pausanias. The first died at Athens under the disgrace of a public condem- nation ; the third was officially killed at Sparta for the treason in which he had been detected ; the second, Them- istocles, died at Magnesia, in Asia Minor, in the service of the Persian king, and under condemnation at Athens for treason. He alone of the three was innocent of the charges brought against him by his countrymen. The general outline of the larger events of the Persian invasions, as briefly given above, is assumed by Plutarch to be known to his readers, as well as some prominent details. He selects for his life of Themistocles such additional details from the great story as will specially illustrate the character of that hero. He adds masses of biographical detail, mostly in the shape of personal anecdote, much of which has no certain connection with the great events of the time, much of which bears plainly the marks of later manufacture to suit a certain established type of character. His Life falls naturally into four main divisions : first, the family, educa- tion, and early political life of Themistocles, down to the ostracism of his rival Aristides, — chapters i.-v. ; second, Themistocles' participation in the war from the ostracism of Aristides through the battle of Salamis and the events immediately following and dependent upon it, — chapters vi.-xviii. ; third, the career of Themistocles from his triumph to his ostracism, some seven years later, — chapters xix.-xxii. ; and fourth, his exile for treason, his Persian career, his death and burial, — chapters xxiii.-xxxii. A brief analysis of these four divisions, with more or less tentative effort to determine the sources from which Plutarch draws his ma- SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S TIIEMISTOCLES 29 terial, will show how much less demand upon our belief the first and last divisions are entitled to make than the second and third, and how in all four a large apocryphal element has found a place. This brief analysis will be supplemented by the current notes, in which generous citations from the possible or probable sources of Plutarch will be made, that the reader may judge for himself of the manner and method and spirit of Plutarch's work. {h) The Sources of Plutarch in his Themistocles. But before making this brief preliminary analysis of each division of the Life, it will be necessary to determine the sources of information which were actually open to Plutarch, if he took pains to secure them, and to characterize them briefly ; not only those whom he cites by name as his author- ity, but also those whom he leaves unnamed, in spite of indebtedness to them, and those to whom he probably refers in sundiy vague plural terms. Plutarch cites by name in the Themistocles no less than twenty-eight authors. Of these, four were poets contempo- rary with the Persian Wars and with Themistocles : Simon- ides, iEschylus, Pindar, and Timocreon of Khodes. These four furnish what, with all its paucity, is still the most important evidence, both for Tliemistocles' achievements, and for the national sentiment toward him while those achievements were fresh in men's minds. Other contempo- rary poets may have furnished evidence too, but what these four furnished has come down to us, in part at least. Simonides of Ceos lived from 556 to 4^8 b. c, and was an admired and successful lyric poet at Athens for many years, before, during, and after the Persian Wars. He might be called the Hellenic Poet Laureate of the Persian Wars. His verses adorned the memories of those who fell at Marathon, Thermopylge, Artemisium, Salamis, and Platsea, and heralded the praises of the victors, as he had earlier sung the praises of victors in the great games. Eualcidas, an Eretrian cap- tain, slain by the Persians at Ephesus, was a man of note, 30 INTRODUCTION " who had gained crowns at the games, and received much praise from Simonides of Ceos " (^Herodotus, v. 102). Simonides was a national, not a local poet, filled with the nobler inspirations of a successful national struggle against foreign aggression, and he passed away before the bitter sec- tional quarrels were rife which culminated in the Pelopon- nesian War. He has naught but glowing praise for Salamis and Themistocles. ^schylus, the great dramatic poet (525-456 b. c), in his Persians, an historical drama brought out in 472, does full justice to Themistocles as the real author of the victory at Salamis, under the blessing of the gods, although the play was undoubtedly meant to bring into higher appreciation the services of Aristides at Salamis and Platsea. There may be exaltation of Aristides, but there is no depreciation of Themistocles by ^schylus. Pindar too (522-442 b. c), the greatest lyric rival of Simonides, and like him also a national rather than a sec- tional poet, in a brilliant ode {Pyth., i. 75 ff.) recognizes Athens as most entitled to the glory of Salamis, as Sparta was to that of Platsea. He is not chary of other praise for Athens, as the citation in chapter viii. of the Themistocles shows. But Athens at Salamis was synonymous with Themistocles. The three great poets contemporary with the Persian Wars, then, unite in extolling Salamis and Themistocles. We get no breath of malevolence from them. But fame invites detraction. Both Simonides and Themistocles had an ardent hater in the athlete, political refugee, and poet Timocreon of Khodes. The most we know of his poetry is due to Plutarch's citations from him in chapter xxi. of the Themistocles. What Simonides thought of him may be seen from the satiric epitaph which he composed for him : " Here lies Timocreon of PJiodes, who ate much, drank much, and much abused his fellow men " (Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graeci, iii.* p. 505). What Themistocles thought of him is plain from the fact that after the Hellenic cause had triumphed, he SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 31 refused to intercede with the Ehodians for the recall of Timocreon from banishment, though he had been his friend. Timocreon had " medised," as Herodotus would say, — had favored the Persian cause when things looked darkest for Hellenic freedom, — and his people had therefore cast him out. Stung by the refusal of Themistocles to intercede in his behalf, he venomously accused the great hero of venality in the matter, — of having been "bought;" and when the political fortunes of Themistocles were overwhelmed by the invincible coalition of Cimon, Aristides, and Sparta against him, Timocreon exultantly turned upon him the charge of " medising." Nothing could better illustrate the credulity of malice than the fact that the next generation of Athen- ians, the Athenians particularly of the Periclean following, from 450 to 430 b. c, actually believed, or pretended to believe that Themistocles had " medised " in the first flush of his victory at Salamis (see the note on Themistocles, xvi. 1). With Timocreon first appear the charges of venality and treachery which became firmly fixed in the Themistocles tradition from the fact that Herodotus afterwards incorpo- rated them in his immortal story. Three important sources of Plutarch were contemporary with Cimon and Pericles, so far as their literary testimony goes, and represent the generation following Themistocles and the Persian wars, although the actual years of their lives may correspond with those of Themistocles to some extent. These are Ion of Chios, Stesimbrotus of Thasos, and Herodotus. Ion of Chios was a brilliant and popular poet at Athens between 452 and 421 B.C., personally acquainted if not inti- mate with -^schylus, Sophocles, Cimon, and Pericles. Be- sides his lyric and tragic poetry, he composed a prose work entitled Sojourns, in which he recounted his personal expe- riences at Athens and elsewhere, particularly with famous men of the day. Through this delightful witness several choice bits of authentic contemporary testimony have come down to us. Plutarch evidently made liberal use of him, 32 INTRODUCTION directly or indirectly, in his Periclcfi and Cimon. From him, doubtless, comes the glimpse which Plutarch gives (in his De Profectihus in Virtute, 8 = Morals, p. 79 E) of ^Eschy- lus and Ion sitting together at the Isthmian games, watching a contest of boxers. Observing that whenever one of the boxers was hit, the audience shouted, ^schylus nudged Ion, saying : " See what training will do ! The man who is hit, holds his peace; the spectators yell." When the scholiast on the Persians of ^schylus, at v. 429, notes that " Ion, in his Sojourns, says that ^Eschylus was present at the battle of Salamis," it is the best testimony possible to that fact. Through Ion we get authentic testimony to the very looks and words of Cimon and Pericles. In spite of his aristo- cratic sympathies, which made Cimon especially the object of his admiration, it is to be noted that the only testimony concerning Themistocles which reaches us from him indi- cates merely that hero's lack of what passed in those days for higher education. We may be sure that such was the estimate of Themistocles current in the fashionable and aris- tocratic circles in which Ion moved. But the invincible political coalition against Themistocles not only ostracized him about 472 b. c, it also secured his con- demnation for treason about 471, his permanent exile on pain of death, and the confiscation of his property. The fact that he found asylum at the court of Persia, that common refuge for expatriated Greeks, brought the malevo- lent charges of venality and " medism " which Timocreon seems to have been first to set going, into general accept- ance. A democracy which was led by aristocrats like Cimon and Pericles belittled the services and impugned the motives of their former comparatively plebeian leader. Selfish cunning, rather than the self-sacrificing statesman- ship which really characterized his course, came to be the popular trait in the tradition of his career. All manner of current malevolent stories about Themistocles were col- lected in a political pamphlet by Stesimbrotus of Thasos, a sophist and rhapsodist who achieved some note at Athens SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 33 during the times of Ciinon and Pericles. The pamphlet was probably written about the time of the outbreak of the Pelo- ponnesian war (431 B. c), and served up a mass of scandal- ous gossip about Themistocles, the founder of the Athenian navy, and Pericles, the founder of the Athenian empire, both of whom were objects of Intense hatred to the oligarchical party, in the interests of which Stesimbrotus evidently com- piled his work. Cimon and Thucydides, son of Melesias, were also treated in a similar way, though the fragments of the work which have reached us make it probable that these, as rivals or opponents of Pericles, were handled with less mal- evolence. The work was not a history of the times, or a biography of the men with whom it dealt, but a defamatory tract full of spicy slander. Its historical worth lies chiefly in the glimpse which it gives into the depths of partisan rancor at the time. Plutarch draws much material from it, but is usually averse to accepting its evidence. He used it more in the Cimon and Pericles than in the Themistocles. It is probably the work which brings from him the bitter com- plaint {Fericles, xiii.) : " So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history, when, on the one hand, those who afterwards write it find long periods of time intercepting their view, and, on the other, the con- temporary records of any actions and lives, partly through envy and Hi-will, partly through favor and flattery, pervert and distort truth." In this atmosphere Herodotus evidently composed those parts of his great history where Themistocles appears, as the current notes will fully show. He composed them in Athens probably, and for Athenians. He reproduces the beliefs and feelings of the time and place in which he is writing, and herein consists his peculiar worth as an historian. He has given high artistic form to the reigning beliefs of the Peri- clean party at Athens concerning the Persian Wars, one generation of men after the wars were fought and the greatest hero of those wars had died. Meanwhile the oral tradition of those wars, — and the literary tradition of 3 34 INTRODUCTION them by Charon of Lampsacus and Hellanicus of Mitylene was annalistic and meagre, — had suffered the changes to which all oral tradition is naturally liable, and, besides, was directly acted upon by an entirely new set of hates and jealousies, aris- ing from the growth of the Athenian empire. These tended to distort and pervert the stories of services to the national Hel- lenic cause formerly rendered by states now in hostile relations to Athens. The old and the new traditions subsisted side by side, and Herodotus often takes pains to give them both, and sometimes to correct the flagrant wrongs of partisan tradition. For Argos and Corinth and ^gina he insists on correcting the malevolence of Athenian tradition ; but for Boeotia and Thebes he does no such service ; and with all his candor and fidelity he could not avoid tingeing his account of the services and exploits of Themistocles with the prevailingly hostile beliefs of those among whom and for whom he wrote. He was largely dependent on oral tradition, and that which came to his ears, and which we may suppose him to have fairly reproduced, was malevolently hostile to Themistocles. It had not only distorted the really pardonable diplomatic deceptions of Themistocles, but had invented others which were unpar- donable. The shrewdness and cunning which Themistocles had exercised for his country's good, malevolence made him to have exercised for his own good ; and a connection with Persia which no dreamer could possibly have imagined in the days of the glory of Salamis, he was now made not only to have foreseen, but to have carefully planned. But after the death of Cimon in 449 b. c, and the passing of the glorious policy for which he so long contended of peace and friendship with Sparta, but aggressive war on Persia, a slow change in the popular feeling toward Themistocles can be traced, which culminates in a complete revulsion. The new era favored peace with Persia, and even alliance, but war with Sparta. It was this arch-enemy of the new Peri- clean era which had brought imsubstantiated charges of treachery against Themistocles, and joined his political foes at Athens in hunting him from the country. And SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 35 the Athenian navy, on which she placed her main reliance in this new era, especially after her defeat at Coroneia (447), and the Thirty Years' Peace (445), was the creation of Themistocles. No malice had even tried to belittle or besmirch that eminent service. Besides, if, in making head against the hated domestic rival, Athens came into touch with Greek cities of Asia Minor, she found that among some of them, at least, the memory of Themistocles was honored for beneficent services which bespoke an abiding love of his native country (see the notes on Themistocles, xxxi. 4). Pericles and the powerful family of the Alcmaeonidae were only too willing to have the malicious estimates of Themistocles' life and death prevail, and Herodotus was only too willing to be their spokesman ; but events worked in favor of a rehabilitation of the career of Themistocles. And when the dominating personality of Pericles was removed (429), and the war with Sparta intensified yet more Athenian hatred of her, and when the successes won against her were seen to be due in the main to the undis- puted services of the maligned Themistocles, the change in popular sentiment toward his memory became pronounced. The Old Athenian Comedy of the decade 430-420, so far as we can now control its references to him, was friendly, even grateful, and the fiction of his treason slowly died out of popular belief. Writing toward the close of the century, Thucydides boldly controverted many estimates of his more popular predecessor, Herodotus, and none more emphatically than his treatment of Themistocles. Against the misjudgment of Themistocles by the leading minds and the masses of the Periclean age at Athens, and against the perpetuation of this misjudgment in the historical romance of Herodotus, Thucydides, in one of his main and formal digressions, which is our earliest specimen of formal biography in Greek, utters an earnest, dignified protest. And it is greatly to Plutarch's credit, even though he was probably prejudiced against Herodotus from the start, that he puts himself in line with 36 INTRODUCTION this protest of Thucydides. It was not alone his humanity and natural kindness of spirit, but his critical preference of Thucydides as a historical authority superior to Herodotus, that led him to give Herodotean details of the events of the Persian Wars with which Themistocles was associated, but in the Thucydidean spirit. The malicious element in the Herodotean material is carefully eliminated, under the influ- ence of the grand protest of Thucydides. Themistocles was not guilty of treason, according to Plutarch, even though he did fly for refuge to the king of Persia. This is the main point, and in the main point Plutarch sides with Thucydides against Herodotus. We can pardon him then, if, when he comes to treat of Themistocles' life in Persia, about which only a few salient facts were known, he leaves the safe reticence of Thucydides, and admits into his story the orna- mental, but purely fictitious material with which later writers supplied him. The three allusions to Themistocles in Aristophanes {Knights, 1831, 812-819, 884) are even affectionate in their tone, and the last two dwell on his benefactions to Athens ; the second actually implies that his exile showed ingratitude on the part of the city. At the Lensean festival of 424 B. c, therefore, an Athenian audience evidently felt tender toward Themistocles. Perhaps this growing tender- ness toward him on account of the wrongs done him at Spartan instigation called forth the magnificent eulogium which Thucydides bestowed upon him. At any rate, in the early part of the next century his memory is entirely cleared of the stain of treachery. In Plato's Gorgias, Themistocles is ranked with Miltiades, Cimon, and Pericles. All were good men of virtue, if virtue consist in the satisfaction of our own and other people's desires; and all alike were bad statesmen because they suffered themselves to be " thrown from their chariot," i. e. ostracized. In Themistocles' case the Athenians added exile to ostracism ; but there is not the slightest hint of its justice. And in a still more striking passage of the Me7io (pp. 93, 99), SOURCES OF PLUTAKCH'S THEMIS TO CLES 37 Themistocles is called a good man and a good statesman, — a wise and good man, although miable to teach his vu-tue to his own son, exactly as Aristides, Pericles and Thucydides, son of Melesias, were. Such language could not have been used unless all belief in the treason of Themistocles had vanished from popular belief. Xenophon is like Plato in this regard. In the orators of the closing fifth and of the fourth cen- tury, especially Antiphon, Andocides, Isocrates, ^schines and Demosthenes, whatever opinions may be held about the expediency and advantage of converting Athens into a mari- time power, — and orators as well as philosophers sometimes questioned these, — there is complete unanimity in this, that to Themistocles is always ascribed, in strains which become rather conventional, the glory of Athens' navy, and of the Piraeus ; and that there is no hint of his actual treason, though there are many allusions to his coimtry's ingratitude toward him. But the orators used the history of the fifth century merely as a source for telling illustrations or contrasts. They did not recount it at length, and were inaccurate in details. There is little indication in them of any lines of historical tradition which are independent of Herodotus and Thucydides. All the more worthy of notice, then, is their elimination from Herodotus of his hostile treatment of Themistocles. The historical material of Herodotus and Thucydides was worked over into a form which appealed to the rhetorical tastes of the fourth century by Ephorus, a native of the ^olian city of Cyme. Ephorus was a pupil of the great orator Isocrates, and carried into the narration of historical events the principles of formal rhetoric. The form was of more importance than the substance, and freely shaped the substance to its needs. He wrote a universal history of Greeks and Barbarians from the return of the Heracleidse, or the " Dorian Invasion," down to the year 340 b. c, at which point death interrupted his task. His work became a Vulgate of history, enjoying an immense popularity. It has come down to us only in excerpts and fragments, and is principally known to us through the generous use made of 38 INTRODUCTION it by the compiler Diodorus Siculus, who prepared a com- pend of universal history down to Coesar's Gallic wars, writ- ing under Augustus. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books of this compend of Diodorus, we have the periods of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars treated, in the main after Ephorus, and so, ultimately, after Herodotus and Thucydides, though not without important variations on the part both of Ephorus and Diodorus. It is plain that Diodorus excerpts Ephorus in large sections. But it is also probable that he condenses at times, and certain that he adds some matter of his own composition, especially for purposes of juncture. In general, however, we are reason- ably confident that he reproduces Ephorus. Though a dili- gent student and collector of material, Ephorus is not so trustworthy a guide as Herodotus even, much less Thucyd- ides, since he yields far more than they do to the tempta- tions of his rhetoric. His style is artificial in the extreme, diffuse and weak, and yet to his style he clearly sacrifices fidelity to fact and authority. He was an extravagant admirer of Athens and Themistocles, going as far beyond the truth in his praise of them as their enemies did in their detraction. Very different from him in method and purpose, though like him in his formal rhetorical style, and his love of writ- ing for the sake of writing rather than for the sake of truth, was his fellow-pupil under Isocrates, Theopompus of Chios. This stern aristocrat devoted, like Thucydides, the years of his exile, and his wealth, to securing the most accu- rate knowledge possible of the periods which he chronicled, namely: the years 411 to 339 B. c, in continuation of the history of Thucydides ; and the career of Philip of Macedon, from 360 to 336 B. c. The loss of these works, which were storehouses of erudition, is one of the severest that Greek literature has sustained. The tenth book of the second work, the Pliilippica, was devoted, by way of excursion, to the Attic statesmen of the Persian Wars and later. Here Plutarch evidently found much biographical material SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMIS TOCLES 39 for his Themistoclcs, and apparently a spirit of hostility to this hero, as was natural in a writer of Theopompus' politi- cal sympathies. Fragments of his works show also a ten- dency to correct the vainglorious spirit of Athenian traditions. As a man of the national party he has bitter things to say of Demosthenes, as well as of Themistoclcs. In both Theo- pompus and Ephorus we may assume that some authentic material appeared, — either from the early annalists Charon and Hellanicus, or from private family traditions, — which is not to be found in Herodotus or Thucydides on the same periods ; but by far the largest part of such supplementary matter is suspicious, to say the least. It is more likely to be a rhetorical invention than genuine tradition. Plutarch is much indebted to a group of antiquarian writers who composed the Atthides, or chronological his- tories of the customs, institutions, and monuments of Athens. The oldest of these, if Hellanicus be not included in the group, whose Atthis was of a more general character, was Clidemus, or Clitodemus. The few fragments of his work which have reached us include an item of the year 377 b. c, and make it probable that he flourished during the closing years of the fifth, and in the first half of the fourth century. Plutarch uses him, either directly or indirectly, in his Theseus, Themistoclcs, and Aristidcs. Phanodemus is another writer of the same class, about whom even less is known. Plutarch cites him once in his Themistoclcs, and twice in his Cimon. Androtion is another, said by Suidas to have been a pupil of Isocrates. He is one of the authorities from whom Aris- totle drew material for his Constitution of Athens, and is cited once by Plutarch in his Solon. He was active in the year 346 B.C. These were all predecessors of the most important writer of the class, Philochorus, who was slain at Athens by Antigonus Gonatas in 261 b. c. He was a professional seer, and an official interpreter of oracles and portents in 306 b. c. His chief 40 INTRODUCTION work, an Atthis, carried the clironicles of Athens down to the year of his death, and the fragments of it testify to the great learning and wisdom of the author. Plutarch cites him by name frequently in his Theseus, once in his Nicias, and probably uses him freely at other times without men- tioning his name, as in chapters x. and xi. of the Themis- tocles, where he takes Aristotle's Constitution of Athens as he found it cited in Philochorus, whose enormous literary activ- ity came in the generation following Aristotle, and who cites Aristotle freely, as well as previous Atthides. It may well be, therefore, that Plutarch uses the earlier Atthis-wviievs, mainly as he finds them cited in Philochorus. Craterus the Macedonian, half-brother of King Antigonus Gonatas, was a diligent and careful compiler of original his- torical documents bearing on the history of Athens, such as the popular decrees and other published inscriptions. He apparently wrote a history of the Athenian people based on these invaluable documents. Plutarch speaks of his collec- tions, to which he must have had access, in his Cimon, xiii., and Aristidcs, xxvi. Spurious documents may have crept into the collections of Craterus, but in general his work must have been of the greatest value, and late lexicog- raphers and scholiasts cite him with respect and confi- dence, often in the same class with the Atthis-writQVQ. Diodorus the Topographer, or Periegete, was a contempo- rary of Theophrastus, toward the close of the fourth century B. c, who wrote works on the monuments and antiquities of Attica. Plutarch cites him in his Tliemistocles, xxxii., TJieseus, xxxvi., and Cimon, xvi. The Peripatetic school of philosophers, headed by Aristotle, in the historical and biographical work which they incident- ally cultivated, seem to have culled from all sorts of late sources striking anecdotes of great historical personages like Themistocles, without much critical acumen. Their main work was in other fields. And yet, in distinction from the Alexandrian school of biography, which contented itself with complete collection of extant material, the Peripatetic SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 41 school, especially the later, sought to throw the charm of literary art around its collected materials. In the Constitution of Athens by Aristotle, recently so marvellously restored to us, and fully cited in the current notes of this volume, the sources drawn upon are distinctly anti-democratic, and represent the sentiments of the oligar- chical faction toward the close of the Peloponnesian war. Theophrastus, the most famous pupil, and the successor of Aristotle (06. 287 B.C.), is cited twice in chapter xxv. of the Themistocles for biographical details, which, like those in Aristotle and Theopompus, betray the bias of the oligarchi- cal partisan. His book " On Lives " was a mine of citation for Plutarch in his Lycurgus, Lysander, Pericles, and other Lives. But his principal works, like those of his master, were in the field of natural history. The writer of this school to whom Plutarch is most indebted, especially for piquant stories and tales of dreams and wonders, is Phanias of Eresos, a fellow-citizen and friend of Theophrastus, as well as a disciple of Aristotle, and his most distinguished disciple, after Theophrastus. He too was a prolific writer on logic, physics, literature, and history as well. Plutarch compliments his erudition in chapter xiii. of the Tliemistocles, and borrows gladly and freely from his sensa- tional store, even when he clearly distrusts the truth of what he takes. Among the historical works attributed to Phanias were a chronological history of Greece, arranged by aimual officers of Eresos ; a history of Sicilian tyrants ; and a work on the assassination of tyrants. What the work was which Plutarch uses so freely in the Themistocles, is not known. All the Peripatetics seem to have been collectors rather than sifters of historical material, and Phanias was apparently a historical romancer, in a daring and fascinating vein. Ariston of Ceos, cited both in the Tliemistocles and Aris- ticles for a story of youthful rivalry in love, is said to have become head of the Peripatetic school about 230 b. c. His works are all lost, and the loss is small. Among his con- temporaries, and in Cicero's eyes, he lacked dignity and 42 INTRODUCTION weight. He cultivated seriously what Aristotle and Theo- phrastus and even Phanias did by way of literary recreation. He wrote light character-sketches, after the manner of those which have come down to us from Theophrastus, and a col- lection of such love-stories as that which Plutarch cites from him. Here also may be classed the Heracleides cited by Plutarch in chapter xxvii. 1, as having Themistocles come to Xerxes rather than to Artaxerxes. Heracleides Ponticus is probably meant, a pupil of both Plato and Aristotle, a voluminous writer on all possible subjects, including historical. None of his works have come down to us, and Plutarch probably merely repeats his name as he found it cited, by some writer or commentator, on the Xerxes side of this curiously mooted point. Idomeneus of Lampsacus is an author to whom Plutarch is under gi-eat obligations in his Aristides, and whose pecu- liar material he must have known indirectly at least, if not directly, in his Themistocles. Idomeneus was a pupil and friend of Epicurus (oh. 270), but a degenerate disciple of his great master. Apparently to palliate the wantonness of his own life, he collected alleged instances of wantonness in the great men of the past. The higher the eminence of the man, the more emphatic the lesson of his lapses and falls. Hence the union of adulation and slander in the traces of the biographical work of Idomeneus. He wrote a bio- graphical work on " The Socratics," and another on " The Demagogues." In the latter, of course, Themistocles and Aristides would be treated. Plutarch speaks depreciatingly of him in Pericles, x., and Demosthenes, xxiii. ; cites him thrice in the Aristides, and undoubtedly takes large material from him in that biography without mentioning him by name. Idomeneus is to Plutarch in the Aristides, what Phanias is in the Themistocles, — a welcome source for much sensa- tional material which his better judgment tells him is of dubious value. Duris, a pupil of Theophrastus, historian and tyrant of SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 43 Samos, lived from about 350 to about 280 b. c, autl wrote a history of Greece from 370 to 281 b. c. Ouly fragments of his works have reached us, and it is hard to estimate them. Plutarch disparages his style and doubts his veracity, and yet, as in the case of Phanias and Idomeneus, finds wel- come material in his writings. He does not cite him for the Themistocles, though he may use his materials, directly or indirectly, in chapter ii. ; he cites him by name in Peri- cles, xxvii., a biography written before the Aristides, and in Alcibiades, xxxii. There remain seven, out of the twenty-eight authors cited by name in the Themistocles, but there is no need here of any- thing more than an alphabetical list of them, with just enough biogi-aphical notice to differentiate them, since Plutarch uses them for isolated details only, and that too, in some cases, at second hand, as he finds them cited in other authorities on whom he is depending more. The list is as follows : — Acestodorus, cited at xiii. 1. Nothing further is positively known about him. It may be the Acestodorus of Megalop- olis, of unknown date, who is mentioned by Stephauus of Byzantium between Ainesias, a pupil of Theophrastus, and Polybius, as author of a work " On Cities." Charon of Lampsacus, cited at xxvii. 1. A " logographer," predecessor of Herodotus, writing Fersica, after the manner of annals. Plutarch cites him only here. Clitarchus, cited at xxvii. 1. A son of Dinon, author of a history of Alexander which was written while Alexander's career was fresh in men's minds, and which incorporated the most romantic and fanciful conceptions of that career into the historical form which became most popular, and even canonical. Plutarch uses him, of course, in his Alexander. Dinon of Colophon, cited at xxvii. 1. The father of Clitarchus, author of a standard history of Persia, which was written during the campaigns of Alexander, and brought the history of the empire down to 340 b. c. He is used by Plutarch in the Artaxerxes. Eratosthenes of Cyrene, cited at xxvii. 3. Librarian at 44 INTRODUCTION Alexandria under Ptolemy Euergetes and his two successors, most distinguished as geographer and chronologist, 275-194 B. c. He wrote also on philosophy and ethics, and the work here cited by Plutarch was of this nature. Neauthes of Cyzicus, cited in i. 2, and xxix 4. A rhetori- cian of the school of Isocrates, who flourished about 240 b. c, and wrote a book on " Illustrious Men," a History of Greece, and a History of Attains of Pergamum (241-197). The third and fourth books of his Greek History treated of the Persian Wars. Phylarchus, cited in xxxii. 2 with such depreciation of his style and veracity, was an Athenian historian of the period 272-220, a contemporary of Aratus (oh. 213 B.C.), the main authority for Plutarch in his Agis and Cleomenes, and Pi/rrhus. His work was after the order of Dvuis of Samos, and Phanias, whom Plutarch finds so serviceable in spite of their failings. (c) Analysis of the Tuemistocles. The first natural division, chapters i.-v., covers the first period of the hero's life, — his birth, education, and early political career, down to the ostracism of Aristides (483). Themistocles was of obscure birth, plain education, and obliged to struggle for social and political recognition. He was ambitious, clever, impetuous, and in his earlier years dissipated. Pired by the fame of Miltiades, he maps out a naval policy for Athens which shall enable her to cope with Persia on the sea. In carrying out this policy, he in- gratiates himself with the common people, and antagonizes successfully both Miltiades and Aristides, the leaders of the aristocracy. Aristides is at last ostracized. Of the twelve anecdotes which embellish this division, many are loosely used. They sometimes illustrate later periods in the life of Themistocles than the one under con- sideration, and are often inventions of a time after the victory of Salamis. Most of the narrative material also is inferential in its nature. Given a few fundamental facts on ANALYSIS OF THE THEMIS TOCLES 45 good authority, such as the lowly birth of Themistocles, his far-seeing naval policy, and his political triumph over Aristides, all of which are clearly brought out in Herodotus and Thucydides, and most of the rest of the material is such as might naturally be invented on the basis of these facts, to give desired but lacking biogi-aphical detail. Most of it comes, in fact, so far as we can trace it at all, from writers later even than the century in which Themistocles lived. Plutarch seems to write currente calamo, from well-stocked memory and copious notes. The authorities actually men- tioned in this division are Phanias, Neanthes, Simonides, Stesimbrotus (twice), Ariston, and Plato ; but there are several vague plural phrases of reference, such as " some," " others," " the story -makers ; " and some vague general formulcc like "it is said," "it is thought," "it is agreed," the significance of which can never be satisfactorily deter- mined. It certainly cannot be proved, however, that Plutarch is reproducing some predecessor's blend of biograpliical material. The combination is his own. The second division, chapters vi.-xviii., covers the second period in the life of Themistocles, from the ostracism of Aristides (483) through the events immediately following upon the victory at Salamis (480). Familiarity with the greater events of the period is assumed in the reader. The details are, in the main, Herodotean, but the spirit is Thucydidean, and even Ephorean, i. e. not simply favorable, but adulatory. Having achieved the naval supremacy of Athens in spite of the opposition of Miltiades and Aristides, who thought the victory of heavy-armed troops at Marathon glory and prophecy enough, Themistocles inspired the Athenians to defy the Persian King ; united all the southern Greeks by wisely yielding, even in naval matters, to the presumptuous claims of Sparta ; participated in the abortive attempt to block the Persian advance at the Vale of Tempe ; persuaded reluctant allies to unite in the three days' naval struggle off Artemisium ; sowed the seeds of disintegration in the King's fleet during the slow retreat down the coast 46 INTRODUCTION before the victorious enemy ; was foremost in persuading the Athenians to abandon their city and make their fleet their home ; overcame, at last, by a desperate stratagem, the pur- pose of the allies to retire still farther down the coast, and brought on a naval engagement in such narrow quarters that the Greeks, even though disheartened and irresolute, con- tended on favorable terms with the superior numbers of their enemy's ships, and inflicted on him and his invasion a checking blow, — " that fair and notorious victory," as Simon- ides sang, " than which no more brilliant exploit was ever performed upon the sea." I deem it a literary impossibility that Plutarch should have written this division without consulting Herodotus, the famous ultimate authority for the events. But he certainly treats Herodotus with the greatest freedom. He cites him twice by name for startling details merely, and once incorrectly at that ; changes the order of his events and the names of his speakers ; extracts all the venom from his stories about Themistocles ; embellishes with citations from ^schylus, Pindar, Simonides, — most welcome authentic tes- timony, — as well as from the arch romancer Phanias, and the statelier Aristotle, not to mention the antiquarians Clidemus and Phanodemus, and the unknown Acestodorus. Again, as in the first division, the vague general phrases of reference, — as to a " cloud of witnesses," — abound (there are some nine in all) ; again the division is brought to a close by a chapter containing a farrago of stories, good, bad, and indif- ferent, perhaps a page of the commonplace-book copied entire; and again the combination, which is, after all, highly artistic, must be credited to Plutarch himself, and not to any inter- mediate compiler or biographer, except in the way of suggestion. The best tradition, including the testimony of Aristophanes and the Old Comedy, makes the great triumph of Themisto- cles due, not to valor, but to wisdom and adroitness. It was the far-sighted diplomat whom, for a brief space, Pelo- ponnesus and Attica united to honor. And it is the quality ANALYSIS OF THE THEMISTOCLES 47 of diplomatic adroitness which the anecdotical element of this second division most illustrates. The hon-mots are prob- ably rhetorical inventions of the century after Themistocles. They might just as well be ascribed to any one who had achieved eminence and power from lowly origins. The third division, chapters xix.-xxii., covers the career of Themistocles from his marvellous triumph to his ostracism, a period of about seven years. For this period there is little positive evidence of any sort. Herodotus has almost none, Thucydides but little. Plutarch's outline is exceedingly summary, and he fails almost entirely, as usual, to give any clear idea of the political combination in consequence of which Themistocles fell so low from an eminence so high. He tells us of the diplomatic trick by which Themistocles deceived Sparta and secured the rebuilding of the walls of Athens (Thucydides) ; of the building of the walls of the Piraeus, and the emphasis put by Themistocles on his naval policy in opposition to Aiistides and the nobles (Thucydides) ; he hints at the growth of Spartan hatred for Themistocles and favor for his young rival Cimon ; at the onslaught of angry enemies, like Timocreon of Ehodes; at a growing unpopu- larity of Themistocles which he increases by wearisome references to his own services ; but at last the political crash comes in rather abruptly and Themistocles is ostracized, just about ten years after the ostracism of his rival Aristides. The current notes will supply fuller explanation than Plutarch does of so speedy and so utter a reversal of fortime. The authentic material of this division is based almost entirely on Thucydides, though he is not mentioned by name, and it is reinforced by ornamental citations or rem- iniscences from Aristophanes and Plato ; by much curious material from some of the antiquarian writers, — Clidemus, perhaps, or Philochorus ; and by malicious stories of late invention, one or two possibly from Theopompus, who is cited by name for one. Herodotus is used by name for an incident that does not belong in this period at alL 48 INTRODUCTION Contemporary evidence of the highest value is given in the citations from Timocreon, but side by side with worth- less stories of late manufacture. The phrases of vague plural or general reference are fewer in number, and the blend, or combination is not so successful as in the other divisions. The modern historian also finds little authentic material to serve him in the reconstruction of this particular period of the political activity of Athens. The fourth division, chapters xxiii.-xxxii., covers the last period of Themistocles' career, — his exile for treason, his Persian adventures and successes, his death and burial. The incidents occurring in Hellas are, in the main, well authenticated history, being largely a transcription of Thu- cydides (i. 135-7). The adventures in Persia are almost wholly of romantic invention. Plutarch gives a residence in Argos with political moves against Sparta ; Spartan charges that the correspondence of their own traitor, Pausanias, impli- cated Themistocles also ; a summons to appear before a Hel- lenic tribunal and answer to a charge of treason ; the flight to Persia by way of Corcyra, Epirus, and Macedonia, — mostly after Thucydides. But here he admits freely into his narra- tive the ornamental but purely fictitious anecdotes with which late authorities supplied him. From the time when the great figure of Themistocles vanished forever from Hellas, Hellenic fancy revelled in picturing to itself the adventures through which this unrivalled diplomat forged his way from the position of prime foe to that of prime friend of the Great King. That he did so somehow, his princely residence at Magnesia, with this and other Greek cities tributary to his wants, indisputably showed. But how did he do so? and what price did he pay for the Great King's favor? Such questions Hellenic fancy asked, and, in the absence of other answers, answered them for itself. Through intrigue and mortal peril Themistocles gained access to the royal pres- ence, astonished the Great King by his bold readiness of resource, adopted Persian language and manners so as to out-Persian the Persian courtiers, lived like a royal satrap on ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WARS 49 the confines of the empire closest to Hellas, under such obli- gations to do anti-Hellenic service to the King that at last he took his own life rather than try to fulfil them. He had splendid burial at Magnesia, though in later times his de- scendants dared to claim a secret burial of his remains in Attic soil, at his own request, and tradition fixed his Attic tomb near the entrance to the Piraeus, his greatest creation. Thucydides' brief and cautious testimony is fully utilized by Plutarch, but is most generously expanded and supple- mented, from Ephorus and Phanias especially. All three authors are cited by name, as well as more than a dozen others. No better example could be given of the wide extent of Plutarch's reading, even though it be granted that a con- siderable group of these authors are cited at second hand. The result is a brilliant literary mosaic, in which fact and fancy are inextricably united to form the ethical pattern. Stesimbrotus, Charon, and Andocides supply items from the fifth century's traditions ; Theopompus and Theophrastus are drawn upon for rhetorical and philosophical inventions of the fourth century; Neanthes and Phylarchus are brilliant representatives of the third century's historiography, and there is more than the usual reference to vague aggregates of writers. Most interesting of all, a Themistocles of the century after Christ, lineal descendant of the hero of Salamis, and inheritor of the family traditions and proper- ties, supplies his intimate friend and fellow student, the writer of the Themistocles, with minute details from his family archives. III. APJSTIDES AND THE TEADITION OF HIS HISTOEY IN PLUTARCH'S LIFE. (a) Aristides in the Persian Wars. Plutarch assumes, in his Aristides, the reader's familiarity with the same general outline of events as in the TJiemis- tocles. It need not therefore be repeated here. There is this striking difference, however, that in the Aristides the 4 50 INTRODUCTION political activity of the two rivals is pushed back into the period before Marathon. There is not the slightest evidence for this except that which is di-awn from late authorities, as the current notes will fully show (see the note on the Tlicmistoclcs, iii. 3). Authentic evidence from contemporary or proximate sources knows nothing of either Aristides or Themistocles until after Marathon, nor does Aristotle's Con- stitution of Athens, timong later sources. Still later tradition, however, insisted that the two heroes of Salamis should be heroes of Marathon also, and generously invented details of their conduct on that field which illustrated the noble rivalry between them and the two types of character long since firmly fixed in men's remembrance of them. More- over, since Aristides was felt to have been the elder of the two, — and probably was, although it cannot be positively proven, — a still earlier political activity was assigned to him as intimate friend of the reformer Cleisthenes (508 B.C.). There is nothing chronologically improbable in this ; there is simply no good evidence for it. But when he wrote his Aristides, Plutarch clearly surrendered himself to the influ- ence of late and largely romantic authorities much more than he had done in the Themistocles. This is not strange. Contemporary and proximate sources, and particularly Herodotus and Thucydides, have almost no details concerning Aristides. His was clearly a co-operative rather than an initiating personality. Two episodes in Herodotus, — the magnanimous offer of his services in aid of his rival at Salamis (viii. 79-82), and his slaughter of the Persians on the islet of Psyttaleia toward the close of the engagement, — exliaust the list ; and in Thucydides there are merely two passing allusions to the man : once (i. 91, 3) as colleague of Themistocles in the embassy to Sparta which was part of the great stratagem for securing the rebuilding of the walls of Athens ; and once (v. 18, 5) as the one " in whose time " the contributions of the cities to the Delian League were established. Aristides may have been present at Marathon, probably was, we may say, from the evidence ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WARS 51 at our command ; it is possible that Themistocles was present, but neither raised himself above the thousands of other Athe- nians who contributed namelessly to the victory of Miltiades. The naval policy of Themistocles, ostensibly directed against the ^ginetans, but far-sightedly against the Persians, made the victory of Salamis possible. It was so opposed by Aristides that he was removed by ostracism, and he took up his residence while in exile, as we may safely gather from the first episode in Herodotus wherein he appears, with the bitterest Hellenic enemies of Athens, the ^ginetans. His magnanimity in offering his services in the battle of Salamis was far surpassed by that of Themistocles in ac- cepting them. And even Herodotus, the malignant tra- ducer of Themistocles, and the extravagant admirer of Aristides, wherein he but mirrors Athenian sentiment during the culmination of the Periclean epoch (440^30), can give Aristides but faint glory in the great achievement. The name of Aristides never became synonymous with the vic- tory of Salamis, as that of Themistocles did. Nor is it synonymous with the victory of Platoea in the year following Salamis, although here Themistocles played no part at all. In his Themistocles, Plutarch has not a word to say of the victories over the Persians which immediately followed Salamis, — the victories of Plataea and Mycale. But his account of one of them, Plataea, occupies almost half of his Aristides. Late tradition tried to make the name of Aristides synonymous with Plataea. It did this by con- centrating on Aristides the actions attributed by the primary authority, Herodotus, to the Athenians in general, and by inventing fresh personal details. With the departure of Xerxes and his fleet, leaving a picked force of infantry behind in Thessaly and Boeotia, the problem confronting the southern Greeks changed so radi- cally that Themistocles with his naval policy and leadership were suddenly useless, or at least unnecessary. Land forces, not a fleet, must oppose Mardonius. By the following spring (479), Sparta and heavy-armed infantry, rather than Athens 52 INTRODUCTION and triremes, were in highest demand. Not a word is heard of Themistocles during the great struggle which annihilated the Persian armies left behind in Greece, and swept the ^gean Sea clear of the Persian fleets. To Sparta and Pau- sanias belongs by common consent the glory of Plataea. Even Herodotus here rises high above the seductions of partisan Athenian misrepresentation, forty or fifty years after the events, and pronounces judgment in clear and decisive tones : " Then did Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus, and grandson of Anaxandridas, win a victory exceeding in glory all those to which our knowledge extends " (ix. 64). Athenian tradition had warped the facts this way and that, in order to magnify the really subordinate part taken by the Athenian contingent at Platsea, and to minify the parts taken by states which had since the events become intensely hate- ful to Athens, and even to cast aspersions on Spartan courage ; but it dared not detract from the solitary pre-emin- ence in glory due to Pausanias for the final victory. So Thucydides has the Plataeans speak of the victory won in their territory as that of Pausanias pre-eminently and almost alone. At least, no other commander's name is associated with the victory (ii. 71, 2). Salamis and Themistocles had been, within one short year, obscured by Platsea and Pausanias. There had been no call during that year for the peculiar services which Themistocles could render. The Athenian fleet was foremost, it is true, in the vic- tory at Mycale, but Themistocles was not there; a politi- cal rival of his was in command of the Athenian forces at Mycale as well as at Platsea. Too much honor for Salamis had been heaped upon a man of lowly origin and slender means. But there came a call at once. Again the cunning diplo- mat rather than the bluff and simple warrior was needed. When the Athenians, after fighting the Persians victoriously on sea and land for three years, returned to the site of their city, which had been twice laid waste by the enemy, they set themselves at once to the task of rebuilding and fortify- ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WARS 53 ing it. Their greatest rival, Sparta, whose only walls were impenetrable mountains and well-drilled soldiers, and who had no natural connection with the sea, protested. " They would rather themselves have seen neither the Athenians nor any one else protected by a wall ; but their main motive was the importunity of their allies, who dreaded not only the Athenian navy, which had until lately been quite small, but also the spirit which had animated them in the Persian War. So the Lacedtemonians requested them not to restore their walls, but on the contrary to join with them in razing the fortifications of other towns outside the Peloponnesus which had been standing" (^Thucy elides, L 90, 1, 2). If the Persians came again, the Lacedemonians argued, the Pelo- ponnesus would be a sufficient retreat for all Hellas, and the enemy would have no such strong place for his head- quarters as he had recently found in Thebes. In this hour of diplomatic need, Themistocles comes again to the front. The Lacedaemonians must be outwitted, and Themistocles must outwit them. The ruse by which he does it is told with unusual detail by Thucydides, and in his best narrative manner. And as the gods, according to ^schylus, had smiled upon the great ruse of Themistocles at Salamis, and Aristides had approved it and co-operated in it, so it was now. Aristides helped his rival in this his crowning strat- agem, playing again a very subordinate role. Themistocles deliberately offered up in sacrifice to his country's needs a popularity in Sparta such as no non-Spartan had ever en- joyed. "The friendship of the Laceda3monian magistrates for Themistocles," says Thucydides, " induced them to believe him" (i. 91, 1). But with the success of the ruse and the humiliating defeat of Sparta's representative diplomacy, the popularity of Themistocles in Sparta was succeeded by a relentless hate which pursued him steadily until it succeeded in banishing him from Athens, and at last in exiling him from Hellas under charge of treason. The first step in this policy of hatred toward Themistocles was to throw the whole weight of Spartan influence with the strong political 54 INTRODUCTION party at Athens opposed to him. This was not an aristo- cratic as opposed to a democratic party, as Pkitarch repre- sents it, for Athens was irrevocably democratic; but rather a democratic party which insisted on aristocratic leadership, as opposed to a democratic party under plebeian leadership ; a party under the lead of Aristides and Cimon, representa- tives of two of the most powerful aristocratic families at Athens, opposed to a party under the lead of a novus homo, with no distinguished ancestors and no fortune, as Herodotus introduces him to us (vii. 143, 1). No reversal of national policy ensued when the party of Aristides, Cimon and Sparta secured a preponderance of Athenian democratic votes. They simply appropriated the fruits of a policy which Themistocles had inaugurated and carried to triumphant success, while they supplanted the author of the policy. And the passage of the naval hegemony from Sparta to Athens while Aristides and Cimon were in command of the Athenian fleet, during the years 478^76 B.C., was not due wholly to the at- tractive characters of Aristides and Cimon, as contrasted with that of Pausanias, as Thucydides is careful to point out (i. 95 Jin.), but to the Spartan friendliness to- ward Athens under other leadership than that of the hated Themistocles. In describing this transfer of the naval hegemony, Thu- cydides speaks only of " Athenians " in general, and knows nothing, apparently, of any predominating personal influence, either on the part of Aristides or Cimon. So in his account of the battles of Platsea, Herodotus deals only with the " Athenians " in general, though he notes the fact that Aristides is their commander-in-chief. But the rhetorical historians of the next century, and biographers like Ido- meneus of Lampsacus who follow them, are not content to deal with such general terms. Actions determined by the deliberative agreement of a college of generals, in the absence of any easily predominating personality like those of Miltiades or Themistocles, must be referred to the deci- ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WARS 55 sion of one man, for the greater effect of the story. And so we have in the later versions of the history of Platffia and the transfer of the naval hegemony, ascription of all Athenian action to Aristides, and to Aristides or Cimon. For the flexi- bility of this later version of history is seen in the fact that in his Aristides, Plutarch lays the attraction of the allies from Sparta to Athens to the dominant personal influence of Aristides; but in his Cimon, to that of Cimon. As a biographer, Plutarch naturally falls in with this tendency of later historical tradition, and even improves upon it. There is nothing in the best historical evidence to show that Aristides rose far above the Athenian average of ability or probity. He certainly had no genius with which to dazzle friends and foes alike, as Themistocles had. With all the will in the world to do so, Herodotus finds no justification in the popular tradition of his day at Athens for making Ai-istides play any very distinguished part at Platsea, nor did ^schylus in his Persians (472 B, c), the political purpose of which is so plainly to rescue Aristides from total eclipse by the glory of Themistocles, On the con- trary, the Persian disaster at Platsea, prophesied by the ghost of Darius (vv. 816 ff'.), is to be caused by "the Dorian spear." With the two gi'eatest stratagems of The- mistocles, Aristides is heartily in accord, and lends his active aid to carry them through. But just as the later romantic tradition insists on emphasizing and multiplying striking illustrations of the cunning and unscrupulous financial suc- cesses of Themistocles, so, and in much the same degree, does it deal with the probity and consequent poverty of Ai'istides. The more the two characters and careers were contrasted by rhetoricians and philosophers of the fourth and following centuries, the more the piquant illustrative material was multiplied, until it is a grievous task to thread one's way, even in the case of so prosaic a career as that of Aristides, between fact and fiction. There is, however, this notable difference m the two cases : fiction begins to accumu- late around the tradition of Themistocles' career during his 56 INTRODUCTION life-time, owing to the unsurpassed romance of the actual facts of his life, as in the case of Alexander ; whereas the fiction which grew up about the tradition of Aristides' career is almost wholly a product of later centuries. The Confederacy of Delos was undoubtedly formed (477) while Aristides and Cimon were in command of the naval forces which Themistocles had created for them, and the delicate question of the contributions of the allies to the common fund was settled under their general guidance. Later tradition has in this as in other matters concentrated the credit almost wholly, and to an exaggerated degree, upon Aristides. He may have been influential in the matter, but hardly so autocratic as romantic writers represent. And the salient personality of the traitor Pausanias, vividly portrayed by the master hand of Thucydides, also tended to evoke, in the tradition of the rhetorical and philosophical schools, con- trasting traits in the fainter portrait of Aristides. After this he falls decidedly into the background. It was in the inter- ests of Cimon, not Aristides, that Themistocles was ostracized (about 472), and the brilliant successes of Cimon after this seem to have been won independently of his former patron and friend. Nothing but late and uncertain testimony reaches us concerning the remaining years of Aristides' life, which probably closed quietly in 468 b. c, while his more brilliant but unfortunate rival, Themistocles, was a hunted fugitive among the Greek cities of Asia Minor. (&) The Sources of Plutarch in his Aristides. The sources of Plutarch in his Aristides are, as in the Themistocles, Herodotus and Thucydides wherever they afford material ; and since the story of Platsea in Herodotus, and of the fortification of Athens and the Ph-seus in Thu- cydides must have been famous specimens of those gi-eat historians' method and mamier to Plutarch as well as to us, it cannot be allowed that Plutarch makes no direct use of them. How he uses them, what variations he allows SOURCES OF PLUTARCH IN HIS ABISTIDES 57 himself from them, what comLmations from other sources he makes with them, are questions for the answer to whicli the current notes will afford material. He cites Hero- dotus by name only twice (xvi. 1 ; xix. 4) ; Thucydides once (xxiv. 3.). Next to Herodotus and Thucydides, Plutarch seems to be most indebted in this Life to Idomeneus of Lampsacus (see p. 42), who is cited by name thrice (i. 5 ; iv. 2 ; x. 5), and to whose work many other portions are, in all probability, largely indebted. It is not necessary, however, to assume that all the departures from Herodotus and Thucydides in Plutarch are due to Idomeneus. Plutarch undoubtedly falls of neces- sity, from sheer lack of biographical material, into the con- structive manner of his later sources. Other sources common to the Aristides and Themistodes, and already sufficiently described in this Introduction, are, in alphabetical order : — ^schylus, from whose Seven against Tliehes a passage is cited in iii. 3 ; see p. 30. Ariston of Ceos, cited in ii. 3 ; see p. 41. Aristotle (Pseudo-), cited in xxvii, 2 ; see p. 40. Craterus, cited in xxvi. 1, and used several times elsewhere ; see p. 40. Clidemus, cited in xix. 3, and probably used elsewhere ; see p. 39. Plato, cited in xxv. 6 ; see p. 36. Theophrastus, cited in xxv. 2 ; see p. 41. The other sources cited by name in the Aristides, — these also arranged in alphabetical order, — are as follows : — vEschines the Socratic, cited for the long and dramatic story of Aristides and Callias in xxv. 6. ^schines was an ardent disciple of Socrates, and is mentioned by Plato among those present at the Master's condemnation and death. He was author of seven Socratic dialogues which were in great repute. Among them was a Callias, from which the story cited probably came. It is a useful specimen of the illustra- tive personal anecdote as invented by the philosophical schools. It has high rhetorical, but no historical worth. Aristoxenus the Musician, cited in xxvii. 2, with three other authorities (namely, Demetrius the Phalerean, Hierouy- 58 INTRODUCTION mus the Ehodian, and Pseudo-Aristotle), for the tradition that Socrates was a bigamist ; but as sufficiently refuted by Panpetius. This makes it probable that the citation was taken over from Panoetius by Plutarch. Aristoxenus was a native of Tarentum, and became a pupil of Aristotle. Of his voluminous writings the most important were in the domain of rhythm and metre, and these alone have survived in any considerable fragments. On these subjects he is the greatest ancient authority. He is said to have spoken depreciatingly of his master, Aristotle, as we know he did of Plato and Socrates, in his Lives of these men, Callisthenes, cited in xxvii. 2 for an item concerning a granddaughter of Aristides, is probably the Callisthenes of Olynthus who was a pupil of Aristotle with Theophrastus and Alexander, and accompanied the latter on his eastern campaigns as historian, by recommendation of Aristotle. He was more independent and sane in his estimates of Alex- ander's achievements than many other contemporaries, but his weight as an historical witness was slight. He wrote a general history of Greece, from which this citation of Plu- tarch's comes, perhaps indii'ectly, as well as a special history of Alexander's campaigns down to the death of Darius (330 B. c). None of his works have reached us, except in frag- ments. His own death, under condemnation of Alexander, followed shortly after that of Darius. Demetrius of Phalerum, whose book on Socrates is five times cited in the Aristides (i. 1 ; i. 5 ; v. 5 ; xxvii. 2 ; xxvii. 3), was regent at Athens for Cassander from 317 to 307 b. c, " a cultured high-liver, playing the role of Savior of Society." He had a singularly varied career as orator, statesman, philos- opher and poet, and wrote voluminously on history, politics, poetry and rhetoric. The closing years of his life (296-283), and those of his greatest literary activity, were spent in Egypt at the court of the first and second Ptolemies. The genesis of the great Alexandrian library is credited to liim. It looks as though Plutarch used him as a source only when discussing the academic question of the poverty ANALYSIS OF THE ARISTIDES 59 of Aristides, and then perhaps at second hand, through Panietius. Hieronymus the Ehodian, cited in xxvii. 2, probably at second hand, was a disciple of Aristotle, and flourished about 300 B. c. Like most of the Peripatetic school he wrote on historical subjects, probably in the way of com- pilation. He is not to be confounded with his contemporary, Hieronymus of Cardia, who wrote a history of Alexander's successors. Pansetius the Stoic, of Ehodes, cited in L 4 and xxvii. 2, flourished between 150 and 110 B. c. He was the chief founder of the Stoic school at Eome, winning over to his teachings many influential Eomans. He accompanied the younger Scipio in 143 on an embassy to Alexandria, and succeeded to the headship of the Stoic school at Athens, where he died. He showed a rare critical attitude toward the loose and romantic traditions of history. He wrote essays on ethical themes like those of Plutarch's Morals, and was thus, both in career and literary inclinations, an author sure to be congenial to Plutarch. It was probably in a special tract " On Socrates " that he discussed the positions of Demetrius concerning that teacher. In chapter ix. of the Aristides, Plutarch evidently uses his own Tliemistocles for material there (c. xiii. 2) ascribed to Phanias (see p. 41). In chapter v, 5, the official lists of archons to which Plutarch refers may be an independent source, and not found, as the current note suggests, in Clidemus, or some other of the archaeological AttMs-\^T\i&vs, It can hardly be doubted that Ephorus is used in adapting Herodotus' account of the battles of Plataea, chapters x.-xxi. see p. 37. (c) Analysis of the Aristides The Aristides is no such work of art as the Tliemistocles. It is clearly something of a tour de force, in order to secure as good a match as possible for the Cato, with which it 60 INTRODUCTION is paired. The principle of parallelism is the least success- ful of Plutarch's contributions to biography, and the one with which we can at the least loss dispense. Its aim was not historical, but ethical, and the history is often strained to secure the desired similarity in ethical situation. In moral character Themistocles may be somewhat allied with Camillus, and Aristides with Cato, but not as historical per- sonalities, — not as statesmen or warriors. Aristides was not an aggressive personality like Themistocles, or like Cato, and for that very reason little authentic personal detail about him was handed down to the generation immediately follow- ing him. This is true of the earlier career of Themistocles, — the career before the threatened invasion of Xerxes, — but im- mediately ceases to be true, so that there was an embarrass- ment of riches in the material at Plutarch's command for writing his Life. But it is true of the entire career of Aris- tides, so that Plutarch is put to it to get material enough for a biography. He therefore follows a clue given him by the third-century biographers and historians, and ascribes to Aristides personally all that Herodotus and Thucydides credit to the Athenians in general. Occasionally he goes further, and ascribes to Aristides what the elder sources clearly ascribe to other distinct individuals. This gives him the bulk of his biography. For the rest, he draws, as in the Themistocles, on late and apocryphal anecdotic material, or he moralizes, or discusses at imdue length such academical questions as the poverty of his hero, or digresses into descrip- tions of battles and monuments and celebrations, far beyond the lines which he has elsewhere laid down for himself. Historically, however, the Themistocles and Aristides supple- ment each other in the most welcome manner, as do the Pompey and Cmsar, and this is excuse enough for abandon- ing Plutarch's questionable parallelism between Eoman and Greek, and adopting one between two Athenian rival states- men and commanders. Any analysis of the Aristides must be more arbitrary than that of the Themistocles, since it is more loosely constructed. ANALYSIS OF THE ARTS TIDES 61 If arbitrary, it inay well be such as will facilitate compari- son of the two careers. On this principle, the first division of the Aristides, chapters i.-vii., will cover the birth, station, and property of the hero, his early rivalry with Themistocles and contrast to him in disposition and character, his be- havior and services at Marathon, and his ostracism, — a period from an uncertain date well towards the middle of the sixth century, down to 483 B. c. Aristides was of noble birth, according to Plutarch, but poor, a position from which no evidence will drive the amiable writer. He was the intimate friend of the great democratic reformer Clisthenes (508), but favored an aris- tocratic form of government, like the Spartan, and so came into life-long opposition to Themistocles. Generous apocry- phal material is adduced to account for and illustrate this rivalry in character and political activity, as well as the calm, undeviating rectitude of Aristides. The tradition of Marathon as established by Herodotus is altered and enlarged with apocryphal material to show the bravery, unselfishness, and perfect incorruptibility of Aristides. The surname of " The Just " is carried back from the fourth century to the fifth for him, some mild philosophy is expended on the themes of " virtue " and " justice," and the ostracism is made to descend upon him because Themistocles made the Athenians think him too just. No passage could better illustrate Plutarch's lack of grasp for political crises. It is not the opposition of Aristides to the popular naval policy of Themistocles which brings his ostracism by the Athenian people, according to Plutarch, but their jealousy of his superior " justice." While Herodotus, of course, furnishes the foundation for the picture of Marathon, he is not mentioned by name, and his version is altered and supplemented in sundry ways under the stress of dearth of material, and the influence of late, third-century writers. Demetrius of Phalerum, Ido- meneus of Lampsacus, and Pansetius the Stoic are the writers cited by name in this division, and there is the same 62 INTRODUCTION indication here and there, as in the Tliemistocles, of aggrega- tions of authorities who might be cited on this side of a ques- tion or on that. But in general, the Aristides draws from a far smaller range of sources than the TJiemistocles, and it is prob- able that some single guide, like Idomeneus, is more exten- sively followed, even though controverted at times in detail. The second division of the Life, chapters viii., ix., covers simply the participation of Aristides in the battle of Salamis and the counsels which immediately followed it. The out- line is Herodotean, though great liberties have been taken with the shading, and some apocryphal embellishments from late sources have been added, as the current notes fully show. No authority is cited by name in this division, not even Herodotus, because Plutarch evidently assumes the familiarity of his reader with that historian's greater story. Besides, Salamis was the glory of Themistocles, not of Aristides, even with all the accretions of later invention, and had already been fully described by Plutarch in the Themistocles. The third division of the Life, chapters x.-xxi., covers the campaign of 479, ending with the battles of Platsea. This is the main division of the biography. It is practically the story of Platsea by Herodotus, freely adapted and supple- mented by material from Ephorus and later writers, as the current notes show in detail, and above all individualized, so far as Athenian participation allowed at all, in favor of Aristides. Aristides is made to appear the chief figure, — the real, though not the nominal commander of the Greek forces, without whom Pausanias would have made a disas- trous campaign of it. Herodotus is cited once by name for material differing essentially from that which he really gives, — very likely a citation from memory, confused with other reading ; and once by name in order to protest, — and protest most righteously, — against his partisan Athenian version of the losses in the battles. Idomeneus is cited once by name, with the implication that his version of the matter is exaggerated and untrue ; Craterus is used to refute him, ANALYSIS OF THE ARISTIDES 63 though not meutioned by name (x. 5). The vague plural "some" is used once when the reference is clearly to a definite antiquarian authority, teaching us that other vague plural terms of reference may cover single authorities. The fourth division of the Aristides, chapters xxii., xxiii., covers the diminishing activity of the hero in the years immediately following Plataia, as his light paled before that of Cimon, and especially his part in securing the naval supremacy for Athens, and in regulating the financial affairs of the new Delian League. The probabilities are wrenched to make him survive and even acquiesce in the transfer of the treasury of the League from Delos to Athens. Then noth- ing remains but to revert to the standing themes of his justice and poverty, with which the biography opened, and the stan- dard close, as in the Themistodcs, is found in accounts of his death, burial, and posterity. Late personalization of general history, and apocryphal anecdote abound in this portion of the Life, as was to be expected in the absence of authentic material. For the transfer of the naval hegemony, Thu- cydides is, of course, the ultimate authority, though for this part he is not cited by name, and his testimony is greatly distorted in the free-hand elaboration of it which either Plutarch himself makes, or adopts from Idomeueus. Thu- cydides is cited by name for the item of the amount of annual income to the Athenian imperial treasury ; Theophrastus, for a paradoxical and improbable story illustrative of justice yielding to the demands of expediency ; Jj^schines the Socratic, for a dramatic and purely fictitious story contrasting the poor Aristides with the wealthy Callias ; Plato, for a senti- ment which is a combination of two widely separated utterances quoted freely from memory ; and, regarding the posterity of the hero, Panaetius the Stoic evidently supplies Plutarch with a group of five authorities whom we need not suppose him to have consulted independently : Aristoxenus, Callisthenes, Demetrius of Phalerum, Hieronymus the Eho- dian, and Pseudo-Aristotle. Craterus again furnishes docu- mentary material without getting explicit credit for it, and 64 INTRODUCTION is once censured by name for not basing his statements on his usual good evidence. In chapter xxii. Plutarch evi- dently uses again his own TJiemistodes (c. xx.), as in xxiii. 1 he borrows and adapts from his own Cimon {cc. v., vL). The presence and influence of Idomeneus is most strongly felt in such a chapter as xxiv. ; the moulding and blending and generously supplying hand of Plutarch, in such a chapter as XXV. In the opening of chapter xxvi. Plutarch seems to divide all the sources whom he has laid under contribution for his Aristides into three classes: Craterus, with his un- substantiated story of the death of Aristides under condem- nation for bribery ; " some," who say he died in Pontus on a commission of state ; " others," who say he died at Athens in age and honor. Altogether, this closing division of the Aristides shows how impossible it is to set boimds to the freely shaping activity of Plutarch upon generously accumu- lated material, even though he may follow more closely than elsewhere, or than usual, some one convenient biographical predecessor. IV. BIOGEAPHY BEPOEE PLUTAECH. The survey of authorities thus made merely for two Lives, shows plainly that Plutarch was by no means the originator of artistic biography. He marks rather the culmination of a long process of evolution both in material and form. The main lines of this evolution can be traced, in spite of the enormous losses which Greek literature has sustained. The gi-eat intellectual movement at Athens toward the close of the j&fth century B.C., which is voiced for us by such exponents as Euripides, Thucydides, and Socrates, directed attention to the individual and the personal as the only true som-ce of any proper conception of the typi- cal, the general, and the universal. When Thucydides wrote his elaborate excursus on the end of Pausanias and Themistocles, the greatest Hellenes of their time, he gave us our earliest specimen of Greek biography, — portions of BIOGRAPHY BEFORE PLUTARCH 65 Lives, with distinct character-sketching. The more com- plete and rounded character-sketches in Xenophon's Ana- basis, written during the second quarter of the fourth century, show that the biographical element was finding larger and larger place in distinctly historical composition, probably owing to the development, as distinct literary forms, of the Eulogy and the Encomium. The rhetorical historians of the second half of the fourth century, Ephorus and Theopompus, evidently responded still more to the growing, and now perhaps prevailing tendency to emphasize the importance of the individual man as a shaping factor in the course of events. It was an era of gi-eat, and even colossal personalities. Its history had to be largely biog- raphy. It was therefore natural that, when earlier history was rewritten to serve as introduction and background for the new, its meagre traditions should be generously individ- ualized, so that, for instance, what had been ascribed to Athenians or Lacedoemonians in general, should now be made the personal achievement of a Themistocles, an Aris- tides, or a Pausanias. The great schools of philosophy, too, the Academic and the Peripatetic, studiously fostered an interest in the greater personalities, — at first the men of thought, the thinkers and teachers, then the men of action, statesmen and commanders. Plato and Xenophon had realized to themselves and trans- mitted to others intensely vivid conceptions of the character and life of Socrates their Master. Successors to Plato in the line of Academic teaching elaborated lovingly their memoirs of the Great Disciple as well as of the Founder; and rival teachers in the rival school, like Aristoxenus of Tarentum, wrote Lives of Socrates and Plato which were not loving, but malicious. Aristoxenus, the founder of a school of Peripatetic biographers, had none too much love for his own Master, Aristotle. It was Aristotle who, by his general teachings and methods, initiated the greatest activity in the collection and presenta- tion in literary form of biographical details. It was on the 6 66 INTRODUCTION broadest collections and the most detailed study of individual cases that he based his theories of Politics and Poetry. Such an historical and antiquarian treatise as his Constitution of Athens has a large biographical element, and gives us strong character-sketches of Solon, Pisistratus, Themistocles, Aris- tides, Theramenes, and others. Between one hundred and three hundred similar Polities preceded and formed the basis for his Politics. So an indefinitely large number of biographical sketches of individual Poets preceded and formed the basis for his Poetics. These Lives of Poets are lost, though much of the material which composed them has undoubtedly come down to us in later compilations based upon them. The followers and disciples of Aristotle, begiiming with Theophrastus, and continuing through Aristoxenus, Phanias, and Neanthes, who are most important for the historical tra- dition at present under study, not only used the personal anecdote freely as the basis for philosophical discussion, — where the philosophical discussion was the main thing, rather than the truth of the personal anecdote, — but ex- tended the literary form of the independent Life to all " Illustrious Men," as well as philosophers and poets. This biography of the Peripatetic school had certain character- istic features which stand out distinctly, even though their work is known only in fragments. It did not hesitate to bring under its general method the lives of men of such early periods that there could be no authentic personal detail about them ; in lieu of authentic detail, it was prone to accept as authentic all sorts of legend and invention without any critical sifting whatever ; it even indulged freely in the invention of detail for the illustration of general traits of character assumed, and often descended to the invention of slanderous detail in the case of characters which were out of the range of its particular political or philosophical sympathies. Besides these philosophical schools of biography, and largely indebted to their activity, there arose at Alexandria, especially during the third and second centuries B. c, a learned BIOGRAPHY BEFORE PLUTARCH 67 or philological school of biography, whose Lives were based on material laboriously collected from the unlimited resources of the great Alexandrian library. The material thus col- lected was used chiefly to furnish compact introductions to literary works, and reappears in later and sometimes anony- mous Lives, and in such compilations as those of Diogenes Laertius, and Suidas. The chronological histories of Eratos- thenes, for instance, must have contained generous biographical material. Later Peripatetic philosophers also, like Hermippus and Satyrus, and historians like Idomeneus and Phylarchus, availed themselves of the biographical material collected by the learned grammarians of the Alexandrian school, in the composition of their Lives of illustrious men. They added the embellishments in which their school dehghted, and gave attractive literary form to learned matter. All this long succession of biographical work lay ready for the use of such late biographers as Nepos and Plutarch. It was the literary deposit of generations of artistic and learned labor. Not only had such biographical material as the older historians furnished been culled out and arranged in an order adapted to the limited Lives of particular men, but well- defined types of character had been established for most of the illustrious men whose Lives might be desired, and even the general form and structure of a biography had become established. There was a recognized technique of biography long before Plutarch, to the general features of which it can be seen that he conforms, at least in many of his Lives. Both the Themistocles and Aristides have this con- ventional form, which was, in most respects, a perfectly nat- ural development. First comes Birth, Family, and Education ; then the Type of Character ; then such Deeds and Achieve- ments, as best illustrate that type of character, — the char- acter dominating the selection of deeds; and lastly the Death, Burial, Posterity, and Subsequent Influence. Even the rhetorical device of " comparison " between two charac- ters is as old as Isocrates ; Polybius and Posidonius compared and contrasted Greeks and Romans, though not in technical 68 INTRODUCTION biographies; Plutarch lifts the casual comparison into the dignity of an almost constant Epilogue. His " famous saymgs," too, are not all of his own gathering. They were a standing feature of technical biography before he wrote. In the cases of Themistocles and Aristides, Plutarch prob- ably had accessible for his use a long line of biographies of these particular men, and especially a biography of The- mistocles by Phanias, and one of Aristides by Idomeneus, in which much labor of compilation was spared him, but to which he adds generously from his own stores, and imparts — what is of the highest importance — his own spirit, so that though he follows their form and uses their material, he gives his own independent interpretation to the characters imder study, often reverting, in support of his own interpre- tation, to earlier and more authoritative evidence than that furnished him by the biographies on which he chiefly relies. Malice and envy certainly have no place in his reconstruc- tion of biographical material, however tolerant his attitude may be toward sensational or picturesque invention; and however unscientific his reconstruction of given material may be, it is often in the highest degree artistic. Alphabetical List of Authorities cited by Plutarch in the Themistocles. Acestodorus XIII. 1 Neanthes . . . . I. 2 ; XXIX. 4 ^schylus XIV. 1 Phanias . . I. 2 ; VII. 4 ; XIII. 2 ; Andocides XXXII. 2 XXVII. 3 ; XXIX. 4 Ariston of Ceos III. 2 Phanodemus XIII. 1 Aristophanes Comicus . . XIX. 3 Phylarchus XXXII. 2 Aristotle X. 3 Pindar VIII. 2 Charon of Lampsacus . XXVII. 1 Plato IV. 3 ; XXXII. 1 Clidemus X. 4 Plato Comicus .... XXXII. 3 Clitarchus XXVII. 1 Simonides .... I. 3 ; XV. 2 Dinon of Colophon . . XXVII. 1 Stesimbrotus II. 3 ; IV. 3 ; XXIV. 3 Diodorus the Topographer XXXII. 3 Theophrastus .... XXV. 1, 3 Ephorus ...... XXVII. 1 Theopompus . XIX. 1 ; XXV. 3 ; Eratosthenes .... XXVII. 3 XXXI. 2 Heracleides XXVII. 1 Thucydides . . XXV. 1 ; XXVII. 1 Herodotus VII. 3 ; XVII. 1 ; XXL 1 Timocreon of Rhodes . . . XXI. BIOGRAPHY BEFORE PLUTARCH 69 Alphabetical List of Authorities cited by Plutarch in the Aristides. iEschines the Socratic . . XXV. 6 Demetrius the Phalereau . I. 1, 5 ; ^schylus III. 3 V. 5 ; XXVII. 2, 3 Ariston of Ceos 11.3 Herodotus. . . XVI. 1 ; XIX. 4 Aristotle (Pseudo-) . . XXVII. 2 Hieronyrnus the Rhodian XXVII. 2 Aristoxenus the Musician XXVII. 2 Idomeneus . . . I. 5 ; IV. 2 ; X. 5 Callisthenes .... XXVII. 2 Panatius ... I. 4 ; XXVII. 2 Clidemus XIX. 3 Plato XXV. 6 Craterus XXVI. 1 Theophrastus XXV. 2 Thucydides XXIV. 3 THEMISTOCLES THEMISTOCLES I. . . . But in the case of Themistocles, his family was too obscure to further his reputation. His father was Neocles, — no very conspicuous man at His family. Athens, — a Phrearrhian by deme, of tlie tribe Leontisj and on his mother's side he was an ahen, as her epitaph testifies : — " Abrotonon was I, and a woman of Thrace, yet I brought forth That great light of the Greeks, — know ! 't was Themistocles." Phanias, however, writes that the mother of The- 2 mistocles was not a Thracian, but a Carian woman, and that her name was not Abrotonon, but Euterpe. And Neanthes actually adds the name of her city in Caria, — Halicarnassus. It was for the reason given, and because the aliens were wont to frequent Cynosarges, — this is a place outside the gates, a gymnasium of Heracles ; for he too was not a legitimate god, but had something alien about him, from the fact that his mother was a mortal, — that Themistocles sought to induce cer- tain well born youth to go out to Cynosarges and exercise with him ; and by his success in this bit of cunning he is thought to have removed the distinc- tion between aliens and legitimates. However, it is clear that he was connected with 3 the family of the Lycomidse, for he caused the 74 THEMISTOCLES chapel-shrine at Phlya, which belonged to the Lyco- midae and had been burned by the Barbarians, to be restored at his own costs and adorned with frescoes, as Simonides has stated. II. However lowly his birth, it is agreed on all hands that while yet a boy he was impetuous, by nature sae!:acious, and by election enterpris- Boyhood, ^ ° . . . youth and ing and prone to public life. In times of education. , , . i i • i ^ i -> j- relaxation and leisure, when absolved irom his lessons, he would not play nor indulge his ease, as the rest of the boys did, but would be found com- posing and rehearsing to himself mock speeches. These speeches would be in accusation or defence of some boy or other. 2 Wherefore his teacher was wont to say to him: "My boy, thou wilt be nothing insignificant, but something great, of a surety, either for good or evil." Moreover, when he was set to study, those branches which aimed at the formation of character, or ministered to any gratification or grace of a lib- eral sort, he would learn reluctantly and sluggishly ; and to all that was said for the cultivation of sagacity or practical efiiciency he showed an indifference far beyond his years, as though he put his confidence in his natural gifts alone. 3 Thus it came about that, in after life, at entertain- ments of a so-called liberal and polite nature, when he was taunted by men of reputed culture, he was forced to defend himself rather rudely, saying that tuning the lyre and handling the harp were no accom- plishments of his, but rather taking a city that was YOUTH AND EDUCATION 75 small and inglorious and making it glorious and great. And yet Stesimbrotus says that Themistocles was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and a disciple of Melissus the physicist ; but he is careless in his chronology. It was Pericles, a much younger man than Themistocles, whom Melissus opposed at the siege of Samos, and with whom Anaxagoras was intimate. Rather, then, might one side with those who say 4 that Themistocles was a devotee of Mnesiphilus the Phrearrhian, a man who was neither a rhetorician nor one of the so-called physical philosophers, but a cultivator of what was then called sophia, or wisdom, although it was really nothing more than cleverness in politics and practical sagacity. Mnesiphilus re- ceived this sophia, and handed it down, as though it were the doctrine of a sect, in unbroken tradition from Solon, His successors blended it with forensic arts, and shifted its application from public affairs to language, and were dubbed " sophists." It was this man, then, to whom Themistocles resorted at the very beginning of his public life. But in the first essays of his youth he was uneven 5 and unstable, since he gave his natural impulses free course, which, without due address and training, rush to violent extremes in the objects of their pursuit, and often degenerate ; as he himself in later life con- fessed, when he said that the wildest colts too made very good horses if only they got the proper breaking and training. What some story-makers add to this, however, toe 76 THEMISTOCLES the effect that his father disinherited him, and his mother took her own life for very grief at her son's ill-fame, this I think is false. And, in just the opposite vein, there are some who say that his father fondly tried to divert him from public life, pointing out to him old triremes on the sea-shore, all wrecked and neglected, and claiming that the people treated their leaders in like fashion when these were past service. III. Speedily, however, as it seems, and while he was still in all the ardor of youth, did public affairs Entrance lay tlicir grasp upon Themistocles, and ex- into politics ; •itii-- ij. • jj- rivalry with ccssivcly did his impulsc to wm reputation Anstides; g.^^ j^^ie mastcry over him. Wherefore, the "trophy ° ..... ofMiitiades." from the Very beginning, in his desire to be first, he boldly encountered the enmity of men who had power and were already first in the city, especially that of Aristides the son of Lysimachus, who was always his opponent. And yet it is thought that his enmity with this man had an altogether puerile beginning. They were both lovers of the beautiful Stesilaiis, a native of Ceos, as Ariston the philosopher has recorded, and thenceforward they continued to be rivals in public life also. 2 However, the dissimilarity in their lives and char- acters is likely to have increased their variance. Aris- tides was gentle by nature, and a conservative in character. He engaged in public life, not to win favor or reputation, but to secure the best results consistent with safety and righteousness, and so he MARITIME POLICY 77 was compelled, since Themistocles stirred the people up to many novel enterprises and introduced great innovations, to oppose him often, and to take a firm stand against his increasing influence. It is said, indeed, that Themistocles was so carried 3 away by his desire for reputation, and such an am- bitious lover of great deeds, that, though he was still a young man when the battle with the Barbarians at Marathon was fought and the generalship of Mil- tiades was in everybody's mouth, he was seen there- after to be wrapped in his own thoughts for the most part, and was sleepless o' nights, and refused invita- tions to his customary drinking parties, and said to those who put wondering questions to him concern- ing his change of life that the trophy of Miltiades would not suffer him to sleep. Now the rest of his countrymen thought that the 4 defeat of the Barbarians at Marathon was the end of the war; but Themistocles thought it to be only the beginning of greater contests, and for these he anointed himself, as it were, to be the champion of all Hellas, and put his city into training, because, while it was yet afar off, he expected the evil that was to come. IV. And so, in the first place, whereas the Athe- nians were wont to divide up among themselves the revenue coming from the silver mines at He converts Laureium, he, and he alone, dared to come ^^^^e^f 'nto ' ' ' a maritime before the people with a motion that this power. division be given up, and that with these moneys triremes be constructed for the war against iEgina. 78 THEMISTOCLES 2 This was the greatest war then raging in Hellas, and the islanders controlled the sea, owing to the number of their ships. Wherefore all the more easily did Themistocles carry his point, not by trying to terrify the citizens with dreadful pictures of Darius or the Persians, — these were too far away and inspired no very serious fear of their coming, — but by making opportune use of the bitter jealousy which they cher- ished toward vEgina in order to secure the armament he desired. The result was that with those moneys they built an hundred triremes, which actually fought at Salamis against Xerxes. 3 And after this, by luring the city on gradually and turning its progress toward the sea, claiming that with their infantry they were no match even for their nearest neighbors, but that with the power they would get from their ships they could not only repel the Barbarians but also take the lead in Hellas, he made them, instead of "steadfast hoplites," — to quote Plato's words, — sea-tossed mariners, and brought down upon himself this accusation : " Themistocles, forsooth, robbed his fellow-citizens of spear and shield, and degraded the people of Athens to the rowing-pad and the oar." And this he accomplished in triumph over the public opposition of Miltiades, as Stesimbrotus relates. 4 Now, whether by accomplishing this he did injury to the integrity and purity of public life or not, let the philosopher rather investigate. But that the sal- vation which the Hellenes achieved at that time came from the sea, and that it was those very triremes CHARACTER AND POWER 79 which restored again the fallen city of Athens, Xerxes himself bore witness, not to speak of other proofs. For though his infantry remained intact, he took to flight after the defeat of his ships, because he thought he was not a match for the Hellenes, and he left Mardonius behind, as it seems to me, rather to obstruct their pursuit than to subdue them. V. Some say that Themistocles was an eager money-maker because of his liberality; for since he . was fond of entertaining, and lavished Anecdotes money splendidly on his guests, he required illustrative of his char- a generous budget. Others, on the con- acter and trary, denounce his great stinginess and ^'^^^^"^" parsimony, claiming that he used to sell the very food sent in to him as a gift. When Philides the horse-breeder was asked by him for a colt and would n't give it, Themistocles threat- ened speedily to make his house a wooden horse; thereby darkly intimating that he would stir up ac- cusations against him in his own family, and lawsuits between the man and those of his own household. In his ambition he surpassed all men. For instance, 2 while he was still young and obscure, he prevailed upon Epicles of Hermione, a harpist who was eagerly sought after by the Athenians, to practise at his house, because he was ambitious that many should seek out his dwelling and come often to see him. Again, on going to Olympia, he tried to rivals Cimon in his banquets and booths and other brilliant appointments, so that he displeased the Hellenes. For Cimon was young and of a great house, and they 80 TIIEMISTOCLES thought they must allow him in such extravagances ; but Themistocles had not yet become famous, and was thought to be seeking to elevate himself unduly without adequate means, and so got the credit of ostentation. 4 And still again, as Clwregus, or theatrical manager, he won a victory with tragedies, although even at that early time this contest was conducted with great eagerness and ambition, and set up a tablet com- memorating his victory with the following inscrip- tion : " Themistocles the Phrearrhian was Choregus ; Phrynichus was Poet; Adeimantus was Archon." However, he was on good terms with the common folk, partly because he could call off-hand the name of every citizen, and partly because he rendered the service of a safe and impartial arbitrator in cases of private obligation and settlement out of court; and so he once said to Simonides of Ceos, who had made an improper request from him when he was magistrate : " You would not be a good poet if you should sing contrary to the measure ; nor I a clever magistrate if I should show favor contrary to the law." 5 And once again he banteringly said to Simonides that it was nonsense for him to abuse the Corinthians, who dwelt in a great and fair city, while he had portrait figures made of himself, who was of such an ugly countenance. And so he grew in power, and pleased the common folk, and finally headed a successful faction and got Aristides removed by ostracism. ATTITUDE TOWARD PERSIA 81 VI. At last, when the Mede was descending upon Hellas and the Athenians were deliberating who should be their general, all the rest, they His conduct say, voluntarily renounced their claims to ^"^roachof the generalship, so panic-stricken were they the Persians, at the danger ; but Epicydes, the son of Euphemides, a popular leader who was powerful in speech but effeminate in spirit and susceptible to bribes, set out to get the office, and was likely to prevail in the election ; so Themistocles, fearing lest matters should go to utter ruin in case the leadership fell to such a man, bribed and bought off the ambition of Epicydes. Praise is given his treatment of the linguist in the 2 company of those who were sent by the King to demand earth and water as tokens of submission: this interpreter he caused to be arrested, and had him put to death by special decree, because he dared to prostitute the speech of Hellas to barbarian stipulations. Also to his treatment of Arthmius of Zeleia : on 3 motion of Themistocles this man was entered on the list of the proscribed, with his children and his family, because he brought the gold of the Medes and offered it to the Hellenes. But the greatest of all his achievements was his* putting a stop to Hellenic wars, and reconciling Hellenic cities with one another, persuading them to postpone their mutual hatreds because of the foreign war. To which end, they say, Cheileos the Arcadian most seconded his efforts. 6 82 THEMISTOCLES VII. On assuming the command, he straightway went to work to embark the citizens on their tri- remes, and tried to persuade them to leave Themisto- j-\^q\j. citv behind them and so as far as cles at ^ ^ Tenipe;aud possible away from Hellas to meet the Bar- at Artemi- t , i • sium before barian by sea. But many opposed this the battles. ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ j^^ j^^ £^^^|^ ^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ the vale of Tempe, along with the Lacedaemonians, in order to make a stand there in defence of Thessaly, which was not yet at that time supposed to be medis- ing. But soon the army came back from this posi- tion without accomplishing anything, the Thessalians went over to the side of the King, and everything was medising as far as Boeotia, so that at last the Athenians were more kindly disposed to the naval policy of Themistocles, and he was sent with a fleet to Artemisium, to watch the narrows. 2 It was at this place that the Hellenes urged Eury- biades and the Lacedaemonians to take the lead, but the Athenians, since in the number of their ships they surpassed all the rest put together, disdained to follow others, — a peril which Themistocles at once comprehended. He surrendered his own command to Eurybiades, and tried to mollify the Athenians with the promise that if they would show themselves brave men in the war, he would induce the Hellenes to yield a willing obedience to them thereafter. Wherefore he is thought to have been the man most instrumental in achieving the salvation of Hellas, and foremost in lead- ing the Athenians up to the high repute of surpassing their foes in valor and their allies in magnanimity. ARTEMISIUM 83 Now Eurybiades, on the arrival of the barbarians armament at Aphetse, was terrified at the number of ships that faced him, and, learning that two hundred ships more were sailing around above Sciathus to cut off his retreat, desired to proceed by the shortest route down into Hellas, to get into touch with Pelopon- nesus and encompass his fleet with his infantry forces there, because he thought the power of the King altogether invincible by sea. Therefore the Euboeans, fearing lest the Hellenes abandon them to their fate, held secret conference with Themistocles, and sent Pelagon to him with large sums of money. This money he took, as Herodotus relates, and gave to Eurybiades. Meeting with most opposition among his fellow- 4 citizens from Architeles, who was captain on the sacred state-galley, and who, because he had no money to pay the wages of his sailors, was eager to sail off home, Themistocles incited his crew all the more against him, so that they made a rush upon him and snatched away his dinner. Then, while Architeles was feeling dejected and indignant over this, Themistocles sent him a dinner of bread and meat in a box at the bottom of which he had put a talent of silver, and bade him dine without delay, and on the morrow satisfy his crew ; otherwise he said he would denounce him publicly as the receiver of money from the enemy. At any rate, such is the story of Phanias the Lesbian. Vni. The battles which were fought at that time with the ships of the Barbarians in the narrows 84 THEMISTOCLES were not decisive of the main issue, it is true, but they were of the greatest service to the Hellenes in The sea- gi^i^g ^hem experience, since they were fights off ^j-^^^g tauffht by actual achievements in the Artemi- '=' "^ siura ; their f acc of danger that neither multitudes of- sons; their ships nor brilliantly decorated figure-heads monuments. ^^^ boastful shouts or barbarous battle- hymns have any terror for men who know how to come to close quarters and dare to fight there ; but that they must despise all such things, rush upon the very persons of their foes, grapple with them, and fight it out to the bitter end. 2 Of this Pindar seems to have been well aware when he said of the battle of Artemisium : " Where Athenians' valiant sons set in radiance eternal Liberty's corner-stone." For verily the foundation of victory is courage. Artemisium is a part of Euboea above Hestisea, — a sea-beach stretching away to the north, — and just about opposite to it lies Olizon, in the territory once subject to Philoctetes. It has a small temple of Artemis surnamed Prosecea, which is surrounded by trees and enclosed by upright slabs of white mar- ble. This stone, when you rub it with your hand, gives off the color and the odor of saffron. 8 On one of these slabs the following elegy was inscribed : " Nations of all sorts of men from Asia's boundaries coming, Sons of the Athenians once, here on this arm of the sea, Whelmed in a battle of ships, and the host of the Medes was destroyed ; These are the tokens thereof, built for the Maid Artemis." APPEAL TO THE lONIANS 85 And a place is pointed out on the shore, with sea sand all about it, which supplies from its depths a dark ashen powder, apparently the product of fire, and here they are thought to have burned their wrecks and dead bodies. IX. However, when they learned by messenger from Thermopylse to Artemisium that Leonidas was slain and that Xerxes was master of the Retreat of the Greeks ; pass, they withdrew further down into Hel- cmmiug de- las, the Athenians bringing up the extreme mistocies for rear because of their valor, and greatly