Plutarch's Morals Part 28

[636] Or _bashfulness_, _shamefacedness_, what the French call _mauvaise honte_.

[637] Shakespeare puts all this into one line: "Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds."--_2 Henry IV._, A. iv. Sc. iv.

[638] Or _girls_. [Greek: kore] means both a girl, and the pupil of the eye.

[639] So Wyttenbach.

[640] These lines are quoted again "On Moral Virtue," -- vi.

[641] "Iliad," xxiv. 44, 45.

[642] Euripides, "Bellerophon," Fragm., 313.

[643] Soph., Fragm., 736.

[644] Surely it is necessary to read [Greek: prodiaphthareisa to akolasto].

[645] See Plato, "Charmides," 165 A.

[646] Euripides, "Medea," 290, 291.

[647] "Works and Days," 342.

[648] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: med hypolabe pisteuein, dokounta].

[649] See Horace's very amusing "Satire," i. ix., on such tiresome fellows.

[650] [Greek: epitribo] is used in the same sense by Demosthenes, p. 288.

[651] On such social pests see Juvenal, i. 1-14.

[652] See Pausanias, i. 2. Euripides left Athens about 409 B.C., and took up his abode for good in Macedonia at the court of Archelaus, where he died 406 B.C.

[653] For a drachma was only worth 6 obols, or 9_d._ of our money, nearly = Roman denarius.

[654] A talent was 6,000 drachmae, or 36,000 obols, about 243 15_s._ of our money.

[655] "Olynth." iii. p. 33, -- 19.

[656] Compare "On Education," -- vii.

[657] Our "Out of the frying-pan into the fire." Cf.

"Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim."

[658] By their having to borrow themselves.

[659] Fragm. 947.

[660] Or apophthegms, of which Plutarch and Lord Verulam have both left us collections.

[661] Thucydides, ii. 40. Pericles is the speaker.

[662] A slightly-changed line from Euripides'

"Pirithous," Fragm. 591. Quoted correctly "On Abundance of Friends," -- vii.

[663] "Zenonis discipulus."--_Reiske._

[664] "Works and Days," 371.

[665] Cf. Shakspere, "Hamlet," i. iii. 76.

[666] Euripides, "Medea," 1078.

[667] Our "Set a thief to catch a thief."

[668] Or strigil. See Otto Jahn's note on Persius, v.

126.

[669] "Forsitan illa quam nominat Pausanias, i.

27."--_Reiske._

[670] Literally "want of tune in." We cannot well keep up the metaphor. Compare with this pa.s.sage, "That virtue may be taught," -- ii.

[671] Literally "crowns."

[672] Thucydides, ii. 64. Pericles is the speaker.

Quoted again in "How one may discern a flatterer from a friend," -- x.x.xV.

[673] "Est Bio Borysthenita, de quo vide Diog.

Laert."--_Reiske._

[674] "De Alexino Eleo vide Diog. Laert., ii. 109.

Nostri p. 1063, 3."--_Reiske._

[675] Antisthenes wrote a book called "Hercules." See Diogenes Laertius, vi. 16.

ON RESTRAINING ANGER.

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN SYLLA AND FUNDa.n.u.s.

-- I. _Sylla._ Those painters, Funda.n.u.s, seem to me to do well who, before giving the finis.h.i.+ng touches to their paintings, lay them by for a time and then revise them; because by taking their eyes off them for a time they gain by frequent inspection a new insight, and are more apt to detect minute differences, that continuous familiarity would have hidden. Now since a human being cannot so separate himself from himself for a time, and make a break in his continuity, and then approach himself again--and that is perhaps the chief reason why a man is a worse judge of himself than of others--the next best thing will be for a man to inspect his friends after an interval, and likewise offer himself to their scrutiny, not to see whether he has aged quickly, or whether his bodily condition is better or worse, but to examine his moral character, and see whether time has added any good quality, or removed any bad one.

On my return then to Rome after an absence of two years, and having been with you now five months, I am not at all surprised that there has been a great increase and growth in those good points which you formerly had owing to your admirable nature; but when I see how gentle and obedient to reason your former excessive impetuosity and hot temper has become, it cannot but occur to me to quote the line,

"Ye G.o.ds, how much more mild is he become!"[676]