ok up Cicero, for that he sat still and said nothing, when
that Octavius Caesar the young man made petition against the law, that
he might sue for the Consulship, and being so young, that he had never
a hair on his face. And Brutus self also doth reprove Cicero in his
letters, for that he had maintained and nourished a more grievous and
greater tyranny, than that which they had put down. And last of all,
me thinketh the death of Cicero most pitiful, to see an old man
carried up and down, (with tender love of his servants) seeking all
the ways that might be to fly death, which did not long prevent his
natural course: and in the end, old as he was, to see his head so
pitifully cut off. Whereas Demosthenes, though he yielded a little,
entreating him that came to take him: yet for that he had prepared the
poison long before, that he had kept it long, and also used it as he
did, he cannot but be marvellously commended for it. For sith the god
Neptune denied him the benefit of his sanctuary, he betook him to a
greater, and that was death: whereby he saved himself out of the
soldiers' hands of the tyrant, and also scorned the bloody cruelty of
Antipater.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 92: Plutarch is read for his matter, rather than for his
style. In style as well as for the time in which he lived, he does not
belong to the classical writers of Greece. For this reason he may be
read in English almost as satisfactorily as in his own language. He is
described by Mahaffy as a pure and elevating writer, full of precious
information and lofty in his moral tone.]

[Footnote 93: From "The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans,
Compared together by that Grave, Learned Philosopher and
Historiographer Plutarch of Chaeronea." Translated by Sir Thomas North.
North was born about 1535, his translation being first published in
1579. Written throughout in the best prose of the Elizabethan period,
North's version will always have another and very special interest as
the store house from which Shakespeare obtained his knowledge of
antiquity. It has been asserted that to this book we really owe the
existence of "Julius Caesar," "Coriolanus," and "Antony and Cleopatra."
In "Coriolanus" whole speeches have been taken bodily from North,
while in "Antony and Cleopatra" North's diction has been closely
followed. North did not translate from the original Greek, but from an
old French version by James Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre in the times of
Henry II of