these imputations, as of his
riches and extraordinarily expensive way of living, that I cannot believe
any testimony to the contrary. And besides, it is much more reasonable
to believe the Roman historians in such things than Greeks and
foreigners. Now Tacitus and the rest speak very honourably both of his
life and death; and represent him to us a very excellent and virtuous
person in all things; and I will allege no other reproach against Dion's
report but this, which I cannot avoid, namely, that he has so weak a
judgment in the Roman affairs, that he dares to maintain Julius Caesar's
cause against Pompey [And so does this editor. D.W.], and that of Antony
against Cicero.

Let us now come to Plutarch: Jean Bodin is a good author of our times,
and a writer of much greater judgment than the rout of scribblers of his
age, and who deserves to be read and considered. I find him, though, a
little bold in this passage of his Method of history, where he accuses
Plutarch not only of ignorance (wherein I would have let him alone: for
that is beyond my criticism), but that he "often writes things
incredible, and absolutely fabulous ": these are his own words. If he
had simply said, that he had delivered things otherwise than they really
are, it had been no great reproach; for what we have not seen, we are
forced to receive from other hands, and take upon trust, and I see that
he purposely sometimes variously relates the same story; as the judgment
of the three best captains that ever were, given by Hannibal; 'tis one
way in the Life of Flammius, and another in that of Pyrrhus. But to
charge him with having taken incredible and impossible things for current
pay, is to accuse the most judicious author in the world of want of
judgment. And this is his example; "as," says he, "when he relates that
a Lacedaemonian boy suffered his bowels to be torn out by a fox-cub he
had stolen, and kept it still concealed under his coat till he fell down
dead, rather than he would discover his theft." I find, in the first
place, this example ill chosen, forasmuch as it is very hard to limit the
power of the faculties of--the soul, whereas we have better authority to
limit and know the force of the bodily limbs; and therefore, if I had
been he, I should rather have chosen an example of this second sort; and
there are some of these less credible: and amongst others, that which he
refates of Pyrrhus, that "all wounded as he was, he struck one of