illustrious men, and help us to form a better judgment of
those who make so conspicuous a figure in History.

Plutarch was a native of the town of Chaeroneia, in Boeotia; the times
of his birth and death are not exactly known, but we learn from his own
works that he was a young student at Delphi, in the thirteenth year of
the reign of the Emperor Nero, A.D. 66. He visited both Italy and Rome,
and probably resided at Rome for some time. He wrote his Life of
Demosthenes, at least after his return to Chaeroneia: he says (_Life of
Demosthenes_, c. 2), that he had not time to exercise himself in the
Latin Language during his residence at Rome, being much occupied with
public business, and giving lessons in philosophy. Accordingly it was
late before he began to read the Latin writers; and we may infer from
his own words that he never acquired a very exact knowledge of the
language. He observes that it happened in his case, that in his study of
the Latin writers he did not so much learn and understand the facts from
the words, as acquire the meaning of the words from the facts, of which
he had already some knowledge. We may perhaps conclude from this, that
Plutarch wrote all his Roman lives in Chaeroneia, after he had returned
there from Rome. The statement that Plutarch was the preceptor of the
Emperor Trajan, and was raised to the consular rank by him, is not
supported by sufficient evidence. Plutarch addressed to Trajan his Book
of Apophthegms, or Sayings of Kings and Commanders; but this is all that
is satisfactorily ascertained as to the connection between the Emperor
and Philosopher. Trajan died A.D. 117.

"The plan of Plutarch's Biographies is briefly explained by himself in
the introduction to the Life of Alexander the Great, where he makes an
apology for the brevity with which he is compelled to treat of the
numerous events in the Lives of Alexander and Caesar. 'For,' he says, 'I
do not write Histories, but Lives; nor do the most conspicuous acts of
necessity exhibit a man's virtue or his vice, but oftentimes some slight
circumstance, a word, or a jest, shows a man's character better than
battles with the slaughter of tens of thousands, and the greatest arrays
of armies and sieges of cities. Now, as painters produce a likeness by a
representation of the countenance and the expression of the eyes,
without troubling themselves about the other parts of the body, so I
must be allowed to look rather into the signs of a ma