r of Dionysus the Bacchic orgies on festival
nights with common revellings; but a mighty plague stirring up Asia in
annual cycles drives them here for litigation and suits at law at stated
times: and the mass of business, like the confluence of mighty rivers,
has inundated one forum, and festers and teems with ruiners and ruined.
What fevers, what agues, do not these things cause? What obstructions,
what irruptions of blood into the air-vessels, what distemperature of
heat, what overflow of humours, do not result? If you examine every suit
at law, as if it were a person, as to where it originated, where it came
from, you will find that one was produced by obstinate temper, another
by frantic love of strife, a third by some sordid desire.[320]

[312] Homer, "Iliad," xvii. 446, 447.

[313] See the Fable [Greek: Alopex kai Pardalis]. No.
42, Ed. Halme.

[314] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: ochriasesi kai
erythemasi].

[315] Forte [Greek: agnoian]."--_Wyttenbach._ The
ordinary reading is [Greek: anoian]. "E coelo descendit
[Greek: gnothi seauton]," says Juvenal truly, xi. 27.

[316] Compare the image in Shakspere, "Hamlet," A. iii.
Sc. I. 165, 166.

"Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh."

[317] Euripides, "Bacchae," 1170-1172. Agave's treatment
of her son Pentheus was a stock philosophical
comparison. See for example Horace, ii. "Sat." iii. 303,
304, and context.

[318] Euripides, "Orestes," 258.

[319] "_Aurum_ puta. Pactolus enim aurum fert. Videtur
dictio e Pindaro desumta esse."--_Reiske._

[320] "Libellus hic fine carere videtur. Quare autem
opusculum hoc Plutarcho indignum atque suppositum visum
Xylandro fuerit, non intelligo."--_Reiske._

ON ABUNDANCE OF FRIENDS.

Sec. I. Menon the Thessalian, who thought he was a perfect adept in
discourse, and, to borrow the language of Empedocles, "had attained the
heights of wisdom," was asked by Socrates, what virtue was, and upon his
answering quickly and glibly, that virtue was a different thing in boy
and old man, and in man and woman, and in magistrate and private person,
and in master and servant, "Capital," said Socrates, "you were asked
about one virtue, but you have raised up a whole swarm of them,"[321]
conjecturing not amiss that the man named many because he knew not one.
Might not someone jee