Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1

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W. Heinemann, 1914 - Biographies
A series of biographies of famous Greek and Roman men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings.
 

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Page 243 - Spartan children were not in that manner under tutors, purchased or hired with money, nor were the parents at liberty to educate them as they pleased; but as soon as they were seven years old, Lycurgus ordered them to be enrolled in companies, where they were all kept under the same order and discipline, and had their exercises and recreations in common.
Page 215 - Next, he undertook to divide up their movable property also, in is order that every vestige of unevenness and inequality might be removed; and when he saw that they could not bear to have it taken from them directly, he took another course, and overcame their avarice by political devices. In the first place, he withdrew all gold and silver money from currency and ordained the use of iron money 20 only. Then to a great weight and mass of this he gave a trifling value, so that ten minas' worth required...
Page xi - What lies beyond is sandy desert without', water and full of wild beasts," or " blind marsh," or "Scythian cold," or "frozen sea," so in the writing of my Parallel Lives, now that I have traversed those periods of time which are accessible to probable reasoning and which afford basis for a history dealing with facts...
Page 213 - Determined, therefore, to banish insolence and envy and crime *o and luxury, and those yet more deep-seated and afflictive diseases of the state, poverty and wealth, he persuaded his fellow-citizens to make one parcel of all their territory and divide it up anew, and to live with one another on a basis of entire uniformity and equality in the means of subsistence, seeking preeminence through virtue alone...
Page 241 - For it is said that epileptic and sickly infants are thrown into convulsions by the strong wine and loose their senses, while the healthy ones are rather tempered by it, like steel, and given a firm habit of body. Their nurses, too, exercised great care and skill ; they reared infants without swaddling-bands, and thus left their limbs and figures free to develop ; besides, they taught them to be contented and happy, not dainty about their food, nor fearful of the dark, nor afraid to be left alone,...
Page 455 - ... hippikon," a distance of four furlongs, that should be used, but where the distance was greater than this, people must try to get water of their own ; if, however, after digging to a depth of ten fathoms on their own land, they could not get water, then they might take it from a neighbour's well, filling a five gallon jar twice a day ; for he thought it his duty to aid the needy, not to provision the idle.
Page 243 - Of reading and writing, they learned only enough to serve their turn ; all the rest of their training was calculated to make them obey commands well, endure hardships, and conquer in battle.
Page 457 - But the law concerning naturalized citizens is of doubtful character. He permitted only those to be made citizens who were permanently exiled from their own country, or who removed to Athens with their entire families to ply a trade. This he did, as we are told, not so much to drive away other foreigners, as to invite these particular ones to Athens with the full assurance of becoming citizens; he also thought that reliance could be placed both on those who had been forced to abandon their own country,...
Page xi - Nor is it too much to affirm that of the two halves of Plutarch's writings, of his Lives and his Morals, each constitutes a complement of the other ; the one half setting forth to us, and, so far as this was possible, from ideal points of view, what the ancient world had aimed at and accomplished in the world of action, and the other what, in like manner, it had aimed at and accomplished in the world of...
Page 223 - editia," which refers merely to meals and eating. They met in companies of fifteen, a few more or less, and each one of the mess-mates contributed monthly a bushel of barleymeal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two and a half pounds of figs, and in addition to this, a very small sum of money for such relishes as flesh and fish. Besides this, whenever any one made a ка1 вгктач TIC атгар^г' /cal вг/реааач eTrefíijrev etc то a-vffcrLriov.

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