eleven books have been preserved, in which the origin and foundation of the Roman state are treated with great amplitude, and the history of the republic brought down to the end of the decemvirate. He has been censured for dealing in the marvellous; but the censure applies equally to Livy, who has repeated the same stories, without, it is probable, either believing them himself or expecting his readers to do so. Those who write of the origin of nations have but scanty materials of genuine history, and are thus tempted to eke them out with the popular fables. And these it is sometimes important to know, as they have frequently given rise to ceremonies and customs both of a religious and civil nature, of which the origin may therefore be considered as belonging to authentic history. The point in which Dionysius is more justly to be blamed is his fondness for system, and the desire he has to persuade his readers of his own sagacity in discovering, as he imagines, a deep and refined policy in the founders of the Roman state, in all those con stitutional regulations regarding the powers and rights of the different orders, the functions of the magistrates, &c., which, in reality, could only have arisen gradually and progressively, as circumstances pointed out and required them. Of this error of Dionysius, I shall have another occasion to take some notice.

There are few of the ancient historians who deserve a higher rank in the estimation of the moderns than Arrian, whose history of the expedition of Alexander is the most authentic narrative we have of the exploits of that great conqueror, as he is also the best expositor of the real motives and designs of that extraordinary man, of whose policy such opposite judgments have been formed. The narrative of Arrian, as he informs us in his preface, is founded on the accounts givens by two of Alexander's principal officers,

count of all the sources of information from which his history is compiled.

Aristobulus and Ptolemy Lagus, afterward the sovereign of Egypt. No historical record, therefore, has a better claim to the public faith. The brief account of India by Arrian, which includes the curious journal of Nearchus's voyage, is likewise extremely interesting and instructive. The style of Arrian, formed on that of Xenophon, is a very happy imitation of that author's simplicity, purity, and precision. Arrian's merits are not solely those of an accurate and able historian; he was likewise a profound philosopher. It is to his writings that we owe all our knowledge of the sublime morality of Epictetus, of whom he was the favourite disciple, and has diligently recorded the philosophical lessons and maxims of his master. The short treatise entitled the Enchiridion of Epictetus, which is a complete epitome of the stoical morality, was written by Arrian, and, from its beautiful precision, is perhaps on the whole a more valuable memorial of that great philosopher than the four books which Arrian has collected of his discourses.

The last author I shall mention of those properly to be classed among the Greek historians is Plutarch, and perhaps there is no writer of antiquity of equal value in point of important matter and useful information. Plutarch was a Boeotian by birth, a native of Chæronea, a small state of which his father was chief magistrate, with the title of archon. He was born in the 48th year of the Christian era, under the reign of the emperor Claudius. In his youth he travelled into Egypt, and while in that country, studied under Ammonius, a celebrated teacher of philosophy at Alexandria. Returning thence into Greece, he visited all the schools of the philosophers in that country, and, finally, with a mind replete with useful knowledge and an extensive acquaintance with men and manners, he repaired to Rome, for the purpose of examining the public records and collecting materials for the lives of the illustrious men of Italy and Greece. The reputation he had

acquired as a man of great erudition procured him the acquaintance of all the learned, and introduced him to the notice of the emperor Trajan, who honoured him with high marks of his favour and friendship, and conferred on him the proconsular government of Illyria. A public life, however, was irksome to Plutarch, whose chief enjoyment lay in the pursuits of literature and philosophy. He returned after the death of Trajan to his native city of Charonea, where he passed the remaining years of a long life in discharging the office of its chief magistrate, in the composition of his excellent writings, and in the continual practice of all the active and social virtues. The Lives of Illustrious Men, written by Plutarch, must upon the whole be ranked among the most valuable works which remain to us of the ancients. He is the only author who introduces us to an intimate and familiar acquaintance with those great men whose public exploits and political characters we find indeed in other historians, but of whose individual features as men, and of their manners in domestic, private, and social intercourse, we should be utterly ignorant, were it not for his descriptive paintings, and the truly characteristic anecdotes which he records of them. What, if at times the biographer is chargeable with a little garrulity, and a too scrupulous minuteness in the detail of circumstances not of the highest importance? So natural is the desire felt by the ingenuous mind of knowing everything that concerns a great and illustrious character, that we can much more easily forgive the writer who is cheerfully lavish of the information he has collected, and at times descends even to trifling particulars, than him who, from a proud feeling of the dignity of authorship, is fastidiously sparing of his stores, and disdains to be ranked among the collectors of anecdote.

A great charm of Plutarch's writings is the admirable vein of morality which pervades all his compositions. Every sentiment proceeds from the heart, and

forcibly persuades the reader of the amiable candour, worth, and integrity of the writer. While his biographical details contain the most valuable part of the ancient history of Greece and Rome, his moral writings include the sum of all the ancient ethics. Perhaps it was no exaggerated estimate of his merits made by Theodore Gaza, when he declared that if every trace of ancient learning was to perish, and he had it in his power to preserve one single book from the works of the profane writers, his choice would fall upon Plutarch.

The style of this author, though in the judgment of the best critics, neither polished nor pure, is at all times energetic; and, on those occasions when the subject demands it, rises frequently to great eloquence.

An ancient Greek epigram of Agathias records the high esteem which the Roman people entertained for this excellent writer, in erecting a statute to his honour.*

The epigram is thus translated by Dryden :-
"Boeotian Plutarch, to thy deathless praise
Does martial Rome this graceful statue raise;
Because both Greece and she thy fame have shared,
Their heroes written, and their lives compared.
But thou thyself could never write thy own;
Their lives have parallels, but thine has none.'

CHAPTER IX.

GREEK PHILOSOPHY-Ionic

Sect-Thales--Anaximander-Anaximenes-Anaxagoras-Italic Sect-Pythagoras-Empedocles, &c.,-Eleatic Sect-Zeno-Leucippus-Democritus-Heraclitus-Socrates-Cyrenaic Sect-AristippusDiogenes-Megaric Sect-Plato-Peripatetics

Cynics

Aristotle Skeptics-Pyrrho-Stoics-Epicureans-Reflections.

I HAVE already remarked that one considerable effect of the public games and festivals of the Greeks was the propagation and advancement of the literary spirit. The Olympic and other solemn games of the Greeks were not only the field of martial and athletic exercises, but of the contests for the palm of literature. Those immense assemblies were the stated resort of the poets, the historians, the rhapsodists, and even the philosophers.

After the days of Homer and Hesiod, the increasing relish for poetical composition gave rise to a set of men termed rhapsodists, whose original employment was to travel from one city to another, frequenting public entertainments and solemn festivals, and reciting works of the poets which they had committed to memory. As the early poets were the first teach ers of the sciences, those rhapsodists became commentators on their works, and expositors of their doctrines. The youth, who resorted to them for instruction, dignified their masters with the title of Sophists or professors of wisdom, and these sophists soon became the founders of different sects or schools of phiosophy.

The history of the ancient philosophy, if we consider how small a portion it embraced of useful knowledge, and yet how ardent the zeal of its teachers, and how keen the controversies of the different sects, af fords on the whole a mortifying picture of the caprice and weakness of the human mind: but on these very