The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: The Dryden Translation
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The makers of Encyclopaedia Britannica bring you one of the Great Books of the Western World. This text captures major ideas, stories, and discoveries that helped shape Western culture.
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“I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off: ‘Beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther.’” (Page 1)
“With like reason may we blame those who misuse that love of inquiry and observation which nature has implanted in our souls, by expending it on objects unworthy of the attention either of their eyes or their ears, while they disregard such as are excellent in themselves, and would do them good.” (Page 121)
“And though possessed, as it were, by a kind of inspiration for the pursuit of every virtue, yet what most of all virtue and excellence fixed his affection was that steady and inflexible justice which is not to be wrought upon by favour or compassion.” (Page 621)
“Let us hope that Fable may, in what shall follow, so submit to the purifying processes of Reason as to take the character of exact history. In any case, however, where it shall be found contumaciously slighting credibility and refusing to be reduced to anything like probable fact, we shall beg that we may meet with candid readers, and such as will receive with indulgence the stories of antiquity.” (Page 1)
“It was for the sake of others that I first commenced writing biographies; but I find myself proceeding and attaching myself to it for my own; the virtues of these great men serving me as a sort of looking-glass, in which I may see how to adjust and adorn my own life.” (Page 195)
- Title: The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: The Dryden Translation
- Author: Plutarch
- Edition: Second Edition
- Series: Great Books of the Western World
- Volume: 13
- Publishers: Robert P. Gwinn, Encyclopedia Britannica
- Print Publication Date: 1990
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Greece › Biography--Early works to 1800; Rome › Biography--Early works to 1800
- ISBNs: 0852295316, 9780852295311
- Resource ID: LLS:GBWW13
- Resource Type: text.monograph.ancient-manuscript.translation
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:11:08Z