Plutarch

In ancient Greece, the women of Thessaly developed this reputation for being able to draw down the moon.

Plutarch actually writes about a Thessalian woman called Agonis who apparently understood when lunar eclipses were going to happen and could predict them.

According to his account, she used that knowledge to convince people that she herself was bewitching the moon and drawing it down from the sky.

Even in modern witchcraft, eclipse energy is one of those things people disagree about.

These are as corrupting as individual beggars.

plutarch's morals contains this lesson quote a beggar asking an alms of a lacedaemonian he said well should i give thee anything thou wilt be the greater beggar for he that first gave thee money made thee idle and is the cause of this base and dishonorable way of living end quote as i know them there are few millionaires very few indeed who are clear of the sin of having made beggars bearing in mind these considerations let us endeavour to present some of the best uses to which a millionaire can devote the surplus of which he should regard himself as only the trustee first standing apart by itself there is the founding of a university by men enormously rich such men as must necessarily be few in any country perhaps the greatest sum ever given by an individual for any purpose is the gift of senator stanford who undertakes to establish a complete university upon the pacific coast where he amassed his enormous fortune which is said to involve the expenditure of ten millions of dollars and upon which he may be expected to bestow twenty millions of his surplus he is to be envied a thousand years hence some orator speaking his praise upon the then crowded shores of the pacific may thus adapt griffith's eulogy of wolsey in bestowing madam he was most princely ever witness for him this seat of learning though unfinished yet so famous so excellent in art and still so rising that christendom shall ever speak his virtue here is a noble use of wealth we have many such institutions john hopkins cornell packer and others but most of these have only been bequeathed and it is impossible to extol any man greatly for simply leaving what he cannot take with him cooper and pratt and stanford and others of this class deserve credit and admiration as much for the time and attention given during their lives as for their expenditure upon their respective monuments we cannot think of the pacific coast without recalling another important work of a different character which has recently been established there the lick observatory if any millionaire be interested in the ennobling study of astronomy and there should be and would be such if they but gave the subject the slightest attention here is an example which could well be followed for the progress made in astronomical instruments and appliances is so great and continuous that every few years a new telescope might be judiciously given to one of the observatories upon this continent the last being always the largest and the best and certain to carry further and further the knowledge of the universe and of our relation to it here upon the earth as one among many of the good deeds of the late mr thaw of pittsburg his constant support of the observatory there may be mentioned this observatory enabled professor langley to make his wonderful discoveries he is now at the head of the smithsonian institution a worthy successor to professor henry Connected with him was Mr. Brashear of Pittsburgh, whose instruments are in most of the principal observatories of the world.

He was a common millwright, but Mr. Thaw recognized his genius and was his main support through trying days.

This common workman has been made a professor by one of the foremost scientific bodies of the world.

porphyry born in two thirty three a d was his pupil granting that longinus was twenty years porphyry's senior he must have come into the world about two hundred and thirteen a d he travelled much studied in many cities and was the friend of the mystic neoplatonists plotinus and ammonius the former called him a philologist not a philosopher porphyry shows us longinus at a supper where the plagiarisms of greek writers are discussed a topic dear to trivial or spiteful mediocrity he is best known by his death as the greek secretary of zenobia he inspired a haughty answer from the queen to aurelian who therefore put him to death Many rhetorical and philosophic treaties are ascribed to him, whereof only fragments survive.

Did he write the treatise on the sublime? Modern students prefer to believe that the famous essay is, if not by Plutarch, as some hold, at least

by some author of his age, the age of the early Caesars.

The arguments for depriving Longinus Zenobia's tutor of the credit of the treatise lie on the surface and may be briefly stated.

and who perished under his revenge.

But ammonius is not a very uncommon name, and we have no reason to suppose that the Neoplatonist ammonius busied himself with the literary criticism of Homer and Plato.

There was, among others, an Egyptian ammonius, the tutor of Plutarch.

These are the mass of the arguments on both sides.

With Homer, we breathe the fresh air of the pristine world when the light of poetry gilded every mountaintop and peopled the earth with heroes and demigods.

With Plutarch, we walk in company with sages, warriors, and statesmen, and kindle with admiration of their virtues or are roused to indignation at their crimes.

With Sophocles, we sound the depths of human passion and learn the sublime lesson of endurance.

We are charmed with an ode of Horace, perfect in rhythm, perfect in sentiment, perfect in diction, and perfect in moral, the condensed essence of volumes in a single page.

To steer across an unknown sea with Columbus, or to brave the dangers of the frozen ocean with Nansen or Dr. Kane.

To study the manners of ancient nations with Herodotus.

To live over again the life of Greece and Rome with Plutarch's heroes.

To trace the decline of empires with Gibbon and Mommsen.

And you leave and you just feel refreshed and you feel like I can do it another week versus the mom who is like, oh, my gosh, you're not doing this already.

You haven't read Plutarch or you're not reading Shakespeare with your students.

Like we we did all of that before breakfast this morning.

And like you're like, OK, well, I need about a month before I see you again because it's going to take me that long to recover.

Promoted by the vast extension of the geographical limits of the Greek world resulting from Alexander's conquests, and by his policy of breaking down the barriers between Greek and barbarian, the idea was reflected in the Stoic doctrine that all men are brothers and that a man's true country is not his own particular city but the ecumene.

Footnote Plutarch long ago saw the connection between the policy of Alexander and the cosmopolitan teaching of Zeno.

End of footnote It soon became familiar, popularized by the most popular of the later philosophies of Greece.

And just as it had been implied in the imperial aspiration and polity of Alexander, so it was implied, still more clearly, in the imperial theory of Rome.

Alexander's own horse, Bucephalus, became almost as famous as many of the people around him.

Plutarch, writing much later, tells the story of the young Alexander watching experienced men fail to control the animal.

Alexander noticed that Bucephalus appeared frightened by his own shadow, so he turned him towards the sun and calmly mounted him.

The adults had tried strength.

Rather, democracy and aristocracy were each understood as a check upon the other that would, when combined, produce the very best man possible, the Republican aristocrat.

the classical Republican aristocrat, or as it came to be in America, those stern men of Plutarch's days that existed in ours, the founding fathers, particularly the Virginian founding fathers like Richard Henry Lee and George Washington.

As Sidner writes, quote, "...18th century Virginia did not regard democracy and aristocracy as contradictory kinds of government." It employed both of these qualities in its political system, and it was the interplay of these two forces, democratic and aristocratic, that gave to the government of colonial Virginia much of that distinctive quality, which made for the selection of those men who ruled Virginia during the era of the American Revolution.

End quote.