BOOKS.

GREEK HISTORY FROM PLUTARCH.* WE wish to recommend to the English reader a genuine bit of Greek History, in a series of Lives from a good old Greek author, with whose name we are most of us more or less familiar. These "Lives,"—the lives namely, of Themistocles, Pericles, Alcibiades, Lysander, Pelopida.;, Timoleon' Demosthenes, and Alexander— were origally into nto Englishm h by Lord Somers, Creech, Charles Boyle, a son of John Evelyn, and a son of Sir Thomas Brown, and we suppose, others of less note. They are selected from what we believe is known as Dryden's translation of Plutarch's Lives, lately revised by Mr. A. H. Clough, the clever author, we presume of a long vacation pastoral, whose astounding title, The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich, should deter no one from reading what is, in our opinion, a fresh, racy bit of college romance, with witty, humorous and poetical touches' and. a rhythm in its rough music, which make it worth a cart load of poetry, commonly so-called— and a great deal more.

These eight lives have been arranged by Mr. Clough in a chro- nological order from Themistocles to Alexander, so as to "form a sketch of Greek history more agreeable than a compendium." They comprise we are told, a portion of the history with which Plutarch is himself best acquainted, and for some parts of which he is a principal authority. This volume will possibly be suc- ceeded by a second, including a parallel series of lives, also of Greek men, which, with Mr. George Long's valuable selection of Plutarch's biographies, in illustration of the civil wars of Rome, will form an excellent manual of the history of the most striking periods of the two empires of pagan antiquity, in which modern Europe is most interested.

Plutarch is correctly described by Mr. Clough, as a biographer

and a moralist, rather than as a historian. His object is to illus- trate individual character, and not social or political phenomena. "Plutarch," says his present editor, "wrote in the time of Trojan, and we have learned the value of contemporary state- ments: it is justly felt that, for the time of Pericles, his evidence is not to be compared to that of Thucydides." Plutarch must not be mistaken for a philosophical historian. Perhaps his intellect was not sufficiently sceptical or scrutinizing, to have enabled him to become such, had he wished to write history instead of bio- graphy. This, however, was not his desire. His aim was to write the lives of men, to direct his attention to the "marks and indi- cations of their souls," to apprehend the significant trifles and suggestive accidents of character, to show, like a portrait-painter, the whole manner and spirit of the heroic men of Greece and Rome. Plutarch, in some sense' anticipated our modern literary hero worship. He thought that the love of virtue was inspired by the admiration of virtue' which great men represented and embodied in their actions. In his life of Pericles, he compares the acts of virtue, to colours whose freshness and pleasantness stimulate and strengthen the sight. Directed to them our in- tellectual perceptions are, with the sense of delight, called forth and allured to their proper good. Admiring what is done, we desire to imitate the doer. " Moral good, he continues, is a prac- tical stimulus to itself: it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an im- pulse to act; not influencing the mind and character by a mere imitation which we look at, but creating by the narrative of the fact a. moral purpose which we form." With this high estimate of the uses of biography, Plutarch naturally combined a high es- timate of biographical literature. Mr. Clough remarks that the second chapter of his Life of Pericles "might in general be headed, On the Superiority of History and Biography to the Fine Arts." To our modern thought, as the editor further observes, Plutarch's disparagement of sculpture and poetry, which was not peculiar to himself, but common among the Greeks and Romans, is not a little strange. It is true that Plutarch instances only se- condary poets as Phileta.s and. Anaoreon, but we cannot argue from the inferiority of these examples, to an exemption in favour of the primary poets, Homer, 2Esehylus, or iSophocles, since Phi- dies' to whom Pisa owed the statue of Jupiter, his greatest work, and Polycletus to whom Argos was indebted for that of Juno, both being masters in the art of expressing life in marble, are selected as the pattern objects of Plutarch's contemptuous depreciation. He almost classes, or seems to class poets, and sculptors with dyers and. perfumers, whom he pronounces low and sordid. people. Heroic action and manly completeness are, no doubt, greater than any partial accomplishment. Thus we assent to the sarcastic cri- ticism of Antisthenes, "when people told him that Ismenias was an admirable piper. He is but a miserable human being, other- wise he would not have been an admirable piper."

Whether art excludes manhood, whether Milton, Goethe or Scott, admirable as poets, were not also admirable as men, whether Michael. Angelo, in his quadruple capacity of architect, painter, sculptor and poet, was not "a man for a' that," we leave to the decision of competent judges. Plutarch, we suppose would have voted in the negative. Convinced at any rate, that noble action was higher than the noblest artistic creation, and that poetic skill was far beneath that which faithfully embodies the real doings and sayings of real men, he would on ethical grounds have pre- fervid his own "Lives" of Pericles, Timoleon, Alexander, to all the llitids and Odysseys, that ever were written. The practice of

• Greek History,from Themistocles to Alexander. in a series of Lives from Plu- tarch. Revised and arranged by A. Ii. Clough, sometime Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Published by Longman wad Co.

wise and able men and women, without confirming this hypothe- tical valuation, shows in what honour Plutarch has been held. Shakspeare, Montaigne, Rousseau, Turenne, and Madame Roland, are numbered. among his readers. In our own day, if we rightly remember, Emerson speaks of Plutarch admiringly. Neglected for twenty years, Mr. Clough reintroduces him to an English audience. We trust that his little volume, or we would say his two little volumes, will be welcomed into the library of every English youth and maiden. A repeated perusal will go far to make them under- stand and sympathize with the heroic proportions of Greek and Roman manhood ; and the errors and political misjudgments of the prince of biographers, must be corrected by the subsequent study of Thirlwall, Grote, and others.

The period, says Mr. Clough, in which Plutarch lived and wrote was an eventful period. It was the period which intervened between the reign of Claudius and that of Hadrian: Taoitus, the two Plinks Juvenal, Martial, Epietetus, Statius, Arrian and Lucian

were contemporaries. It was "the last flourishing era of heathendom : marked, it would seem, moreover, by a sort of late revival of the mixture of fable and moral philosophy which made up the Greek and Roman religion." Plutarch was born about A. D. 46, at ChEeronea, a small town of Bosotia—not that famous or infamous for the victory of the Man of Macedonia. The name of his father is not known. His grandfather's name was Lam- pries. He was educated at Athens ; he resided in Rome ; he mar- ried Timoxena, a lady of Cheeronea, of ancient lineage. He had. several children, among others a little Timoxena, who died. Plu- tarch was not without that experience of life which travel con- fers. In his youth he visited Egypt, and. Mr. Clough thinks it probable that he sojourned more than once, and that for a con- siderable time' in Italy. Plutarch was preeminently a literary man. His reading was well nigh exhaustive. As a writer, he was extremely productive. In addition to his renowned "Lives," he has bequeathed to all time numerous miscellaneous minor or moral works. As amen and as a citizen, Plutarch seems deserving of respectful commendation.

Returning to Mr. Clough's volume of Greek History, with its more than forty wood-outs, which really are illustrations, and its useful explanatory notes,—we find that it opens with the life of the great Themistocles, according to M. J. S. Mill, "the most sa- gacious, the most far-sighted, the most judiciously daring, the craftiest, and unfortunately also one of the most unprincipled politicians ; who first saved, then aggrandized, and at last would have sold his country." Plutarch's opinion of this distinguished. man we leave to be inferred from the story of his life, which he has told, with a variety of incident, anecdote, and splendid cir- cumstance' that brings the man and his times out clearly and forcibly. We pause now only to cite some instances of the Attic wit with which Themistocles could speak. He seemsto have been fond of figurative language, and to have aimed to drive home his meaning with a metaphor for a blow. "He said that the Athe- nians did not honour or admire him but made as it were

im

a plane tree of him; sheltered themselves under him in bad weather, and as soon as it was fine, plucked his leaves and cut his branches." Themistocles knew his own value, and took care that others should know how good a conceit he had of himself. When one of the Athenian generals boastingly compared his actions with those of Themistocles, he told him a sort of Greek fairy tale, which reminds us a little of the stories of Hans Andersen—" Once upon a time, the Day-after-the Festival found fault with the Festival. With you there is nothing but hurry and trouble and preparation, but when I come' everybody sits down quietly and enjoys him- self. The Festival admitted it was true, but added_ "if I had not come first, you would not have come at all." Even so, he said, if Themistocles had not come before where had you been now? To a Seriphian who objected that he owed the honour which he had obtained, not to himself but to the greatness of his city, he gave better than he got, when he answered. True ; I should never have been famous, if I had been of Seriphus; nor you, had you been of Athens. Themistocles was a bit of a humourist as well as a wit. "Loving to be singular in all things, when he had land to sell, he ordered the crier to give notice that there were good neighbours near it." It is interesting to learn that Plutarch was intimately acquainted with a Themistocles of Athens, the repre- sentative of the old hero, whose alter-shaped tomb, if Diodorus's conjecture be right, was erected "near the port of PirEeus where the land runs out like an elbow from the promontory of Alcimus, when you have doubled the cape and passed inward, where the sea is always calm." Byron saw it we presume, near half a cen- tury ago, when catching, as it were, the echo of Plutarch's descrip- tion, he sang :

"No breath of air to break the wave, That rolls below the Athenian's grave, That tomb which gleaming o'er the cliff, First greets the homeward-veering skiff, High o'er the land be saved in vain, When shall such hero live again !

The second " Life" in Mr. Ciongh's selection is that of Pericles, whose rare merits are not unrecognized by his biographer. Emi- nently beautiful is the passage in which Pericles, exemplifying, we would fain think, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the doctrine of a judicious and beneficent state-action, converted the surplus of the public wealth to such undertakings as in the future would procure for the Athenians eternal honour, and in the present, "freely supply all the inhabitants with plenty." Desiring at once to beautify Athens' and to distribute the capital of the republic in each a way, that the "-undisciplined mechanic multitude," might have an equitable share of the superfluous in- come of the country, Pericles "actually pat the whole city in a manner into state-pay."

" This associative experiment, judged on its own merits, seems

to have been thoroughly successful. Of the two ends proposed, one was to secure, for a time, an adjustment of social advantages, by providing the Athenian proletary with extraordinary remune- rative employment ; labour and capital, we assume, being in excess of the ordinary demand ; the other end was the patriotic. project of constructing a succession of magnificent public works, such as should reflect everlasting honour on the Athenian people, and embody in material forms whatever of august, graceful, holy, Humanity, in its Hellenic phase, had yet conceived. We do not stop to examine objections. We are aware that there is at least one point on which opposition might be raised—the right of ap- propriating the Imperial fund. This' however, is a point which in no way affects the argument. As to adverse considerations, grounded on the moral imperfections of Hellenic life, and the in- ferred unadvisableness of giving external reality to polytheistic conceptions, we can only say, that in every aspect of its progress, mankind is, and possibly always will be, a long way off from su- preme excellence. Art is only the ideal representation of life, and must partake in some degree of its defects, and, if you will, of its excesses, while, yet, in suggesting a nobler emotional exis- tence, it goes far to compensate and correct its errors.

However this may be, we get from Plutarch's masterly narra- tive a striking picture of the admirable organization of labour in that spirit of state-socialism which Pericles directed. "Every trade, he says, in the same way as a captain in an army has his particular company of soldiers under him, had its own hired com- pany of journeymen and labourers belonging to it banded together as in array, to be as it were the instrument and body for the per- formance of the service. So that to say all in a word, the occa- sions and service of these public works distributed plenty through every age and. condition." It seems they put the right man in the right place, in those days, too ; for Phidias had the oversight of all the works and was surveyor-general, though upon the va- rious portions other great masters and workmen were employed ; "Callicrates and Ictinus on the Parthenon ; Coriebus and Metagenes on the chapel at Eleusis; while the famous "long wall, which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles propose to the people, was undertaken by Callicrates." The marvel, Plutarch remarks, was that the rapidity of execution was answerable to the excellence of the material and the beauty of the design and workmanship. Undertakings, each of which seemed to demand several succes- sions and ages of men, "were every one of them accomplished in the height and prime of one man's political service." For which reason, resumes the Greek biographer, " Pericles's works are spe- cially admired, as having been made quickly to last long. For every particular piece of his work was immediately even at that time, for its beauty and elegance antique ; and yet in its vigour and freshness looks, to this day, as if it were just executed. There is a sort of bloom of newness upon those works of his, pre- serving them from the touch of time, as if they had sumo peren- nial spirit, and undecaying vitality mingled in the composition of them.

We do not intend to examine more minutely the life of Pericles, nor' indeed, to examine at all the lives of the six remaining worthies contained in the volume before us. We prefer to give, though in rough and hurried presentment, some general details, which illustrate individual or collective Greek life and thought. Thus we read of Alcibiades, with his long purple robes, like a woman, dragging after him as he went through the market-place, or causing the planks of his galley to be cut away that he might lie the softer, his bed not being placed on the boards but hanging on girths. We read, too how he kept Agatharcus the painter a prisoner till he had painted his whole house ; how he had a beau- tiful park, which he called after his own name, and a gilt shield with a Cupid holding a thunderbolt in his hand, painted on it. It was Alcibiades who at one time led the oligarchical party, and who persuaded the Athenians to undertake that ill-starred expedition to Sicily. Cannot we see Timon the misanthrope take kin by the hand on that day when he succeeded so well.in the assembly, and, too true prophet of evil as he was, cannot we hear him cry, amid the crowd that attended Alcibiades home, "Go on, my son, and increase in credit with the people : you will one day bring them calamities enough!"

i

It was n the days of this wilful and brilliant patrician that the famous outrage was perpetrated that so frightened the Athenians out of their propriety—the mutilation of the Mercury statues—an incident that has been illustrated in so masterly a way, by Mr. Grote, in his History of Greece. Alcibiades and some of his friends were accused of defacing other images, and having profanely acted the sacred mysteries at a drunken meet- ing. Theodorns, it was said, had been the "Herald," Polytion, the "Torchbearer," and Alcibiades himself, impiously mooking the two Goddesses Ceres and Proserpine, had enacted the "Chief Priest." The sentiment of popular exasperation at this insult to the established religion, to the sacramental cultus of Athens, can. only be understood by comparing it with the holy horror that would be excited in a Catholic community, by some analogous outrage on the snblimest mysteries of its faith. Athens had, in fact, its sceptics, its atheists, its rationalists in the age of Alcibiades and Socrates. Pericles was himself sus- pected of heresy. Aspasia was actually indicted of impiety. Anaxagoras was obliged to leave the city. It was to this emi- nent man, according to Plutarch, that Pericles was indebted, generally, for that elevation and sublimity of purpose and cha- racter which distinguished him. Anaxagoras of Clazomense, says Plutarch, was called by his contemporaries "by the name of Mind or Intelligence, whether in admiration of the great and ex- traordinary gift he displayed for the science of nature, or because that he was the first of the philosophers who did not refer the first ordering of the world to fortune or chance, but to a pure unadulterated intelligence, which in all other existing, mixed and compound things, acts as a principle of discrimination and of com- bination of like with like."

Such a conviction seems to imply a sort of initial and perhaps by no means imperfect monotheism. Anaxagoras might almost be claimed as the founder of their sect by our modern 'Deists. In a later period, Plutarch quotes two aphorisms which closely resemble the conclusions of our modern theological philosophy. We can hardly do better-than transfer the passage, in which we find them, as a last illustration, to our notice of this admirable volume of Greek biography-

" Among the sayings of one Psammon, a philosopher, whom he (Alex- ander) heard in Egypt, he most approved of this—that all melt are yorerned by God, became in everything that which is chief and commands, is divine. But what he pronounced himself upon this subject, was even more like a philosopher, for he said, God was the common father of us all, but in a special sense of the best of tn."