and far nations understood before the name of Romans, so great were their victories.' Given the Roman dominion and two parties with the traditions of Marius and Sulla behind them, there was nothing for it but that one or other should prove its competence to rule; and no other way of achieving this than finding the man and giving him the power. The Marians found Cæsar, and in him a man who could find power for himself. The political heirs of Sulla found Cato and Brutus, and Lucullus and Pompey; but none of these was Cæsar, and, such as they were, the Senate played them off the one against the other. Bemused with theories and sentiments, they neither saw the necessity, nor seized the means, of governing a world that cried aloud for government. In Plutarch you watch the play; and, whạtever you may think of the actors-of Crassus or Cato, Pompey or Cæsar-of the non-actors you can think nothing. Bibulus, with his bills,' and the Senate, which bade Pompey disband his troops, stand for ever as types of formal incompetence. Plutarch shows that it is wiser and more righteous to win the game by accepting the rules, even if sometimes you must strain and break them, than to leave the table because you dislike the rules. stead of quarrelling with the rules and losing the game, the Senate should have won the game, and then have changed the rules. This Cæsar did, as Plutarch the republican allows, to the saving of his country and the lasting profit of mankind. Doubtless he shows the argument in action, and points the moral only in an epilogue. But living, as we do, after the politicians of so many ages and so many parties have laid competing claims to the glory of his chiefs, this is our gain. Brutus and Cato, heroes of

In

the Renaissance and gods of liberty a hundred years ago, we are told by eminent historians, were selfish oligarchs: bunglers who, having failed to feed the city or to flush the drains, wrote 'sulky letters' 1 about the one man who could do these things, and govern the world into the bargain. Between these views it skills not to decide. It is enough to take up the Lives and to rejoice that Plutarch, writing one hundred and fifty years after the foundering of the Republic, dwelt rather on its heroes who are for ever glorious than on its theories which were for ever shamed.

In his book are three complete plays: the brief tragedy of Athens-that land of honey and hemlock,' offering her cup of sweet and deadly elements to the dreamers of every age; with the drama of the merging of Greece in the dominion of Rome and the drama of the overthrow of the Roman Republic. And the upshot of all three is that the playwright insists on the culture of the individual for the sake of the State. The political teacher behind the political dramatist inculcates, no theory of politics but, an attitude towards life. Good is the child of custom and conflict, not the reward of individual research; so he shows you life as one battle in which the armies are ordered States. Every man, therefore, must needs be a citizen, and every citizen a soldier in the ranks. For this service, life being a battle, he must cultivate the soldier's virtues of courage and courtesy. The word is North's, and smacks something more of chivalry than Amyot's humanité; yet both may be taken to point Plutarch's moral, not only that victory is impossible without kindness between comrades, and intolerable without

1 Mommsen: he uses the phrase of Cicero.

forbearance between foes, but also, that in every age of man's progress to perfection through strife these qualities must be developed to a larger growth measured by the moral needs of war between nations and parties. He insists again and again on this need of courtesy in a world wherein all men are in duty bound to hold opposite opinions, for which they must in honour live and die. For this his Sertorius, his Lucullus, and his Mummius, sketched in a passing allusion, are chiefly memorable; while of Cæsar he writes that amongst other honours' his enemies gave him 'he rightly deserved this, that they should build him a Temple of Clemency.' Cæsar, lighting from his horse to embrace Cicero, the arch-instigator of the opposition he had overthrown, and walking with him a great way a-foot'; or Demetrius, who, the Athenians having defaulted, gathers them into the theatre, and then, when they expect a massacre, forgives them in a speech-these are but two exemplars of a style which Plutarch ever praises. And if his standard of courtesy in victory be high, not lower is his standard of courage in defeat. Demosthenes is condemned for that he took his banishment unmanly,' while Phocion, his rival, is made glorious for his irony in death: paying, when the stock ran out, for his own hemlock, sith a man cannot die at Athens for nothing.' In defeat Plutarch's heroes sometimes doubted if life were worth living; but they never doubted there were things in life worth dying for. Even Demosthenes is redeemed in his eyes because, at the last, sith the god Neptune denied him the benefit of his sanctuary, he betook him to a greater, and that was Death.' So often does Plutarch applaud the act of suicide, and so scornfully does he revile those who, like the last

king of Macedon, forwent their opportunity, that we might easily misconceive his ethics. But when a man will willingly kill himself, he must not do it to be rid of pains and labour, but it must have an honourable respect and action. For, to live or die for his own respect, that cannot but be dishonourable.

And therefore I am of opinion that we should not yet cast off the hope we have to serve our country in time to come; but when all hope faileth us, then we may easily make ourselves away when we list.' Thus, after Selasia, the last of the kings of Sparta, who recalled the saying of Lycurgus: that, with great personages . . . . . the end of their life should be no more idle and unprofitable then the rest of their life before.' And this is the pith of Plutarch's political matter: that men may not with honour live unto themselves, but must rather live and die in respect to the State.

II

Side by side, and in equal honour, with Plutarch the dramatist of politics there should stand, I think -not Plutarch the moralist but-Plutarch the unrivalled painter of men. Much has been written, and rightly written, of his perennial influence upon human character and human conduct; yet outside the ethics of citizenship he insisted on little that is not now a platitude. The interest of his morals springs from their likeness to our own; the wonder of his portraitures must ever be new and strange. Indeed, we may speak of his art much as he writes, through North, of the 'stately and sumptuous buildings' which Pericles 'gave to be built in the cittie of Athens.' For 'it looketh at this daye as if it were

but newly done and finished, there is such a certaine kynde of florishing freshnes in it, which letteth that the injurie of time cannot impaire the sight thereof: as if every one of those foresaid workes had some living spirite in it, to make it seeme young and freshe: and a soul that lived ever, which kept them in good continuing state.' Yet despite this 'florishing freshnes' the painter has been slighted for the preacher, and for this preference of the ethical before the æsthetic element in the Lives, and of both before their political quality, Plutarch has mostly himself to thank. Just as he masks a political framework under a professed devotion to the study of individual souls, so, when he comes to the study of these souls, he puts you off by declaring a moral aim in language that may easily mislead. 'When first I began these lives,' he writes in the Paulus Emilius, my intent was to profit other: but since, continuing and going on, I have much profited myself by looking into these histories, as if I looked into a glasse, to frame and facion my life, to the moold and patterne of these vertuous noble men, and doe as it were lodge them with me, one after another.' And again, by keeping allwayes in minde the acts of the most noble, vertuous and best geven men of former age I doe teache and prepare my selfe to shake of and banishe from me, all lewde and dishonest condition, if by chaunce the companie and conversation of them whose companie I keepe . . . doe acquaint me with some unhappie or ungratious touche.' Now, as matter of fact, he does not keep always in mind these, and these only. Doubtless his aim was moral; yet assuredly he never did pursue it by denoting none save the virtuous acts of the most noble, vertuous, and best geven men.' On the contrary, his practice