But up till the instant of his sounding it, you are told of his every act. Plutarch, proceeding as leisurely as his hero, creates suspense out of delay. You are told that Alexander slept soundly far into the morning, and that he was called three times. You are told how carefully he dressed, and of each article of armour and apparel he put on his 'Sicilian cassocke,' his brigandine of many foldes of canvas,' 'his head peece bright as silver,' and 'his coller sute like to the same all set full of precious stones.' The battle has begun between the outposts, and he is still riding down the lines on a hack: 'to spare Bucephal, because he was then somewhat olde.' He mounted the great horse 'always at the last moment; and as soone as he was gotten up on his backe, the trumpet sounded, and he gave charge.' To-day it is made to seem as if that moment would never come; but at the last all things being ready, 'he tooke his launce in his left hande and, holding up his right hande unto heaven, besought the goddes

that if it were true, he was begotten of Jupiter, it would please them that day to helpe him and to incorage the Græcians. The sooth-sayer Aristander was then a-horsebacke hard by Alexander apparelled all in white, and a croune of gold on his head, who shewed Alexander when he made his prayer, an Eagle flying over his head, and pointing directly towards his enemies. This marvellously encouraged all the armie that saw it, and with this joy, the men of armes of Alexander's side, encouraging one another, did set spurres to their horse to charge upon the enemies.' Until the heroic instant you are compelled to note the hero's every deliberate movement. He and the little group of gleaming figures about him are the merest specks in the plain before

the Macedonian army, itself but a handful in comparison to the embattled nations in front. The art is perfect in these flash-pictures of great moments in time in the Athenians map-drawing in the dust, in the Romans watching the Ambrons raking by, in Tigranes' laugh, in Hannibal's joke, in Alexander's supreme gesture; and how instant in each the imaginative suggestion of dragging hours before rapid and irreparable events! Equally potent are the effects which Plutarch contrives by revealing all the consequences of a disaster in some swift, farreaching glimpse. Thus, when Cæsar crossed the Rubicon, 'Rome itself was filled up with the flowing repaire of all the people who came thither like droves of cattell.' And thus does Sparta receive the news of her annihilation :- At that time there was by chance a common feast day in the citie when as the messenger arrived that brought the news of the battell lost at Leuctres. The Ephori knowing then that the rumor ranne all about; that they were all undone, and how they had lost the signorie and commaundement over all Grece: would not suffer them for all this to breake off their daunce in the Theater, nor the citie in anything to chaunge the forme of their feast, but sent unto the parentes to everie man's house, to let them understande the names of them that were slaine at the battell, they themselves remaining still in the Theater to see the daunces and sportes continued, to judge who carried the best games away. The next morning when everie man knew the number of them that were slaine, and of those also that escaped: the parentes and frendes of them that were dead, met in the market place, looking cheerfully of the matter, and one of them embraced another. On thother side the parentes of

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them that scaped, kept their houses with their wives, as folk that mourned. The mothers of them, that kept their sonnes which came from the battell, were sad and sorrowfull, and spake not a word. Contrairily, the mothers of them that were slaine, went friendly to visite one another, to rejoyce together.' 1 There is no word of the fight. As Thackeray gives you Waterloo in a picture of Brussels, so Plutarch gives you Leuctra, and with more of beauty and pathos, in a picture of Sparta. Of the Roman defeat at Cannæ there is a full and wonderful account; but what an effective touch is added with the Consul Terentius Varro returning backe to Rome, with the shame of his extreame misfortune and overthrowe, that he durste not looke upon any man: the Senate notwithstanding, and all the people following them, went to the gates of the cittie to meete him, and dyd honourably receyve him'!

In these passages Plutarch, following the course of Greek tragedy, and keeping the action off the stage, gives the reverberation and not the shock of fate; but in many others the stark reality of his painting is its own sufficient charm. He abounds in unfamiliar aspects of familiar places: places he invests with (as it were) the magic born of a wandering son's return. Here is his Athens in her decrepitude. 'The poore citie of Athens which had escaped from so many warres, tyrannies and civil dissensions,' is now besieged by Sulla without, and oppressed by the tyrant Aristion within; and in his presentment of her condition there is, surely, a foreshadowing of those dark ages when historic sites became the scenes of new tragedies that were merely brutal and insignificant. At Athens' men were driven for famine Agesilaus.

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to eate feverfew that grew about the castell'; also, they 'caused old shoes and old oyle potes to be sodden to deliver some savor unto that which they did eate. Meanwhile the tyrant himselfe did nothing all day long but cramme in meat, drinke dronke, daunce, maske, scoff and flowte at the enemies (suffering the holy lampe of Minerva to go out for lack of oyle).' Is there not a grimness of irony about this picture of the drunken and sinister buffoon sitting camped in the Acropolis, like a toad in a ruined temple, 'magnifying the dedes of Theseus and insulting the priestes'? At last the Roman enters the city about midnight 'with a wonderfull fearefull order, making a marvellous noise with a number of hornes and sounding of trompets, and all his army with him in order of battell, crying, " To the sack, to the sack: Kill, kill."'1 A companion picture is that of a Syracuse Thucydides never knew.2 Archimedes is her sole defence; and thanks to him, the Roman ships are taken up with certaine engines fastened within one contrary to an other, which made them turne in the ayer like a whirlegigge, and so cast them upon the rockes by the towne walles, and splitted them all to fitters, to the great spoyle and murder of the persons that were within them.' Elsewhere the Mediterranean pirates, polite as our own highwaymen, are found inviting noble Romans to walk the plank; 3 for Plutarch never misses a romantic touch. Some of his strongest realisations are of moments when fate hangs by a hair: as that breathless and desperate predicament of Aratus and his men on their ladders against the walls of Sicyon; with the 'curste curres' that would not cease from barking; the captain of the watch visiting the soldiers with a 3 Pompey.

1 Sylla.

2 Marcellus.

little bell'; 'the number of torches and a great noyse of men that followed him'; the great greyhound kept in a little tower, which began to answer the curs at large with a soft girning: but when they came by the tower where he lay, he barked out alowde, that all the place thereabouts rang of his barking'; the ladders shaking and bowing 'by reason of the weight of the men, unless they did come up fayer and softly one after another,' till at last, the cocks began to crowe, and the country folke that brought things to the market to sell, began to come apace to the towne out of every quarter. Later in the same life you have the escalading of the Acrocorinthus: when Aratus and the storming party, with their shoes off, being lost on the slopes,

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sodainely, even as it had been by miracle, the moone appearing through the clowdes, brought them to that part of the wall where they should be, and straight the moone was shadowed againe'; so they cut down the watch, but one man escaped, and 'the trompets forthwith sounded the alarom. . . all the citie was in an uprore, the streets were straight full of people running up and downe, and of lights in every corner.' Plutarch's management of light, I should remark, is always astonishingly real; he never leaves the sun or the moon out of his picture, nor the incidence of clouds and of the dust of battle. Thus varied his sunshine leaps and wavers on distant armour, or glares at hand from Margian steel; or his moonlight glints on a spear, and fades as the wrack races athwart the sky.

It is all the work of an incomparable painter; there is any amount of it in the Parallel Lives; 2 and,

1 Aratus.

2 See the rousing of Greece in the Philopamen; the declaration of