Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/573

 APPENDIX. 565 Page 356. — Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Xenocrates the philosopher, tells a pleasant story, which appears to belong to this occasion of his going as envoy with Phocion, and yet is quite inconsistent with Plutarch's account of it, and must, in some way or other, be inaccurate. Anlipaler, says Diogenes, asked him to supper. Xenocrates replied to the invitation by repealing the words in the Odyssey used hy Ulysses to Circe, when, shoiving him hospitality, she placed the table before him, and saw him neither eating or drinking, — " O Circe, what man of a right mind could let himself touch meat or drink before he had ransomed his companions, and beheld them with his eyes," — with which Antipatcr was so well pleased, that he released them. Xenocrates paid the alien-tax at Ath- ens (below, p. 3G0), being a native of Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople. Life of Cato, page 393. — Short-hand writers; in the Greek, semeiographi, writers by signs ; in Latin, notarii, which has the same sense. Page 394. — The life of Cato, like a dramatic piece, has this one scene or pas- sage full of perplexity and doubtful meaning. Every tragedy, according to Aristotle's remark in the Poetics, consists simply of two portions, one the fast- ening or complication, the other the undoing or solution of the difficulty or em- barrassment in which the plot consists (the nceud and the denouement of French criticism) ; and one particular part, one crisis, will usually bring the complica- tion to its height : the tragic dilemma has first to be indicated, then stated in its strongest terms, then one or other alternative taken, or a middle course somehow discovered, and the spectator one way or other relieved of his anx- iety. See for the tragic desis and lysis, Aristotle, Poetics, c. 18. Thrasca is the famous Thrasea Partus, who died by Nero's orders, and who wrote a life of Cato, his Stoic example, just as Arulcnus Rusticus wrote one of him. Page 408. — To seize his goods as tvas the custom. The magistrate might seize a portion of a man's property, by way of distress, to compel him to the discharge of a public duty. The sum of money brought from Cyprus, seven thousand talents, which Cato says (below, p. 410) was more than Pompey brought home from the ransacked world, seems quite too small ; the figure is probably wrong. Phylargyrus, just below, should be Philargyrus. The dock, in page 409, is the state-arsenal, or navalia, high up the river, at the other end of the Campus Martius, so that Cato passed through the whole city, and along a part of the Campus, before he brought his vessel to shore. Page 417. — Apollodorus the Phalerian is described in Plato's Pbtedo as shedding tears all through the previous conversation, and, when Socrates took the hemlock, bursting into a passion of distress and horror. Xenophon, in the Me- morabilia, calls him an ardent admirer of Socrates, but otherwise rather a silly person. He is also characterized at the beginning of Plato's Symposium. Pago 423. — The verses are from the Hercules Furens (174) ; an answer to a charge of cowardice brought against Hercules. Page 42 G. — The word domestics, used by the old translator, should have been altered; it is simply taken from the Latin word for the original Greek, which means, belonging to his house or family, and is not at all limited, as tho word domestics is with us, to servants. Page 441. — Cato could scarcely have read the Dialogue on the Soul (the