Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/254

 246 DION. but carrying meat from the shambles, so it is very proba- ble that the principles of those who have had the same good education should appear with a resemblance in all their actions, creating in them a certain harmony and proportion, at once agreeable and becoming. We may also draw a close parallel of the lives of the two men from their fortunes, wherein chance, even more than their own designs, made them nearly alike. For they were both cut off by an untimely death, not being able to accomplish those ends which through many risks and difficulties they aimed at. But, above all, this is most wonderful ; that by preternatural interposition both of them had notice given of their approaching death by an unpropitious form, which visibly ajDpeared to them. Although there are people who utterly deny- any such thing, and say that no man in his right senses ever yet saw any supernatural phantom or apparition, but that children only, and silly women, or men disordered by sickness, in some aberration of the mind or distempera- ture of the body, have had empty and extravagant imagi- nations, whilst the real evil genius, superstition, was in themselves. Yet if Dion and Brutus, men of solid under- standing, and philosophers, not to be easily deluded by fancy or discomposed by any sudden apprehension, were thus affected by visions, that they forthwith declared to their friends what they had seen, I know not how we can avoid admitting again the utterly exploded o^oinion of the oldest times, that evil and beguiling spirits, out of an envy to good men, and a desire of impeding their good deeds, make efforts to excite in them feelings of terror and distraction, to make them shake and totter in their virtue, lest by a steady and unbiased perseverance they should obtain a happier condition than these beings after death. But I shall leave these things for another oppor- tunity, and, in this twelfth book of the lives of great men