or worse, the more serious labor. There is, of course, a great inequality in their work. But the translation by Langhorne, for which, in the middle of the last century, the older volumes were discarded, is so inferior in liveliness, and is in fact so dull and heavy a book, that, in default of an entirely new translation, some advantage, it is hoped, may be gained by the revival here attempted. It would not have been needed, had Mr. Long not limited the series which he published, with very useful notes, in Mr. Knight's Shilling Library, to the lives connected with the Civil Wars of Rome.
Dryden's Life of Plutarch is, like many of Dryden's writings, hasty yet well written, inaccurate but agreeable to read; that by Dacier, printed in the last volume of his French translation, is, in many respects, very good. The materials for both were collected, and the references accumulated, by Rualdus, in his laborious Life appended to the old Paris folios of 1624. But every thing that is of any value is given in the articles in Fabricius's Bibliotheca Græca, and, with the most recent additions, in Pauly's German Cyclopædia. Much that is useful is found, as might be expected, in Clinton's Fasti Romani, from which the following table is taken:—
| Date. A. D. |
OCCURRENCES. | AUTHORS. | |
| 41 | Accession of Claudius. | ||
| 54 | Accession of Nero. | Seneca. Lucan. Persius. | |
| 66 | Nero comes into Greece; alluded to in Plutarch's Dialogue. On the EI at Delphi. | ||
| 67 | Nero celebrates the Isthmian Games; alluded to in Plutarch's life of Flamininus. | ||
| 68 | Galba is Emperor. Civil wars. | ||
| 69 | Yitellius, Otho, Vespasian. | ||
| 70 | Taking of Jerusalem. | ||
| 74 | The Philosophers are expelled from Rome. | Death of Pliny the Elder. | |
| 79 | Death of Sabinus, the Gaul. | ||
| 79 | Death of Vespasian, and accession of Titus. | ||
| 79 | Eruption of Vesuvius; alluded to by Plutarch, as a recent occurrence, in his Enquiry why the Pythian Oracles are no longer delivered in verse. | ||
