Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.1, 1865).djvu/31

Date. A. D.	OCCURRENCES.	AUTHORS.
81	Accession of Domitian.	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Quintilian. Statius. Silius Italicus. Martial.
90	The Philosophers are again expelled from Rome, after the death of Rusticus.
96	Accession of Nerva.	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Dio Chrysostom. Tacitus, born about A.D. 60. Plutarch. Epictetus. Arrian. Pliny the Younger, born, A.D. 61. Juvenal, born A.D. 59. Favorinus. Suetonius, born about A.D. 70.
98	Accession of Trajan.
100	Pliny's Panegyric.
103	Epictetus is teaching at Nicopolis, Arrian attending him.
104	Pliny in Bithynia.
106	Trajan winters on the Danube; alluded to by Plutarch, On the Principle of Cold.
113	Erection of Trajan's Column.
114	Trajan's Parthian Victories. Plutarch had written his life of Antony before these.
117	Accession of Hadrian.
117	In Hadrian's third year, Plutarch, according to Eusebius, was still alive.
138	Accession of Antoninus.	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Ptolemy. Appian. Paumnias. Galen. Lucian. Athenaeus. Dion Cassius.
161	Accession of Marcus Aurelius.
181	Accession of Commodus.

Note.—The authors whose names are printed in italics are Greek writers.

The fault which runs through all the earlier biographies, from that of Rualdus downward, is the assumption, wholly untenable, that Plutarch passed many years, as many, perhaps as forty, at Rome. The entire character of his life is of course altered by such an impression. It is, therefore, not worth while reprinting here the life originally prefixed by Dryden to the translations which, with more or less of alteration, follow in the present volumes. One or two characteristic extracts may be sufficient. The first may throw some light on a subject which to modern readers is a little obscure. Dryden is wrong in one or two less important points, but his general view of the dæmonic belief which pervades Plutarch's writings is tolerably to the purpose.