Note (return) — Chapter I

The character of the Athenians has been sketched by Plutarch 29 with considerable minuteness, and his representations have been permitted, until of late years, to pass unchallenged. He has described them as at once passionate and placable, easily moved to anger, and as easily appeased; fond of pleasantry and repartee, and heartily enjoying a laugh; pleased to hear themselves praised, and yet not annoyed by criticism and censure; naturally generous towards those who were poor and in humble circumstances, and humane even towards their enemies; jealous of their liberties, and keeping even their rulers in awe. In regard to their intellectual traits, he affirms their minds were not formed for laborious research, and though they seized a subject as it were by intuition, yet wanted patience and perseverance for a thorough examination of all its bearings. "An observation," says the writer of the article on "Attica," in the Encyclopædia Britannica, "more superficial in itself, and arguing a greater ignorance of the Athenians, can not easily be imagined." Plutarch lived more than three hundred years after the palmy days of the Athenian Demos had passed away. He was a Bœotian by birth, not an Attic, and more of a Roman than a Greek in all his sympathies. We are tempted to regard him as writing under the influence of prejudice, if not of envy. He was scarcely reliable as a biographer, and as materials for history his "Parallel Lives" have been pronounced "not altogether trustworthy." 30