Note 52 — Chapter III · EDUCATION AT ROME.
William Harold Payne translation
Of course Plutarch, like all the writers of antiquity, writes only in behalf of free-born children in good circumstances. “He abandons,” as he himself admits, “the education of the poor and the lowly.”
Plutarch seems to aim at what appears to him to be practicable. That he was liberal in his opinions must be evident, I think, from this extract: “It is my desire that all children whatsoever may partake of the benefits of education alike; but if yet any persons, by reason of the narrowness of their estates, cannot make use of my precepts, let them not blame me that give them, but Fortune, which disableth them from making the advantage by them they otherwise might. Though even poor men must use their utmost endeavor to give their children the best education; or, if they can not, they must bestow upon them the best that their abilities will reach.” (Morals, vol. I. pp. 19, 20.) (P.)