Note 169 — Chapter IV

Virgil: Georgics, ii. 534; Plut: De Fortuna Romanorum, 316 E. This may be a conscious reminiscence of Virgil’s line. If Plutarch had not read Virgil, he may have heard so famous a verse quoted by his friends at Rome. He himself translates a passage from “the poet Flaccus” in his Life of Lucullus (518 C—Horace: Ep., i. 6, 45). The question of Plutarch’s acquaintance with Latin is very important for investigations into the historical sources of his “Lives;” but it lies beyond our present limits. It is fully dealt with by Weissenberger in his Die Sprache Plutarchs (1895). He exculpates Plutarch from some of the grosser mistakes in Latinity imputed to him by Volkmann.