Plutarch's Morals

Transcriber's note: The original book uses often colons instead of semicolons. Spelling of proper names is different in different pages and some words occur in hyphenated and unhyphenated forms. These have not been changed. A couple of commas and periods have been added or removed to improve the reading and only obvious spelling errors have been corrected.

In 1882 the Reverend C. W. King, Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, translated the six Theosophical Essays of the Moralia , forming a volume in Bohn's Classical Library. The present volume consists of the twenty-six Ethical Essays, which are, in my opinion, the cream of the Moralia , and constitute a highly interesting series of treatises on what might be called The Ethics of the Hearth and Home. I have grouped these Essays in such a manner as to enable the reader to read together such as touch on the same or on kindred subjects.
As is well known, the text of the Moralia is very corrupt, and the reading very doubtful, in many places. In eight of the twenty-six Essays in this volume I have had the invaluable help of the text of Rudolf Hercher; help so invaluable that one cannot but sadly regret that only one volume of the Moralia has yet appeared in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana . Wyttenbach's text and notes I have always used when available, and when not so have fallen back upon Reiske. Reiske is always ingenious, but too fond of correcting a text, and the criticism of him by Wyttenbach is perhaps substantially correct. In nullo auctore habitabat; vagabatur per omnes: nec apud quemquam tamdiu divertebat, ut in paulo interiorem ejus consuetudinem se insinuaret. I have also had constantly before me the Didot Edition of the Moralia , edited by Frederic Dübner.
Let any reader who wishes to know more about Plutarch, consult the article on Plutarch, in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica , by the well-known scholar F. A. Paley. He will also do well to read an Essay on Plutarch by R. W. Emerson, reprinted in Volume III. of the Bohn's Standard Library Edition of Emerson's Works, and Five Lectures on Plutarch by the late Archbishop Trench, published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co. in 1874. All these contain much of interest, and will repay perusal.