“It is true, also, that his unhistorical treatment of the subjects of his biography makes him often unsatisfactory and imperfect in the portraits he draws.  Much, of course, in the public lives of statesmen can find its only explanation in their political position; and of this Plutarch often knows and thinks little.  So far as the researches of modern historians have succeeded in really recovering a knowledge of relations of this sort, so far, undoubtedly, these biographies stand in need of their correction.  Yet, in the uncertainty which must attend all modern restorations, it is agreeable, and surely also profitable, to recur to portraits drawn ere new thoughts and views had occupied the civilized world, without reference to such disputable grounds of judgment, simply upon the broad principles of the ancient moral code of right and wrong. ....  We have here the faithful record of the historical tradition of Plutarch’s age.  This is what, in the second century of our era, Greeks and Romans loved to believe about their warriors and statesmen of the past.  As a picture, at least, of the best Greek and Roman moral views and moral judgments, as a presentation of the results of Greek and Roman moral thought, delivered, not under the pressure of calamity, but as they existed in ordinary times, and actuated plain-living people, in country places, in their daily life, Plutarch’s writings are of indisputable value.”

Of all the biographies contained in his work, none might excite greater suspicion of incorrectness than that of Timoleon, on account of the extraordinary character both of the man and of the incidents of his career.  His story reads like a romance of the ancient times, like a legend of some half-mythical hero, rather than like the true account of an actual man.  There is, perhaps, none among his Lives which Plutarch has written with greater spirit, with livelier sympathies, than this.  And yet, in spite of all its seeming improbability, there is little reason to question its essential truth.  It corresponds, with some minor exceptions, with all that can be ascertained from other ancient authors who wrote concerning the deliverer of Sicily; and even Mitford, with all his zeal in the cause of tyrants, can find little to detract from the praise of Timoleon, or to diminish our confidence in the truth of Plutarch’s account of him.

But, in addition to the interest that belongs to these biographies, from their intrinsic qualities, as affected by the character of Plutarch,—­beside the interest which the common reader or the student of biography and history may find in them, they possess a still deeper interest for the student of human nature, in its various modifications, under varying influences, and in different ages, from exhibiting to him, in a long series, many of the chief characters of the heathen world in such form as fits them for comparison with the prominent men of Christian times.  The question of the effect of Christianity upon the characters