of Plutarch “historian” for “stoic,” but it is better to suppose that Plutarch was mistaken, about the age of the Stoic.  The ownership of good sayings is seldom undisputed.  Velleius Paterculus (ii. 83) attributes this to Pompeius Magnus.  The allusion is to Xerxes the Persian, who dug a canal through the flat isthmus which connects the rocky peninsula of Athos with the mainland (Herodotus, vii. 22), which still exists.]

[Footnote 432:  There is some corruption in the text; but the general meaning is clear enough.]

[Footnote 433:  This is the story which Q. Horatius Flaccus tells in his Epistolae, Lib. i.  Ep. 6.]

[Footnote 434:  This is one of many like indications in Plutarch of his good opinion of his countrymen.  Compare the life of Crassus, c. 8, where he is speaking of Spartacus.]

[Footnote 435:  Plutarch’s allusion would be intelligible to a Greek, but hardly so to a Roman, unless he was an educated man.  A prytaneum in a Greek city was a building belonging to the community, on the altar of which was kept the ever-burning fire.  In the prytaneum of Athens, entertainments were given both to foreign ambassadors and to citizens who had merited the distinction of dining in the prytaneum, a privilege that was given sometimes for life, and sometimes for a limited period.  As the town-hall of any community is in a manner the common home of the citizens, so Plutarch compares the house of Lucullus, which was open to all strangers, with the public hall of a man’s own city.]

[Footnote 436:  Plato established his school in the Academia, a grove near Athens; whence the name of the place, Academia, was used to signify the opinions of the school of Plato and of those schools which were derived from his.  Speusippus, the nephew of Plato, was his successor in the Academy, and he was followed by Xenokrates, and other teachers who belong to the Old Academy, as it is called, among whom were Polemo, Krates, and Krantor.  The New Academy, that is, the philosophical sect so called, was established by Arcesilaus; who was succeeded by several teachers of little note.  Karneades, a native of Cyrene, the man mentioned by Plutarch, was he who gave to the New Academy its chief repute.  Philo was not the immediate pupil of Karneades.  He was a native of Larissa, and during the war with Mithridates he came to Rome, where he delivered lectures.  Cicero was one of his hearers, and often mentions him.  Philo according to Cicero (Academ. i. i) denies that there were two Academies.  Antiochus, of Askalon, was a pupil of Philo, but after he had founded a school of his own he attempted to reconcile the doctrines of the Old Academy with those of the Peripatetics and Stoics; and he became an opponent of the New Academy.  Antiochus was with Lucullus in Egypt. (Cicero, Academ.  Prior. ii. c. 4.) The usual division of the Academy is into the Old and New; but other divisions also were made.  The first and oldest was the school of Plato, the second or middle was that of Arkesilaus, and the third was that of Karneades and Kleitomachus.  Some make a fourth, the school of Philo and Charmidas; and a fifth, which was that of Antiochus. (Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrh.  Hypot. i. 220.)]