Plutarch's Lives Author:Plutarch Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LIFE OF SERTORIUS. I. It is perhaps not a matter of surprise, if in the lapse of time, which is unlimited, while fortune is continually changing her cour... more »se, spontaneity should often result in the same incidents ; for, if the number of elemental things is not limited, fortune has in the abundance of material a bountiful supply of sameness of results ; and, if things are implieated in a dependence upon definite numbers, it is of necessity that the same things must often happen, being effected by the same means. Now, as some are pleased to collect, by inquiry and hearsay, from among If this ia obscure, the fault is Plutarch's. His word for Fortune is Txi, which he has often used in the Life of Sulla. The word for Spontaneity is rti mndfurrov, the Self-moved. The word for Elemental things is ri vroittifiiva. The word (nroKtifitvov is used by Aristotle to signify both the tbing of which something is predicated, the Subject of grammarians, and for the Substance, which is as it were the substratum on which actions operate. Aristotle (3tetaphyt. vi. vii. 3) says " Essence (oinrta) or Being is predicated, if not in many ways, in four at least; for the formal cause (ri rl fo eTrai), and the universal, and genus appear to be the essence of everything; and the fourth of theae is the Substance (t« less