A Selection of the Lives of Plutarch 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: five the work would be too much for him, and therefore did not go through with,it. Thefe verles are a proof that bufmefj was not the hinderance : I grow in le... more »arning as I grow in years. And again. Wine, wit, and beauty, dill their charms bellow. Light all the lhades of life, and cheer us as we go. Plato, ambitious to cultivate and adorn the-fubject of th Atlantic I fland, as a delightful Ipot in fbme fair field unoccupied, to which alfo he had fome claim, by his being related to Solon, laid out magnificent courts and endofures, and erected a grand entrance to it, fuch as no other ftory, fable, or poem, ever had. But as he began it late, he ended- his life before the work; fa that the more the reader is delighted with the part that is written, the more regret he has to find it unfinifhed. As the temple of Jupiter Olym- pius in Athens is the only one that has not the laft hand put to it, fo the wifflom of Plata, amongft his many excellent wyrks, has left nothing imperfed but the Atlantic Uland. , ,. Heraclides Ponticus relates that Solon lived a confider- able time after Pififtratus ufurped the government; but according to Phanias the Ephefian, not quite twd years. For Pififtratus began his tyranny in the archonfhip of Comias, and Phanias tells us, Solon died in the archon- fltip of Hegeftratus, the immediate fuccellbr to Comijs. THEMISTOCLES. Fiourijhed 47i years before Chrijt. A. HE family of Themiftocles was too obfcure to raiie bim to diftinction. He was the fon of Neocles, an infwior citizen of Athens, of the ward of Phrear, and the tribe of Leontis. By his mother's fide, he is faid to have been 'die- gimate, according to the following verfs : Though born in Thrace, Ahrotonon my name, My (oa enrols ire in the lilts of fame, The great Themiftocles. ...« less