尼西亚__PLUTARCH.pdf

英文名著3000 本 75 AD NICIAS ?-413 B.C. by Plutarch translated by John Dryden CRASSUS, in my opinion, may most properly be set against Nicias, and the Parthian disaster compared with that in Sicily. But here it will be well for me to entreat the reader, in all courtesy, not to think that I contend with Thucydides in matters so pathetically, vividly,and eloquently, beyond all imitation, and even beyond himself,expressed by him; nor to believe me guilty of the like folly with Timaeus, who, hoping in his history to surpass Thucydides in art,and to make Philistus appear a trifler and a novice, pushes on in his descriptions, through all the battles, sea-fights, and public speeches, in recording which they have been most successful, without 1 英文名著3000 本 meriting so much as to be compared, in Pindar's phrase, to- "One that on his feet Would with the Lydian cars compete." He simply shows himself all along a half-lettered, childish writer; in the words of Diphilus- " of wit obese,O'erlarded with Sicilian grease." Often he sinks to the very level of Xenarchus, telling us that he thinks it ominous to the Athenians that their general, who had victory in his name, was unwilling to take command in the expedition; and that the defacing of the Hermae was a divine intimation that they should suffer much in the war by Hermora tes, the son of Hermon; and,moreover, how it was likely that Hercules should aid the Syracusans for the sake of Proserpine, by whose means