Notes - 1

1 Unless the expression “my sons your companions” ought to be taken as a piece of pleasantry.

Notes - 2

1 There appears, however, to be no sure reason for saying that Plutarch himself remembered seeing his great-grandfather, and hearing him tell the story.

Notes - 3

1 This may throw some doubt on the statement (with which, however, it is perhaps not absolutely incompatible) made by the Byzantine historian Eunapius that “Ammonius, the teacher of the divine Plutarch, was an Egyptian.”
      Plutarch was certainly skilled in all the wisdom of the Græco-Egyptians; see his treatise addressed to the learned lady Clea, on Isis and Osiris; but he may, for anything we know, have stayed long and studied much at Alexandria.

Notes - 4

1 That he had more than two sons who grew up, at any rate, to youth, appears from a passage where he speaks of his younger sons having stayed too long at the theatre, and being, in consequence, too late at supper.

Notes - 5

1 Periods of four years elapsing between the celebrations of the Pythian games, like the Olympiads for the Olympic games.

Notes - 6

1 Something also of a personal remembrance of Vespasian’s unrelentingly severe temper may be thought to appear in the story, related in the Dialogue on Love, of the Gaulish rebel Sabinus, and his wife Eponina, mentioned by Tacitus in his Histories, who, after living in an underground concealment several years, were discovered and put to death. Two sons were born to them in their hiding-place, “one of whom,” says Plutarch, “was here with us in Delphi only a little while ago,” and he is disposed, he adds, “to attribute the subsequent extinction of the race of Vespasian to divine displeasure at this cruel and unfeeling act.”

Notes - 7

1 He means the Eclectic as it is more usually called.

2 He means, I believe, Those who; apparently the word and should be omitted in line 24, before sinking into flesh.

Notes - 8

1 Undoubtedly much later.