[45:5] These were both sons of Cassander. Philip succeeded his father as king of Macedonia, but died almost immediately upon his accession to the throne, leaving probably memory of his vices, of which Plutarch had knowledge, but no record of which has come down to our time. Antipater, his next younger brother, in some sort succeeded him, first murdering his mother, who favored the claims of her still younger son. He himself was murdered before he could obtain undisturbed possession of his kingdom.
[46:1] These obsolete modes of medical practice can now only provoke a smile; but the argument is complete, if we will substitute for them the treatment cited at the close of the sentence,—blood-letting for ophthalmia, which, if not in rule now, was so thirty years ago.
[48:1] The reference in this last clause is to the opinion largely held by the Stoics, that the soul is not immortal, but is destined to survive the body, and to live till the consummation of the existing universe, which, after completing a cycle of many thousands of years, will be destroyed by fire.
[48:2] This sentence is, as I believe, ironical. Some editors and translators make it interrogative; but the grammatical construction, as it seems to me, is opposed to this view.
[48:3] This term, as applied to vessels or shallow earth-beds, where what is sown can only spring up and wither without coming to seed, occurs in Plato’s Phaedrus. The very brief life and untimely end of Adonis may perhaps account for this peculiar use of his name.
[49:1] Several hundred years ago. Archilochus, the earliest Ionian lyric poet, flourished, and was killed in battle, in the seventh century B. C. This entire passage may be regarded as an argumentum de concessis, and as such it is perfectly legitimate. The inspiration of the Delphian oracle and priestess was believed in by many of those for whom Plutarch wrote; and to them he said, “Can you believe that all these oracular utterances about expiations for the dead and posthumous honors to be paid to them have had reference to beings that ceased to exist when they ceased to breathe?”
[50:1] Or, “the home of the grasshopper”; for tettix (τέττιξ) means grasshopper. The oracle, as usual, was ambiguous. Calondas, alias Corax, is represented as not understanding it at first, but finding out afterward that a Cretan named Tettix had settled at Taenarus, or Taenarum, he inferred that his home was designated by the oracle.
[50:2] This place was on the southernmost cape of Greece, now Cape Matapan. The peninsula which forms this cape had a famous temple of Poseidon, was sacred to the infernal gods, and was the site of an avenue, through a cave, to and from the infernal regions,—the avenue by which Hercules dragged Cerberus to the light of day.
[50:3] Pausanias, the Spartan, after a career of mingled glory and shame, being detected in treasonable intrigues, took refuge in the temple of Athene. When he was nearly exhausted by hunger the Ephori dragged him out of the temple, and he died at its threshold. For their sacrilege the Delphian oracle ordered that he should be re-interred on the spot where he died, and that two brazen statues should be erected in honor of the goddess in her temple at the public charge. Very naturally, his ghost was supposed to haunt the sacred enclosure whence he had been taken to die. See [p. 28, n. 4].
[51:1] The clause, “than there is that they should be fully rendered in this life,” has nothing in the original to correspond to it; but it is necessary in order to convey the obvious meaning of the sentence.