[70:3] Vespasian, who died in A. D. 79.
[73:1] Nero’s matricide is here referred to. Plutarch, no doubt, had in his mind some then well-known figure or description in a poem of Pindar now lost.
[73:2] Some interpreters suppose that this creature is a swan. I have no doubt that it is a frog. Even had not the empire passed entirely out of the possible reach of the Caesars, I do not believe that Plutarch would have shown any tenderness to Nero’s memory, and certainly there was no conceivable motive for it under the reign of Titus or Domitian. There is a fine satire in this final destiny of Nero. He has been horribly punished, and has been tortured into the likeness of the reptile regarded by the ancients as the only matricide in their zoölogy; and now for the one good act of his reign a little mercy is shown him. He had prided himself and annoyed his subjects as a singer, and now he is transformed into the singer that is a perpetual annoyance to all dwellers near swamps and ponds.
[74:1] He freed the province of Achaia from taxes, and endowed it with certain political rights and privileges. Vespasian restored the province to its previous condition.
INDEX.
- Adrasteia, presiding over the punishment of disembodied souls, [63].
- Aesculapius, sprung from a vicious stock, [22].
- Aesop, murder of, [34].
- Ajax, crime of, [37 n.]
- Alexander, revenge of, on the Branchidae for the guilt of their ancestors, [35].
- Amphilochus, oracle of, [60 n.]
- Apollodorus, the prey of terrific visions, [28].
- serving a cannibal feast to his associates in crime, [32].
- Archytas, forbearance of, [12].
- Aristo, punished for sacrilege, [23].
- Aristocrates, treachery of, [4].
- Artaxerxes Longimanus, penal discipline of, [64 n.]
- Bessus, the parricide, betraying his crime from remorse, [24].
- Bion, the philosopher, cavils of, at the reality of inherited punishment, [52].
- character of, [52 n.]
- Brasidas, death of, [2].
- Callippus, killed by the dagger with which he had procured Dion’s death, [22].
- Calondas, expiating the slaughter of Archilochus, [49].
- Cassander, not punished till he had restored Thebes, [7].
- Character, hereditary, [44].
- Children, inheriting the rewards and punishments due to their fathers, [39].
- Cimon, infamy and fame of, [16].
- Dionysius, left unpunished for the good that he might do, [18].
- Forbearance, the Divine, affording space for repentance, [13].
- Gelon, reformation of, [14].
- Glaucus, fraud and punishment of, [32].
- God, in his slowness to punish, an example to man, [11].
- Hereditary transmission of punishment no more mysterious than transitions in space, [42].
- Heritage of moral qualities lapsing in the first, and reappearing in some subsequent generation, [58].
- Hieron, reformation of, [14].
- Hipparchus, punishment of, anticipated in vision, [28].
- Immortality, made probable by God’s retributive providence, [48].
- Laws, human, often unintelligible, [9].
- Lethe, cavern of, [67].
- Lyciscus, treachery of, [5].
- Lydiades, a tyrant, and afterward a patriot, [15].
- Miltiades, a tyrant, yet a patriot, [16].
- Mitius, the murderer of, punished, [23].
- Municipal life and character, continuous, [43].
- Nero, doom of, [73].
- Odysseus, redeemed by his own virtues from the curse resting on his father, [22].
- Pausanias, haunted by the apparition of a victim of his lust and cruelty, [29].
- haunting the temple near which he died, [50].
- Peisistratus, a usurper, yet a beneficent ruler, [15].
- Periander, punishment of, deferred that he might first render service, [17].
- Pericles, of an accursed and infamous race, [28].
- Plato, quoted as making God an example to man, [10].
- forbearance of, [12].
- Plutarch, birthplace and residence of, [vii].
- education of, [viii].
- family of, [ix].
- philosophy of, [x].
- theology of, [xi].
- ethics of, [xii].
- relation of, to Christianity, [xiv].
- “Lives” of, [xvii].
- “Moralia” of, [xx].
- letter of, to his wife on the death of their child, [xxii].
- “Apophthegms” of, [xxv].
- treatise of, on the Delay of the Divine Justice, [xxvi].
- Pompey the Great, son of a worthless father, [21].
- Providence, the Divine, beyond man’s full comprehension, [8].
- Ptolemy Ceraunus, punishment of, foretold in dreams, [28].
- Punishment, alleged to be not recognized as such, when delayed, [6].
- for the children of bad men, preceding and preventing guilt, [55].
- Sibyl in the moon, predictions of, [69].
- Sicyon, the people of, punished for wantonness and cruelty, [21].
- Slowness of retribution, alleged to be disheartening to those who suffer wrong, [3].
- Souls cast no shadow, [63].
- Sybaris destroyed for the guilt of its inhabitants, [37].
- Themistocles, early profligacy and subsequent public services of, [16].
- Thespesius, story of, [59].
- Transformation of men into beasts, [71].
- Wicked men, preserved for services that they may render, [18].
- employed by God as executioners before their own destruction, [20].
- punished not late, but long, [24].
- punished most severely of all in their children, [51].
University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.