Plutarch's Lives


THESEUS

As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the
world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the
effect, that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild
beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so, in this
work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men
with one another, after passing through those periods which probable
reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very
well say of those that are farther off, Beyond this there is nothing but
prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors
of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther. Yet, after
publishing an account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I
thought I might, not without reason, ascend as high as to Romulus, being
brought by my history so near to his time.
Considering therefore with myself

Whom shall I set so great a man to face?
Or whom oppose? who's equal to the place?

(as Aeschylus expresses it), I found none so fit as him that peopled the
beautiful and far-famed city of Athens, to be set in opposition with the
father of the invincible and renowned city of Rome. Let us hope that
Fable may, in what shall follow, so submit to the purifying processes of
Reason as to take the character of exact history. In any case, however,
where it shall be found contumaciously slighting credibility, and
refusing to be reduced to anything like probable fact, we shall beg