account of how I had discharged it, when my father rose in the public
assembly and enjoined me not to say _I_ went, but _we_ went, nor to say
that _I_ said, but _we_ said, throughout my story, giving my colleague
his share."

The most important event in the whole of Plutarch's pious and peaceful
life is undoubtedly his journey to Italy and to Rome; but here again we
know little more than that he knew but little Latin when he went
thither, and was too busy when there to acquire much knowledge of that
tongue. His occupation at Rome, besides antiquarian researches which
were afterwards worked up into his Roman Lives, was the delivery of
lectures on philosophical and other subjects, a common practice among
the learned Greeks of his day. Many of these lectures, it is
conjectured, were afterwards recast by him into the numerous short
treatises on various subjects now included under the general name of
Moralia. Plutarch's visit to Rome and business there is admirably
explained in the following passage of North's 'Life of Plutarch':--"For
my part, I think Plutarch was drawn to Rome by meanes of some friends he
had there, especially by Sossius Senecio, that had been a Consull, who
was of great estimation at that time, and namely under the Empire of
Trajan. And that which maketh me think so, is because of Plutarch's own
words, who saith in the beginning of his first book of his discourse at
the table, that he gathered together all his reasons and discourses made
here and there, as well in Rome with Senecio, as in Greece with Plutarch
and others. Not being likely that he would have taken the pains to have
made so long a voyage, and to have come to such a city where he
understood not their vulgar tongue, if he had not been drawn thither by
Senecio, and such other men; as also in acknowledgement of the good
turnes and honour he had received by such men, he dedicated diverse of
his bookes unto them, and among others, the Lives unto Senecio, and the