1 74 PLINY'S NATURAL HTSTOET. [Book VII. 



descendants and house of the poet Pindar 1 should be spared, at 

 the taking of Thehes. He likewise rebuilt the native city 2 of 

 Aristotle, uniting to the extraordinary brilliancy of his exploits 

 this speaking testimony of his kindliness of disposition. 



Apollo impeached by name the assassins of the poet Archi- 

 lochus 3 at Delphi. While the Lacedemonians were besieging 

 Athens, Father Liber ordered the funeral rites to be performed 

 for Sophocles, the very prince of the tragic buskin ; re- 

 peatedly warning their king, Lysander, in his sleep, to allow 

 of the burial of his favourite. Upon this, the king made en- 

 quiry who had lately died in Athens ; and understanding without 

 any difficulty from the Athenians to whom the god referred, he 

 allowed the funeral rites to be performed without molestation. 



CHAP. 31. (30.) MEN WHO HAVE BEEN BEMABEABLE FOB 



WISDOM. 



Dionysius the tyrant, who otherwise manifested a natural 

 propensity for cruelty and pride, sent a vessel crowned with 

 garlands to meet Plato, that high-priest of wisdom ; and on 

 his disembarcation, received him on the shore, in a chariot 

 drawn by four white horses. Isocrates was able to sell a 

 single oration of his for twenty talents. 4 JEschines, the great 

 Athenian orator, after he had read to the Rhodians the speech 

 which he had made on the accusation of Demosthenes, read 

 the defence made by Demosthenes, through which he had 

 been driven into exile among them. When they expressed 

 their admiration of it, " How much more," said he, " would 

 you have admired it, if you had heard him deliver it him- 



1 The city was taken by him by assault, and all its buildings, with the 

 exception of the house of Pindar, levelled to the ground ; most of the in- 

 habitants were slaughtered, and the rest sold as slaves. 



2 Stagirus, or Stagira, a town of Macedonia, in Chalcidice, on the Stry- 

 monic Gulf. It was a colony of Andros, founded B.C. 656, and originally 

 called Orthagoria. It was destroyed by Philip, and, according to some 

 accounts, was rebuilt by him, as having been the native place of Aristotle. 



3 Archilochus of Paros was one of the earliest Ionian lyric poets, and 

 was the first who composed in Iambic verse according to fixed rules. He 

 flourished about 714676 B.C. Pliny speaks here of his murderers ; but 

 it is generally stated by historians that he was murdered by one individual, 

 by some called Calondas, or Corax, a Naxian, by others Archias. 



4 We may here refer to some remarks by Hardouin and Ajasson on the 

 actual sum obtained by Isocrates ; Lemaire, vol. iii. pp. 126, 127.B. 



