Vll 



Stobasus of his treatise On Laws. And in such 

 estimation was the former of these works held by 

 Plato and Aristotle, that the latter, as Syrianus 

 observes (in Aristot. Metaphys.)? " has nearly 

 taken the whole of his two books on Generation 

 and Corruption from this work;" and that the 

 former anxiously desired to see it, is evident from 

 his Epistle to Archytas, of which the following is 

 a translation : 



" Plato to Archytas the Tarentine, prosperity. 



" It is wonderful with what pleasure we received 

 the Commentaries which came from you, and how 

 very much we were delighted with the genius of 

 their author. To us, indeed, he appeared to be 

 a man worthy of his ancient progenitors. For 

 these men are said to have been ten thousand* in 

 in number ; and, according to report, were the 

 best of all those Trojans that migrated under 

 Laomedon. 



translated by some grammarian into the common dialect, in order 

 that it might be more easily understood by the reader." Vid. 

 Biblioth. Graec. torn. i. p. 51O. 



* In all the editions of Plato, ftvpot, conformably to the above 

 translation ; but from Diogenes Laertius, who, in his Life of Ar- 

 chytas, gives this epistle of Plato, it appears that the true reading 

 is Mugaiot, i. e. Myrenees, so called from Myra, a city of Lycia 

 in Asia Minor, (see Pliny, v. 27. Strabo xiv. 666.) This 12th 

 epistle of Plato, though ascribed by Thrasyllus and Diogenes 

 Laertius to Plato, yet is marked in the Greek manuscripts of it as 

 spurious. 



