12 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



should give him his dispatch with all speed, lest he 

 should infect and enchant the minds and affections of 

 the youth, and at unawares bring in an alteration of 

 the manners and customs of the state. Out of the 

 same conceit or humour did Virgil, turning his pen to 

 the advantage of his country, and the disadvantage 

 of his own profession, make a kind of separation 

 between policy and government, and between arts 

 and sciences, in the verses so much renowned, attribut 

 ing and challenging the one to the Romans, and leaving 

 and yielding the other to the Grecians : Tu regere 

 imperio populos, Romane, memento, Hae tibi erunt 

 artes, &c. So likewise we see that Anytus, the accuser 

 of Socrates, laid it as an article of charge and accusa 

 tion against him, that he did, with the variety and 

 power of his discourses and disputations, withdraw 

 young men from due reverence to the laws and customs 

 of their country, and that he did profess a dangerous 

 and pernicious science, which was, to make the worse 

 matter seem the better, and to suppress truth by force 

 of eloquence and speech. 



2. But these and the like imputations have rather 

 a countenance of gravity than any ground of justice : 

 for experience doth warrant, that both in persons and 

 in times there hath been a meeting and concurrence 

 in learning and arms, nourishing and excelling in the 

 same men and the same ages. For as for men, there 

 cannot be a better nor the like instance, as of that pair, 

 Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar the Dictator ; 

 whereof the one was Aristotle s scholar in philosophy, 

 and the other was Cicero s rival in eloquence : or if 

 any man had rather call for scholars that were great 

 generals, than generals that were great scholars, let 

 him take Epaminondas the Theban, or Xenophon the 

 Athenian ; whereof the one was the first that abated 

 the power of Sparta, and the other was the first that 

 made way to the overthrow of the monarchy of Persia. 

 And this concurrence is yet more visible in times than 

 in persons, by how much an age is [a] greater object 

 than a man. For both in Egypt, Assyria, Persia, 



