174 
PLINt's I?"ATUIIAL HTSTOET. 
[Book VII. 
descendants and house of the poet Pindar^ should be spared, at 
the taking of Thebes. He likewise rebuilt the native city^ 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^ 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 EEMAEKABLE FOR 
WISDOM. 
Lionysius 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.* ^schines, the great 
Athenian orator, after he had read to the Ehodians 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 Mm 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. 6o6, 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 Pares was one of the earliest Ionian lyric poets, and 
was the first who composed in Iambic verse according to fixed rules. He 
flourished about 714 — 676 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. 
* 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. 
