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Proceedings of the Boyal Society 
Only the two last lines are of much importance. They stand in 
the original as follows : — 
Cuncta jacent flammis et tristi mersa favilH, 
Nec superi vellent hoc licuisse sibi. 
Now I trust that I shall have the court entirely with me, when I 
maintain that in these lines the evidence for the overthrow of 
Pompeii and Herculaneum is simply nil. Ruin of a rural district is 
there ; of loss of human life, of buried cities, there is not so much 
as a hint. Indeed, so far as it goes, it might be plausibly argued, if 
Martial were our only witness, that such a destruction could not have 
taken place ; for that, if it had occurred, he would have surely made 
at least some passing allusion to an event so startling and remarkable. 
2. Lyell refers to the narratives of the event. The next two 
pieces of evidence, in my opinion by far the strongest among the 
contemporary ones, are not narratives. These are those of Plutarch 
and of Statius. And first as regards Plutarch. 
His name has been immortalised by his famous parallel biographies 
of Greeks and Romans, — a book which has charmed many eminent 
men in various generations; to which Milton, and still more Shak- 
speare, were largely indebted, and which has been perhaps a more 
important factor in the formation of modern thought and character 
than has always been recognised. But Plutarch was also a moralist 
and a philosopher ; a light in which he has been justly represented 
in a pleasant little volume by Dr. Trench, the Archbishop of Dublin. 
Among his treatises is one generally known by its Latin title, De 
sera numinis vindictd. It is highly theological, and might almost be 
called an essay, from a heathen’s standpoint, on at least one half of 
the second commandment. Two theologians of this century, in most 
opposite camps, the ultramontane Count Joseph De Maistre, and a 
Lutheran convert from Judaism, the historian Neander, used to derive 
consolation from its pages during the years when the power of the 
first Napoleon was at its zenith. De Maistre translated it into 
French.* Another treatise of Plutarch’s pen discusses the question, 
why the Pythian priestess no longer, as formerly, delivers the oracles 
in verse (7repi, rov gr] XP^ V qu,/u.erpa vvv tt)v irvOiav). 
* For the references to De Maistre and Neander, I am indebted to the 
above-mentioned work of Archbishop Trench. 
