ἱστορίαι Historiai
Plut. Mor., Fortune of the Romans 4 Concerning the Fortune of the Romans, Plutarch; served verbatim
But as to Fortune, her gait is hasty, her looks bold, her hope arrogant; and leaving Virtue far behind her, she enters the lists, not, as she is described, with light wings, balancing herself in the air, or lightly tripping with her tiptoes upon the convexity of the globe, as if she were presently to vanish away out of sight. No, she does not appear here in any such doubtful and uncertain posture; but as the Spartans say that Venus, when she passed over the Eurotas, put off her gewgaws and female ornaments, and armed herself with spear and shield for the sake of Lycurgus; so Fortune, having deserted the Persians and Assyrians, did swiftly fly over Macedonia, and quickly threw off her favorite Alexander the Great, and after that, having passed through the countries of Egypt and Syria, and oftentimes by turns supported the Carthaginians, she did at last fly over Tiber to the Palatine Mount, and there she put off her wings, her Mercurial shoes, and left her slippery and deceitful globe. Thus she entered Rome, as one that was to be resident there, and thus she comes to the bar in this controversy. She is no more uncertain, as Pindar describes her; she does not henceforth guide a double helm, but continues constant to the Romans, and therefore may be called the sister of Eunomia and Persuasion, and the daughter of Providence, as Alcman describes her pedigree. This is certain in the opinion of all men. that she holds in her hand the Horn of Plenty, not that which is filled with verdant fruits, but that which pours forth abundance of all things which the earth or the sea, the rivers or the metals, or the harbors afford. Several illustrious and famous men are seen to accompany her, Numa Pompilius from the Sabines, and Priscus from Tarquinii, whom, being foreigners and strangers, Fortune seated on the throne of Romulus. Aemilius Paulus also, bringing back his army from Perseus and the Macedonians, and triumphing in an unbloody and entire victory, does greatly magnify and extol Fortune. The same does Caecilius Metellus, that brave old gentleman surnamed Macedonicus, whose corpse was carried forth to its funeral by his four sons, Quintus Balearicus, Lucius Diadematus, Marcus Metellus, and Caius Caprarius, and his two sons-in-law,—who were all six honorable men, and of consular dignity,—and also by his two grandsons, who were famous for the good offices they did to the commonwealth, both abroad by their heroical actions and at home by the administration of justice. Aemilius Scaurus, from a mean estate and a meaner family, was raised by Fortune to that height of dignity that he was chosen Prince of the Senate. It was Fortune that took Cornelius Sylla out of the bosom of Nicopolis the whore, and exalted him above the Cimbrian triumphs of Marius and the dignity of his seven consulships, giving him at once the powers of a monarch and a dictator; upon which account he adopted himself and all his memorable actions to Fortune, crying out with Oedipus in Sophocles, I think myself the son of Fortune. In the Roman tongue he was called Felix, the happy; but he writ himself to the Greeks Lucius Cornelius Sylla Venustus, i. e. Beloved of Venus,—which is also the inscription on all his trophies, both those at Chaeronea with us, and those in honor of his victories over Mithridates; and that not without reason, since it is not the Night, as Menander thought, but Fortune, that enjoys the greatest part of Venus.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

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Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass
battle of Chaeronea — a candidate entry Alexander — a candidate entry Lucius — a candidate entry Lycurgus — a life Marius — a life Metellus — a candidate entry Numa — a life Oedipus — a life Paulus — a candidate entry Perseus — a candidate entry Pindar — a life Sylla — a candidate entry

Concerning the Fortune of the Romans, Plutarch — translated by John Oswald (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)