Plut. Mor., Greek and Roman Parallels 30 — Parallels, or a comparison between the Greek and Roman Histories

Plut. Mor., Greek and Roman Parallels 30 — Parallels, or a comparison between the Greek and Roman Histories, Plutarch; served verbatim

The Sardians, being engaged in war with the Smyrnaeans, besieged Smyrna, and sent them word by their ambassadors, that they would never raise the siege till the Smyrnaeans should deliver up their wives to their embraces. The men of Smyrna would have been hard put to it upon this pinching necessity, if it had not been for the advice of a pretty wench that was a maid-servant to Phylarchus. Her counsel to her master was this; that instead of sending free women, they should rather dress up the servants and send them. The Smyrnaeans followed their advice; and when the Sardians had wearied themselves with their mistresses, the Smyrnaeans easily overcame them. From whence there is a festival day observed under the name of Eleutheria, which is celebrated among the Smyrnaeans with great solemnity; the servants being dressed up with all the ornaments of the free women.—Dositheus, in the Third Book of his Lydian History. Atepomarus, a king of the Gauls, being in war with the Romans, made a public declaration, that he would never agree to a peace till the Romans should prostitute their wives to them. The Romans advised with the maid-servants, and sent them in the place of the free women; the barbarians plied the work so hard, that they were soon tired and fell asleep. Retana (who was the authoress of the counsel) climbed a fig-tree, and so got on the wall; and finding how it was, gave notice of it to the consuls. The Romans upon this made a sally and routed the enemy; in memory whereof was instituted the Servants’ Holiday, and this was the rise of it.—Aristides Milesius, in the First Book of his Italian History.

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

Aristides — a life Dositheus — a candidate entry Milesius — a candidate entry Phylarchus — a life

Parallels, or a comparison between the Greek and Roman Histories, 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)