Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers
Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers
Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers
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Plutarch <strong>and</strong> the Greece <strong>of</strong> His Age<br />
NOTE: To translate Plutarch is a very different task from<br />
that <strong>of</strong> translating Seneca. The style <strong>of</strong> the latter is terse <strong>and</strong><br />
epigrammatic; clauses <strong>and</strong> sentences <strong>of</strong>ten follow each other<br />
without connectives, <strong>and</strong> are in the main short. That <strong>of</strong> the<br />
former is the reverse. Most <strong>of</strong> his sentences are long, many<br />
<strong>of</strong> them very long. These, as well as clauses <strong>and</strong> words, are<br />
<strong>of</strong>ten strung together with the participles xai <strong>and</strong><br />
ydf&gt;,<br />
or other connectives, until the reader sometimes wonders<br />
whether they will ever end. Seneca is full <strong>of</strong> pithy sayings<br />
well suited for quotation: in Plutarch they are rare, The<br />
style <strong>of</strong> both writers is highly rhetorical, but, if we except<br />
the evident striving after effect, they have little else in com<br />
mon.<br />
As in the case <strong>of</strong> Seneca, it has been my aim to preserve for<br />
the English reader the peculiarities <strong>of</strong> the Greek, so far as<br />
possible. There is much to be said in favor <strong>of</strong> making a<br />
translation, above everything else, readable: but in the effort<br />
to do so, the translator is constantly exposed to the danger <strong>of</strong><br />
displacing the style <strong>of</strong> the original with his own. I hope I<br />
have in a measure, at least, succeeded in putting before the<br />
English reader, not only what Plutarch said in the following<br />
Tract, but also how he said it.<br />
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