Plutarch, Volume 2

Front Cover
A. J. Valpy, 1831
 

Selected pages

Contents

I
1
II
50
III
89
IV
143
V
192
VI
235
VII
283
VIII
325

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 337 - And, in truth, all the rest of the Syracusans were no more than the body in the batteries of Archimedes, while he himself was the informing soul. All other weapons lay idle and unemployed; his were the only offensive and defensive arms of the city.
Page 341 - ... his diagram, that he neither heard the tumultuous noise of the Romans, nor perceived that the city was taken. A soldier suddenly entered his room, and ordered him to follow him to Marcellus ; and Archimedes refusing to do it, till he had finished his problem, and brought his demonstration to bear, the soldier, in a passion, drew his sword and killed him.
Page 44 - ... omen, and threw them into the greatest consternation. Pericles observing that the pilot was much astonished and perplexed, took his cloak, and having covered his eyes with it, asked him, ' If he found any thing terrible in that, or considered it as a sad presage ?' on his answering in the negative, he said, ' Where is the difference then between this and the other, except that something bigger than my cloak causes the eclipse ?' But this is a question which is discussed in the schools of philosophy.
Page 336 - ... suspended and twirling in the air, presented a most dreadful spectacle. There it swung till the men were thrown out by the violence of the motion, and then it split against the walls, or sunk, on the engine's letting go its hold. As for the machine which Marcellus brought forward upon eight galleys, and which was called sambuca...
Page 338 - Archimedes had such a depth of understanding, such a dignity of sentiment, and so copious a fund of mathematical knowledge, that, though in the invention of these machines he gained the reputation of a man endowed with divine, rather than human, knowledge, yet he did not vouchsafe to leave any account of them in writing.
Page 237 - Was she not chaste? was she not fair? was she not fruitful? holding out his shoe, asked them, Whether it was not new? and well made? Yet, added he, none of you can tell where it pinches me.
Page 334 - Nor had he gone so far, but at the pressing instances of King Hiero, who entreated him to turn his art from abstracted notions to matters of sense, and to make his reasonings more intelligible to the generality of mankind, applying them to the uses of common life.
Page 18 - ... they are old, they have the freshness of a modern building. A bloom is diffused over them, which preserves their aspect untarnished by time, as if they were animated with a spirit of perpetual youth and unfading elegance.

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