to make
blackguards of themselves.'"

A number of apothegms, proverbs, or sayings of more or less wit occur in
the collected works of Plutarch, although Schneidewin does not hesitate to
attribute most of them to some impostor usurping his name. At any rate,
they are handily classified, and form a bulky addition to Mr. Paley's
translated specimens.

Here is a brief and bright saying which this writer attaches to King
Archelaus, when a talkative barber, trimming his beard, asked him, "How
shall I cut it?"

"In silence," replied the king.

The anecdote recalls one of Charles II's bragging barbers, who boasted to
him he could cut his majesty's throat when he would--a boast for which he
was only dismissed; though for a like rash vaunt, according to Peter
Cunningham, the barber of Dionysius was crucified.

To return to Plutarch, he tells the following stories, both good in their
way, of Philip of Macedon.

In passing sentence on two rogues, he ordered one to leave Macedonia with
all possible speed, and the other to try to catch him.

No less astute was his query as to a strong position he wished to occupy,
which was reported by the scouts to be almost impregnable.

"Is there not," he asked, "even a pathway to it wide enough for an ass
laden with gold?"

Philip, too, according to Plutarch, is entitled to the fatherhood of an
adage which retains its ancient fame about "calling a spade a spade."

Another story tells how Philip removed a judge, because he discovered that
the man's hair and beard were dyed.

"I could not believe," Plutarch reports the king as saying, "that one who
was false in his hair could be honest in his judgments."

Another sample of a witty saying from Plutarch's mint is one attributed to
Themistocles, that his son was the strongest man in Greece.

"For," said he, "the Athenians rule the Hellenes, I rule the Athenians,
your mother rules me, and you rule your mother."

Yet another is a retort attributed to Iphicrates, the celebrated Athenian
general. Harmodius, a young aristocrat who bore a name famous in the early
history of Athens, had reproached Iphicrates, who was the son of a
cobbler, with his mean birth.

"My nobility," the soldier replied, "begins with me, but yours ends with
you."

Another Athenian general, Phocion, was a man who preferred deeds to words.
He compared the eloquent speeches of one of his political opponents to
cypress-trees.

"They are tall," he said, "but the