the
shores of the Mediterranean. Occasionally some faint echo of strife
would make itself heard from the wild tribes on the Danube, or in the
far Syrian deserts, but over nearly all the world known to the ancients
was established the Pax Romana. Battles were indeed fought, and troops
were marched upon Rome, but this was merely to decide who was to be the
nominal head of the vast system of the Empire, and what had once been
independent cities, countries, and nations submitted unhesitatingly to
whoever represented that irresistible power. It might be imagined that a
political system which destroyed all national individuality, and
rendered patriotism in its highest sense scarcely possible, would have
reacted unfavourably on the literary character of the age. Yet nothing
of the kind can be urged against the times which produced Epictetus, Dio
Chrysostom and Arrian; while at Rome, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus,
Martial, and Juvenal were reviving the memories of the Augustan age.

From several passages in Plutarch's writings we gather that he studied
under a master named Ammonius, at Athens. For instance, at the end of
his Life of Themistokles, he mentions a descendant of that great man who
was his fellow-student at the house of Ammonius the philosopher. Again,
he tells us that once Ammonius, observing at his afternoon lecture that
some of his class had indulged too freely in the pleasures of the table,
ordered his own son to be flogged, "because," he said, "the young
gentleman cannot eat his dinner without pickles," casting his eye at the
same time upon the other offenders so as to make them sensible that the
reproof applied to them also.

By way of completing his education he proceeded to visit Egypt. The
"wisdom of the Egyptians" always seems to have had a fascination for the
Greeks, and at this period Alexandria, with its famous library and its
memories of the Ptolemies, of Kallimachus and of Theokritus, was an
important centre of Greek intellectual activity. Plutarch's treatise on
Isis and Osiris is generally supposed to be a juvenile work suggested by
his Egyptian travels. In all the Graeco-Egyptian lore he certainly
became well skilled, although we have no evidence as to how long he
remained in Egypt. He makes mention indeed of a feast given in his
honour by some of his relatives on the occasion of his return home from
Alexandria, but we can gather nothing from the passage as to his age at
that time.

One anecdote of h