other,
nor his virtue either so clean, entire, or steady as that of Seneca.

Now the book whereof I speak, to bring about its design, gives a very
injurious description of Seneca, having borrowed its approaches from Dion
the historian, whose testimony I do not at all believe for besides that
he is inconsistent, that after having called Seneca one while very wise,
and again a mortal enemy to Nero's vices, makes him elsewhere avaricious,
an usurer, ambitious, effeminate, voluptuous, and a false pretender to
philosophy, his virtue appears so vivid and vigorous in his writings, and
his vindication is so clear from any of these imputations, as of his
riches and extraordinarily expensive way of living, that I cannot believe
any testimony to the contrary. And besides, it is much more reasonable
to believe the Roman historians in such things than Greeks and
foreigners. Now Tacitus and the rest speak very honourably both of his
life and death; and represent him to us a very excellent and virtuous
person in all things; and I will allege no other reproach against Dion's
report but this, which I cannot avoid, namely, that he has so weak a
judgment in the Roman affairs, that he dares to maintain Julius Caesar's
cause against Pompey [And so does this editor. D.W.], and that of Antony
against Cicero.

Let us now come to Plutarch: Jean Bodin is a good author of our times,
and a writer of much greater judgment than the rout of scribblers of his
age, and who deserves to be read and considered. I find him, though, a
little bold in this passage of his Method of history, where he accuses
Plutarch not only of ignorance (wherein I would have let him alone: for
that is beyond my criticism), but that he "often writes things
incredible, and absolutely fabulous ": these are his own words. If he
had simply said, that he had delivered things otherwise than they really
are, it had been no great reproach; for what we have not seen, we are
forced to receive from other hands, and take upon trust, and I see that
he purposely sometimes variously relates the same story; as the judgment
of the three best captains that ever were, given by Hannibal; 'tis one
way in the Life of Flammius, and another in that of Pyrrhus. But to
charge him with having taken incredible and impossible things for current
pay, is to accuse the most judicious author in the world of want of
judgment. And this is his example; "as," says he, "when he relates that
a Lacedaemonian