Hipparchus, Plutarch, Schröder, and Hough

Abstract

1. HIPPARCHUS AND PLUTARCH. Plutarch was Greek biographer and philosopher from Chaeronea, who was born before A.D. 50 and died after A.D. 120. He is best known for his Parallel Lives, which inspired such Renaissance writers as Montaigne, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Rousseau. His many other works have been gathered together under the name Moralia, a collection of comparatively short treatises and dialogues which cover an immense range of subjects, literary, ethical, political, and scientific [21, p. 8]. Part of the Moralia consists of the Table-Talk, a collection of dialogues purporting to reproduce the after-dinner conversation of Plutarch and his friends and relatives on various occasions [20, p. 2]. In the Table-Talk [20, VIII.9, 732] appears the following statement: