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Essays and Lectures

by Oscar Wilde

previous: THE TEACHER OF WISDOM

Footnotes:

(1) Plato's LAWS; AEschylus' PROMETHEUS BOUND.

(2) Somewhat in the same spirit Plato, in his LAWS, appeals to the local position of Ilion among the rivers of the plain, as a proof that it was not built till long after the Deluge.

(3) Plutarch remarks that the ONLY evidence Greece possesses of the truth that the legendary power of Athens is no 'romance or idle story,' is the public and sacred buildings. This is an instance of the exaggerated importance given to ruins against which Thucydides is warning us.

(4) The fictitious sale in the Roman marriage PER COEMPTIONEM was originally, of course, a real sale.

(5) Notably, of course, in the case of heat and its laws.

(6) Cousin errs a good deal in this respect. To say, as he did, 'Give me the latitude and the longitude of a country, its rivers and its mountains, and I will deduce the race,' is surely a glaring exaggeration.

(7) The monarchical, aristocratical, and democratic elements of the Roman constitution are referred to.

(8) Polybius, vi. 9. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]

(9) [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]

(10) The various stages are [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], [Greek text which cannot be reproduced].

(11) Polybius, xii. 24.

(12) Polybius, i. 4, viii. 4, specially; and really PASSIM.

(13) He makes one exception.

(14) Polybius, viii. 4.

(15) Polybius, xvi. 12.

(16) Polybius, viii. 4: [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]

(17) Polybius resembled Gibbon in many respects. Like him he held that all religions were to the philosopher equally false, to the vulgar equally true, to the statesman equally useful.

(18) Cf. Polybius, xii. 25, [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]

(19) Polybius, xxii. 8.

(20) I mean particularly as regards his sweeping denunciation of the complete moral decadence of Greek society during the Peloponnesain War, which, from what remains to us of Athenian literature, we know must have been completely exaggerated. Or, rather, he is looking at men merely in their political dealings: and in politics the man who is personally honourable and refined will not scruple to do anything for his party.

(21) Polybius, xii. 25.

(22) THE TWO PATHS, Lect. iii. p. 123 (1859 ed.).

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