FAMOUS MEN
OF
ANCIENT TIMES.

BY

S. G. GOODRICH.

BOSTON:

THOMPSON, BROWN & COMPANY.

23 Hawley Street.

[Pg iii]

PREFACE

The reader of these pages will perhaps remark, thatthe length of the following sketches is hardly proportionedto the relative importance of the several subjects, regardedin a merely historical point of view. In explanation of thisfact, the author begs leave to say, that, while he intended topresent a series of the great beacon lights that shine alongthe shores of the past, and thus throw a continuous gleamover the dusky sea of ancient history,—he had still otherviews. His chief aim is moral culture; and the severalarticles have been abridged or extended, as this controllingpurpose might be subserved.

It may be proper to make one observation more. If theauthor has been somewhat more chary of his eulogies uponthe great men that figure in the pages of Grecian and Romanstory, than is the established custom, he has only to plead inhis vindication, that he has viewed them in the same light—weighedthem in the same balance—measured them by thesame standard, as he should have done the more familiar charactersof our own day, making due allowance for the timesand circumstances in which they acted. He has stated theresults of such a mode of appreciation; yet if the master[Pg iv]spirits of antiquity are thus shorn of some portion of theirglory, the writer still believes that the interest they excite isnot lessened, and that the instruction they afford is notdiminished. On the contrary, it seems to him that thestudy of ancient biography, if it be impartial and discriminating,is one of the most entertaining and useful to whichthe mind can be applied.

[Pg v]

CONTENTS.

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