[Essays and Miscellanies by Plutarch]@TWC D-Link bookEssays and Miscellanies BOOK V 27/34
And this perchance often happens to young children, and the cause of their diseases is falsely attributed to those that look upon them. When I had done, Caius, Florus's son-in-law, said: Then it seems you make no more reckoning or account of Democritus's images, than of those of Aegium or Megara; for he delivers that the envious send out images which are not altogether void of sense or force, but full of the disturbing and poisonous qualities of those from whom they come.
Now these being mixed with such qualities, and remaining with and abiding in those persons that injure them both in mind and body; for this, I think, is the meaning of that philosopher, a man in his opinion and expressions admirable and divine.
Very true, said I, and I wonder that you did not observe that I took nothing from those effluvia and images but life and will; lest you should imagine that, now it is almost midnight, I brought in spectres and wise and understanding images to terrify and fright you; but in the morning, if you please, we will talk of those things. QUESTION VIII.
WHY HOMER CALLS THE APPLE-TREE [GREEK OMITTED], AND EMPEDOCLES CALLS APPLES [GREEK OMITTED]. PLUTARCH, TRYPHO, CERTAIN GRAMMARIANS, LAMPRIAS THE ELDER. As we were at supper in Chaeronea, and had all sorts of fruit at the table, one of the company chanced to speak these verses, The fig-trees sweet, the apple-trees that bear Fair fruit, and olives green through all the year. ("Odyssey," vii.
115.) Upon this there arose a question, why the poet calls apple-trees particularly [Greek omitted], BEARING FAIR FRUIT.
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