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Excerpt from Plutarch's Lives, Vol. 6 of 8 IN this volume we shall give the Lives of Alexander the Great, and of Caesar, who overthrew Pompey and, as the quantity of materials is so great, we shall only premise, that we hope for indulgence though we do not give the actions in full detail and with a scrupulous exactness, but rather in a short summary; since we are not writing Histories, but Lives. Nor is it always in the most distinguished achievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discerned but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges or the most important battles. Therefore, as painters in their portraits labour the likeness in the face, and particularly about the eyes, in which the peculiar turn of mind most appears, and run over the rest with a more careless hand so we must be permit ted to strike off the features of the soul, in order to give a real likeness of these great men, and leave to others the circumstantial detail of their labours and achievements. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.