Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.2, 1865).djvu/392

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FLAMININUS.[1]




What Titus Quintius Flamininus, whom, we select as a parallel to Philopœmen, was in personal appearance, those who are curious may see by the brazen statue of him, which stands in Rome near that of the great Apollo, brought from Carthage, opposite to the Circus Maximus, with a Greek inscription upon it. The temper of his mind is said to have been of the warmest both in anger and in kindness; not indeed equally so in both respects; as in punishing, he was ever moderate, never inflexible; but whatever courtesy or good turn he set about, he went through with it, and was as perpetually kind and obliging to those on whom he had poured his favors, as if they, not he, had been the benefactors: exerting himself for the security and preservation of what he seemed to consider his noblest possessions, those to whom he had done good. But being ever thirsty after honor, and passionate for glory, if any thing of a greater and more extraordinary nature were to be done, he was eager to be the doer of it himself; and took more pleasure in those that needed, than in those that were capable of

  1. The manuscripts generally write the name, incorrectly, Flaminius, and it is very possible that Plutarch, who was not by any means perfect in his knowledge of Latin, made the mistake himself. Titus was the name by which Flamininus was commonly known to the Greeks.