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Once upon a time, when he was passing through Selinus in Sicily, he saw inscribed upon a monument this elegiac couplet: Here at Selinus these men, who tyrc.nny strove to extinguish, Brazen-clad Ares laid low; nigh to our gates were they slain. Whereupon he said, ‘You certainly deserved to die for trying to extinguish tyranny when it was ablaze; rather you ought to have let it burn itself out completely.’ 1
1 Cf. Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus, chap. xx. (52 E).
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931. 3.
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