Excerpt
SERTORIUS
IT is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes
her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should
spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought
upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an
abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results. Or if, on
the other hand, events are limited to the combinations of some finite
number, then of necessity the same must often recur, and in the same
sequence. There are people who take a pleasure in making collections of
all such fortuitous occurrences that they have heard or read of, as look
like works of a rational power and design; they observe, for example,
that two eminent persons whose names were Attis, the one a Syrian, the
other of Arcadia, were both slain by a wild boar; that of two whose
names were Actæon, the one was torn in pieces by his dogs, the
other by his lovers; that of two famous Scipios, the one overthrew the
Carthaginians in war, the other totally ruined and destroyed them; the
city of Troy was the first time taken by Herc ... read full excerpt from: Plutarch: The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Volume II ebook
