The brief essay To an Uneducated Ruler may have formed part of a lecture, or it may, as its traditional title suggests, have been composed as a letter to some person in authority. There is nothing in it to prove either assumption. No striking or unusual precepts or doctrines are here promulgated, but the essay is enlivened by a few interesting tales and, considering its brevity, by a somewhat unusual number of rather elaborate similes. As usual Plutarch depends upon earlier writers for most of his material. The ending is so abrupt as to warrant the belief that the essay, in its present form, is only a fragment.