Plutarch and his intellectual world: essays on Plutarch

271 Pages·1997·2.933 MB·English

by  Bowie, Ewen, Mossman, Judith

First published in 1997 by
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© 1997 The contributors
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ISBN 0 7156 2778 3
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by Ernest Buckley, Clunton, Shropshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd.,
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CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
1. Hadrian, Favorinus, and Plutarch Ewen Bowie (Corpus Christi College,
Oxford)
2. Favorinus versus Epictetus on the philosophical heritage of Plutarch. A
debate on epistemology Jan Opsomer (Catholic University of Leuven)
3. Thyrsus-bearer of the Academy or enthusiast for Plato? Plutarch’s de
Stoicorum repugnantiis George Boys-Stones (St John’s College, Oxford)
4. Family and the formation of character in Plutarch Francesca Albini
(University College London)
5. From Olympias to Aretaphila: women in politics in Plutarch Karin
Blomqvist (University of Lund)
6. Plutarch, Amatorius 13–18 Donald Russell (St John’s College, Oxford)
7. Health and politics in Plutarch’s de tuenda sanitate praecepta Luigi
Senzasono (Rome)
8. Plutarch’s Dinner of the Seven Wise Men and its place in symposion
literature Judith Mossman (Trinity College, Dublin)
9. Plutarch, Brutus and Brutus’ Greek and Latin letters John Moles
(University of Durham)
10. Moral ambiguity in Plutarch’s Lysander–Sulla Tim Duff (University of
Reading)
11. Severed heads: individual portraits and irrational forces in Plutarch’s
Galba and Otho Rhiannon Ash (St Hugh’s College, Oxford)
12. Plutarch on Caesar’s fall Christopher Pelling (University College,
Oxford)
13. Plutarch and the end of history John Dillon (Trinity College, Dublin)
Index of Passages
General Index
PREFACE
This volume contains essays representative of papers given at the conference
of the International Plutarch Society held at Trinity College, Dublin, on 7–11
September 1994. The conference was entitled ‘The Intellectual World of
Plutarch’, and was attended by some thirty participants from several
countries. I would like to express my gratitude to all those who attended the
conference and participated in the discussions after the papers. I owe
particular debts to Anton Powell, who before the conference had even taken
place suggested that the Classical Press of Wales might publish the
proceedings; to John Dillon, who not only gave invaluable help in organizing
the conference and secured funding for it, but also allowed me to edit the
papers; and to Charles Benson, Keeper of Early Printed Books in the Old
Library of Trinity College, who kindly organized an exhibition of early
editions of Plutarch during the conference itself and who generously gave me
permission to use an illustration from Trinity’s Agostini Plutarch on the dust-
jacket of this volume. The International Plutarch Society, in the person of
Frances B. Titchener, the editor of Ploutarchos, performed its usual vital
function of publicising the event and bringing people together for it. One of
the great joys of working on Plutarch is the warm and friendly atmosphere
which Plutarch Society events always bask in. Perhaps there is something
about Plutarch studies that encourages bonhomie; but that IPS events attract
scholars from such a wide radius is in very large measure due to the hard
work of those who produce the Society’s journal.
INTRODUCTION
Judith Mossman
Bild und Habitus der Intellektuellen ändern sich mit der jeweiligen
Gesellschaft und den konkreten Aufgaben und Funktionen, die er in ihr
wahrnimmt. Denn jede Zeit schafft sich die Intellektuellen, die sie braucht.
Wir selbst haben einen solchen Wandel seit den späten 60er Jahren
unmittelbar miterlebt. Der damals aktuelle Typus des kritischen, politisch und
moralisch engagierten, ‘linken’ Intellek tuellen, der weit über Hörsaal und
Universitätscampus hinaus in der öffentlichen Diskussion und im
Straßenprotest das Bild bestimmte, ist heute ausgestorben – und mit ihm auch
ganz bestimmte Formen seines Erscheinungsbildes, von der
unkonventionellen, am Arbeiter orientierten Kleidung bis hin zum Lebensstil
und zur Redeweise. Die Konsumund Freizeitgesellschaft hat inzwischen
längst neue Typen hervorgebracht: den politisch nicht mehr engagierten
Moderator, den Unterhalter, den Analytiker und Prognostiker, der
Zeitströmungen zu erkennen und im Dienste seiner Auftraggeber eventuell
auch zu modellieren versucht. Nicht mehr der parteiische Kritiker und Re
former, sondern der mehr oder weniger konformistische, über den Parteien
stehende Kommentator ist gefragt.1
The naming of books is a difficult matter, especially the naming of collections
of essays. There is a danger that any title general enough to be properly
descriptive of the contents of such a book may sound woolly; the danger is all
the greater if the title includes a word like ‘intellectual’, a word with a number
of different shades of meaning and connotations which are not always either
clear or positive. As this collection of essays is called Plutarch and his
Intellectual World, it seems doubly necessary for the editor to explain in some
detail the rationale behind this title.
It was meant to convey various ideas, exploiting rather than suffer ing
from the ambiguities of ‘intellectual’. First, it was supposed to suggest that
Plutarch has an intellectual historical context which he responded to, which
he helped to shape and was shaped by, and in which he needs to be
understood. Secondly, I wanted to emphasise, both by the title, and by
incorporating in one volume essays on as wide a range of Plutarch’s work as
possible, that Plutarch’s oeuvre cannot ultimately be divided up by genre: that
the Lives and the Moralia need to be seen as the product of a single, if
extraordinarily capacious, intelligence.2
But there is something else lurking in this title, too: the question, ‘In what
sense is Plutarch an intellectual?’, is raised by it, but not an swered. Indeed,
there is no single answer, but many – perhaps as many as there are readers of
Plutarch. If Plutarch himself were asked what sort of an intellectual he was, it
is far from clear that he would recognise the terms of the question, leave alone
what he would want to answer.3 It is entirely safe to say that he would want to
dissociate himself from some modern connotations of the word. In modern
times intellectuals have occasionally appeared as heroes or as tragic victims,
but they have more often been seen as pretentious, ineffectual, or hypocritical.
Plutarch (or at least the humane and agreeable persona he presents so well
throughout his writings) would certainly not think of himself either as above
conventional morality, as W.H. Auden’s man in-the-street thinks of
intellectuals, or with the self-depreciation im plied in Auden’s reportage of
this attitude.4 Nor would he regard himself as above practical considerations,
unlike the man whom Albert Schweitzer invited to help him carry wood, and
who declined, saying: ‘I don’t do that sort of thing, I’m an intellectual.’5
Camus defined an intellectual as ‘someone whose mind watches itself’.6 One
even wonders whether Plutarch, despite his conviction of the overriding
importance of philosophy, would be as self-consciously intellectual as this,
and yet we might be deceived in that by the apparent gentlemanly ease with
which Plutarch creates his characters in the Lives, and what Erasmus calls his
opus musaicum in the Moralia.7
Zanker’s description of the intellectuals of today in the quotation above
says much that is reminiscent of Plutarch’s apparent attitude to the proper role
of the intellectual in the wider world; and John Dillon, too, in the final essay
in this collection, strongly suggests that Plutarch and contemporary thinkers
such as Fukuyama have similar views of themselves as observers of the ‘end
of history’.8 But perhaps what is really important in Zanker’s piece is his
timely reminder that fashions in intellectuals change, as well as in everything
else, and this perception is very important when reading Plutarch. Part of the
secret of Plutarch’s success is that it is easy for a wide variety of readers to
identify with him in many respects, but we should ask ourselves whether such
identification is not largely illusory, and whether it is not rather the case that
each successive age finds in Plutarch what it needs, just as it creates the
contemporary intellectuals it requires.
Bearing all this in mind, it seemed best to begin the collection with three
studies on Plutarch’s relations with his contemporaries – the historical context
of Plutarch’s intellectual world, in effect. Ewen Bowie considers the
relationship of Plutarch to Favorinus and of Favorinus to Hadrian; Jan
Opsomer and George Boys-Stones tackle different aspects of Plutarch’s
engagement in philosophical debate and seek to elucidate Plutarch’s own
philosophical position.
From Plutarch’s philosophy to his views on society: Francesca Albini next
considers aspects of Plutarch’s thought on education, that fundamental
component of anyone’s intellectual outlook; Karin Blomqvist raises Plutarch’s
attitude to gender and specifically to how women should use their talents,
intellectual and other, and what those talents are.
Moving from Plutarch’s thought to his mode of expression, some thing he
considered vital to the appreciation of character and intel lect,9 Donald
Russell shows in a detailed study of a high-point of one of Plutarch’s most
carefully written works how Plutarch constructs an argument and expresses it.
The next two essays concentrate on further literary aspects of two of the
Moralia: Luigi Senzasono examines a nexus of imagery which links health
and politics in the De tuenda sanitate praecepta, and I examine the literary
antecedents and method of the Dinner of the Seven Wise Men.
Turning to the Lives, Plutarch’s appreciation and use of his primary
sources is considered by John Moles in a manner which stresses how artful
Plutarch can be even when he is apparently at his most ingenu ous;10 this is
also emphasised in a somewhat different context by Tim Duff in his
examination of Plutarch’s moralism. Rhiannon Ash and Christopher Pelling
illustrate different aspects of Plutarch’s depth and subtlety of historical vision
and how he uses sophisticated literary techniques to convey it, and finally
John Dillon reinforces the point that Plutarch is capable of seeing, indeed
compelled to see, his own times as part of a broader historical perspective.
It is hoped that some of the breadth and variety of Plutarch’s intellectual
interests and some of the skill with which they are ex pressed will become
clear from the thirteen essays in this book. But so versatile was Plutarch’s
intelligence, and so great his intellectual en ergy, that one collection of essays
cannot hope to do full justice to him; there is still much scope yet for
exploration of Plutarch and his intellectual world.
Notes
1 Paul Zanker, Die Maske des Sokrates: Das Bild der Intellektuellen in der
antiken Kunst, Munich 1995, 9: ‘The image and dress of the intellectual
change with contemporary society and the concrete tasks and functions which
he undertakes in it. For each society creates the intellectuals it needs. We
ourselves have directly experienced such a change since the late 60s. The type
of the intellectual current at that time – the critically, politically, and morally
engaged, ‘left-wing’ intellectual, who established his image far beyond the
lecture room and university campus through public discussion and
protestmarches in the street – has died out today, and with him also quite
distinctive patterns in his outward image, from his unconventional, worker-
oriented clothing to his mode of living and the style of his discourse. The
consumerand leisure-society has in the meantime long since produced new
types: the TV anchor-man, no longer politically engaged, the chatterer, the
analyst and pundit, who tries to recognise contemporary tendencies and in the
service of his employers eventually also tries to mould them. No longer the
partisan critic and reformer, but the more or less conformist commentator,
who stands above the parties, is in demand.’
2 This not a new point: it was made forcefully by J. Barthelmess, ‘Recent
work on the Moralia’, in Miscellanea Plutarchea: Atti del I convegno di studi
su Plutarcho, ed. F.E. Brenk and I. Gallo, Ferrara 1986, 61–81, esp. 61–2. It is
however one which continues to be worth stressing, as it is still sometimes
obscured, despite Barthelmess’ optimism at the time.
3 The English word ‘intellectual’, used as a noun, would require several
Greek words to convey its semantic range: ϕɩλóσoϕς ,ϕɩλoμαθής, σoϕóς,
σoϕɩστής are only the first which spring to mind.
4 ‘To the man-in-the-street, who, I’m sorry to say, | Is a keen observer of
life, | The word ‘Intellectual’ suggests straight away | A man who’s untrue to
his wife.’ W.H. Auden, New Year Letter (1961), note to line 1277.
5 The story is to be found in A. Schweitzer, Mitteilungen aus Lambarene
(1928, tr. C.T. Campion, 1931, as More from the Primeval Forest), ch. 5.
Plutarch’s practical engagement with local affairs, for example, is apparent
from Praecepta gerendae reipublicae 811b–c, and is charmingly expressed by
Wilamowitz in his essay ‘Plutarch as Biographer’ (tr. from Reden und
Vorträge, ii [5] 1967 [1922], 247–79, by J. Kerkhecker) in B. Scardigli (ed.)
Essays on Plutarch’s Lives, Oxford 1995, 47–74, esp. 52: ‘Yet the visitors
might miss their host, because he may be on the way to inspect the cleaning
of the streets of the little town…’
6 ‘Intellectuel = celui qui se dédouble’, A. Camus, Carnets 1935–42
(Notebooks, 1962), p. 41.
7 See Donald Russell, Plutarch: Selected Essays and Dialogues, Oxford
1993, xv–xvi.
8 See John Dillon, ‘Plutarch and the end of History’, below, pp. 233–40.
9 See also John Moles, ‘Plutarch, Brutus, and Brutus’ Greek and Latin
letters’, below, pp. 145–8.
10 See Moles, below, pp. 141–68.