PREFACE
When the student of Plutarch leaves the familiar ground of the “Parallel Lives,” and turns, for the first time, to the less thoroughly explored region of the “Ethics,” he is struck with wonder at the many-sided excellence of the writer whose special gift he has been accustomed to regard as consisting in the composition of biographies more remarkable for the presentation of moral truths than for the accurate narration of historical facts. He learns with surprise that Plutarch has bequeathed to posterity a mine of information respecting the period in which he himself lived, as valuable and as interesting as the view presented in his “Lives” of that higher antiquity in which his classic heroes moved and worked. Even the actual bulk of Plutarch’s contribution to what may be called “general literature” is noteworthy. Apart from the “Lives,” the so-called “Catalogue of Lamprias” contains the titles of nearly two hundred works attributed, ostensibly by his son, to Plutarch,[1]and some fourscore of these have been handed downto our time under the general, but somewhat misleading, title of “Ethica” or “Moralia.”
Among these surviving essays are to be found contributions, of a surprising vitality and freshness, to the discussion of Education, Politics, Art, Literature, Music, Hygiene; serious and studied criticisms and appreciations of the great philosophic schools of Greece and their founders; short sermons on minor morals, illustrated by vivid sketches of character both typical and individual; conversations on Love and Marriage, and on other topics perpetually interesting to civilized societies. The longest work of all, the “Symposiacs,” or “Table Talk,” besides containing a wealth of material used by Plutarch and his friends in the discussion of current problems of scientific, literary, and social interest, gives a picture of Græco-Roman Society in the first Christian century, which, both from its general character and from the multitude of details it contains on matters of fact, is of the utmost importance for the accurate study of the period and its complicated problems. All these various works are interpenetrated with the character of the writer to such a vivid degree of personality that their study, from this point of view alone, would probably cast more light upon Plutarch’s methods as a writer of history than innumerable minute and difficult inquiries into his “sources,” and the manner in which he used them in writing his “Lives.”
Fascinating, however, as is the study of the “Ethics” in these various aspects, it soon becomes evident that the point of paramount importance for a properappreciation of Plutarch’s attitude towards life and its problems in general, is to be found in the position which he assumed in face of the religious questions which perplexed the thinking men of his time and country. What was Plutarch’s view of that ancient and hereditary faith which was not only the official creed of the Empire, but which was still accepted as a sufficient spiritual satisfaction by many millions of the Empire’s subjects? Was it possible that a man so steeped in the best literature, so keen a student of the greatest philosophies, could be a believer, to any serious extent, in those traditions which appear so crude and impossible in the light of our higher modern ideals? And if he could think them worthy of credit, by what method of interpretation was this consummation facilitated? How could he persuade himself and others to find in them at once the sanction and the inspiration of virtuous conduct? These are some of the questions which are constantly before the mind of the reader as he turns the pages of the “Ethics,” and they are constantly before the mind of the reader because the author is constantly supplying materials for answering them. The most important of Plutarch’s general writings are devoted to the full discussion, from a variety of standpoints, of religious questions, not only those handed down by the popular tradition, or embodied in ceremonial observances and legalized worships, but also those more purely theological conceptions presented in the various systems of Greek Philosophy. Around Plutarch’s Religion revolves his conception of life; his numerous contributions to thediscussion of other subjects of human interest unfold their full significance only when regarded in the light supplied by a knowledge of his religious beliefs.
Such, at any rate, is the experience of the present writer after a close study of the “Ethics” during several years; and it is with the hope of contributing in some degree to the clearer appreciation of Plutarch’s manifold activities in other directions, that an investigation into his religious views has been made the special object of the following pages.
The text which has been used for the purposes of this essay is that issued at intervals between the years 1888 and 1896 by Mr. G. N. Bernardakis, the director of the Gymnasium at Mytilene.[2]The editor has postponed, for discussion in a subsequent work, many questions bearing upon the authority of his MSS., and the principles which he has applied to them in the choice of his readings; his efforts in theeditio minorhaving been almost wholly confined to presenting the results of his labours in the shape of a complete and coherent text. Although, as Dr. Holden has said, “until the appearance of the promisededitio majorit is premature to pronounce an opinion on the editor’s qualifications as a textual critic,”[3]yet Mr. Bernardakis has exhibited so much combined accuracy and acumen in the preliminary discussion of various questions connected with his collation of MSS., and has disposed so completely, as Dr. Holden admits, of the chargesof inaccuracy brought against him by Professor von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff of Berlin,[4]that the more general student of Classical Literature may, perhaps, feel some amount of confidence that in this edition he sees the actual work of Plutarch himself, and not the ingenious and daring conjectures of some too brilliant critic. This feeling of confidence will not be diminished by the evident anxiety displayed by Mr. W. R. Paton, an English scholar working in the same field, “to induce Mr. Bernardakis to assist and correct” him in editing a text of the “De Cupiditate Divitiarum,”[5]and it will be increased by the discovery that, greatly different as the text of Bernardakis is from that of any other previous edition, the difference frequently consists in the substitution of plain sense for undiluted absurdity, or total want of meaning.
Indebtedness to other sources of criticism and information is, the writer hopes, fully acknowledged in the footnotes as occasion arises. There has yet been published no work in English dealing with Plutarch’s “Ethics” at all similar in scope and character either to Volkmann’s “Leben, Schriften und Philosophie des Plutarch von Chæronea,”[6]or to Gréard’s “La Morale de Plutarque.”[7]Archbishop Trench, who speaksslightingly of Gréard’s interesting study, has himself contributed one or two “Lectures” to some general observations on this sphere of Plutarch’s activity,[8]while the Rev. J. P. Mahaffy has given two chapters to the subject in his “Greek World under Roman Sway.”[9]Chap. xiii., which is headed “Plutarch and His Times—Public Life,” is devoted partly to Apuleius, and partly to Plutarch himself, and exhibits, in continuous form, a number of that author’s best-known and most frequently quoted statements and opinions on the subjects of Politics and Religion, some ten pages being set apart for the presentation and criticism of his views on the latter topic. Chap. xiv. is entitled “Plutarch and His Times—Private Life,” and intersperses with comments a number of extracts from the evidence furnished by Plutarch on various matters appertaining to the social and domestic life of his epoch, giving the gist of passages selected from the “Table Talk,” from various essays on Education, and from several tracts on Minor Morals and other themes of general interest.
Although Professor Mahaffy’s prolonged and extensive researches into every available sphere of Greek life and thought occasionally enable him to help out his author’s descriptions by aptly chosen illustrations from other sources, yet, in dealing with a writer at once so voluminous and so full of interest as Plutarch, thehistorian is hampered by the necessary limits of his appointed task, no less than by his own diffusive and gossiping style. Mr. Mahaffy’s Clio has always appeared to us in the light of an amiable and cultured hostess presiding at Afternoon Tea, gliding graciously hither and thither among her guests, and introducing topics of conversation which have only a superficial interest, or which she presents only in their superficial aspects; while, perhaps unconsciously, conveying the impression that she reserves for discussion among a few chosen intimates the more profound and sacred issues of human life. These two chapters on Plutarch furnish an excellent example of Professor Mahaffy’s method. They are entertaining in the sense that all well-conducted gossip is entertaining. A trait of character is chosen here; a smart saying, or a foolish one, is selected there; a piquant anecdote is retold elsewhere: but the searchlight is never stationary, and the earnest student who trusts solely to its assistance will vainly attempt to see Plutarch steadily and see him whole.
It is, of course, the fact, as already suggested, that, in these chapters, Professor Mahaffy is dealing with Plutarch only so far as he furnishes material illustrative of the conception which the historian has formed as to the character of the age in which his subject lived. This fact is conspicuously evident in the brief account of Plutarch’s Religion given in the ten pages from page 311 onwards, where Professor Mahaffy accepts the belief of so many of his predecessors, that the age was an age of religious decadence, and not an age ofreligious revival; and that, moreover, it was blameworthy in Plutarch that “he never took pains to understand” Christianity.[10]Further, it must be added, that the historian’s natural desire to illustrate Plutarch’s times, rather than to display Plutarch himself, has led him to commit serious injustice by his uncritical acceptance of certain spurious tracts as the genuine workmanship of Plutarch.
The conclusion at which Professor Mahaffy arrives, that Plutarch was “a narrow and bigoted Hellene,”[11]is intelligible enough to those who accept the view which we have endeavoured to combat in Chapter III. of the following essay, a view which is simply a belated survival of the ancient prejudice which consigns to eternal perdition the followers of other Religions, because they are wilfully blind to the light with which our own special Belief has been blessed in such splendour. But the man who, after even the most casual study of Plutarch’s utterances on Religion, can seriously describe him as “narrow and bigoted” will maintain, with equal serenity, that it is the practice of the sun to shine at midnight. Professor Mahaffy, indeed, in using such expressions, is at variance with his own better judgment, inasmuch as he elsewhere concedes that, “had Plutarch been at Athens when St. Paul came there, he would have been the first to give the Apostle a respectful hearing.”[12]
The subject of Plutarch’s “Moralia” has also been touched in a few contributions to the current Literature of the Reviews. The article on “Plutarch” appearing over Paley’s initials in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” and giving a brief statement of the subjects dealt with in the different tracts in the “Moralia,” almost entirely exhausts the short list of English literary contributions to the treatment of this portion of Plutarch’s work. Paley declared in the article in question that the “Moralia” were “practically almost unknown to most persons in Britain, even to those who call themselves scholars.” This sweeping assertion is not by any means true to-day, although it is still the case that, so far as the literary presentment of results is concerned, the “Ethics” of Plutarch are a neglected field of research.
Volkmann, in the “Leben und Schriften” part of his work, carefully discusses the authenticity of each tract in the generally recognized list of Plutarch’s writings, while in the volume dealing with the “Philosophie” he gives an exhaustive analysis of the greater portion of them. Recognizing that Plutarch had no special philosophical system of his own, Volkmann endeavours to remedy this deficiency by the application of a systematic method of treatment with regular branches of “synthetic” and “analytic” investigation. The “synthetic” branch of Volkmann’s method is devoted to a discussion of Plutarch’s philosophic standpoint; to an examination of his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureans; and to the consideration of his relation to Plato, which Volkmannregards as the foundation of Plutarch’s Philosophy. The function of Volkmann’s “analytic” method is to discover how, on the philosophic basis thus laid down by the “synthetic” method, Plutarch arranges his positive conclusions in a coherent relationship with his negative polemic. It is, according to Volkmann, a natural result of the successful operation of this twofold system, that the circumstances of Plutarch’s life lose their external character, and attain to an essential connexion with his philosophical conceptions. This last assertion is made by way of criticism directed against Gréard’s “natural and simple” method of arranging Plutarch’s philosophical utterances under headings descriptive of the various spheres of life to which they seem appropriate—“la vie domestique,” “la cité,” “le temple,” &c. Volkmann thinks that under this arrangement the sense of internal unity is lost; that Plutarch’s views are presented in it as goodnatured and benevolent, but somewhat rambling, reflections on the separate aspects of human life, instead of being treated as the outcome of a consistent philosophy taking ethical phenomena into systematic consideration.[13]This criticism has considerable force, though it does not detract from the truth and charm of M. Gréard’s book. Volkmann himself undoubtedly errs in the opposite direction. Gréard was quite justified in retorting on his critic, “Il arrive même qu’en voulant établir troprationellementla philosophie de Plutarque, M. Volkmann se trouve conduit à lui prêter une sorte de système, bien qu’il sache comme personne quenul moins que le sage de Chéronée n’a porté dans ses écrits une pensée systématique.”[14]Volkmann, in our opinion, attaches far too much importance both to Plutarch’s discipular relation to Plato, and to his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureans. Plutarch’s opposition to Plato is frequently as strongly marked as his opposition to Stoics and Epicureans; and his indebtedness to Stoics and Epicureans is frequently as strongly marked as his indebtedness to Plato.
Volkmann’s work had been preceded in 1854 by an interesting and well-written Thesis, entitled “De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis Theologia.”[15]The author, C. G. Seibert, gives a brief review of Greek Philosophy, with the object of showing the attitude assumed by each of the great schools to the gods of the national tradition. He demonstrates conclusively, and Volkmann follows in his steps, that Plutarch owed something to all the Schools, to Stoics, to Peripatetics, and to Epicureans. Yet he, too, insists that Plutarch’s attitude towards the popular religion was identical with that assumed by Plato—eadem ratione (qua Plato)Platonis discipuli theologiam tractarunt, e quibus præ cœteris Plutarchus magistri divini vestigia secutus est. This, indeed, is the orthodox tendency in the appreciation of Plutarch, and it has been carried to the extent of claiming Plutarch as the founder of that special kind of Platonism distinguished by the epithet “New.” “Plutarch,” says Archbishop Trench, “was a Platonist with an oriental tinge, and thus a forerunner of the New Platonists.”—“He might be described with greater truth than Ammonius as the Founder of Neo-Platonism,” wrote Dr. H. W. J. Thiersch, who, however, had not freed himself from the idea (the truth of which even so early a writer as Dacier had doubted, and the legendary character of which M. Gréard has proved beyond a doubt) that Plutarch received consular honours at the hands of Trajan.[16]—“In this essay” (theDe Oraculorum Defectu), thinks Mr. W. J. Brodribb, “Plutarch largely uses the Neo-Platonic Philosophy.”[17]Even those who do not insist that Plutarch is a Neo-Platonist, or a “forerunner” of Neo-Platonism, are so anxious to label him with some designation, that they will hardly allow him to speak for himself. It may, perhaps, argue presumption on the part of anhomo incognitus nulliusque auctoritatisto suggest that Plutarch faces the teaching of his predecessors with anindependent mind; that he isnullius addictus jurare in verba magistri; that he tries Plato’s teachings, not from Plato’s point of view, but from his own.[18]
Such, however, is the view maintained in the pages of the following essay. It seems to us that, in order to discover the principle which gives coherence and internal unity to Plutarch’s innumerable philosophic utterances, it is not necessary to start with the assumption that he belongs to any particular school. Philosophy is to him one of the recognized sources of Religion and Morality. Tradition is another source, and Law or recognized custom another. Plutarch assumes that these three sources conjointly supply solid sanctions for belief and conduct. They are the three great records of human experience, and Plutarch will examine all their contributions to the criticism of life with a view to selecting those parts from each which will best aid him and his fellow citizens to lead lives of virtue and happiness. The great philosophical schools of Greece are regarded from this point of view—from the point of view of a moralist and a philosopher, not from the point of view of a Platonist, an anti-Stoic, or an anti-Epicurean. Plutarch is indebted, as even Volkmann himself shows, to all the Schools alike. Then why call him a Platonist, or a Neo-Pythagorizing Platonist, as Zeller has done? Plutarch’s teaching is too full of logical inconsistencies to be formalized intoa system of Philosophy. But the dominating principle of his teaching, the paramount necessity of finding a sanction and an inspiration for conduct in what the wisdom of the past had already discovered, is so strikingly conspicuous in all his writings that his logical inconsistencies appear, and are, unimportant. It is this desire of making the wisdom and traditions of the past available for ethical usefulness which actuates his attempt to reconcile the contradictions, and remove the crudities and inconsistencies, in the three sources of religious knowledge. This is the principle which gives his teaching unity, and not any external circumstances of his life, or his attitude in favour of or in opposition to the tenets of any particular school.
There is no English translation of Plutarch’s “Ethics” which can claim anything approaching the character of an authorized version. Almost every editor of Plutarch has felt it necessary to find fault with his predecessors’ attempts to express Plutarch’s meaning through the medium of another language. Amyot’s translation is, in the opinion of the Comte Joseph de Maistre, repellent to “ladies and foreigners.” Wyttenbach, who makes numerous alterations of Xylander’s Latin version, also says of Ricard’s French translation, that “it skips over the difficulties and corruptions in such a manner as to suggest that the translator was content merely to produce a version which should be intelligible to French readers.”[19]Wyttenbach himself is reprehended in the following terms by the editor of the Didot text of the “Moralia”—“Of the Latin version, in which we have made numerous corrections, it must be admitted that Xylander and Wyttenbach, in dealing with corrupt passages, not infrequently translated conjectures of their own, or suggested by other scholars, which we have been unable to adopt into the Greek Text.” In the preface to his English translation of the “De Iside et Osiride,” the Rev. Samuel Squire, Archdeacon of Bath in 1744, has some excellent critical remarks on the style of previous translators of Plutarch, and he somewhat pathetically describes the difficulties awaiting the author who endeavours to translate that writer—“To enter into another man’s Soul as it were, who lived several hundred years since, to go along with his thoughts, to trace, pursue, and connect his several ideas, to express them with propriety in a language different from that they were conceived in, and lastly to give the copy the air and spirit of an original, is not so easy a task as it may be perhaps deemed by those who have never made the attempt. The very few good translations of the learned authors into our own language, will sufficiently justify the truth of the observation—but if any one still doubts it, let him take the first section of the book before him, and make the experiment himself.” M. Gréard is briefer but equally emphatic—“Toute traduction est une œuvre délicate, celle de Plutarque plus que toute autre peut-être.”
Whatever may be the cause of the perpetuation of this ungracious tradition of fault-finding, whether the general difficulty specified by Archdeacon Squire, or the more particular obstacle of a corrupt text described by other commentators, we do not feel that we are called upon to make any departure from so long-established a custom. The quaint charm of most of the translations forming the basis of Dr. Goodwin’s revision no one will be inclined to deny, although the reviser’s own remarks make it clear that little dependence is to be placed upon their accuracy in any instance of difficulty.[20]The two volumes contained in the well-known “Bohn” series of translations are utterly misleading, not only as regards the colour which they infuse into Plutarch’s style, but also as regards their conspicuous incorrectness in many particular instances.[21]To other translations of individual tracts reference has been occasionally made in the notes.
In view of the fact that no dependence was to be placed upon the accuracy of any translation yet furnished of that portion of our author’s work with which we were dealing, it was necessary, beforeundertaking this essay, to make full translations of considerable portions of the “Ethics” from the text of Bernardakis; and these translations, or paraphrases based upon them, are largely employed in the following pages. Mere references to the text in support of positions assumed, or statements made, would have been useless and misleading in the absence of clear indications as to the exact interpretation placed upon the words of the text. The writer cannot hope to have succeeded where, in the opinion of competent judges, there have been so many failures. But he has, at any rate, made a conscientious attempt to understand his author, and to give expression to his view of his author’s meaning, without any prejudice born of the assumption that Plutarch belonged to a particular school, or devoted his great powers of criticism and research to the exposition and illustration of the doctrines of any single philosopher.
JOHN OAKESMITH.
Battersea,September, 1902.