Plutarch, Volume IV

by John Langhorne, William Langhorne, Plutarch,

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

Genres: Classics

324 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 2015

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

posted as a review of vol.4, but relevant to vols.1-3 as well

Written by Plutarch sometime in the early 2nd century AD., the 4-volume Parallel Lives, aka Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, has a much wider historical remit, from c. 820 BC to 30BC, than the well-known Penguin excerpted edition The Fall of the Roman Republic : Six Lives. For greater understanding, in addition to those lives of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, Caesar, and Cicero familiar from the Penguin edition, also consider the lives of the other famous or notorious Romans treated by Plutarch, as well as the lives of rebels who fought against the Roman hegemony, e.g. among the Greeks, Philopoemen of the Achaean League, Perseus of Macedon, and Pyrrhus of Elis. Because he had to start somewhere in providing these portraits of 'great men' of the now very distant past, Plutarch includes some outright figures of legend rather than of history, figures such as Theseus or Romulus; these Plutarch treats (mostly) with due circumspection, and this increases the reader's confidence in Plutarch as an authority. But there is reason to doubt Plutarch's various accounts, as explained below, in places if not overall.

For those looking further afield than Roman history, or those specifically interested in the Hellenistic period from 323 BC to 30BC, e.g. for students of Demosthenes' speeches (available online in English translation via Perseus), Plutarch's Lives provide some much needed context. Herein is a source that contributes to understanding the waxing power of Macedon, leading to the Macedonian hegemony over Hellas, as well as the attempts at resistance against it. Surprising are the biographies of Phocion of Athens (c. 402–318 BC), Agis IV of Sparta (c. 265 BC–241 BC), Aratus of Sicyon (271–213 BC), and Philopoemen of Megalopolis (253–183 BC). In singling out these four depictions (here appearing in vols. 2, 3 & 4) I'm aware that I'm dissenting from most scholars who tend instead to praise Plutarch's sketches of the likes of Themistocles, Alcibiades, Cato the Elder, or Antonius, all much more well known figures in history. But these four Greek narratives stood out, in my mind.

The whole is papered over with an ostensible moral purpose, for this exercise in its larger remit is intended as ethical history, the kind of history (or biography) with a lesson to teach the reader: "for the elevation of our own character" (vol.1 Life of Timoleon). Where possible, Plutarch draws the comparisons and contrasts to justify his moralizing, allowing the reader to glean how appropriate his conclusions are, or not, about the various historical figures portrayed. All the figures drawn here strive in various fields simultaneously, military, civilian, familial, philosophical, rhetorical, prudential, financial—although it seems none of them, perhaps especially among the Romans, can satisfy the demands of all of these fields at the same time: e.g. Cato the Elder (Cato Censorius) took a perverse pleasure in flaunting his narrow-mindedness, especially when it came to philosophy, making him liable to various forms of spiteful conduct that made him forfeit the very virtues he professed to uphold, at times letting his ill-nature get the better of him (vol.2 Life of Marcus Cato, 5, 22-23, and passim); e.g. Pompey was not much in civilian life, making a hash of every political situation he meddled in ("You have deceived us!" bewailed Cicero); Caesar, always in debt or living by injustice, in order to prop up his reputation as a magnanimous man; Cato the Younger (Cato Uticensis) neither devoted nor perhaps even just, it seems, to his wife Marcia, although the circumstances are obscure; Antonius not much of an admiral, nor a husband, nor did he do anything good for the state which he ostenbly served; Brutus a merciless usurer (vol.3, n.712 ); Cicero notoriously inconsistent with his philosophy, if it can be said that he even had one, due to excessive self-regard (shall we say vanity?), making him a ridiculous consul, as Cato remarked (vol.3 Life of Cato, 21). Although it is nowhere stated by Plutarch, it can be inferred from the text that he is holding the entire set of historical figures that he has selected to a standard of well-roundedness. This standard is very different than, say, the measure the self-interested Roman populace used to judge them (viz. 'what have you done for me lately?' it seems the Roman plebs are always asking), usually taking the material riches that the various praetors, proconsuls or imperators bring back from conquered provinces as the coin of their worth; others among these figures had reknown of a different sort in mind, conscious of their reputation in posterity, and careful to cultivate the frame in which their memories would be shown in the best light—surely figures like Caesar are to be condemned, despite in his case all of his vaunted justifications in written form of his wonted greatness (e.g. his Conquest of Gaul and his The Civil War). As Plutarch puts it: Cato "had the superiority over Cæsar in things honourable and just" (Life of Cato, 64); or, "political virtue is the highest to which a man can aspire" (Comparison of Aristeides and Cato, 3).

Other than the above-mentioned possibilities for ethical instruction, Plutarch's overall point in lining up Greek vs Roman is to demonstrate that, for anything the Romans could do, the Greeks could do it just as well or better; or, as the case may be, worse e.g. Demetrius I of Macedon (337–283 BC) arguably cuts a far worse figure than anyone among the Romans that Plutarch covers; so, a negative example, of someone who just wasn't even trying to live up to any ethical standard. Or at minimum Plutarch's program is, despite the admitted greatness of the Roman Republic or subsequently of the Roman Empire, that there were among the Greeks of the Hellenistic Age figures worthy of remembrance. Of course, after the Macedonian Wars (214–148 BC), Greece fell under the Roman ambit. So the entirety reads, across the four volumes, as something like a history of the decline of Greek civilization, a succession of falls, first of the Delian League, then the Spartan hegemony, then the Theban hegemony, then the Macedonian hegemony, then the Achaean League falling under the Roman hegemony (where Plutarch leaves off, per force, writing centuries before the Roman Empire itself falls in turn).

More problematic, there are at least some places in the the history of Rome that Plutarch provides where one can read the biographies provided as very much like medieval chansons de gestes, or a succession of 'great' deeds, episodic and repetitive, mostly with Roman commanders responding to and/or targeting petty potentates with delusions of grandeur, in campaigns which are mostly pointless (similar to the knights-errant with their tournaments of the later literary tradition), taking place as they do within what appears to be a never-ending cycle of violence, of conquest and reconquest of the same plots of ground: consider for example, in Plutarch's biographies of classical/hellenistic figures, how many of the conflicts take place over and over again in Gaul, Iberia, Anatolia, or Mesopotamia, at the extreme territorial limits of Roman influence and ambition. It becomes painfully obvious that some of this is hagiography (myth-making), most obviously in the case of the Marcellus (c. 268–208 BC); once Plutarch has shown himself willing in this case (vol.2 Mar. 6-8) to distort history for patriotic effect, the reader winces more and more often at his re-telling of events. Some of these conquests, e.g. by the otherwise obscure Roman Lucullus (115–53 BC) over Mithridates (135–63 BC) —in the otherwise obscure kingdom of Pontus-- involve almost unbelievable numbers of dead, e.g. 280,000 at the siege of Cyzicus (73 BC), itself an obscure place, hardly evident today. See photo taken in 2019 of the Ruins of Cyzicus, Anatolia, Asia Minor:
[image error]
Formerly part of Kingdom of Pontus, apparently this is what's left of the Cyzicus amphitheatre (photo by Izabela Miszczak, via Wikipedia, date accessed 5th Feb 2023)

Others of these contests depicted in Plutarch are staged as one-on-one battles, where hero and anti-hero cannot resist their better natures or heed their better advisors and instead "come down in passion and fight a battle" (vol.2 Luc.. 36. p.455).

Some of Plutarch's illustrative speeches highlighting the characters in these biographies are just begging to be put to music. In fact, later Europeans composers and dramaturges would mine this sort of history endlessly, finding ample subject-matter in Plutarch's Lives for their tragedy or opera. e.g. There are, reportedly, no less than 24 operas composed about Tigranes alone, the Armenian king (140–55 BC) who hails from an otherwise obscure or upstart Artaxiad Dynasty. e.g. In the Baroque era, there are at least three Italian-language operas about Scipio including Scipione (1726) by George Frideric Handel, who also wrote an opera Giulio Cesare (1724) and another entitled Agrippina (1709) about the emperor Otho (d. 69AD). There are at least 3 operas about Sulla, including one by Mozart Lucio Silla (1772). e.g. There's an Italian opera about Demetrius of Macedon, Demetrio a Rodi (1789), etc. Also to a classicizing poet's or librettist's liking are the "descendants of Herakles" or "sons of Apollo" that are mentioned —in all seriousness— by Plutarch, as well as the various auguries, oracles and prodigies he cites, sometimes with a determining effect on the outcome of the military maneuvers at hand. (My favorite: "all at once, the sky opened, and there appeared a huge flame-like body, which came down between the two armies, in form most like a cask, and in colour resembling molten silver, so that both armies were alarmed at the sight and separated." Luc. 8. p.427) Plutarch takes these portents seriously, detracting from the narrative, even when not otherwise attested in the historical record; these additions of his become tiresome, interjecting endless "prognostics of success," not to mention human-voiced oxes (Mar. 28.p.60), talking satyrs (vol.2 Sul. 27. pp.364-5), etc. At best, these can all be considered Plutarch's contributions to the history of rumor. As a footnote by the editor/translator puts it: "The registration of dreams and their interpretation, that is the events which followed and were supposed to explain them, were usual among the Greeks." (vol.3 Life of Pompeius, fn.279) At places, especially in vol.1, Plutarch declaims against "superstitious fears which the common phenomena of the heavens produce" (Life of Perikles, 6; also cp. "silly superstition" Life Of Lykurgus, 26; "to influence them by means of superstition" Life of Numa, 8; "subject to superstitious fears", ibid, 22; "prey to superstitious terrors" Life of Solon, 21; "prey to superstitious terrors" Life of Camillus, 6; "superstitious feeling is increased by misfortune" ibid., 19; "superstitious observances" Life Of Fabius Maximus, 4; "addicted to superstition" Life Of Caius Marcius Coriolanus, 24; "unbounded superstition" Life of Timoleon, intro; ibid. "rid them from this superstition", 26), but Plutarch also thinks divination can be a sound basis of piety and feels obliged therefore to provide an account of diviners and charlatans within his biographies. At worst, Plutarch may have intended to build up the class of priests, soothsayers, diviners and such. (Plutarch himself was reportedly an interpreter of the oracle at Temple of Apollo at Delphi.) So, while Plutarch picked up from his reading of Thucydides the practice of creating ideal speeches (q.v. Plutarch does not claim that he is transmitting reported speech, drawn faithfully from his sources, when providing his illustrative speeches), he did not learn to apply consistently the latter's contempt for myth and romance (e.g. Life of Romulus, 3-8), as things that ought to be extraneous to history.

With the benefit of hindsight, and with knowledge of the subsequent history of the Roman empire, the reader today knows more than Plutarch did about how the story ends, and can easily question the divine origin that Plutarch assumes the empire must have had: that is, ending as it does with the demise of the Roman hegemony as well as with more division, more cyclical violence, more sieges, tournaments...and razed cities. The modern-day sceptic questions at least Plutarch's inclusion of all those prodigies as part of his character sketches, if not also some of the more fundamental points of his story-telling. However, in those comparisons that are extant where Plutarch draws his parallels between Romans and Greeks (apparently four of these comparative essays are missing, lost to time), Plutarch reaches for a prophetic tone that makes one wonder, and want to re-read him.

[Richard Bracken · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final 14 lives (the last volume) cemented for me what Plutarch seems to have been saying all along, that vices are vices and virtues are virtues no matter what the age. The human race, however, seems to want to go through the same painful cycles with every generation. Must each one have to learn so many lessons firsthand?

In one part of Tolkien’s second work from his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas have finally caught up with Merry and Pippin. They begin to discuss the clues that the two hobbits had been leaving behind to aid the hoped-for rescuers:

‘And here also is your brooch, Pippin,’ said Aragorn. ‘I have kept it safe, for it is a very precious thing.’

‘I know,’ said Pippin. ‘It was a wrench to let it go; but what else could I do?’

‘Nothing else,’ answered Aragorn. ‘One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters. You did rightly.’

From Plutarch’s vantage point, treasures can put an entire society into ‘fetters’, but when should they be cast away? For the Spartans not quickly enough. For:

After the desire for silver and gold had penetrated into Sparta, the acquisition of wealth produced greed and meanness, while the use and enjoyment of riches was followed by luxury, effeminacy, and extravagance. Thus it fell out that Sparta lost her high and honoured position in Greece, and remained in obscurity and disgrace until the reign of Agis.

While Agis’ made great progress in pivoting many of his people back towards their old ways for a time, certain wealthy elite’s proved to be among the most determined of orcs. The consequence, of course, is that they often must utilize corruption, the most pernicious and damaging vice to any country, city, or town in order to get their way. In addition to the natural risk that Plutarch’s history seems to show, that wealth leads to “effeminacy and extravagance”, it also seems to narrow the mind and dull the senses. A person who’s mind is fettered with possessions and material goods can often not see very far beyond them.

When Demetrius invaded and entered Athens in force, he went to visit the reputed philosopher Stilpon, inquiring whether anything had been stolen from him.

“Nothing,” replied Stilpon. “I saw no one taking away any knowledge.”

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is very difficult to rate a work such as this. on one hand, it is well written and well organized. On the other hand, if you are not interested in the people that are written about?????I was not. So it took me a long time to get thru this. I had to force myself to read some of it every other day. I did enjoy the chapters on Cicero, Dion, Aratus and Galba. I have the other books in this set but will not read them.

[G.W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

purchased and read early 1900's I think..cannot find publishing date..great read.