Moralia 5

by Plutarch, Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)

s/t: Isis & Osiris/The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse/The Obsolescence of Oracles
Plutarch=Plutarchus, c. 45-120, was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia in central Greece, studied philosophy at Athens, &, upon going to Rome as a philosophy teacher, was given consular rank by Trajan & a Greek procuratorship by Hadrian. He was married & the father of one daughter & four sons. He was of kindly character & independent thought, studious & learned.
Plutarch wrote on many subjects. Most popular have been the 46 Parallel Lives, biographies set as paired ethical examples (one Greek & a similar Roman, tho the last 4 are single). All are invaluable sources for the lives & characters of Greek & Roman statesmen, soldiers & orators. His 60 or so other extant works are known as Moral Essays Moralia. They're of literary value, useful to those interested in philosophy, ethics & religion.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Moralia is in 15 volumes, volume 13 having two parts.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics

528 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 100

About the author

Plutarch (later named, upon becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus; AD 46–AD 120) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He is classified as a Middle Platonist. Plutarch's surviving works were written in Greek, but intended for both Greek and Roman readers.

Reviews

[Unknown · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is nothing more important for man to receive than the truth. —Isis and Osiris, 351c

We have a ridiculous fear of one death, we who have already died so many deaths, and are still dying . . . the man in his prime passes away when the old man comes into existence, the young man passes away into the man in his prime, the child into the young man, and the babe into the child. Dead is the man of yesterday, for he is passed into the man of today; and the man of today is dying as he passes into the man of tomorrow. Nobody remains one person, nor is one person; but we become many persons . . . —The E at Delphi, 392c
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While he was speaking, a fragrance overspread the place, as his mouth breathed forth a most pleasant perfume. —The Obsolescence of Oracles, 421b

It is very pleasant to listen to such conversation as this . . . —The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse, 402b

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This volume contains the following essays:
• Isis and Osiris
• The E at Delphi
• The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse
• The Obsolescence of Oracles
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Isis and Osiris contains an interesting look at Egyptian mythology and customs.

In The E at Delphi, Plutarch offers explanations of what the inscribed letter could mean.

The final two essays contain many digressions, and are only lightly centred around their named topic.

An interesting offering.
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Isis and Osiris
. . . like to the heavenly azure which enfolds the universe. (352d)

. . . they also use no salt with their food during their periods of holy living. For this they have various other reasons, but in particular the fact that salt, by sharpening the appetite, makes them more inclined to drinking and eating. (352f)

To consider salt impure, because, as Aristagoras has said, when it is crystallizing many minute creatures are caught in it and die there, is certainly silly. (352f)

The drinking of Nile water is reputed to be fattening and to cause obesity. (353a)

They have many periods of holy living when wine is prohibited, and in these they spend their time exclusively in studying, learning, and teaching religious matters. (353b)

Is is said also that Technactis, the father of Bocchoris, when he was leading his army against the Arabians, because his baggage was slow in arriving, found pleasure in eating such common food as was available, and afterwards slept soundly on a bedding of straw, and thus became fond of frugal living. (354b)

. . . imparting to their persons a wondrous fragrance from her own body. (357a)

As they relate, Isis proceeded to her son Horus, who was being reared in Buto, and bestowed the chest in a place well out of the way; but Typhon who was hunting by night intbhe light of the moon, happened upon it. Recognising the body he divided it into fourteen parts and scattered them, each in a different place. Isis learned of this and sought for them again, sailing through the swamps in a boar of papyrus. (357f)

The traditional result of Osiris’ dismemberment is that there are many so-called tombs of Osiris in Egypt; for Isis held a funeral for each part when she had found it. (358a)

Of the parts of Osiris’ body the only one which Isis did not find was the male member, for the reason that this bad been at once tossed into the river, and the lepidotus, the sea-bream, and the pike, had fed upon it; and it is from these very fishes the Egyp[tans are most scrupulous on abstaining. (358b)

On the nineteenth day of the first month, when they are holding festival in honour of Hermes, they eat honey and a fig; and as they eat they say, “A sweet thing is Truth." (378b)

Cyphi iis a compound composed of sixteen ingredients: honey, wine, raisins, cyperus, resin, myrrh, aspalathus, seelis, mastich, bitumen, rush, sorrel, and in addition to these both the junipers, of which they call one the larger and one the smaller, cardamum, and calamus. These are compounded, not at random, but while the sacred writings are being read to the perfumers as they mix the ingredients. (383e)
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The E at Delphi
Material gifts fall far below those bestowed by literary discourse and wisdom. (384e)

You have not only all the advantages of a great city, but you have also more abundant leisure amid many books and all manner of discussions. (384e)

Who is by nature inclined to the love of knowledge, thus creating in the soul a craving that leads onward to the truth . . . (384f)
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The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse
The appearance and technique of the statues had only a moderate attraction for the foreign visitor, who, apparently, was a connoisseur in works of art. (395a)

—Do you happen to have heard the story of Pauson the painter?
—No, said Sarapion. I have not.
—Well, it is really worth hearing. It seems that he had received a commission to paint a horse rolling, and painted it galloping. His patron was indignant, whereupon Pauson laughed and turned the canvas upside down, and, when the lower part became the upper, the horse now appeared to be not hallowing, but rolling. (396e)

In many instances, apparently, nicknames cause the real names to be obscured. (401a)
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The Obsolescence of Oracles
He had recently been at the shrine of Ammon, and it was plain that he was not particularly impressed by most of the things there, but in regard to the ever-burning lamp he related a story told by the priests which deserves special consideration; it is that the lamp consumes less and less oil each year, and the hold that this is a proof of a disparity in the years, which all the time is making one year shorter in duration than its predecessor; for tit is reasonable that in less duration of time the amount consumed should be less. (410b)

Moderation, adequacy, excess in nothing, and complete self-sufficiency are above all else the essential characterises of everything done by the gods. (413f)

He had ranged widely in literature and was no foreigner, and replete with Greek culture to a high degree. (422d)

When the body becomes cleaned of all impurities and attains a temperament adapted to this end, a temperament which the reasoning and thinking faculty of the souls is relaxed and released from their present state as they range amid the irrational and imaginative realms of the future. (432c)

. . . the odour which the most exquisite and costly perfumes send forth. (437c)

[William Bies · Rating 4 out of 5]

The middle Platonist and priest at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, Plutarch (late first to early second century AD), while a wonderful source of testimonia and fragments from earlier writers, hardly enjoys an exalted repute as a philosopher nowadays. But—so we shall contend—this is to miss his significance. For he attests to the ray of illumination of truth that, if welcomed, can enter into the mind and heart of every man, and certainly shone upon the more educated and thoughtful pagans of antiquity:

Therefore the effort to arrive at the Truth, and especially the truth about the gods, is a longing for the divine. For the search for truth requires for its study and investigation the consideration of sacred subjects, and it is a work more hallowed than any form of holy living or temple service; and, not least of all, it is well-pleasing to that goddess whom you [Clea, priestess at Delphi to whom Plutarch has dedicated his work] worship, a goddess exceptionally wise and a lover of wisdom, to whom, as her name [Isis] at least seems to indicate, knowledge and understanding are in the highest degree appropriate. (p. 9)

Not only this, Plutarch demonstrates how enlightened pagan religion could serve as a precursor to monotheism; to wit:

In fact the Deity is not Many, like each of us who is compounded of hundreds of different factors which arise in the course of our experience, a heterogeneous collection combined in a haphazard way. But Being must have Unity, even as Unity must have Being. Now divergence from Unity, because of its differing from Being, deviates into the creation of that which has no Being….Unity is simple and pure. For it is by the admixture of one thing with another that contamination arises, as Homer somewhere says that some ivory which is being dyed red is being “contaminated”, and dyers speak of colors that are well mixed as being “spoiled”; and they call the mixing “spoiling”. Therefore it is characteristic of the imperishable and pure to be one and uncombined. (p. 247)

And it seems to me right to address to the gods the words “Thou art”...believing that never does any vagary or transformation take place near him, but that such acts and experiences are related to some other god, or rather to some demigod, whose office is concerned with Nature in dissolution and generation; and this is clear at once from the names which are, as it were, correspondingly antithetic. For the one is spoken of as Apollo (not many), the other as Pluto (abounding); the one Delian (clear), the other Aïdoneus (unseen); the one Phoebus (bright), the other Scotios (dark); with the one are associated the Muses and Memory, with the other Oblivion and Silence; the one is Theorian (observing) and Phanaean (disclosing) etc. (pp. 249-251); cf. Exodus 3:14, Psalm 88:3-12.

A great measure of Plutarch’s charm consists in the circumstance that he was writing at a time when myth was still a discussable phenomenon. By no means were he and his educated contemporaries so credulous as to accept any and every tall tale, but neither were they carping modern atheists who would scoff at any possibility that the events related in myth might correspond to a truth about the world or about the human condition. Their situation resembles ours today with miracle stories or accounts of interventions by a patron saint in response to intercessory prayer; most of us are not so stridently doctrinaire as was Hume, who (without examining any case studies) categorically and unscientifically dismisses the very possibility of a miracle’s being real, but, living in and espousing the norms of a scientific culture, want strong evidence before we would be prepared to lend them our credence. Plutarch himself appears to belong to the educated but not euhemerizing faction; he exercises a critical intelligence and rejects the baser or less plausible legends, but, all the same, sees many of the classic myths as revelatory of something otherwise hidden about the world to which primitive man (unlike us) was attentive and chose to register in an imaginative poetic fashion. For, ‘we must not treat legend as if it were history at all, but we should adopt that which is appropriate in each legend in accordance with its verisimilitude’ (p. 139), which means that

But they create in men fearful atheistic opinions by conferring the name of gods upon natural objects which are senseless and inanimate, and are of necessity destroyed by men when they need to use them. It is impossible to conceive of these things as being gods in themselves; for God is not senseless nor inanimate nor subject to human control. As a result of this we have come to regard as gods those who make use of these things and present them to us and provide us with things everlasting and constant. Nor do we think of the gods as different gods among different peoples, nor as barbarian gods and Greek gods, nor as southern and northern gods; but, just as the sun and the moon and the heavens and the earth and the sea are common to all, but are called by different names by different peoples, so for that one rationality which keeps all these things in order and the one Providence which watches over them and the ancillary powers that are set over all, there have arisen among different peoples, in accordance with their customs, different honors and appellations….[S]ome go completely astray and become engulfed in superstition; and others, while they fly from superstition as from a quagmire, on the other hand unwittingly fall, as it were, over a precipice into atheism. (pp. 155-157)

Accordingly, Plutarch can be critical of religious practices that tend to lead astray:

But the great majority of Egyptians, in doing service to the animals themselves and in treating them as gods, have...filled their sacred offices with ridicule and derision.…Wherefore in the study of these matters it is especially necessary that we adopt, as our guide in these mysteries, the reasoning that comes from philosophy, and consider reverently each one of the things that are said and done….concerning the sacrifices and festivals. (p. 165)

To follow Plutarch’s commentary in the essays taken from the Moralia reproduced in this volume, on why the oracles at Delphi were no longer given in verse and on why, by around his era, they seemed to be going into decline, one must first appreciate his theory of inspiration:

I suppose you are familiar with the saying found in Heracleitus to the effect that the Lord whose prophetic shrine is at Delphi neither tells nor conceals, but indicates. Add to these words, which are so well said, the thought that the god of this place employs the prophetic priestess for men’s ears just as the sun employs the moon for men’s eyes. For he makes known and reveals his own thoughts, but he makes them known through the associated medium of a mortal body and a soul that is unable to keep quiet, or, as it yields itself to the One that moves it, to remain of itself unmoved and tranquil, but, as though tossed amid billows and enmeshed in the stirrings and emotions within itself, it makes itself more and more restless….[W]hat is called inspiration seems to be a combination of two impulses, the soul being simultaneously impelled through the one of these by some external influence, and through the other by its own nature. (pp. 315-317)

But I incline most to the opinion that the soul acquires towards the prophetic spirit a close and intimate connection of the sort that vision has towards light, which possesses similar properties. For, although the eye has the power of vision, there is no function for it to perform without light; and so the prophetic power of the soul, like an eye, has need of something kindred to help to kindle it and stimulate it further. Hence many among earlier generations regarded Apollo and the Sun as one and the same god; but those who understood and respected fair and wise analogy conjectured that as body is to soul, vision to intellect, and light to truth, so is the power of the sun to the nature of Apollo;….[f]or the sun kindles and promotes and helps to keep in activity the power of vision in our perceptive senses, just as the god does for the power of prophecy in the soul. (p. 475)

During the classical period, priestesses apparently were highly educated and cultured women who would have been knowledgeable about current affairs; later on, sibyls were sometimes drawn from unlettered peasant families, as Plutarch explains:

Homer also gives testimony on my side by his assumption that practically nothing is brought to pass for any reason without a god; he does not, however, represent the god as employing everything for every purpose, but as employing each thing in accordance with the aptitude or faculty that each possesses….So in the same way it is impossible for the unlettered man who has never read verse to talk like a poet. Even so the maiden who now serves the god here was born of as lawful and honorable wedlock as anyone, and her life has been in all respects proper; but, having been brought up in the home of poor peasants, she brings nothing with her as the result of technical skill or of any other expertness or faculty, as she goes down into the shrine. On the contrary, as Xenophon believes that a bride should have seen as little and heard as little as possible before she proceeds to her husband’s house, so this girl, inexperienced and uninformed about practically everything, a pure, virgin soul, becomes the associate of the god. (pp. 317-321)

For two generations at least, everyone in the West has been trained through the incessant din of propaganda coming from secular liberal ideologues who exert a stranglehold over the education of children in public schools and from Hollywood movies to despise virginity and the qualities of spirit of which virginity constitutes the aptest expression (and this applies to young men no less than to young women, as for instance one can note most perspicuously in the charming pseudepigraphical story of Joseph and Aseneth, dating to the first century before Christ), but we can discern in Plutarch’s revealingly innocent and unguarded remarks a facet of why the paganism of the Graeco-Roman world would prove such a fertile ground for the spread of the gospel.

Plutarch was closer than we are to the origins of culture and civilization. Herder in his Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (1774) sees in mankind’s earliest documents, as preserved in Egyptian hieroglyphics and in the Mosaic book of Genesis, a symbolic memory of the divine language of creation, in which sign and signified have not yet lost their primal unity. Now, Plutarch implicitly comprehends that this poetic endowment of the men of old was undergoing a process of dissolution in his day. Indeed, we may hail him as a theorist of disenchantment avant la lettre:

What statement, then, shall we make about the priestesses of former days?….[T]hat era produced personal temperances and natures which had an easy fluency and a bent towards composing poetry, and to them were given also zest and eagerness and readiness of mind abundantly, thus creating an alertness which needed but a slight initial stimulus from without and a prompting of the imagination….Love does not implant in one the poetical or musical faculty, but when it is already existent in one, Love stirs it to activity and makes it fervent, while before it was unnoticed and idle….As compared with him who says that the only poetess of love was Sappho, how much does he fall short who asserts that the only prophetess was the Sibyl and Aristonica and such others as delivered their oracles in verse?….There was, then, a time when men used as the coinage of speech verses and tunes and songs, and reduced to poetic and musical form all history and philosophy and, in a word, every experience and action that required a more impressive utterance….Accordingly, the god did not begrudge to the art of prophecy adornment and pleasing grace, nor did he drive away from there the honored Muse of the tripod, but introduced her rather by awakening and welcoming poetic natures; and he himself provided visions for them, and helped in prompting impressiveness and eloquence as something fitting and admirable. (pp. 321-327)

But, as life took on a change along with the change in men’s fortunes and their natures...men accustomed themselves (nor was it a bad thing) to oppose expensive outlay by adorning themselves with economy, and to rate as decorative the plain and simple rather than the ornate and elaborate. So, as language also underwent a change and put off its finery, history descended from its vehicle of versification and went on foot in prose, whereby the truth was mostly sifted from the fabulous….[The god] adapted the language to what was intelligible and convincing….The introduction of clearness was attended also by a revolution in belief….In the days of old what was not familiar or common, but was expressed altogether indirectly and through circumlocutions, the mass of people imputed to an assumed manifestation of divine power, and held it in awe and reverence; but in later times, being well satisfied to apprehend all these various things clearly and easily without the attendant grandiloquence and artificiality, they blamed the poetic language with which the oracles were clothed, not only for obstructing the understanding of these in their true meaning and for combining vagueness and obscurity with the communication, but already were coming to look with suspicion upon metaphors, riddles and ambiguous statements. (pp. 327-331)

The lesson for us today? The rationalizing trend just sketched has only accelerated in recent centuries. We postmoderns need to recover Plutarch’s balance between the divine and the natural, in light of which prophecy becomes very well possible:

To sum up, then: while every form of creation has, I say, two causes, the very earliest theological writers and poets chose to heed only the superior one, uttering over all things that have come to pass this common generality: Zeus the beginning, Zeus in the midst, and from Zeus comes all being; but as yet they made no approach towards the compelling and natural causes. On the other hand the younger generation which followed them, and are called physicists or natural philosophers, reverse the procedure of the older school in the aberration from the beautiful and divine origin, and ascribe everything to bodies and their behavior, to clashes, transmutations and combinations. Hence the reasoning of both parties is deficient in what is essential to it, since the one ignores or omits the intermediary and the agent, the other the source and the means….The fact is that we do not make the prophetic art godless or irrational when we assign to it as its material the soul of a human being, and assign the spirit of inspiration and the exhalation as an instrument or plectrum for playing on it. (pp. 491-493)

[Alexander Rolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's interesting to see Plutarch and Lamprias and their friends discuss the twilight of their religion (not that they viewed it that way). They are smart, honest, and well-educated, so it's both poignant and impressive to see them grapple with why oracles are no longer given in verse, and why there are fewer given than ever before. A variety of theological ideas are proposed, but Plutarch and his brother remain unshaken that the gods are good, and are persons, not natural forces. Not fickle, vindictive persons, as some of the stories seem to indicate; superstition is as bad as atheism, and the gods desire a belief in their true nature more than sacrifices and good deeds. In spite of being a priest at Delphi, Plutarch often sounds very Christian. I can see why that medieval monk prayed that if God saved any pagan, he would save Plutarch.

These essays also contain the usual treasure of insight and unexpected detail on life in the classical world: from the mechanics of receiving oracles at Delphi, to women wearing hair coverings made of asbestos(!).

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two books, Isis and Osiris and The E at Delphi are fascinating. The last two books about Oracles are dry with many abstruse Platonic digressions.

[Stuart Dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plutarch explores the religion of the Egyptians. He discusses Isis and Osiris and their long-running feud with Typhon. He tries to explain how all this makes sense to them, and why they follow such strange gods and weird religious practices and can't just worship the real gods Zeus and Apollo.

The rest is about the Oracle at Delphi. He examines why there is a big "E" on the sign at the entrance. He discusses why the oracles are now in prose and no longer given in verse. And finally, he examines why there aren't as many oracles as there used to be. All this is stretched out with many side arguments which include the divinity of the number 5, whether there are daimons and if they do exist what is their function, do the gods actually live in the oracle or do they farm out the business to the daimons, and the importance of heptahedrons, octahedrons, and dodecahedrons.

[Michael Snuffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This account of Egyptian Religion seems quite bizarre in light of recent knowledge on the subject. Very informative.