A Companion to Plutarch

Mark Beck, Mark Beck

• Éditeur: Wiley-Blackwell
• Année: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118316375
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Histoire
• Sous-sujet: Histoire de la Grèce antique

A Companion to Plutarch offers a broad survey of the famous historian and biographer; a coherent, comprehensive, and elegant presentation of Plutarch's thought and influence

• Constitutes the first survey of its kind, a unified and accessible guide that offers a comprehensive discussion of all major aspects of Plutarch's oeuvre
• Provides essential background information on Plutarch's world, including his own circle of influential friends (Greek and Roman), his travels, his political activity, and his relations with Trajan and other emperors
• Offers contextualizing background, the literary and cultural details that shed light on some of the fundamental aspects of Plutarch's thought
• Surveys the ideologically crucial reception of the Greek Classical Period in Plutarch's writings
• Follows the currents of recent serious scholarship, discussing perennial interests, and delving into topics and works not formerly given serious attention
  

PART I

Plutarch in Context

CHAPTER 1

Plutarch and Rome

Philip A. Stadter

1. A Greek in a Roman World

No man more successfully bridged the two classical cultures, Greek and Roman, than Plutarch. His crowning achievement, the Parallel Lives, testifies to the dignity and intrinsic worth of the two nations, comparing their heroes and their history. His sense of the contribution that each made to his own world, and would continue to make, won him fame in his own time and has made him a favorite window to the classical world ever since. How did this Greek learn to speak of Rome so effectively?

When Plutarch was born, his home, Chaeronea, had been subject to Romans for more than two centuries. Chaeronea had been a battleground of Greek independence. Here the Thebans, Athenians, and other Greeks had fought against Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander, vainly, in 338 BCE. Here in 86 BCE Sulla had defeated the forces of Mithridates of Pontus, who was trying to force the Romans to abandon Greece. Sulla’s success assured that Rome would continue to rule Greece, as it had since the victories of Flamininus at Cynoscephalae in 197 and Aemilius Paullus at Pydna in 168. Plutarch could point to the monuments of the two battles and see the combatants’ weapons dug up from the fields.

At times Roman domination could be oppressive. Chaeronea was almost destroyed when a proud young man rejected the advances of a Roman officer; it was saved by the intervention of Lucullus, an officer of Sulla’s (Plut. Cim. 1–2). Family tradition recalled that Plutarch’s great-grandfather had had to carry on his back grain to supply Antony’s forces at Actium in 31 (Plut. Ant. 68.6–8). That war had established the dynasty that would end in Plutarch’s day with the death of Nero and the civil war of 69 CE. Roman rule for Plutarch was a given, but the stability of its government and the benevolence of its rulers was never assured.

His language, his rhetorical and philosophical education, his historical and literary heritage, and later his position as priest at Apollo’s ancient shrine at Delphi bound him intellectually and culturally to a millennium of Greek tradition. His voracious reading in Greek literature, history, and philosophy, in particular Plato, continued throughout his life and is evident in every page he wrote. Plutarch is one of the earliest figures of the Greek literary renaissance that would flower in the second century CE.¹ Unlike his contemporary, Dio of Prusa, he chose to present himself as a philosopher rather than an orator. In addition, his deep familiarity with Rome’s history and institutions set him apart from other contemporary Greek intellectuals.

Plutarch as a young man decided to engage with Rome and with individual Romans, with extraordinary success. His teacher at Athens, Ammonius, whose significant civic office as Herald of the Areopagus required regular contact with imperial officials, may have introduced the notion. A crucial stimulus might have been Nero’s trip to Greece in 68 CE, accompanied by leading figures of the court, including the future emperor Vespasian. Plutarch writes of attending the games at Delphi where Nero was competing, along with his teacher Ammonius (Plut. De E 385B). It would have been a good occasion for Plutarch, now in his twenties, to meet prominent Romans. He had perhaps already served as envoy to the proconsul of Achaea (Prae. ger. reip. 816CD). Within two years Vespasian had claimed the title of emperor in Alexandria: Plutarch may have journeyed there with an embassy to salute him.² Either in Greece or in Alexandria he seems to have met a close associate of the new emperor’s, the senator L. Mestrius Florus. Florus became a friend and patron to the young philosopher, and at some point obtained him Roman citizenship, with the name L. Mestrius Ploutarchos.³ Plutarch would have entered the equestrian class: his education, public service, and Roman citizenship bear witness to his belonging to a prosperous family.⁴ When Plutarch traveled to Rome, sometime in Vespasian’s reign, but probably in the early 70s, Florus had him accompany him to northern Italy. In his biography of Otho, Plutarch proudly writes that Florus, a consular, had shown him the battlefield of Bedriacum, where he himself had fought for Otho, and Otho’s monument at Brixellum.⁵ This association with Florus was to be extremely important to him, for it meant that he had someone who could introduce him to other leading senators and, most importantly, speak of him to the emperor.⁶

2. Visiting Rome: The Immersion Experience

This first journey to Rome would have combined three purposes: to augment his reputation in the society of the capital as a philosopher and speaker, to represent his fellow citizens in Boeotia or Delphi at the court, and to enlarge his circle of Roman friends.⁷ “While I was in Rome and other parts of Italy,” Plutarch tells us, “I did not have leisure to practice the Latin language on account of political business and people coming for philosophy” (Plut. Dem. 2.2). Apparently he gave lectures on philosophical topics, as did Euphrates, a philosopher whom the younger Pliny heard and admired.⁸ These no doubt would have been in Greek. Florus was probably among his listeners, for Plutarch later recalls his interest in philosophical debates and his regular celebration of the birthdays of Socrates and Plato. Another Roman contact, Julius Secundus, who also had served with Otho, became a much admired speaker during Vespasian’s reign.⁹

Plutarch does not define further his political business in Rome, but it may well have concerned Delphi, since Vespasian granted that city the right to remain free and autonomous, as well as other privileges. Possibly he also negotiated the appointment of Vespasian’s son Titus as archon, or chief magistrate, at Delphi, a considerable honor for that city. Titus held the position while emperor in 79/80 CE, the year of the quadrennial Pythian games.¹⁰

His stay in Rome also gave Plutarch the opportunity to achieve reading and probably speaking fluency in Latin.¹¹ Plutarch was already able to read Latin historical authors with some ease at the time of the composition of the Lives of the Caesars, which, as will be discussed below, was probably in the mid-70s, when he would have been in his late twenties or early thirties. This work required extensive use of Roman sources, at least one of which was significant enough to be used later by Tacitus and Suetonius.¹² Plutarch may have begun his study of Latin in Chaeronea or Athens, then continued more intensively after he resolved to expand his interests toward Rome. Much later, he would write, “I began to read Roman works late and when advanced in age” (Dem. 2.2), an indication that he did not begin his second language from his earliest years, as was preferred by educators like Quintilian, but after he had already been reading Greek for some time. His wide reading in Greek literature as an adolescent and his early experience on embassies prepared him to understand the Latin texts he was confronting. As he goes on to say, “It happened that I followed along the words from the circumstances, insofar as I had some experience of them, rather than understood and recognized the circumstances from the words.” But as for the finer points of Ciceronian prose style, he professed ignorance. “I think it charming and pleasurable to perceive the beauty and rapidity of Latin delivery and the stylistic figures and rhythms and the other features in which it glories, but practice and exercising for this purpose was not convenient: that is more for those whose greater leisure and suitable age permit such ambitions” (Dem. 2.4). This self-deprecatory confession that his Latin did not reach the high standard which he had attained in Greek also intimates that he had better things to do while in Rome than perfect the finer points of Latin rhetorical language.¹³ The study of the errors in Plutarch’s paraphrases of Latin texts has been significant for establishing his acquaintance with the originals and the relative accuracy of his notices.¹⁴ But it has sometimes led to a rather pedantic evaluation of his ability to read Latin. As Hartmut Erbse has remarked, scholars tend to treat him as if he were a high school student.¹⁵ Even those who think that he read widely in Latin tend to speak of his difficulties in reading, rather than his ease and rapidity. On the contrary, his extensive use of Roman historians in the Caesars, and later in the Parallel Lives and other works, proves his ease with the language.¹⁶

Plutarch’s knowledge of Latin, as well as conversations with his Roman friends, gave him access to a fuller spectrum of Roman culture than he would have had in Greece. This is manifest in his declamation On the Fortune of the Romans, which most likely was delivered at Rome under Vespasian.¹⁷ The speech demonstrates an exceptional familiarity with major figures in Roman history, from Romulus to Augustus, compared, for example, to the orations on Rome of Dio Chrysostom and Aelius Aristides. The Roman authors Valerius Antias and Livy are cited, while the scholar Varro seems to be the source for the list of the temples of Fortuna at Rome. He must have begun reading in these works, as well as the histories treating Augustus and succeeding emperors needed for the Lives of the Caesars, while in Rome, or even before. At the same time, his personal contacts with Romans would have enriched his general knowledge of Roman customs, traditions, and practices. His trip to northern Italy with Florus gave him the opportunity to see recent battlefields and, probably, a statue of Marius erected in Ravenna (Mar. 2.1). No doubt Florus, Secundus, and others he encountered could tell him many stories not only of the terrible year 69, but of the reigns of Nero and earlier emperors to encourage and supplement his reading.¹⁸

Another work, the Roman Questions, written after the death of Domitian in 96 CE, draws heavily on the reading in Roman sources that underlay the Parallel Lives. The 112 short investigations span a broad spectrum of issues related to Roman practices and customs and furnish further evidence that Plutarch had immersed himself not only in Roman history but its antiquarian lore. Terentius Varro, already cited in On the Fortune of Rome, appears to have been an important source, as well as the Augustan scholar Verrius Flaccus.¹⁹ Here again, Plutarch may have drawn on oral sources as well. Remarkably, none of the Roman practices is interpreted as harmful or foolish. Rather, they are shown to be different from, but consonant with Greek practice and Greek philosophy. Occasionally Plutarch even prefers the Roman custom to the Greek. Overall, the Romans are seen as separate from the Greeks, but equally to be respected.

Over the years Plutarch seems to have made several trips to Rome, including a possible stay about 89, and another about 92.²⁰ After that the record is silent: Plutarch would have been over fifty, and perhaps less ready to travel, but Domitian’s expulsion of philosophers from Rome and Italy in 93 or 94 may have kept him away. Again, service on embassies may have been one reason for his visits in the 80s and early 90s. He may have spoken on behalf of the Delphians before the emperor Domitian, who restored the great temple of Apollo in 84. The imposing inscription on the temple recording his gift is still preserved at Delphi.²¹ He continued as well to teach philosophy. He casually mentions a lecture he was delivering at Rome that was attended by Iunius Rusticus. Rusticus received a hand-delivered letter from Domitian, but preferred to hear the rest of the lecture before reading it. Plutarch admired Rusticus’ Stoic restraint, but not long after Domitian had the senator, a consul in 92, executed. Rusticus had written a laudatory piece on Thrasea Paetus, who had been an outspoken critic of Nero and the author of a life of Cato, the great opponent of Caesar (De cur. 522DE; Tac. Agr. 2.1).

3. Roman Friends

Plutarch’s repeated visits to Rome gave him occasion to meet other Roman friends, some of whom he would have known already from their service in Greece. He enjoyed a dinner with Avidius Quietus and Aufidius Modestus, when in summer 92 the former had just returned from serving as proconsul in Achaea.²² Quietus, like Rusticus, had philosophical interests and had been a friend of Thrasea Paetus. Quietus had been honored at Delphi, where it is likely he met Plutarch. He became suffect consul in 93, and later proconsul in Britain. Plutarch addressed his treatise God’s Slowness to Punish to him, and On Brotherly Love to him and his brother Nigrinus. Aufidius Mode...

Table des matières

• Cover
• BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Note on the Translations and Abbreviations
• Introduction: Plutarch in Greece
• PART I: Plutarch in Context
• PART II: Plutarch’s Moralia
• PART III: Plutarch’s Biographical Projects
• PART IV: The Reception of Plutarch
• Index