Moralia
The Moralia is a set of essays ascribed to the 1st-century scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea. The eclectic collection contains 78 essays and transcribed speeches. They provide insights into Roman and Greek life, but they also include timeless observations. Many generations of Europeans have read or imitated them, including Michel de Montaigne, Renaissance Humanists and Enlightenment philosophers.
Contents
General structure
The Moralia include On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great, an important adjunct to Plutarch's Life of the great general; On the Worship of Isis and Osiris, a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites; and On the Malice of Herodotus, in which Plutarch criticizes what he sees as systematic bias in the Histories of Herodotus|Histories] of Herodotus; along with more philosophical treatises, such as On the Decline of the Oracles, On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance, On Peace of Mind and lighter fare, such as Odysseus and Gryllus, a humorous dialog between Homer's Odysseus and one of Circe's enchanted pigs. The Moralia were composed first, while writing the Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch's own life.Some editions of the Moralia include works later understood as pseudepigrapha. Among these are the Lives of the Ten Orators, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, On Fate, and On Music. These works are attributed to "Pseudo-Plutarch". Though the thoughts and opinions recorded are not Plutarch's and come from a slightly later era, they are all classical in origin and have value to the historian.
Books
Since the Stephanus edition of 1572, the Moralia have traditionally been arranged in 14 books :- I.
- *1. On the Education of Children
- *2. How the Young Man Should Study Poetry
- *3. On Hearing
- *4. How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend
- *5. How a Man May Become Aware of his Progress in Virtue
- II.
- *6. How to Profit by One's Enemies
- *7. On Having Many Friends
- *8. On Chance
- *9. On Virtue and Vice
- *10. Letter of Condolence to Apollonius
- *11. Advice about Keeping Well
- *12. Advice to Bride and Groom
- *13. Dinner of the Seven Wise Men
- *14. On Superstition
- III.
- *15. Sayings of Kings and Commanders
- *16. Sayings of the Spartans
- *17. Institutions of the Spartans
- *18. Sayings of the Spartan Women
- *19. Virtues of Women
- IV.
- *20. Roman Questions
- *21. Greek Questions
- *22. Greek and Roman Parallel Stories
- *23. On the Fortune of the Romans
- *24. On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Great
- *25. On the Glory of the Athenians
- V.
- *26. On Isis and Osiris
- *27. On the epsilon at Delphi
- *28. Oracles at Delphi no Longer Given in Verse
- *29. On the Obsolescence of Oracles
- VI.
- *30. Can Virtue be Taught?
- *31. On Moral Virtue
- *32. On the Control of Anger
- *33. On Tranquility of Mind
- *34. On Brotherly Love
- *35. On Affection for Offspring
- *36. Whether Vice is Sufficient to Cause Unhappiness
- *37. Whether Aflictions of the Soul are Worse than Those of the Body
- *38. On Talkativeness
- *39. On Being a Busybody
- VII.
- *40. On Love of Wealth
- *41. On Compliancy
- *42. On Envy and Hate
- *43. On Praising Oneself Inoffensively
- *44. On the Delays of Divine Vengeance
- *45. On Fate
- *46. On the Sign of Socrates
- *47. On Exile
- *48. Consolation to his Wife
- VIII.
- *49. Table Talk
- IX.
- *50. Dialogue on Love
- X.
- *51. Love Stories
- *52. A Philosopher Ought to Converse Especially with Men in Power
- *53. To an Uneducated Ruler
- *54. Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs
- *55. Precepts of Statecraft
- *56. On Monarchy, Democracy and Oligarchy
- *57. That we Ought Not to Borrow
- *58. Lives of the Ten Orators
- *59. Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander
- XI.
- *60. On the Malice of Herodotus
- *61. On the Opinions of the Philosophers
- *62. Causes of Natural Phenomena
- XII.
- *63. On the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon
- *64. On the Principle of Cold
- *65. Whether Fire or Water is More Useful
- *66. Whether Land or Sea Animals are Cleverer
- *67. Beasts are Rational
- *68. On the Eating of Flesh
- XIII.
- *69. Platonic Questions
- *70. On the Birth of the Spirit in Timaeus
- *71. Summary of the Birth of the Spirit
- *72. On Stoic Self-Contradictions
- *73. The Stoics Speak More Paradoxically than the Poets
- *74. On Common Conceptions against the Stoics
- XIV.
- *75. It is Impossible to Live Pleasantly in the Manner of Epicurus
- *76. Against Colotes
- *77. Is the Saying "Live in Obscurity" Right?
- *78. On Music
Editions
Early manuscripts
"The catalogue is transmitted by a group of Moralia manuscripts, the oldest of which is the Parisinus gr. 1678, a copy from the tenth century, on which a second hand of the twelfth century intervened to add the list; see Irigoin."The only surviving manuscript containing all seventy-eight of the extant treatises included in Plutarch's Moralia dates to sometime shortly after 1302 AD.
Modern editions
- Plutarch. Moralia. Translated by William Watson Goodwin. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1871. 5 vols.
- Plutarch. Moralia. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt, et al. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press et al., 1927–2004. 16 vols.
Contents
Origins dilemma
In his essay "The Symposiacs", Plutarch discusses the famous problem of the chicken and the egg. Although Plutarch was not the first person to discuss the problem, he was the first person to put the question into its modern form.On reincarnation
Included in Moralia is a letter addressed by Plutarch to his wife, bidding her not give way to excessive grief at the death of their two-year-old daughter, who was named Timoxena after her mother. In the letter, Plutarch expresses his belief in reincarnation:Spartan lives and sayings
Since Spartans wrote no history prior to the Hellenistic period – their only extant literature is fragments of 7th-century lyrics – Plutarch's five Spartan lives and "Sayings of Spartans" and "Sayings of Spartan Women", rooted in sources that have since disappeared, are some of the richest sources for historians of Lacedaemonia. While they are important, they are also controversial. Plutarch lived centuries after the Sparta he writes about ; and even though he visited Sparta, many of the ancient customs he reports had been long abandoned, so he never actually saw what he wrote about.Plutarch's sources themselves can be problematic. As the historians Sarah Pomeroy, Stanley Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts have written, "Plutarch was influenced by histories written after the decline of Sparta and marked by nostalgia for a happier past, real or imagined." Turning to Plutarch himself, they write, "the admiration writers like Plutarch and Xenophon felt for Spartan society led them to exaggerate its monolithic nature, minimizing departures from ideals of equality and obscuring patterns of historical change." Thus, the Spartan egalitarianism and superhuman immunity to pain that have seized the popular imagination are likely myths, and their main architect is Plutarch. While flawed, Plutarch is nonetheless indispensable as one of the only ancient sources of information on Spartan life. Pomeroy et al. conclude that Plutarch's works on Sparta, while they must be treated with skepticism, remain valuable for their "large quantities of information" and these historians concede that "Plutarch's writings on Sparta, more than those of any other ancient author, have shaped later views of Sparta", despite their potential to misinform. He was also referenced in saying unto Sparta, "The beast will feed again."
Works on Greek and Roman religion
Book IV of the Moralia contains the Roman and Greek Questions. The customs of Romans and Greeks are illuminated in little essays that pose questions such as "Why were patricians not permitted to live on the Capitoline?", and then suggests answers to them.Plutarch's priestly duties connected part of his literary work with the Pythian oracle at Delphi: one of his most important works on this subject is the "Why Pythia does not give oracles in verse". Even more important is the dialogue "On the 'E' at Delphi", which features Ammonius, a Platonic philosopher and teacher of Plutarch, and Lambrias, Plutarch's brother.According to Ammonius, the letter E written on the temple of Apollo in Delphi originated from the Seven Sages of Greece, whose maxims were also written on the walls of the vestibule of the temple and were not seven but actually five: Chilon, Solon, Thales, Bias, and Pittakos. The tyrants Cleobulos and Periandros used their political power to be incorporated in the list. Thus, the E, which was used to represent the number 5, constituted an acknowledgement that the Delphic maxims actually originated from only five genuine wise men.
"On the Malice of Herodotus"
In "On the Malice of Herodotus", Plutarch criticizes the historian Herodotus for all manner of prejudice and misrepresentation. It has been called the "first instance in literature of the slashing review". The 19th century English historian George Grote considered this essay a serious attack upon the works of Herodotus, and speaks of the "honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity".Plutarch makes some palpable hits, catching Herodotus out in various errors, but it is also probable that it was merely a rhetorical exercise, in which Plutarch plays devil's advocate to see what could be said against so favourite and well-known a writer. According to Barrow, Herodotus's real failing in Plutarch's eyes was to advance any criticism at all of the city-states that saved Greece from Persia. Barrow concluded that "Plutarch is fanatically biased in favor of the Greek cities; they can do no wrong."
Other works
- Table-Talk ;
- Dinner of the Seven Sages.
- Dialogue on Love ; Latin name = Amatorius.