Plutarch

Plutarch says about those who develop a passion for pet monkeys and little dogs that it is the loving part in us which, deprived of a legitimate object, and rather than remain unused, makes up a false and frivolous one instead.

As this ancient poet says in Plutarch,however,Point ne se faut couroucer aux affaires, Il ne leur chault de toutes nos choleres.

Plutarch would readily admit about what he was able to do that it is someone else’s responsibility whether their examples are true in every way, but that his responsibility is that they should be useful to posterity and presented so as to light our way to virtue.

and Plutarch commends Philopoemen, that being born to command, he knew how to do it, not only according to the laws, but also to overrule even the laws themselves, when the public necessity so required.

for Plutarch says that Greek and Scholar were terms of reproach and contempt among the Romans.

I never seriously settled myself to the reading any book of solid learning but Plutarch and Seneca;

And taking upon me to write indifferently of whatever comes into my head, and therein making use of nothing but my own proper and natural means, if it befall me, as ofttimes it does, accidentally to meet in any good author, the same heads and commonplaces upon which I have attempted to write (as I did but just now in Plutarch’s Discourse of the Force of Imagination), to see myself so weak and so forlorn, so heavy and so flat, in comparison of those better writers, I at once pity or despise myself.

What profit shall he not reap as to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch?

and Plutarch has read a hundred more there than ever I could find, or than, peradventure, that author ever wrote;

There are in Plutarch many long discourses very worthy to be carefully read and observed, for he is, in my opinion, of all others the greatest master in that kind of writing;

Plutarch had rather we should applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have already read.

I am of Plutarch’s mind, that Aristotle did not so much trouble his great disciple with the knack of forming syllogisms, or with the elements of geometry, as with infusing into him good precepts concerning valor, prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt of fear;

But what if Plutarch, besides several examples that he produces out of antiquity, tells us, he knows of certain knowledge, that in the time of Domitian, the news of the battle lost by Antony in Germany was published at Rome, many days’journey from thence, and dispersed throughout the whole world, the same day it was fought;

and that other, that Plutarch endeavored to reconcile to his brother:

as Plutarch complains, that in his time some attributed the cause of the younger Cato’s death to his fear of Caesar, at which he seems very angry, and with good reason;

Plutarch says, moreover, that to appear so excellent in these less necessary qualities is to produce witness against a man’s self, that he has spent his time and applied his study ill, which ought to have been employed in the acquisition of more necessary and more useful things.

On the Inequality among Us Plutarch says somewhere that he does not find so great a difference betwixt beast and beast as he does betwixt man and man;

And, in truth, I find so vast a distance betwixt Epaminondas, according to my judgment of him, and some that I know, who are yet men of good sense, that I could willingly enhance upon Plutarch, and say that there is more difference betwixt such and such a man than there is betwixt such a man and such a beast:

but already custom, by the authority of his Plutarch, has overcome that novelty.

by “reason that” (I shall here steal Plutarch’s own words, which are better than mine) “he by so doing deprived himself of the violent impression the motion of running adds to the first shock of arms, and hindered that clashing of the combatants against one another which is wont to give them greater impetuosity and fury;

Of this nature was his employment who made it his business to compute into how many several orders the letters of the alphabet might be transposed, and found out that incredible number mentioned in Plutarch.

On Smells It has been reported of some, as of Alexander the Great, that their sweat exhaled an odoriferous smell, occasioned by some rare and extraordinary constitution, of which Plutarch and others have been inquisitive into the cause.

Even our great Plutarch, that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutus and Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been stimulated by some other passion.

but I meet with sense so well united and maintained throughout his whole translation, that certainly he either knew the true fancy of the author, or having, by being long conversant with him, imprinted a vivid and general idea of that of Plutarch in his soul, he has delivered us nothing that either derogates from or contradicts him), but above all, I am the most taken with him for having made so discreet a choice of a book so worthy and of so great utility wherewith to present his country.

but, Plutarch having so often handled this subject, I should give myself an unnecessary trouble to repeat what he has said.

Plutarch says, that Demetrius caused two complete suits of armor to be made for himself and for Alcimus, a captain of the greatest note and authority about him, of six score pounds weight each, whereas the ordinary suits weighed but half as much.

I will have them give Plutarch a fillip on my nose, and rail against Seneca when they think they rail at me.

As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions and conditions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch, since he has been translated into French, and Seneca.

Plutarch is more uniform and constant;

Plutarch’s opinions are Platonic, gentle, and accommodated to civil society;

Plutarch is frank throughout:

Plutarch with things that warm and move you more;

But seeing the matter preached and the preacher are different things, I would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch, as in a book of his own.

and, therefore, above all others, Plutarch is the man for me.

And the very interpretation that Plutarch, gives to this error, which is very well conceived, is advantageous to them:

The ancient Xantippus caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the sea, which has ever since retained the name, and Plutarch says, that he had a scruple about selling for a small profit to the slaughterer an ox that had been long in his service.

there to fix habitations and human abodes, and plant colonies for our convenience, as Plato and Plutarch have done?

I must not omit what Plutarch says he saw of a dog at Rome with the Emperor Vespasian, the father, at the theater of Marcellus.

But this other story of the pie, of which we have Plutarch himself for a warrant, is very strange.

I will not omit this other example of a dog, also, which the same Plutarch (I am sadly confounding all order, but I do not propose arrangement here any more than elsewhere throughout my book) which Plutarch says he saw on board a ship.

I will not omit this other example of a dog, also, which the same Plutarch (I am sadly confounding all order, but I do not propose arrangement here any more than elsewhere throughout my book) which Plutarch says he saw on board a ship.

for this saying (out of Plutarch) has in all times been in the mouth of these people:

Plutarch delivers this story for a certain truth, and that it happened in the age wherein he lived.

which Plutarch affirms to have seen in the island of Anticyra.

Plutarch, who has seen and handled many of them, thinks it is the bones of some fish which she joins and binds together, interlacing them, some lengthwise and others across, and adding ribs and hoops in such manner that she forms at last a round vessel fit to launch;

”That Sextius, of whom both Seneca and Plutarch speak with so high an encomium, having applied himself, all other things set aside, to the study of philosophy, resolved to throw himself into the sea, seeing the progress of his studies too tedious and slow.

Plutarch says the same of metaphysics.

Is not the same thing seen in Seneca and Plutarch?

Plutarch gives a like example of some one who would not be satisfied in that whereof he was in doubt, that he might not lose the pleasure of inquiring into it;

“Tis a greater presumption,” says Plutarch, “in them who are but men to attempt to speak and discourse of the gods and demi-gods than it is in a man utterly ignorant of music to give an opinion of singing;

And if it be true, as Plutarch says, that in some place of the Indies there are men without mouths, who nourish themselves with the smell of certain odors, how many of our descriptions are false?

as Plutarch says of the testimony of histories, that, according to charts and maps, the utmost bounds of known countries are taken up with marshes, impenetrable forests, deserts, and uninhabitable places;

as Plutarch thinks that gods were made of those that were saved;

Whatever I undertake, I owe a sacrifice to the Graces, as Plutarch says of some one, to conciliate their favor:

and though my inclination would rather prompt me to imitate Seneca’s way of writing, yet I do nevertheless more esteem that of Plutarch.

On Anger Plutarch is admirable throughout, but especially where he judges of human actions.

Plutarch’s writings, if well understood, sufficiently bespeak their author, and so that I think I know him even into his soul;

A slave of his, a vicious, ill-conditioned fellow, but who had the precepts of philosophy often ringing in his ears, having for some offense of his been stripped by Plutarch’s command, whilst he was being whipped, muttered at first, that it was without cause and that he had done nothing to deserve it;

to which Plutarch calmly and coldly answered, “How, ruffian,” said he, “by what dost thou judge that I am now angry?

Let us now come to Plutarch.

I find him, though, a little bold in this passage of his Method of history, where he accuses Plutarch not only of ignorance (wherein I would have let him alone:

” In this example I find no great miracle, nor do I admit the excuse with which he defends Plutarch, in having added these words, as ’tis said, to suspend our belief;

and that which Plutarch also, among a hundred other witnesses, relates, that at a sacrifice, a burning coal having fallen into the sleeve of a Lacedaemonian boy, as he was censing, he suffered his whole arm to be burned, till the smell of the broiling flesh was perceived by those present.

The other example he introduces of “things incredible and wholly fabulous,” delivered by Plutarch, is, that “Agesilaus was fined by the Ephori for having wholly engrossed the hearts and affections of his citizens to himself alone.

clearly Plutarch speaks of things that must needs be better known to him than to us;

There is yet in this place another accusation laid against Plutarch which I cannot well digest, where Bodin says that he has sincerely paralleled Romans with Romans, and Greeks among themselves, but not Romans with Greeks;

This is really to attack what in Plutarch is most excellent and most to be commended;

but if a man consider the truth of the thing, and the men in themselves, which is Plutarch’s chiefest aim, and will rather balance their manners, their natures, and parts, than their fortunes, I think, contrary to Bodin, that Cicero and the elder Cato come far short of the men with whom they are compared.

As to Marcellus, Sylla, and Pompey, I very well discern that their exploits of war are greater and more full of pomp and glory than those of the Greeks, whom Plutarch compares with them;

When Plutarch compares them, he does not, for all that, make them equal;

for having only simply named them with the Greeks, he can have done them no injury, what disparity soever there may be betwixt them and Plutarch does not entirely oppose them to one another;

which was the reason, the Roman historians say, that she was repudiated by her husband, which Plutarch confesses to be more than he knew;

This singular and particular commendation is also left of him in the judgment of Plutarch, that he is the only author in the world that never glutted nor disgusted his readers, presenting himself always another thing, and always flourishing in some new grace.

Oh, what an injury has time done me to deprive me of the sight of two of the most noble lives which, by the common consent of all the world, one of the greatest of the Greeks, and the other of the Romans, were in all Plutarch.

He kept his family in health, as Plutarch says if I mistake not, with hare’s milk;

Even Plutarch himself laments his daughter for the little apish tricks of her infancy.

If not this, I have in other bashfulness whereof altogether in things some air of the foolish Plutarch makes mention;

Plutarch says that he sees the Latin tongue by the things:

But I can hardly be without Plutarch;

I think I have seen in Plutarch (who of all the authors I know, is he who has best mixed art with nature, and judgment with knowledge), his giving as a reason for the rising of the stomach in those who are at sea, that it is occasioned by fear;

and because the master hated his wife, Plutarch has seen his courtiers repudiate theirs, whom they loved;

and therefore I do not believe Plutarch in this matter.

There are pieces in Plutarch where he forgets his theme;

As Plutarch says, that those who, through false shame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, are afterward as facile to break their word and to recant;

and that which Plutarch says of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to the motion of the moon;

Plutarch’s way, by how much it is more disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much more manly and persuasive:

” Or thus — for Plutarch delivers it both these ways, as he does a thousand other things, variously and contradictorily — “He must needs be good, because he is so even to the wicked.