Comprising all his Works Collected under the Title of “Morals” · Translated from the…

BOSTON · LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY · MCMXI

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, By Little, Brown, and Company, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

Copyright, 1898, 1905, By Little, Brown, and Company.

Printers S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.

v

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

The translation of Plutarch’s Morals “by Several Hands” was first published in London in 1684-1694. The fifth edition, “revised and corrected from the many errors of the former editions,” published in 1718, is the basis of the present translation. The earlier translation made by Philemon Holland, Doctor of Physick, published in London in 1603 and again in 1657, has often been of great use in the revision. It hardly need be stated, that the name “Morals” is used by tradition to include all the works of Plutarch except the Lives.

The original editions of the present work contained translations of every grade of merit. Some of the essays were translated by eminent scholars like William Baxter (nephew of Richard Baxter) and Thomas Creech, whose work generally required merely such revision as every translation of such an age would now need. But a large number, including some of the longest and most difficult treatises, were translated by men whose ignorance of Greek—or whatever language was the immediate ancestor of their own version—was only one of their many defects as translators. Perhaps we may gain a better idea than we have had of the scholars of Oxford whom Bentley delighted to torment, from these specimens of the learning of their generation; and it may have been a fortunate thing for some of our translators that Bentley was too much occupied with the wise heads of Christ Church to be able to notice the blunders of men who could write notes saying that the Parthenon is “a Promontory shooting into the Black Sea, where stood a Chappel dedicated to some

Virgin God-head, and famous for some Victory thereabout obtain’d;” or who could torture a plain statement that a certain water when stirred produced bubbles (πομφόλυγες) into a story of avi new substance called Pompholyx, “made by Mixture of Brass with the Air”! See Vol. V. p. 337, and Vol. III. p. 517, of the original translation.

Besides the great variety of scholarship and ignorance, each translator had his own theory of translation. While some attempted a literal version, so as even to bracket all words not actually represented in the Greek, others gave a mere paraphrase, which in one case (Mr. Pulleyn’s “Customs of the Lacedaemonians”) became an original essay on the subject, based on the facts supplied by Plutarch. The present editor’s duty, of course, changed with each new style of translation. It would have been impossible to bring the whole work to a uniform standard of verbal correctness, unless essentially a new translation had been made. The original version was often so hopelessly incorrect that no revision was possible; and here the editor cannot flatter himself that he has succeeded in patching the English of the seventeenth century with his own without detriment. Fortunately, the earlier translation of Holland supplied words, and even whole sentences, in many cases in which the other was beyond the help of mere revision. The translation of Holland is generally

more accurate than the other, and, on the whole, a more conscientious work; its antiquated style and diffuseness, however, render it less fitted for republication at the present time. Notwithstanding all the defects of the translation which is here revised, it is beyond all question a more readable version than could be made now; and the liveliness of its style will more than make up to most readers for its want of literal correctness. It need not be stated to professional scholars, that translations made in the seventeenth century cannot, even by the most careful revision, be made to answer the demands of modern critical scholarship.

One of the greatest difficulties in preparing the present work has been to decide how much of the antiquated language of the old translation should be retained. On this point the editor has fortunately been able to consult the wisest and most experienced advisers, to whose aid he has been constantly indebted; but even the highest authorities occasionally disagree on the first principles. He is fully aware, therefore, that he has dissatisfied a large number of the friends of Plutarch in this respect; but he is equally sure that he should have dissatisfied an equal number by any other course which he might have followed. The general principlevii adopted has been to retain such expressions as were in good use when the translation was made, provided the meaning is obvious or easy to be learned from a dictionary, and to discard such as would be unintelligible to ordinary readers. It has, in some cases, been assumed that the use of a phrase of obvious meaning in this translation is of itself authority for accepting it. On these principles many words and expressions are retained,

which are decidedly weaker than their modern equivalents, especially many Latinisms and Gallicisms which now seem pedantic. Even here consistency has been impossible, where the duty of a reviser changed with every new treatise. Perhaps the editor cannot state his own object more correctly, than by saying that he has tried to make each treatise what the original translator would have made it if he had carried out his own purpose conscientiously and thoroughly. Where so many errors were to be corrected, it would be absurd to hope that many have not remained still unnoticed.

The corrupt state of the Greek text of many parts of Plutarch’s Morals must not be overlooked. No complete edition of the Greek has been published since Wyttenbach’s (1795-1800), except the French one by Dübner in the Didot collection. The latter gives no manuscript readings; and although it professes to be based partly on a new collation of the manuscripts in the public library of Paris, nothing distinguishes the changes made on this authority from conjectures of the editor and his predecessors. A slight glance at Wyttenbach will show that many parts of the text are restored by conjecture; and many of the conjectures, though plausible and ingenious, are not such as would be accepted by modern scholarship if they were made in earlier classic authors. A translator must accept many of these under silent protest; to enumerate one-half of them would introduce a critical commentary entirely out of place in a translation. In fact, no critical translation of these treatises is possible, until a thorough revision of the text, with the help of the best manuscripts, has been

made; and this is a task from which most scholars would shrink in dismay. In many cases in this edition, blanks have been preferred to uncertain conjectures or traditional nonsense. The treatises on Music, on the Procreation of the Soul, and the two on the Stoics, have many of their dark corners made darker by the utter uncertainty of the Greek text.

viii

The essays in this edition follow the same order as in the old translation; but those on Fortune, and on Virtue and Vice, with the Conjugal Precepts, are transferred from the beginning of volume third to the end of volume second. The sections have been numbered in accordance with the modern editions of the Greek text. References to most of the classic authors quoted by Plutarch are given in the foot-notes, except where a quotation is a mere fragment of an unknown work. The tragic fragments are numbered according to the edition of Nauck (Leipsic, 1856). All notes (except these references) introduced by the editor are marked G. A few notes are taken from Holland; and all which are not otherwise marked are retained from the old translation.

In conclusion, the editor must express his warmest thanks to his colleagues at the University and other friends who have kindly aided him with their advice and skill. Without their help, the undertaking would sometimes have seemed hopeless.

WILLIAM W. GOODWIN.

ix

INTRODUCTION.

It is remarkable that of an author so familiar as Plutarch, not only to scholars, but to all reading men, and whose history is so easily gathered from his works, no accurate memoir of his life, not even the dates of his birth and death, should have come down to us. Strange that the writer of so many illustrious biographies should wait so long for his own. It is agreed that he was born about the year 50 A. D. He has been represented as having been the tutor of the Emperor Trajan, as dedicating one of his books to him, as living long in Rome in great esteem, as having received from Trajan the consular dignity, and as having been appointed by him the governor of Greece. He was a man whose real superiority had no need of these flatteries. Meantime, the simple truth is, that he was not the tutor of Trajan, that he dedicated no book to him, was not consul in Rome, nor governor of Greece; appears never to have been in Rome but on two occasions, and then on business of the people of his native city, Chæronæa; and though he found or made friends at Rome, and

read lectures to some friends or scholars, he did not know or learn the Latin language there; with one or two doubtful exceptions, never quotes a Latin book; and though the contemporary in his youth, or in his old age, of Persius, Juvenal, Lucan, and Seneca, of Quintilian, Martial, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, and the Younger, he does not cite them, and in return his name is never mentioned by any Roman writer. It would seem that the community of letters and of personal news was even more rare at that day than the want of printing, of railroads and telegraphs, would suggest to us.

But this neglect by his contemporaries has been compensated by an immense popularity in modern nations. Whilst his books were never known to the world in their own Greek tongue, it isx curious that the “Lives” were translated and printed in Latin, thence into Italian, French, and English, more than a century before the original “Works” were yet printed. For whilst the “Lives” were translated in Rome in 1471, and the “Morals,” part by part, soon after, the first printed edition of the Greek “Works” did not appear until 1572. Hardly current in his own Greek, these found learned interpreters in the scholars of Germany, Spain, and Italy. In France, in the middle of the most turbulent civil wars, Amyot’s translation awakened general attention. His genial version of the “Lives” in 1559, of the “Morals” in 1572, had signal success. King Henry IV. wrote to his wife, Marie de Medicis: “Vive Dieu. As God liveth, you could not have sent me any thing which could be more agreeable than the news of the pleasure you have taken in this reading.

Plutarch always delights me with a fresh novelty. To love him is to love me; for he has been long time the instructor of my youth. My good mother, to whom I owe all, and who would not wish, she said, to see her son an illustrious dunce, put this book into my hands almost when I was a child at the breast. It has been like my conscience, and has whispered in my ear many good suggestions and maxims for my conduct, and the government of my affairs.” Still earlier, Rabelais cites him with due respect. Montaigne, in 1589, says: “We dunces had been lost, had not this book raised us out of the dirt. By this favor of his we dare now speak and write. The ladies are able to read to schoolmasters. ’Tis our breviary.” Montesquieu drew from him his definition of law, and, in his Pensées, declares, “I am always charmed with Plutarch; in his writings are circumstances attached to persons, which give great pleasure;” and adds examples. Saint Evremond read Plutarch to the great Condé under a tent. Rollin, so long the historian of antiquity for

France, drew unhesitatingly his history from him. Voltaire honored him, and Rousseau acknowledged him as his master. In England, Sir Thomas North translated the “Lives” in 1579, and Holland the “Morals” in 1603, in time to be used by Shakspeare in his plays, and read by Bacon, Dryden, and Cudworth.

Then, recently, there has been a remarkable revival, in France, in the taste for Plutarch and his contemporaries, led, we may say, by the eminent critic Saint-Beuve. M. Octave Gréard, in a critical work on the “Morals,” has carefully corrected the popularxi legends, and constructed from the works of Plutarch himself his true biography. M. Levéque has given an exposition of his moral philosophy, under the title of “A Physician of the Soul,” in the Revue des Deux Mondes; and M. C. Martha, chapters on the genius of Marcus Aurelius, of Persius, and Lucretius, in the same journal; whilst M. Fustel de Coulanges has explored from its roots in the Aryan race, then in their Greek and Roman descendants, the primeval religion of the household.

Plutarch occupies a unique place in literature as an encyclopædia of Greek and Roman antiquity. Whatever is eminent in fact or in fiction, in opinion, in character, in institutions, in science—natural, moral, or metaphysical, or in memorable sayings, drew his attention and came to his pen with more or less fulness of record. He is, among prose-writers, what Chaucer is among English poets, a repertory for those who want the story without searching for it at first hand,—a compend of all accepted traditions. And all this without any supreme intellectual gifts. He is not a profound mind; not a master in any science; not a lawgiver, like Lycurgus or Solon; not a metaphysician, like Parmenides, Plato, or Aristotle; not the founder of any sect or community, like Pythagoras or Zeno; not a naturalist, like Pliny or Linnæus; not a leader of the mind of a generation, like Plato or Goethe. But if he had not the highest powers, he was yet a man of rare gifts. He had that universal sympathy with genius which makes all its victories his own; though he

never used verse, he had many qualities of the poet in the power of his imagination, the speed of his mental associations, and his sharp, objective eyes. But what specially marks him, he is a chief example of the illumination of the intellect by the force of morals. Though the most amiable of boon-companions, this generous religion gives him aperçus like Goethe’s.

Plutarch was well-born, well-taught, well-conditioned; a self-respecting, amiable man, who knew how to better a good education by travels, by devotion to affairs private and public; a master of ancient culture, he read books with a just criticism; eminently social, he was a king in his own house, surrounded himself with select friends, and knew the high value of good conversation; and declares in a letter written to his wife that “he finds scarcely an erasure, as in a book well-written, in the happiness of his life.”

xii

The range of mind makes the glad writer. The reason of Plutarch’s vast popularity is his humanity. A man of society, of affairs; upright, practical; a good son, husband, father, and friend,—he has a taste for common life, and knows the court, the camp, and the judgment-hall, but also the forge, farm, kitchen, and cellar, and every utensil and use, and with a wise man’s or a poet’s eye. Thought defends him from any degradation. He does not lose his way, for the attractions are from within, not from without. A poet in verse or prose must have a sensuous eye, but an intellectual co-perception. Plutarch’s memory is full, and his horizon wide. Nothing touches man but he feels to be his; he is tolerant even of vice, if he finds it genial; enough a man of the world to give even the devil his due, and would have hugged Robert Burns, when he cried.

He is a philosopher with philosophers, a naturalist with naturalists, and sufficiently a mathematician to leave some of his readers, now and then, at a long distance behind him, or respectfully skipping to the next chapter. But this scholastic omniscience of our author engages a new respect, since they hope he understands his own diagram.

He perpetually suggests Montaigne, who was the best reader he has ever found, though Montaigne excelled his master in the point and surprise of his sentences. Plutarch had a religion which Montaigne wanted, and which defends him from wantonness; and though Plutarch is as plain-spoken, his moral sentiment is always pure. What better praise has any writer received than he whom Montaigne finds “frank in giving things, not words,” dryly adding, “it vexes me that he is so exposed to the spoil of those that are conversant with him.” It is one of the felicities of literary history, the tie which inseparably couples these two names across fourteen centuries. Montaigne, whilst he grasps Étienne de la Boèce with one hand, reaches back the other to Plutarch. These distant friendships charm us, and honor all the parties, and make the best example of the universal citizenship and fraternity of the human mind.

I do not know where to find a book—to borrow a phrase of Ben Jonson’s—“so rammed with life,” and this in chapters chiefly ethical, which are so prone to be heavy and sentimental.xiii No poet could illustrate his thought with more novel or striking similes or happier anecdotes. His style is realistic, picturesque, and varied; his sharp objective eyes seeing every thing that moves, shines, or threatens in nature or art, or thought or dreams. Indeed, twilights, shadows, omens, and spectres have a charm for him. He believes in witchcraft and the evil eye, in demons and ghosts,—but prefers, if you please, to talk of these in the morning. His vivacity and abundance never leave him to loiter or pound on an incident. I admire his rapid and crowded style, as if he had such store of anecdotes of his heroes that he is forced to suppress more than he recounts, in order to keep up with the hasting history.

His surprising merit is the genial facility with which he deals with his manifold topics. There is no trace of labor or pain. He gossips of heroes, philosophers, and poets; of virtues and genius; of love and fate and empires. It is for his pleasure that he recites all that is best in his reading: he prattles history. But he is no courtier, and no Boswell: he is ever manly, far from fawning, and would be welcome to the sages and warriors he reports, as one having a native right to admire and recount these stirring deeds and speeches. I find him a better teacher of rhetoric than any modern. His superstitions are poetic, aspiring, affirmative. A poet might rhyme all day with hints drawn from Plutarch, page on page. No doubt, this superior suggestion for the modern reader owes much to the foreign air, the Greek wine, the religion and history of antique heroes. Thebes, Sparta, Athens, and Rome charm us away from the disgust of the passing hour. But his own cheerfulness and rude health are also magnetic. In his immense quotation and allusion, we quickly cease to discriminate

between what he quotes and what he invents. We sail on his memory into the ports of every nation, enter into every private property, and do not stop to discriminate owners, but give him the praise of all. ’Tis all Plutarch, by right of eminent domain, and all property vests in this emperor. This facility and abundance make the joy of his narrative, and he is read to the neglect of more careful historians. Yet he inspires a curiosity, sometimes makes a necessity, to read them. He disowns any attempt to rival Thucydides; but I suppose he has a hundred readers where Thucydides finds one, and Thucydides must often thank Plutarch for that one. He has preserved for us a multitude

xiv