Part 2

A few lines about the scholar to whose prolonged labours upon Plutarch we owe so much are only his due. Daniel Wyttenbach was born at Bern, where his father was a divine of good Swiss family, in 1746. He studied at Marburg and Göttingen, and passed to Holland, filling professorial chairs at Amsterdam, and, from 1798, at Leyden. In Holland he was the colleague and intimate friend of Valckenaer (1715-85) and David Ruhnken (1723-98), himself by birth a German. By their advice, he turned from a meditated edition of the Emperor Julian’s works to Plutarch. The two advisers were not quite at one, and Wyttenbach seemed to crouch between two burdens—Valckenaer wished him to produce a final edition of some one work, Ruhnken (who would gladly have faced the task himself if he had been a younger man) preferred that he should not stop short of all Plutarch. In 1772 he produced his learned and complete commentary on the _De sera numinum Vindicta_. About this time the Delegates of the Oxford Press were anxious to produce a worthy edition of a great classic; and in 1788 Thomas Burgess, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, afterwards Bishop of St. Davids and of Salisbury, visited Holland and sought an introduction to Wyttenbach, with whom an arrangement was concluded in the autumn of that year. The issue of the volumes of text, with critical notes and revised Latin version, began in 1795 and went on steadily till 1797; but there was much delay and many searchings of heart over the last volume, containing the fragments, the dispatch of which was hindered by the state of war and the occupation of Holland by foreign troops. It was at last discovered in 1800 in the port of Hamburg, and appears to have reached Oxford in that year. The first two volumes of the commentary, to page 242 C, had preceded it in 1798, and were also published in 1800. The last volume must have proceeded slowly, for it had only reached 392 D, near the end of the _E at Delphi_, when, on January 12, 1807, it was interrupted by an explosion due to the careless use of fire on a barge loaded with gunpowder. The effects of the conflagration which followed are visible in Leyden to this day. The disaster was ill-timed for us, for the commentary stops just short of a passage of great interest (see p. 75). Wyttenbach bore this trouble, which he has graphically described in several letters, and also those caused by ill health and narrowed means, with much fortitude. He died in 1820, and the last volume of the commentary was sent to Oxford and published in 1821, followed by the two volumes of the _Index Graecitatis_ in 1830. He was a most amiable man, and the letters which passed between him and Ruhnken have much charm of feeling and expression. Both wrote in admirable Latin; Wyttenbach’s style is always fluent and picturesque, but has certain idiosyncrasies, which may delay an English reader.[15]

Of older scholars who had dealt with Plutarch, by far the most important was Turnebus[16] (1512-65). Of Xylander (W. Holzmann, 1532-76), who produced the Latin translation, the basis of his own commentary, and a Greek text, Wyttenbach writes with much respect and sympathy, as he does also of Reiske (1716-74), his own contemporary, who, however, was not quite adequately equipped, in point of material or of critical judgement.

I should like to express my deep sense of the loss caused to classical scholarship by the lamented death of Herbert Richards. I have more than once referred to his critical notes on the _Moralia_, which have been appearing lately in the _Classical Review_: many of the finer points of Greek idiom do not concern a translator, but there are several most valuable suggestions and criticisms which I have felt confidence in adopting.

A still more personal loss, which intimately concerns this volume, is that of Ingram Bywater. He had promised a revision of it in its passage through the press; and his vigilance as a Curator as well as his jealousy for the severer traditions of scholarship, apart from his personal kindness, would, I know, have made it a searching one. He did not specially care for English translation, and his own masterly version of the _Poetics_ of Aristotle is prefaced by something like a protest. Nor did he feel much sympathy with what he would call the ‘Realien’. On the realities of life no one had a saner or better informed judgement. For natural science and its representatives he cherished a genuine respect; and perhaps none of the tributes to his memory would have touched him more than one which was paid in the pages of _Nature_ by an old colleague and friend of the Exeter College days. But he had a certain shyness of the intrusion of arguments based, say, upon geometry or music, into problems of language already sufficiently perplexed. How generously his noble library and his own stores of wisdom were thrown open to those who sought them is known to many, as it is to myself.

Yet another great loss to me has been that of the Rev. David Thomas, Rector of Garsington, in Oxfordshire, a veteran mathematician, my near neighbour and most kindly and helpful referee during many years.

I cannot send out even so small a volume without a word of gratitude for affectionate and lifelong help received from John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury 1885-1911. His own enduring contribution to secular scholarship was made in 1874, and holds its place in the judgement of Latin scholars. He was always shouldering new burdens, the last being the mastering, for a definite purpose of friendship and public duty, of the language and history of Sweden. But his great stores of books and of knowledge were always in order, and always made available to others. He would often preface any opinion of his own by ‘My father used to think highly’ of such a book or such a person; and it was always well to be reminded of that true scholar and most courteous gentleman of an older day.

I owe much, for help and advice, to living friends whom I should like to thank, but may not. But I must be allowed to acknowledge, in no conventional spirit, the great care bestowed on these pages by the Reader for the Delegates of the Press, who has entered into difficulties of matter as well as of language as few scholars can be expected to have the patience to do.[17]

The style of Plutarch has not received much favour with scholars. He uses too many words, and writes in cumbrous sentences, and the words often seem ill-shapen. But it has merits which are acknowledged by all those who have dwelt much upon him. His style is a very honest one; at the end of the longest sentence it is always found that he has said something worth saying, and that no word can be retrenched as mere verbiage. And he is so much in earnest that he often reaches an eloquence, which burns, perhaps, with a dull glow, but which cannot be quite lost in any translation. Indeed the modern languages have sometimes an advantage in the fact that they do not possess counterparts, as long and as elaborate, of the terms used in the original. Of the first, and the best, of Plutarch’s translators, Montaigne[18] has written an opinion, to which it should be added that, in the judgement of very capable persons, Amyot[19] was a scholar of real knowledge and penetration, though he is sometimes content to paraphrase:

‘Ie donne avecque raison, ce me semble, la palme à Iacques Amyot sur touts nos escrivains françois, non seulement pour la naïfveté et pureté du langage, en quoy il surpasse touts aultres, ny pour la constance d’un si long travail, ny pour la profondeur de son sçavoir, ayant peu developper si heureusement un aucteur si espineux et ferré (car on m’en dira ce qu’on vouldra, ie n’entends rien au grec, mais ie veois un sens si bien ioinct et entretenu partout en sa traduction, que, ou il a certainement entendu l’imagination vraye de l’aucteur, ou ayant, par longue conversation, planté vifvement dans son ame une generale idee de celle de Plutarque, il ne luy a au moins rien presté qui le desmente ou qui le desdie); mais, sur tout, ie luy sçais bon gré d’avoir seu trier et choisir un livre si digne et si à propos pour en faire present à son pais.’

Since this Preface was written, early in 1916, a study of Plutarch, which should be of great value to his readers, has appeared in the _De Plutarcho scriptore et philosopho_, by Professor J. J. Hartman of Leyden. Professor Hartman is an enthusiast, and his book covers all the works of Plutarch, the _Moralia_ and the _Lives_, their relations to one another and to the author’s career. He is of opinion that the _Lives_ were taken in hand after all, or nearly all, the writings included in the _Moralia_ were completed, and then appeared in rapid succession of books. He observes that many of the pieces of the _Moralia_ suggest the date A.D. 107; the _Symposiacs_ he places somewhat later. Two conclusions, of much importance as coming from so serious a student, may be stated: the Christian teaching had never come into Plutarch’s hearing (p. 114, &c.), and there is no suggestion of any tendency to Oriental or Neoplatonic thought; Plutarch was the best living authority on Plato and his works, and aimed at being the Plato of his own day (pp. 389, 680, &c.).

A large list of critical comments is appended to the general notice of each work. Professor Hartman takes as his basis the Teubner edition, and pays a well-merited tribute to the care and skill of M. Bernardakis (p. 237, &c.). His usual complaint is that the editor has lacked the boldness to incorporate in the text ingenious emendations which he mentions in notes. I had myself felt somewhat differently as to all unsupported emendations, though I am glad to repeat my sense of the great usefulness of the edition, my debt to which goes much beyond what I have expressly acknowledged.

Footnote 1:

‘Tout abregé sur un bon livre est un sot abregé.’—_Montaigne_, iii. 8.

Footnote 2:

Xylander reads οὐδέν, but οὐ before πολλά seems simpler, and makes better logic.

Footnote 3:

See, e. g., p. 266.

Footnote 4:

On this point, and on Plutarch’s life generally, see the buoyant and chivalrous pages of the late Mr. George Wyndham’s introduction to North’s _Lives_ in the _Tudor Translations_.

Footnote 5:

See pp. 54, 253. I have searched such numbers of the _Dissertations_ as appear to have reached this country from Vienna since 1910, without coming upon the continuation of Dr. Adler’s argument. It will be of great interest when it comes to hand, but could not adequately be discussed here.

Footnote 6:

‘Où je puyse comme les Danaïdes, remplissant et versant sans cesse.’—i. 25.

Footnote 7:

The _Symposiacs_ were specially favourite reading of Archbishop Trench, whose bright little volume of _Lectures_ is perhaps the best introduction for English readers to the _Moralia_.

Footnote 8:

The same argument might perhaps be applied to the _Lives_, even as far as that of Dion, but there is no elaborate dedication there.

Footnote 9:

Dr. Mahaffy has acutely pointed out that the tract _De Tranquillitate animi_ must have been written before the accession of Titus in A. D. 79, because it contains a remark (467 E) that no Roman Emperor had yet been succeeded by his son. It is this sort of evidence of a date which we seek, but do not find, in the _Symposiacs_.

Footnote 10:

Some of Plutarch’s characters exemplify the ‘sternness of the judgements of youth’, as the younger Diogenianus.—See p. 94.

Footnote 11:

See Vol. I, p. 25.

Footnote 12:

See his Preface in Vol. I, p. xlii.

Footnote 13:

M. Chenevière’s study mentioned on p. 53 is very helpful but not easily accessible.

Footnote 14:

See p. 14; see also _Apollonius of Perga_, by Sir Thomas Heath, F.R.S., Introd., p. xxi.

Footnote 15:

‘Forte’ is always used where we expect ‘fortasse’, and ‘nisi’ often for ‘si non’.

Footnote 16:

Adrien Turnĕbus (i. q. Toranebus?) was a native of Les Andelys (Eure), near Rouen, and the name is said to be of local origin. Montaigne, who knew him personally, always writes Turnebus; the later form Turnèbe seems to be due to false analogy.

Footnote 17:

I may now name Mr. Walter Sumner Gibson, M.A. of Balliol College, formerly an assistant-master at Charterhouse, who died on the 20th January, 1918, having in recent years acted as a Reader to the Clarendon Press.

Footnote 18:

ii. 4.

Footnote 19:

1514-93.

CONTENTS

On the Genius of Socrates 1

Three Pythian Dialogues 52

I. On the ‘E’ at Delphi 57

II. Why the Pythia does not now give 79 Oracles in Verse

III. On the Cessation of the Oracles 112

On the Instances of Delay in Divine 171 Punishment

From the Dialogue ‘On the Soul’ 214

On Superstition 219

Appendix: A Short Discourse of 236 Superstition. By John Smith

On the Face which appears on the Orb of 246 the Moon

Notes 309

Note on the Myths in Plutarch 313

Note on the Plurality of Worlds and the 318 Five Regular Solids

Index 321

ON THE GENIUS OF SOCRATES

INTRODUCTION

The Dialogue on _The Genius of Socrates_, to follow the familiar Latin title, is in the main a detailed and spirited account of a gallant exploit, the recovery of the Cadmeia, or citadel of Thebes, treacherously taken by the Spartans, with the aid of the Theban oligarchs, two years before. The recovery was effected in the winter of 379-378 B.C. by a party of Theban patriots, returning from exile in Athens, led by Pelopidas. The discussions as to the real meaning of the ‘daemonic Sign’ of Socrates form interludes which fill in the hours of waiting, and serve to relieve the tension of the narrative. It is as though Ulysses were heard discoursing to Menelaus within the Wooden Horse on the personality of Pallas Athene, with Helen prowling around outside. There is nothing strained or dramatic, in any disparaging sense, in speculation thus rubbing shoulders with action. The simplicity and good faith of the speakers, and the attractive personality of Epaminondas, forbid any suspicion of affectation. Thus the Dialogue serves a double purpose: it redeems the character of the leading Thebans, and of Pelopidas in particular, from the habitual disparagement of Xenophon and others; and it redeems the intellectual character of the Boeotians from the reproach against which the most brilliant of Greek poets, himself a son of Thebes, protests, ‘Swine of Boeotia’. For the chief speaker on the Socratic question is Simmias, and Cebes is present, Thebans whose names are for ever associated with the last hours of the Athenian Master; and the story is brightened by glimpses into the home of Epaminondas, and by hallowed memories of the Pythagorean brotherhood.

Early in 382 B.C. the Spartans had dispatched a force against Olynthus, the first division under Eudamidas, the second under his brother Phoebidas. The latter lingered under the walls of Thebes; and, whether led by personal ambition, or receiving secret orders from home, allowed himself to intrigue with the oligarchical leaders, who, though their party was not in power, were strong enough to be represented on the board of Polemarchs by Leontides, another, or the other, being Ismenias. Guided by Leontides, the Spartans, one hot summer day, seized the Cadmeia; Leontides arrested his colleague Ismenias, and caused Archias to be made Polemarch in his place. The popular leaders, some four hundred in number, took refuge in Athens. The Spartans disclaimed the action of Phoebidas, who was fined and superseded; and appropriated its results, strengthening the garrison of the Cadmeia. A commission of judges from the confederate states was appointed by Sparta to try Ismenias on a vague charge of Medizing; he was condemned and executed. Of the two Polemarchs, Archias was a man of pleasure, Leontides one of severe private life, but an unscrupulous party leader. He caused the lives of the refugees in Athens to be attempted, successfully in at least one case, that of Androcleidas. Of the patriots, Pelopidas, who had been formally exiled, was the leading spirit; Epaminondas, who remained at home, held back for good reasons which are stated in the course of the Dialogue (p. 9). One of the most useful confederates was Phyllidas; he had himself, when on a visit to Athens, suggested the enterprise, but he managed to retain the confidence of the party now in possession of Thebes, and held the office of Secretary to the Polemarchs.

These facts are assumed to be familiar to his hearers by Capheisias, brother of Epaminondas, who had himself joined the liberators without any scruples, and later on had been sent to Athens on an embassy. His story of the sequel is told to a mixed company of Athenians and Thebans. It is a perfectly clear one, and needs no comment.

The facts are again told by Plutarch in his _Life of Pelopidas_. The _Lives_ were the work of his later years; and the present Dialogue, with its fuller detail and more varied colouring, is an earlier attempt to draw an historical picture, a work of art which will bear the close inspection of those who love to hear of virtue, or valour, in action.

The events are also narrated by Xenophon, who, from his usual Lacedaemonian and anti-Theban bias, omits all mention of Pelopidas. Thirlwall has preferred to base his account upon Plutarch; Grote follows Xenophon, but with a strong protest against his narrowness.

The conduct of Sparta justifies the allegation made by the Athenians in 416 B.C., ‘that in her political transactions she measured honour by inclination and justice by expediency’ (Thuc. 5, 105). The most scathing verdict upon it is delivered by Xenophon himself, who pauses in his narrative to point the moral, that the fall and degradation of Sparta began from this turning-point:

‘It would be possible to mention many other instances, from Greek and foreign history, proving that the Gods do not fail to notice the authors of impious and wicked deeds; at present I shall only mention the case before us. The Lacedaemonians, who had sworn that they would leave the cities independent, and then seized the Acropolis of Thebes, were punished entirely by those whom they had wronged, having previously been beaten by no man then living. The Theban citizens who had introduced them into the citadel, and who wished the city to be subject to the Lacedaemonians that they themselves might enjoy absolute power, lost their supremacy, which seven exiles were enough to overthrow.’

These remarks are in the spirit of the Greek Tragedians, who love to bring into strong light an act or situation of pride and insolence as the turning-point from prosperity to ruin. Thucydides, as is pointed out by Grote in the masterly pages which end his fifty-sixth chapter, has brought the cynical injustice of the Athenians towards Melos into glaring prominence in order to prepare his readers for the disastrous sequel.

The problem of the true nature of the ‘Divine Sign’ of Socrates is one of great interest and some mystery. The Latin word ‘Genius’, the attendant spirit who makes each of us what he is, in fact, his self, is familiar to us from Horace:

_The Genius, guardian of each child of earth, Born when we’re born and dying when we die._

(_Epist._ 2, 2, 187.)

The conception is thoroughly Greek, and may be paralleled abundantly from Plato as well as from Plutarch himself and contemporary writers. But it is really misapplied here, and is in fact a mistranslation, since the word used by Plato and Xenophon as well as by Plutarch is invariably not the daemon, but the neuter adjective, ‘the daemonic sc. Sign’. The passages of Plato and Xenophon are collected in the late James Riddell’s edition of the _Apology_ of Plato.[20] It is to be observed that in all the genuine works of Plato the operation of the Sign is negative and deterrent, in Xenophon it is sometimes positive and hortatory. The reader should consult the articles on Socrates by Professor Henry Jackson in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. Professor Jackson is inclined to think that the evidence points to some abnormal condition of the sense of hearing, and there are expressions in this Dialogue of Plutarch which seem to bear out such a view. Apuleius’ treatise _On the God of Socrates_ (which St. Augustine tells us that he would have entitled _On the daemon of Socrates_ if he had dared) tells us much which is of interest about the daemons, but not very much about Socrates. He contributes, however, the pertinent remark that the Sign, according to Socrates himself, was not ‘a voice’, but ‘a sort of voice’.

There is no indication of the date of composition of this Dialogue.

Not many points of topography arise. The Cadmeia stood on a low hill or plateau rising from north to south on the eastern side of the Dirce stream and reaching a height of some 200 feet, now occupied by the modern town. The market-place was north-east of this, near the river Ismenus. Of the seven famous gates the returning exiles may probably have entered by the Electran, the one assailed by Capaneus in Aeschylus’ story (_Seven against Thebes_, 423).

A DIALOGUE HELD AT ATHENS

[Sidenote: 573] CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE RETURN OF THE THEBAN EXILES, 379 B.C.

SPEAKERS

CAPHEISIAS, a Theban (brother of Epaminondas), who tells the story of the return. TIMOTHEUS., Athenian ARCHIDAMUS., Athenian THE SONS OF ARCHINUS., Athenian LYSITHEIDES., Athenian OTHER FRIENDS.

I. _Archidamus._ I once heard a painter, Capheisias, say a [Sidenote: B] striking thing about the different people who come to view pictures, which he put as a simile. Spectators with no technical knowledge, he said, are like those who greet a large company in the mass; others, who possess fine taste and a love of art, resemble those who have a personal word for all comers. The former get only a general view of the works before them, which is never accurate; the latter discuss each piece critically and in detail, and no point of execution, good or bad, escapes inspection and remark. Now I think that it is just the same with the [Sidenote: C] actions of real life. Duller minds are satisfied if they learn from history the summary account of what occurred and its outcome; lovers of what is honourable and beautiful take keener delight in hearing all particulars of the performances inspired by that great Art Virtue. To the actual result, Fortune has much to say; but he who dwells on causes and particulars sees Virtue at odds with circumstance, acts of rational daring done in the face of danger, and calculation meeting opportunity and passion. Take it that we belong to the second class. Begin at the beginning of the enterprise, and give us all the incidents and [Sidenote: D] all the speeches which were no doubt delivered in your presence; and believe that I would not have hesitated to go to Thebes on purpose to hear the story, but that the Athenians are already beginning to think me too much of a Boeotian.