The large number of poetical quotations in Plutarch often stop a translator’s hand. Wherever it is possible, I have turned to standard versions: for Homer to that of Worsley completed by Conington, for Pindar’s extant Odes to that of Bishop George Moberly, which it has been an especial pleasure to use; for some lines of the Cyclops of Euripides I have been fortunate enough to draw upon Shelley. There remain a good many fragments, some of them of real poetical quality, and some jingling oracles and the like; for the latter doggerel is the proper vehicle, for the former the best attainable doggerel must serve. The range of Plutarch’s poetical quotations seems strangely limited considering their number. All are Greek, and most from the older poets; indeed, with the exception of a few from the New Comedy, nearly all might have been used by Plato. Those from the Tragedians are always to the point, but he does not appear to care from which of the three he is borrowing.[3] Homer and Hesiod always bring a welcome flavour of an older world. Perhaps Pindar is the poet whom he quotes with most hearty appreciation. Though he has given us many new poetical fragments, he introduces us to few, if any, new poets. Of Bacchylides there are only two slight quotations in all Plutarch’s works. A single reference to a passage of Horace is all that shows a knowledge of the existence of Roman poetry.

Southey’s comparison between the Moralia and the Lives need not be pressed; it is the scholar’s preference for the rare, which is his by privilege, over the popular. But it is well to realize, as it is easy to do with the help of indices, that the author’s hand is one in both. It is agreed that the Lives belong to Plutarch’s later years, and were written at Chaeroneia, under the limitations of his own library; the several books appeared at intervals, of what length we cannot say.[4] The few indications of date mentioned in the introductions to the dialogues now before us suggest the later part of Vespasian’s reign or the years nearly following it, say from A.D. 80 on. The dialogue on the Instances of Delay in Divine Punishment from its simpler psychology and demonology, and perhaps from some crudity in style, suggests a date earlier than that of some of the others. Dr. Max Adler, in his lucid and learned dissertation, has established the close connexion between the Face in the Moon and the Cessation of the Oracles, and thinks the former to have been the earlier, and to have been utilized for the latter piece.[5]

Montaigne, who knew his Plutarch up and down, has said that he is one of the authors whom he likes to take after the manner of the Danaids,[6] which may be described as a method of ‘dip and waste’. You may dip anywhere, as you may into the pages of The Doctor, and be sure of finding something which you would wish to remember; but you may also find, on re-reading the same passage, that you have not remembered it at all, so that the waste is continual. The freshness need not be impaired by a little more system; indeed it would be enhanced, at least for the dialogues, for this reason, that they all represent real conversations between real persons, and it is worth our while to put together our impressions about each. The fullest materials for such an attempt will be found in the Symposiacs or dialogues over wine.[7]

The Symposiacs are arranged in nine books, each of which contains ten conversations of unequal length, but all short, except the last which has fifteen. On the other hand nine, viz. four of the fourth book and five of the last, are missing, only the titles being preserved. All the books are dedicated to Sossius Senecio, who was consul first in A.D. 99; and as there is no reference to the dignity, we may perhaps infer that all were written before that year.[8] There is not a single reference in all the nine books to any public or personal event which might help us to a date. We hear of the ‘year’ of officials of the Greek games, of Plutarch’s return from a visit to Alexandria, and of a marriage in his family, which Sossius Senecio attended, but we cannot follow these clues.[9] Many of the discussions are about wine and wine-parties; in others the range of subject is very wide, from ‘What Plato meant by saying, if he did say, that God geometrizes’ to ‘Whether the table should be cleared after dinner’, or ‘Why truffles grow after thunder’. A good many are on medical subjects; in one of them the promising problem, ‘Whether new diseases can arise, and from what causes’, is well argued. The physicians present show a full knowledge of the Natural History found in the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, and the laymen seem to argue with them on equal terms. There is little or no pleasantry about professional habits, the fees or the pedantry, except that in one party a physician is host, and sets on the table an inordinately good dinner, while certain young men of severe habits put him to a great deal of trouble to produce some cheese to eat with their dry bread.[10]

In the first dialogue of the First Book the question is raised, ‘Whether philosophy may be discussed over wine’. The answer appears to be ‘Why not?’ but probably none of the following dialogues would be called ‘philosophical’ by philosophers. Plutarch loved a vigorous set-to, with no quarter given, ‘nothing for hate, but all for honour’, as much as did Montaigne.[11] But he felt deeply about the matters at issue between Stoics and Epicureans, the two schools which mattered. Believing himself in a Providence, kindly and particular, associated by him with the Apollo of Delphi, he disliked equally the Epicurean who flouted a Providence, and the Stoic who lowered it by his pedantry and contradictions. He would not have a scene over the wine. Even in the daylight dialogues now before us, the cynic ‘Planetiades’ is skilfully bowed out before there is trouble, and ‘Epicurus’ takes himself off before the reported discussion begins, leaving the company surprised rather than angry.

The titles of the five lost dialogues of the last book (the others of that book being all on literary subjects) are curious. Three are connected with music; and I should have the permission of those who have kindly helped me here to say that there is about Greek music a considerable region of dim penumbra. Another raises a question discussed in the De Facie and answered there out of Aristotle and Posidonius, as to the eclipses of sun and moon. Another is on the problem ‘Whether the total number of the stars is more probably even than odd’. The speakers (for a fragment is preserved) are quite aware that a game of odd-and-even on such a scale might seem childish. It need not be so, if the treatment were like that of the Arenarius of Archimedes (all the better if in his Doric); it would then have contained some long numbers and some stiff reasoning. Of one thing we may be sure, that if Lamprias, who is much to the fore in the Ninth Book, took a part, he was ready with a received view, framed on the spot.

M. Bernardakis[12] (who quotes a letter from M. Wessely) tells us that in the Paris E there is a blank space here of 2-¼ leaves, but that in the old Vienna MS., no. 148 (which contains the Symposiacs only), three whole pages have been cut out, leaving a gap between what remains of the sixth dialogue and the fragment of the twelfth. Former editions had printed continuously, and our gratitude is due to M. Bernardakis for his restitution of the fragment to its proper place. The inference appears to be that the Vienna MS. is here the parent, though why the fragment stops short where it does is not clear. Probably the scribe was daunted by the technical language, and either left a blank space to be filled up by some one of greater experience, or so spoilt his sheets by errors and erasures that it was better to cut them out. Some such cause has been conjectured for the many gaps left in E, occurring where the subject-matter is difficult.

Some ninety different persons are mentioned by name as taking part in the Symposiac Dialogues, and if we allow for the lost pieces, there must have been at least a hundred. These may be arranged in groups: Plutarch and his family—his grandfather, father, brothers, sons, sons-in-law—the doctors (8), the grammarians (5), and so on. Many of these reappear in the dialogues now before us, and much may be gained in distinctness of personality by following out the references given.[13] Ammonius, Plutarch’s teacher in the Platonic philosophy, comes out as a masterful person, and a past-master in the art of tactful arrangement of a debate. Theon (‘Our Comrade’, an appellation given to some half-dozen others), to be distinguished from ‘Theon the Grammarian’, is a close and much trusted family friend. Very few Roman names appear, but Sossius Senecio, Mestrius Florus, and one or two others, must have been intimates.

None of the conversations in the Symposiacs turn upon points which were Plutarch’s interest when he wrote the Lives; the study of character in stirring times, of the reaction of circumstances upon character and of character upon circumstances, of the insoluble problem which is always solving itself, as to ‘Virtue’ on the one hand and ‘Fortune’ on the other, determining success. The elaborate introduction to the Genius of Socrates, put side by side with that to the Life of Pericles, shows that the author wished to turn from subjects which made good talk over wine in hours of leisure, to others of a more virile stamp. The most convenient hypothesis would be that the success of the Symposiacs suggested to the author to try his hand on more elaborate dialogue, and that, still later on, he settled to the Lives in the spirit, not of an historian, but of an artist, filling his canvas with themes inspired by that great art, Virtue. The lost Life of Epaminondas, his favourite hero, would have told us a great deal about the artist himself. It was not Plutarch’s habit to sum up in such brilliant character sketches as stand out in other historians: this has been done for Epaminondas, on broad and generous lines, by Sir Walter Raleigh, and before him, not less generously, by Montaigne; and much material will be found scattered among Plutarch’s other Lives.