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