XIV

PLUTARCH

Ce même notre Plutarque, si parfait et excellent juge des actions humaines.-MONTAIGNE.

THE epigram has brought us into Roman, and then into Byzantine, times; we must return to the first century A.D. Hellenism in this period is even more cosmopolitan than before. Its task was to give a culture to the Roman Empire. It inspired Roman poets, orators, and men of letters; it supplied the philosophies by which the educated Roman regulated his life education, science, and medicine were largely in the hands of Greeks. But Greece received, as well as gave: she was a part of the Roman Empire, and that empire and the qualities which built it up attracted the attention and won the admiration of her writers. This is eminently true of Plutarch.

Plutarch (A. D. 46-120) was born in Boeotia, and spent most of his life there, but visited Egypt and Italy. To-day he would have been a professor, probably of philosophy, for no other subject could cover his various interests. As it was, he was a man of letters, and spent his time in reading, writing, and discussing with his many friends religion, philosophy, politics, history, archaeology, and literature, with the wide range of a man of liberal education. He has left a great body of writings, which fall under two heads. There are the works, collected under the misleading title of Moral Writings, which include essays on subjects as different as Advice on Marriage, How to read Poetry to the Young, Superstition, the Delays of God's Vengeance, the Use of Enemies, the Face in the Moon, Conversations at Dinner, with many more.1 Interesting as many of these are, Plutarch's fame rests not on them but on his Parallel Lives, biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. Fifty of these have survived, mostly in couples, a Greek and a Roman, with a brief comparison at the end. To read these

1 Selected essays from these are published in translation by the Oxford University Press.

is not merely to peruse a number of isolated biographies, but to walk through a picture-gallery of the ancient world, and to form an idea of what the Greek and the Roman character have meant in history.

Plutarch is not a great historian. He has not the intellectual power or the scientific spirit of Thucydides; he does not view his subject as a whole or divine the forces that underlie and explain the course of history. But he shows us what the Athenian did not trouble to show-the faces, lives, and characters of the actors. He is essentially a biographer, with an eye for picturesque detail, a memory for stories and a gift of telling them, a dramatic sense and a knowledge of character. His interest was doubleintellectual and moral: he enjoyed re-creating famous figures and scenes, and this makes him delightful to read. Shakespeare's Roman plays are a testimony to this side of Plutarch-his richness in dramatic scenes and heroic figures: and Shakespeare left unused far more subjects than he took. But Plutarch also studied history for what it could teach of the art of living. Few men have known better what candour, simplicity, largemindedness, courage, self-sacrifice, and patriotism are: few have loved them more. These are the qualities in men that attracted Plutarch; and this temper, pervading the Lives though never obtrusive or self-conscious, makes them a better lesson in conduct than the most moral of his moral essays.

The following passage describes a scene from the death-bed of the great aristocrat who led and did much to make the Athenian democracy.

BOUT that time Pericles was attacked by the plague.

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When he was near his end, the most distinguished men in Athens and his surviving friends were sitting by him, talking of his great qualities and his power, and recalling his achievements and the number of his victories. They were conversing together, thinking that he had lost consciousness and could not understand. But it happened that he had listened to it all, and breaking into their conversation he expressed his surprise, that they mentioned with praise acts in which fortune had had a share and which many other generals had rivalled, but said nothing of his noblest and greatest achievement.

'For', he said, 'no Athenian has ever been caused to wear mourning through me.'1

Any one who wishes to understand the iron men who made Rome should read the life of Cato the Censor (234-149 B. C.). The following extracts will give some idea of this strange mixture of public spirit, brutality, and noble domestic life. Much in Cato repelled a humane and educated man like Plutarch, but he saw and does justice to the Roman's greatness.

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ILL he took to military and political life Cato lived on

his father's estate in the Sabine district. He was reddish in complexion and grey-eyed. In early life he acquired a good constitution by military service, living temperately and working with his own hands, and he was strong both in body and health. On the march he went on foot and bore his arms, followed by a single servant who carried his provisions. He is said never to have lost his temper or found fault with him, but when free from military duty to have habitually assisted him to prepare his meals. He drank water on a campaign, merely mixing it with vinegar when he was thirsty, or taking a little wine when his strength failed.

The farm of Mānius Cūrius, who had three times triumphed,2 was near his estate. Cato often used to visit it, and observing its small extent and simple dwelling-house he reflected on its owner, who after becoming the greatest man in Rome and driving Pyrrhus out of Italy, dug this small holding with his own hands and lived in this cottage. Here it was that the ambassadors of the Samnites found Curius boiling turnips on his hearth and offered him a large sum in gold: but he sent them away saying that a man whose needs were met by such a supper did not need gold, and that he thought it more honourable to conquer the possessors of wealth than to possess it

1 Pericles, c. 38. I have here and elsewhere made some use of Dryden's translation.

2 A 'triumph' was awarded by the Romans to generals who won important victories.

himself. Cato, after reflecting on the story, went away and surveyed his own farm and servants, and reducing all unnecessary expenses increased his own manual labour. Early in the morning he used to go to the courts and assist his clients: then he returned to his farm and, in winter putting on a smock, but in the summer in his shirt sleeves, worked with his servants and sat down with them, taking the same food and drink. He himself says that when he was consul and general he drank the same wine as his workmen.

His self-restraint was admirable. When he commanded the army he never took for himself and his staff more than three bushels of wheat per month, and less than a bushel and a half per day for his animals. When he was governor of Sardinia where his predecessors used to requisition tents, bedding, and clothes, and to burden the public accounts with the cost of dinners, entertainments, and expenses for a large household and numerous friends, he practised an economy difficult to credit. There was nothing in which he put the public to any expense instead of using a carriage he visited the towns in his province on foot, followed by a single public servant carrying his cloak and a cup to offer libations with. Yet though so easy and simple to his subjects, he showed inflexible strictness and severity in public justice and was rigorous and precise in matters of state regulations; so that the Roman government never seemed more benevolent or more terrible than in his administration.

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I will quote some of his memorable sayings. Once attacking the Romans' extravagance he said: 'It is difficult for a state to survive, where a fish 1 sells for more than an ox.' And again, speaking of the power of women in Rome: All mankind rule their women, and we rule mankind, and women rule us.' He urged the Romans, if their greatness had come from virtue and self-control, not to change them for the worse; but if it had come from vice and licence to change for the better: 1 Immense sums were spent on choice table fish.

for these qualities had made them quite great enough. He used to say that he would rather lose the reward for his good actions than escape punishment for his bad ones; and that he could pardon all offenders except himself. He said that he regretted three things in his life that he had ever trusted a woman with a secret, that he had ever gone by sea when he could go on foot, and that he had remained a whole day intestate. Speaking to a vicious old man he said: 'Age has many deformities: do not add to it those of vice.'

After recounting Cato's military achievements, Plutarch continues :

Ten years after his consulship he stood for the office of censor.1 The aristocracy opposed his election, and put forward seven candidates, who courted the electors by fair promises, as though they wanted an indulgent and easy government. Cato on the other hand was the opposite of mild. He openly threatened evil-doers from the hustings, exclaiming that the city needed a thorough purge, and asking the masses, if they were wise, to choose not the pleasantest doctor, but the most rigorous. And so truly great and worthy of its great men was Rome, that it did not fear the grimness and severity of Cato but rejected the flatterers who showed themselves ready to do everything to please it.

Plutarch then mentions some cases where Cato showed severity, and continues.

He caused most annoyance by retrenching people's luxury. To destroy it outright was impossible, so widespread and fatal was the disease: but he took it in flank, causing all dress, carriages, women's ornaments, and household furniture, which cost more than £60, to be rated at ten times their value, with the idea of raising heavier taxation on the increased assessment. He also imposed a capital tax so as to discourage those on 1 The chief financial official at Rome, with wide powers over the status of citizens.