Plutarch's Cities 9780192859914, 0192859919

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Plutarch’s Cities

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/1/2022, SPi

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Plutarch’s Cities Edited by

LUCIA ATHANASSAKI AND FRANCES B. TITCHENER

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2022 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2022 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2021946290 ISBN 978–0–19–285991–4 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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For Anastasios G. Nikolaidis

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Preface The nucleus of this book was a symposium we organized in Delphi in 2013 in honour of our dear friend and colleague Anastasios (Tasos) Nikolaidis, for his devoted service and distinguished career at the Department of Philology of the University of Crete. In addition to the symposium, the editors and contributors would like to dedicate this volume to him too. Plutarch’s Cities, the first comprehensive study of the importance of the polis in Plutarch’s thought, relates to Nikolaidis’ interests in Plutarch in several ways, sometimes directly but more often indirectly. For Tasos Nikolaidis, who has written extensively on Plutarch both in English and in Greek—looking at the Lives from a historical perspective and at the Moralia from a philosophical one—Plutarch was, above everything else, a man of common sense and practical spirit. Thus, in studying Plutarch’s illustrious men, Nikolaidis focusses on the lessons and examples that their lives can offer, as is evident from the topics he chose to handle, e.g. ‘Morality, Characterization and Individuality’, ‘Philanthropia and Sociability in Plutarch’s Unsociable Heroes’, ‘Plutarch’s Heroes in Action: Does the End Justify the Means?’, ‘Is Plutarch fair to Nicias?’ (Nikolaidis 2014, 2009, 1995, 1988). Nikolaidis also explored Plutarch’s ties with the Greek and Roman elite of his time in a number of articles touching on Sympotic Questions: these he views as some kind of memoir reflecting personal experiences rather than as intellectual constructs, cf. ‘Past and Present in Plutarch’s Table Talk’, ‘Aristotle’s Presence in Plutarch’s Table Talk’, ‘Quaestiones Convivales: Plutarch’s Sense of Humour as Evidence of his Platonism’ (Nikolaidis 2017, 2021, 2019). Other aspects of Plutarch’s œuvre that Nikolaidis has delved into include: Plutarch’s authorial techniques and methods of composition, e.g. ‘Plutarch’s Methods: His Cross-references and the Sequence of the Parallel Lives’, ‘Plutarch’s Contradictions’, ‘Plutarch’s Minor Ethics: Some Remarks on De garrulitate, De curiositate and De vitioso pudore’ (2005, 1991, 2011); the role played by women, e.g. ‘Plutarch on Women and Marriage’ (Nikolaidis 1997); Plutarch’s views on the visual arts, ‘Plutarch’s Views on Art and Especially on Painting and Sculpture’ (Nikolaidis 2013); his religious ideas, e.g. ‘The Religiosity of Plutarch’s Heroes and His Attitude towards Divination,’ ‘What Did Apollo Mean to Plutarch’ (Nikolaidis 2019, 2009); Plutarch’s position as an Academic philosopher, e.g. ‘Plutarch on the Old, Middle, and New Academies and the Academy in Plutarch’s Day’, ‘Plutarch on the Fifth Century Sophists’, and his relationship with Plato and Aristotle, ‘Aristotle’s Treatment of the Concept of Praotes’ (Nikolaidis 1999b, 2013b, 1982).

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Nikolaidis, now emeritus, taught at the University of Crete from 1979 until his retirement in 2012. When he joined the School of Philosophy in 1979, it had opened its doors to the first students only two years earlier, and a lot of groundwork was required of the faculty that staffed the newly founded institution. Tasos settled in Rethymnon and dedicated himself wholeheartedly to administration, teaching, and research. Of the many posts in which he served the University of Crete and the profession at large, we mention only a) his many terms as chairman of the Department of Philology (1995–1999 and 2004–2008) and of Classical Studies (2000–2003, 2008–2009), all characterized by his well-known philanthropia, b) his presidency of the International Plutarch Society (2011–2014), and c) his terms as a panel expert in the European Research Council (2014, 2016, 2018, 2020). He has been highly esteemed by generations of students and colleagues alike for his efficiency, collegiality, wisdom, and fairness, and as an inexhaustible source of anecdotes he has ready to hand for convivial consumption. The symposium in Delphi in 2013 (25–28 April) was such a convivial occasion for many of Nikolaidis’ students and colleagues from Crete, other Greek universities, and many students and scholars from all over the world. It was also an intellectually stimulating scholarly event, hosted at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi, a locus amoenus very near Apollo’s sanctuary, where Plutarch served as a priest of Apollo. During the day we talked about Plutarch’s cities in the Dionysus seminar room, while the evenings were dedicated to convivial entertainment and further discussions on the terrace of the Centre overlooking the gulf of Corinth. It is a pleasure to express our gratitude to the institutions and individuals who made the symposium possible. The symposium itself was generously funded by the University of Crete. We thank the Department Chair, Professor Angela Kastrinaki, and our colleagues for allocating departmental funds to this event. Special thanks are due to George Motakis, who managed the accounting of the event in its entirety with his usual unrivalled expertise. Accommodation and the conference venue at Delphi were provided for a token sum by the European Cultural Centre of Delphi: for this we thank warmly the President of the Administration Council of the Centre, Rector Hélène Ahrweiler. As on previous occasions, Maro Nicolopoulou, head of the Centre’s artistic and cultural events, and Pericles Spatoulas, head of public relations, offered us their full support and expert guidance. We would also like to thank the Centre’s Director, Professor Athanasios Markopoulos, a former colleague at Crete who had just started his term as Director in April 2013, and the staff at Delphi for all they did to make the conference run smoothly. Last but certainly not least we are grateful to all participants, speakers, and discussants for four days of stimulating and lively discussions and debates that convinced us that our polis project was worth pursuing further. In the intervening years between the symposium at Delphi and the completion of this book, we had the opportunity to work closely with our contributors whom

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we thank warmly for their cooperation. We deeply regret that Philip Stadter passed away before he could see this volume in print, but we at least had the opportunity to tell him that it has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press. Delphi was the first, but certainly not the last occasion for debates on Plutarch’s cities with the contributors to this volume and other colleagues at several places including Athens, Oxford, Rethymnon, Logan UT, and Washington DC, so accordingly we thank all those who contributed to this project one way or another. Special thanks are due to Ewen Bowie and Chris Pelling for many stimulating discussions over all these years; to the anonymous reviewers of the Press for their constructive criticism and useful suggestions; to Daniel R. Porter and Sabine Barcatta for editorial assistance; to Charlotte Loveridge and her team, in particular Céline Louasli, Jennifer Laing, and Vasuki Ravichandran, for their help and advice throughout the submission and production process. LA Athens, 10 October 2021 FBT Logan, 10 October 2021

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Contents List of Abbreviations List of Contributors

Introduction Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener

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PART I. CONTEMPORARY CITIES: TRAVEL, SOJOURN, AUTOPSY, AND INSPIRATION 1. Plutarch’s Chaeronea Ewen Bowie

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2. Plutarch and Delphi Philip Stadter

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3. Plutarch and the City of Rome in Plutarch’s Own Times Paolo Desideri

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4. City and Sanctuary in Plutarch Joseph Geiger

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5. Athenian Monumental Architecture, Iconography and Topography, in Plutarch’s De Gloria Atheniensium Lucia Athanassaki

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PART II. CITIES OF THE PAST: HISTORY, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY 6. Stereotyping Sparta, Stereotyping Athens: Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch Christopher Pelling

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7. ἄγειν πομπάς: Ritual Politics and Space Control in Plutarch’s Alcibiades and Other Athenian Lives Athena Kavoulaki

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8. Alcibiades and the City Timothy E. Duff 9. Athenian Civic Identities in Plutarch’s Portrayals of Phocion and Demetrius of Phalerum: From the polites to the kosmopolites Delfim Leão

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10. Plutarch and Thebes John Marincola

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11. Plutarch’s Northern Greek Cities Katerina Panagopoulou

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12. Plutarch’s Troy: Three Approaches Judith Mossman

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PART III. CITIES TO THINK WITH 13. The City and the Self in Plutarch Alexei V. Zadorojnyi 14. The City and the Ship: Reception and the Use of a Metaphor in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives Aurelio Pérez Jiménez

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15. The Place of the Polis in Plutarch’s Political Thinking Geert Roskam

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16. Plutarch’s Civitas Dei Luc Van der Stockt

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17. Plutarch on Superstition, Atheism, and the City Tim Whitmarsh

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PART IV. AFTERWORD 18. Plutarch’s Cities: Where To? Lucia Athanassaki

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Bibliography Index Locorum Index of Names and Subjects

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List of Abbreviations Ael. NA Ael. VH Aeschin. Epist. Alc. And. Antiphon Tetr. APF App. B Civ. Apsines, Rhet. Apul. Met. Ar. Arist. Ath. Pol. Arist. Hist. an. Arist. Pol. Arist. Rh. Ath. BNP Cic. Off. Cic. Rab. Post. Dem. In Dionysod. Demetr. Eloc. Diod. Sic. Diog. Laert. Diog. Oen. Dion. Hal. Dion. Hal. Dem. Dion. Hal. A.R. Epicur. Ep. Men. Eur. Med. Eur. Tro. FdD FGrH Hdt. Heliod. Aeth. Heraclitus All. Hipp. Morb. Sacr. Hom. Od. Homer Il.

Aelian, De natura animalium Aelian, Varia Historia Aeschines, Epistulae Alcaeus Andocides Antiphon, Tetralogies Davies, J. K. 1971. Athenian Propertied Families 600–300 BC. Oxford. Appian, Bella civilia Apsines, Ars rhetorica Apuleius, Metamorphoses Aristophanes Aristotle, Athenaion politeia Aristotle, Historia animalium Aristotle, Politica Aristotle, Rhetorica Athenaeus Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World Cicero, De officiis Cicero, Pro Rabirio Postumo Demosthenes, In Dionysodorum Demetrius [Phalereus], De Elocutione [On Style] Diodorus Siculus Diogenes Laertius Diogenes of Oenoanda Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Demosthene Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae Epicurus, Epistula ad Menoeceum Euripides, Medea Euripides, Troades Fouilles de Delphes F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (1923–) Herodotus Heliodorus, Aethiopica Heraclitus, Homeric Questions Hippocrates, De morbo sacro Homer, Odyssey Homer, Iliad

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IG ILS Isoc. Antid. Isoc. Bus. Iupp. trag. Jos. De bell. Jud. LCL Lib. Liv. LSCG LSJ s.v. LTUR Luc. Pharsalia LXX M. Ant. Men. Epit. Men. PCG Nic. Ethics Ovid Fast. Philodem. De Piet. Philostr. VA Philostr. VS Pind. Nem. PIR² Pl. Alc. Pl. Ap. Pl. Euthphr. Pl. Grg. Pl. Leg. Pl. Phd. Pl. Symp. Pl. Ti. Plb. Plin. Ep. Plin. HN Plut. Porph. Plot. Procl. In Ti. ps.-Andoc. RG RE Schol. ad Luc. SEG Sen. De ira

Inscriptiones graecae Inscriptiones latinae selectae Isocrates, Antidosis Isocrates, Busiris Lucian, Iuppiter tragoedus Flavius Josephus, De bello Judaico Loeb Classical Library Libanius Livius F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées des cités grecques (1969) Liddell Scott Jones sub voce Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae Lucan, Pharsalia Vetus testamentum Graecae redditum Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Menander, Epitrepontes Menander, Poetae Comici Graeci Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Ovid, Fasti Philodemus, De pietate Philostratus, Vita Apollonii Philostratus, Vitae sophistarum Pindar, Nemean Odes Prosopographia imperii Romani (2nd edition) Plato, Alcibiades Plato, Apologia Plato, Euthyphro Plato, Gorgias Plato, Leges Plato, Phaedo Plato, Symposium Plato, Timaeus Polybius Pliny the Younger, Epistulae Pliny (the Elder), Naturalis historia Plutarch, see separate entry below Porphyry, Vita Plotini Proclus, In Timaeum pseudo-Andocides C. Walz, Rhetores graeci (1836–) A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, Real-Encyclopädie d. klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (1893–) Scholia in Lucianum Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum (1923–) Seneca, De ira

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   SIG³ Sol. Soph. OT Suda Suet. Dom. Tac. Agr. Tac. Hist. Theophr. Char. Val. Max. Xen. Ap. Xen. Hell. Xen. Hipp. Xen. Mem.

Sylloge inscriptionum graecarum Solon Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus Suidae Lexicon, Lexicographi Graeci. 5 vols. Leipzig (1928–1938) Suetonius, Life of Domitian Tacitus, Agricola Tacitus, Historiae Theophrastus, Characters Valerius Maximus Xenophon, Apologia Socratis Xenophon, Hellenica Xenophon, Hipparchicus Xenophon, Memorabilia

Plutarch, Lives Aem. Ages. Agis Alex. Ant. Arat. Arist. Art. Brut. Caes. Cam. Cat. Min. Cim. Cor. Dem. Demetr. Fab. Flam. Lyc. Lys. Mar. Nic. Num. Pel. Per. Phil. Phoc. Pomp.

Aemilius Paulus Agesilaus Agis Alexander Antonius Aratus Aristides Artaxerxes Brutus Caesar Camillus Cato Minor Cimon Coriolanus Demosthenes Demetrius Fabius Maximus Flamininus Lycurgus Lysander Marius Nicias Numa Pelopidas Pericles Philopoemen Phocion Pompey

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Pyrrh. Rom. Them. Thes. Ti. Gracch.

Pyrrhus Romulus Themistocles Theseus Tiberius Gracchus

Plutarch, Lives—Comparisons Comp. Aem. et Tim. Comp. Ages. et Pomp. Comp. Agis–Cleom. et Gracch. Comp. Arist. et Cat. Mai. Comp. Cim. et Luc. Comp. Cor. et Alc. Comp. Dem. et Cic. Comp. Lyc. et Num. Comp. Lys. et Sull. Comp. Per. et Fab. Comp. Thes. et Rom.

Aemilius–Timoleon Agesilaus–Pompey Agis/Cleomenes—Tiberius/Gaius Gracchus Aristides–Cato Maior Cimon–Lucullus Coriolanus–Alcibiades Demosthenes–Cicero Lycurgus–Numa Pompilius Lysander–Sulla Pericles–Fabius Maximus Theseus–Romulus

Plutarch, Moralia Ad princ. ineru. Adv. Col. An seni Anim. an. corp. Ap. Reg. Apophth. Lac. Comm. not. Con. praec. Cons. ux. De Alex. fort. De am. prol. De amic. mult. De aud. poet. De cap. ex inim. De coh. ira De cur. De exil. De fort. Rom. De frat. amor. De garr. De gen.

Ad principem ineruditum Adversus Coloten An seni respublica gerenda sit Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores Regum et Imperatorum Apophthegmata Apophthegmata Laconica De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos Praecepta coniugalia Consolatio ad uxorem De fortuna Alexandri De amore prolis De amicorum multitudine De audiendis poetis De capienda ex inimicis utilitate De cohibenda ira De curiositate De exilio De fortuna Romanorum De fraterno amore De garrulitate De genio Socratis

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   De glor. Ath. De Is. et Os. De laud. ips. De lib. educ. De prof. virt. De sera De soll. an. De Stoic. repugn. De superst. De tuend. san. De virt. mor. De vit. aere Prae. ger. reip. Praec. con. Quaest. conv. Quaest. Plat. Quaest. Rom. Reg. et imp. apophth.

De gloria Atheniensium De Iside et Osiride De laude ipsious De liberis educandis De profectibus in virtute De sera numinis vindicta De sollertia animalium De Stoicorum repugnantiis De superstitione De tuenda sanitate praecepta De virtute morali De vitando aere alieno Praecepta gerendae reipublicae Praecepta coniugalia Quaestiones convivales Quaestiones Platonicae Quaestiones Romanae Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

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List of Contributors Lucia Athanassaki is Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Crete. Ewen Bowie is Emeritus Professor of Classical Languages and Literature, University of Oxford, and Emeritus E. P. Warren Praelector, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Paolo Desideri is Professore Ordinario In Pensione at the University of Firenze. Timothy E. Duff is Professor of Greek at the University of Reading. Joseph Geiger is Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Athena Kavoulaki is Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek Literature with Tenure at the University of Crete. Delfim Leão is Full Professor at the Institute of Classical Studies and Researcher at the Centre for Classical and Humanistic Studies at the University of Coimbra. John Marincola is Leon Golden Professor of Classics at Florida State University. Judith Mossman is Professor of Classics and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Arts and Humanities at Coventry University (UK). Katerina Panagopoulou is Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek History with Tenure at the University of Crete, Department of History and Archaeology. Christopher Pelling is Emeritus Regius Professor of Greek, University of Oxford. Aurelio Pérez Jiménez is Professor Emeritus of Greek Philology at the University of Málaga. Geert Roskam is Professor of Greek Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven. Philip Stadter was Eugene H. Falk Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics and of Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Frances B. Titchener is Distinguished Professor of History and Classics at Utah State University. Luc Van der Stockt is Emeritus Professor of Greek Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven. Tim Whitmarsh is A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge. Alexei V. Zadorojnyi is Senior Lecturer in Greek Language and Literature at the University of Liverpool.

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Introduction Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener

Greek cities still mattered in the first century . Political structures were maintained and fearsome competition between politai continued unabated, despite the profound changes cities had undergone ever since their subjection to Macedonian rule. In retrospect Macedonia had bridged the way into Roman supremacy during the Hellenistic period, though then Greek cities and leagues had certainly been able to assert themselves more than they could during the Roman period. The Greek cities’ loss of political autonomy was the catalyst for profound changes in every aspect of existence, political, social, cultural, psychological, and conceptual. In addition to momentous sociopolitical events, natural phenomena and the passage of time brought about changes in the built and the natural environment. Then as now cities developed, expanded, and sometimes shrank or were destroyed and rebuilt. Moreover, perceptions and reconstructions of the past were inevitably filtered through the present. Educated Greeks, pepaideumenoi, living in the Roman empire had to make an imaginative leap in order to appreciate the importance of the archaic and classical polis, both as a fact of life and as an influence shaping people’s conceptual schemes. Moreover, they could not carry on thinking in archaic or classical terms without reflecting on the phenomenon of Rome and its empire. Conversely, they would find it difficult to think of the present of ancient cities such as Athens, Sparta, or Rome without pondering their past. Our evidence suggests that Plutarch, Pausanias, and others made valiant efforts to imagine what it was like to live in the cities of the past, to reconstruct their history, their institutions, their religious and cultural life, their artistic environment, and their daily habits. At the same time travelling in a vast empire gave them the opportunity to think beyond the Greek past and the Graeco-Roman present and to contemplate cities of different peoples that were very different from their own. When Dio of Prusa, for instance, tells his audience that he has come from the Danube to Olympia and proceeds to engage in an imaginary dialogue with Pheidias on whether the sculptor had found the proper shape for Zeus (Oration 12), he offers a typical example of Graeco-Roman sensibility. This volume focuses on Plutarch’s cities. It is the first comprehensive attempt to assess the significance of the polis in Plutarch’s works from several perspectives, namely the polis as a physical entity, a lived experience and a source of inspiration, the polis as a historical and sociopolitical unit, the polis as a theoretical construct Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Introduction In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0001

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2  and paradigm to think with. So far scholarship has focused on Plutarch’s political thought, statesmanship in particular.¹ As a result, discussions of the polis are as a rule incidental and secondary. Exceptions to scholarly focus on statesmanship are two earlier studies dedicated to the polis, both focusing on individual cities, Athens, and Rome.² Athens is the focus of J. L. Johnson’s 1972 doctoral dissertation which deserves more attention than it has received so far. Johnson offered a reassessment of Plutarch’s De gloria Atheniensium by contextualizing the treatise and by showing both Plutarch’s familiarity with Athenian topography, architecture, and iconography and its significance for the interpretation of this puzzling work. He argued that, far from denigrating the role of artists, Plutarch invites his Athenian audience, with whom he shared his familiarity with their artistic surroundings, to look at the city’s walls, monumental architecture, and iconography and to contemplate the contribution of artists to the glory of the city in which the men of action had the lion’s share. Rome is the focus of John Scheid’s recent study of Quaestiones Romanae, published in 2012 both in German and in French. Scheid demonstrates Plutarch’s knowledge of Roman topography, mythology, and religion, argues that Rome’s topography is the organizing principle of the Quaestiones Romanae, and attributes the organization of the content around lieux de mémoire to mnemotechnic rules of composition. Plutarch’s keen interest in topography and lieux de mémoire and their fertilizing impact on his work is further explored in this volume from several angles. We hope that the perspectives offered here will foster discussion concerning the conceptualization and the significance of the polis in other authors of the Graeco-Roman period, such as Dio of Prusa, Aelius Aristides, Lucian, Pausanias, and even Appian and Cassius Dio. Plutarch travelled a lot and had the opportunity to spend significant periods of time in some of the most famous cities of his day. Like many of his contemporaries he had a keen interest in the major players of the classical period, in his case Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. As a priest of Pythian Apollo, he was naturally interested in Delphi, the place where major and minor Greek cities and successful individuals displayed their piety, their hopes, their artistic and military achievements, and their political aspirations. Plutarch’s interest in Rome’s past and present was of a different order. However one interprets Plutarch’s feelings ¹ For Plutarch’s political thought see Weber 1959; Aalders 1982; the essays in Gallo and Scardigli 1995; Sirinelli 2000; Halfmann 2002; Pelling 2014; for statesmanship the essays in de Blois, Bons, Kessels, and Schenkeveld (eds.) 2004 and 2005; Fulkerson 2012; Beneker 2012 discusses the significance of passion for statesmanship in the Lives; Stadter 2015: 165–78; Liebert 2016 focusses on Spartan Lives and argues for Lycurgus as Plutarch’s alter ego; Jacobs 2018 argues that Plutarch’s Lives were pragmatic literature addressed to statesmen and generals. For issues of cultural identity see the references in n. 3. ² Johnson 1972; Scheid 2012a and 2012b. Cf. Jones 1971, whose emphasis is on Roman rule rather than the city of Rome itself (see also n. 3). A volume on Plutarch and Sparta, edited by J. Mossman and P. Davies, is in preparation.

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towards Rome, historically and psychologically the powerful city was the conqueror; linguistically and culturally it was in many respects the ‘other’.³ To write about cities with a rich historical and cultural record autopsy was just the beginning. As Plutarch states in the famous opening of the Life of Demosthenes (ch. 1–2), writing about the past required serious research and resources that could only be found in big cities. Plutarch visited Rome and Athens, consulted all kinds of documents in situ, and found the sources he needed in libraries public and private. Simultaneously, his philosophical interests and training were the stimulus to think about the polis in abstract terms, but without losing sight of the city as a physical entity, as we shall see in a moment. Greek interest in the city as a physical, material, cultural, and sociopolitical entity remained vigorous from the beginning to the end of the ancient world. Greek uses two terms to denote the ‘city’, πόλις and ἄστυ. Both terms are holistic: they denote the city both as a physical entity (territory, built environment, and natural landscape) and a society. As a rule, however, polis, the most common Greek noun according to Mogens Herman Hansen, is used primarily with reference to its people and their institutions (κοινωνία πολιτῶν) and secondarily with reference to its territory, physical surroundings, and material structures.⁴ To quote Hansen once again, the two senses are very closely connected and virtually inseparable.⁵ Likewise, ἄστυ ordinarily denotes the city as a physical entity, but there are instances where ἄστυ is used with reference to the political community.⁶ This flexibility of signification shows how closely related and ultimately interdependent these concepts were. Ancient writers were mainly interested in the human factor, the citizen-body, but once we dig beneath the surface, the importance of the built environment and the natural landscape emerges. In reconstructing the past Plutarch, the avid reader, availed himself of a vast array of earlier authorities on famous men of the distant and recent past and their illustrious cities. Some of these authorities offered inspiration, some offered information, and some provided both. Here we discuss very briefly a few examples from four authors who exercised great

³ For Plutarch’s positive attitude towards the Romans see Jones 1971. For Plutarch’s hellenocentrism in the Roman Questions see Preston 2001. For different responses of Plutarch and other Greeks to Rome see Bowie 1970; Swain 1996; Swain 1997; Veyne 1999; Goldhill 2001a; Whitmarsh 2001; Ursin 2019. ⁴ Hansen 2007: 13: ‘the term polis has two different meanings: town and state, but even when it is used in the sense of town its reference, its denotation, seems almost invariably to be what the Greeks called polis in the sense of a koinonia politon politeias and what we call a city-state’. Hansen also uses the terms ‘nucleated settlement’ and ‘political community’ to distinguish between ‘urban centre, town’ on the one hand and ‘city-state’ on the other. See also LSJ s.v. and the passages discussed hereafter. ⁵ Hansen 2007: 14: ‘the aim of the study is to compare the urban and the political senses of the word polis used about Hellenic communities and, via the reference, to demonstrate that the two aspects are virtually inseparable’. ⁶ LSJ s.v. and the passages discussed hereafter. Note also the use of ἀστός/-οί (townsman/-men).

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4  influence on Plutarch, namely Homer, Pindar, Thucydides, and Plato, an influence that is further explored by several contributors to this volume. Our discussion focuses on terminology, namely the semantic distinction and overlaps between πόλις and ἄστυ as political communities and physical entities. To begin with Homer, epic heroes set the paradigm for successive generations of Greeks who travelled for military, colonial, commercial, and religious purposes. Τhe Iliad focuses on the city the Achaeans came to conquer (πόλις Τρώων or Πριάμοιο πόλις or ἄστυ μέγα Πριάμοιο). In contrast, the Odyssey’s narrative is multi-focal. Odysseus’ familiarity with many people’s cities and mentalities is stated in the opening (πολλῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω, Od. 1.3). In an interesting variation that illustrates the flexibility of signification and specifically the semantic overlap between πόλις and ἄστυ, Alcinous asserts that the magic ships of the Phaeaceans are also acquainted with the minds and the cities of all people: ἀλλ’ αὐταὶ ἴσασι νοήματα καὶ φρένας ἀνδρῶν, καὶ πάντων ἴσασι πόλιας καὶ πίονας ἀγροὺς ἀνθρώπων, (Od. 8.559–61)

Pindar also sang of the fame of well-travelled men and of their cities in his epinicians and other encomiastic songs. He sang of the glory of cities in his hymnic poetry too, above all in his dithyrambs. His epinicians focus on his contemporaries’ and their heroic ancestors’ great achievements with emphasis on the eternal glory they promise, never ever omitting mention of the honorands’ home towns. Praise of the honorand’s home town is of course an epinician convention, but even the most cursory mentions show Pindar’s interest in geography, topography, the architectural and cultural landscape, and the social institutions of a number of cities, notably Aegina, Athens, Cyrene, Delphi, Syracuse, and Thebes.⁷ Like Homer, Pindar uses πόλις mainly with reference to the political community and institutions and ἄστυ mainly with reference to the physical surroundings and material structures, but there are significant semantic overlaps. In his famous dithyramb for the Athenians (fr. 76) that earned him 10,000 drachmae, proxenia, and a statue in Athens, Pindar praises the Athenian contribution during the Persian wars by calling their city the bulwark of Greece, a divine city (δαιμόνιον πτολίεθρον). In another dithyramb, which mentions the altar of the Twelve Gods and probably alludes to other Athenian buildings, he opts for the word ἄστυ (ἄστεος ὀμφαλόν θυόεντ’, fr. 75, 3).⁸ But even in this case, where the emphasis is ⁷ For Pindar’s familiarity with the topography and architectural landscape of these cities see Athanassaki 2011a, 2011b, and 2012; Morgan 2015; Neer and Kurke 2019. ⁸ For the references to the architectural landscape see Neer and Kurke 2019: 124–56.

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clearly on the architectural landscape of the Athenian Agora, Pindar focuses on the performing human chorus, while the imagined divine chorus enliven with their dance the brilliantly adorned architectural centre of the city. Plutarchan usage displays similar flexibility of signification. In the opening of De gloria Atheniensium, a treatise with abundant references and allusions to Pindar, Plutarch uses the deictic πόλις ἥδε (this city here) with reference to the visible and the invisible, namely Athenian monumental architecture and iconography, and the citizens of the classical period.⁹ Thucydides opts for πόλις too in his famous discussion of the pitfalls of assessing the political grandeur and cultural magnificence of Mycenae on the basis of physical remains: Καὶ ὅτι μὲν Μυκῆναι μικρὸν ἦν, ἢ εἴ τι τῶν τότε πόλισμα νῦν μὴ ἀξιόχρεων δοκεῖ εἶναι, οὐκ ἀκριβεῖ ἄν τις σημείῳ χρώμενος ἀπιστοίη μὴ γενέσθαι τὸν στόλον τοσοῦτον ὅσον οἵ τε ποιηταὶ εἰρήκασι καὶ ὁ λόγος κατέχει. Λακεδαιμονίων γὰρ εἰ ἡ πόλις ἐρημωθείη, λειφθείη δὲ τά τε ἱερὰ καὶ τῆς κατασκευῆς τὰ ἐδάφη, πολλὴν ἂν οἶμαι ἀπιστίαν τῆς δυνάμεως προελθόντος πολλοῦ χρόνου τοῖς ἔπειτα πρὸς τὸ κλέος αὐτῶν εἶναι (καίτοι Πελοποννήσου τῶν πέντε τὰς δύο μοίρας νέμονται, τῆς τε ξυμπάσης ἡγοῦνται καὶ τῶν ἔξω ξυμμάχων πολλῶν· ὅμως δὲ οὔτε ξυνοικισθείσης πόλεως οὔτε ἱεροῖς καὶ κατασκευαῖς πολυτελέσι χρησαμένης, κατὰ κώμας δὲ τῷ παλαιῷ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τρόπῳ οἰκισθείσης, φαίνοιτ’ ἂν ὑποδεεστέρα), Ἀθηναίων δὲ τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο παθόντων διπλασίαν ἂν τὴν δύναμιν εἰκάζεσθαι ἀπὸ τῆς φανερᾶς ὄψεως τῆς πόλεως ἢ ἔστιν. (Thuc. 1.10.1–2)

And because Mycenae was only a small place, or if any particular town of that time seems now to be insignificant, it would not be right for me to treat this as an exact piece of evidence and refuse to believe that the expedition against Troy was as great as the poets have asserted and as tradition still maintains. For if the city of the Lacedaemonians should be deserted, and nothing should be left of it but its temples and the foundations of its other buildings, posterity would, I think, after a long lapse of time, be very loath to believe that their power was as great as their renown. (And yet they occupy two-fifths of the Peloponnesus and have the hegemony of the whole, as well as of their many allies outside; but still, as Sparta is not compactly built as a city and has not provided itself with costly temples and other edifices, but is inhabited village-fashion in the old Hellenic style, its power would appear less than it is). Whereas, if Athens should suffer the

⁹ See further Athanassaki in this volume, Chapter 5.

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6  same fate, its power would, I think, from what appeared of the city’s ruins, be conjectured double what it is. (transl. C. F. Smith) In this instance ξυνοικισθείσης πόλεως is used both with reference to the political community and the built environment (φανερὰ ὄψις τῆς πόλεως) which is further specified by more precise terms (ἱερόν, κατασκευή). In other instances, it is the context that determines whether the reference is to architectural structures or to the political community or to both. More importantly from the perspective of the present volume, Thucydides’ attempt to gauge Mycenae’s past power and glory on the basis of his written and oral sources on the one hand and autopsy on the other sets a venerable model for Plutarch’s endeavours six centuries later. Thucydides’ famous comparison of the two most powerful Greek cities of his day, Sparta and Athens, in order to illustrate the reverse analogy between Mycenae’s power and glory and the smallness of its material remains, illustrates the importance of all kinds of sources for the reconstruction of the past. In this instance he both gives more credit to poets and storytellers than elsewhere in the archaeologia and points out the limitations of material evidence. Plutarch may not have been as scrupulous about the truthvalue of his sources as Thucydides, but his oeuvre is an invaluable testimony to trends and models of erudition in the Graeco-Roman period and a gold mine of information about a number of cities and civic institutions. Plato’s influence on Plutarch’s political thought is known and well discussed.¹⁰ The focus of this volume on the polis, however, brings out another aspect of Platonic influence on Plutarch, the anchoring of theoretical discussions in urban settings, or outside city walls, or en route from/to the city. To give just two examples, Plato anchors the Republic in the house of Cephalus in the Piraeus. The opening of the dialogue features Socrates and his company in the Piraeus about to return to Athens (ἄστυ), when Cephalus’ son Polemarchus sees them and invites them to spend the evening in his house and attend the pannychis of the festival in honour of Bendis. The initial focus on Socrates’ movements to and from Athens soon gives way to Plato’s ideal construct, Callipolis, that will occupy the thoughts and imagination of Socrates and his interlocutors. Similarly, in the Laws the Athenian, Clinias, and Megillus, are represented as replicating King Minos’ trip from Cnossus to the Cave of Zeus. The ideal city Magnesia takes shape in the course of their discussion on their way from the city to the sanctuary of Zeus on Mt. Ida and soon Magnesia, like the Republic’s Callipolis, occupies the minds of Plato’s interlocutors and of his readers. Several chapters in in this volume explore Plato’s influence on Plutarch. Bowie draws attention to the impact of Platonic settings on the Sympotic Questions, whereas several chapters in the last section of

¹⁰ See Hershbell 1995 with references to earlier scholarship; Pelling 2014; Boulet 2014; Colman 2015.

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this volume map out a similar, centrifugal, movement of Plutarchan narrative leading from the city as a physical, concrete entity to theoretical constructs and the interplay of cities real and ideal. As already mentioned, in addition to his tremendous erudition Plutarch needed great powers of imagination and abstraction to conjure up how cities of the distant past looked and how people in them lived their lives. The chapters in this volume show that he met the challenge successfully, for despite his debts to his predecessors, Plutarch’s representations of real and ideal cities have a distinct flavour that results from the author’s autopsy, erudition, and a keen sense of the past’s impact on the present. This volume does not of course exhaust this multi-faceted topic, nor does it map all its facets—in the final section some areas that could be further explored are signalled. Our aim is to foster discussion of the city both as a physical entity and as a social organization with emphasis on Plutarch’s representations of the intellectual, religious, cultural, and artistic landscape as lived experience in the present and the past, and of the significance of the polis as a paradigm to think with. The seventeen chapters are grouped in three sections according to their focus on cities past or present, real or ideal, but they intersect in a number of ways. In what follows we offer a summary of their points of contact and contrast. The chapters of Part I, ‘Contemporary Cities: Travel, Sojourn, Autopsy, and Inspiration’, focus on Plutarch’s keen interest in the city as a physical entity and his familiarity with topography, art and architecture, urban and extra-urban spaces, buildings, and activities. These discussions bring out Plutarch’s power of observation, strong visual memory, and an erudition that come not only from his investigations of written records but from autopsy and from information gathered from locals—friends, acquaintances, or guides. Moreover, all chapters show how formative autopsy and familiarity with topography, inscriptional records, and monumental art and architecture have been for Plutarch’s ideological agenda, sense of history, and philosophical thought.¹¹ Part 1 opens with Ewen Bowie’s discussion of Plutarch’s Chaeronea (Chapter 1). Bowie looks first at Plutarch’s involvement in local politics and his posthumous reception as the most eminent citizen of Chaeronea of all times. He then discusses Plutarch’s reconstruction of the political and military history of Chaeronea from its foundation down to the Roman civil wars of the first century , thus heralding the discussion in his second section. Bowie shows that Plutarch draws on his local historical and topographical knowledge, but sparingly, ¹¹ Taken as a whole these chapters offer an important corrective to John Buckler’s learned, yet heavily biased account (Buckler 1992), which privileged Plutarch’s interest in books, documents, and libraries at the expense of his interest in the visual arts, festivals, and other ritualized activities. Buckler judged Plutarch as an epigrapher, an art historian, and a historian of religion and found him lacking in comparison with authors such as Ovid (in the Fasti) and Pausanias. This is how Buckler concludes his assessment (our emphasis): ‘It is difficult to be cross with such a genial author as Plutarch, but ultimately one cannot fail to feel disappointed in a man who himself had seen so much, and most of that now lost, and yet left comparatively few of his observations to posterity’.

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8  out of concern for his non-Boeotian audiences. In the third part of his chapter, Bowie explores Plutarch’s representation of day-to-day life in Chaeronea, focusing on local cults and the settings of self-standing and embedded dialogues. He points out that in contrast to the sparse information about local cults Plutarch offers, he paints a picture of a rich cultural life in Chaeronea. Although only one selfstanding dialogue, On the Intelligence of Animals, seems to be set in Chaeronea, Plutarch located a significant proportion of the Sympotic Questions in his native city. Bowie revisits recent treatments of the settings and argues for a more systematic patterning of these locations: Athens opens and closes Books 1, 3, 5 and 7 and provides the setting for the whole of Book 9; Chaeronea is repeatedly juxtaposed with much grander cities—Delphi, Corinth, and Rome as well as Athens. Bowie’s discussion brings out the sharp contrast between Chaeronea’s past fame as the locus of major battles and its cultural significance in Plutarch’s time thanks to the literary elevation of his small town as a centre of Greek paideia. The Platonic intertexts and influence on the choice of settings in the Sympotic Questions were of course intended for the eyes and ears of the pepaideumenoi, thus further enhancing the intellectual merits of Chaeronea. In his mid-forties Plutarch became priest of Apollo in Delphi, a post that he held till the end of his life. Delphi was one of the Panhellenic centres where cities and prominent individuals displayed their identities and achievements through magnificent dedications. In Chapter 2, Philip Stadter follows the steps of Plutarch in Apollo’s sanctuary as he performs sacrifices, hosts and attends dinners with friends and visitors, guides his guests through the magnificent Greek and Roman dedications, and discusses their significance. According to Stadter, Delphic art and architecture, far from being a mere tourist attraction, exercised a deep influence on Plutarch’s conception of history and the way he viewed the world. Stadter suggests that the juxtaposition of Greek and Roman artefacts of successive periods offered Plutarch the incentive to consider larger historical and cultural issues and may have had a decisive impact on his writings. The juxtaposition of monuments such as those of Philopoemen and Flamininus or of statues of Greek commanders and Roman generals and emperors may have inspired the conception of Parallel Lives. The impact of art and architecture on Plutarch’s works also comes out in Desideri’s, Geiger’s, and Athanassaki’s chapters. Paolo Desideri (Chapter 3) takes us to Plutarch’s sojourns in Rome and his eyewitness accounts of the city. Like earlier scholars, Carl Theander and John Buckler in particular, Desideri reiterates the difficulty of distinguishing the information based on autopsy from information that Plutarch drew from his literary sources. Contrary to John Buckler, however, he shows the importance of autopsy for his biographical project. Desideri revisits the issue and discusses why certain inscriptions, statues, and buildings carry more weight as witnesses to first-hand observation than the second-hand knowledge provided by literary texts. He begins his exploration with

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Plutarch’s aesthetic and ideological judgement on the altered marble columns of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which Plutarch had seen in Athens, and on Domitian’s luxurious palace. Other eyewitness accounts include the inscription Plutarch saw at the temple of Health, which provided him with important information on Cato the Elder’s policies, and a Greek inscription on the bronze statue of Flamininus which Plutarch interpreted rightly as an indication of Flamininus’ philhellenism. Plutarch’s catalogue of the temples of Fortuna shows his remarkable familiarity with Roman architecture and topography; finally, the mention of everyday activities such as a dog show in the theatre of Marcellus in which Plutarch sat not far from Vespasian or Arulenus Rusticus’ refusal to interrupt Plutarch’s lecture in order to read a message from Domitian enhance the eyewitness quality of Plutarch’s descriptions of his Roman sojourns. Desideri stresses the importance of autopsy both because it offered first-hand historical material and because it contributed greatly to Plutarch’s vivid reconstructions of the settings of the Roman Lives. Another important aspect of autopsy that Desideri touches upon is the emotions Plutarch experienced at the sight of Roman temples and artifacts, an aspect that informs Geiger’s discussion of Plutarch’s preference for extra-urban sanctuaries. In Chapter 4, Joseph Geiger focuses on Plutarch’s visits to sanctuaries in Rome, Greece, and Egypt for scholarly investigation, contemplation, and pleasure. Initially Geiger catches sight of Plutarch walking in the Delphic sanctuary or looking at the temples of Fortuna and Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome, thus covering some of the same ground as Stadter and Desideri. Noting Plutarch’s selective mention of Roman sites, mainly archaic and Republican, Geiger—like Stadter and Athanassaki—reminds us of Plutarch’s predilection for classical art and architecture and points out the similarity between Plutarch’s treatment of the Greek and the Roman past. He then goes on to discuss Plutarch’s theoria to various festivals such as the Elaphebolia in Phocis, the Daedala in Plataea, the Pythian Games, the Isthmian Games, the Dionysia in Athens, and the festival of Eros in Thespiae from which Plutarch and his retinue retreated to the sanctuary of the Muses on Mt. Helicon—where the story of Ismenodora and Bacchon set in the town of Thespiae provides the stimulus for philosophical discussion. Geiger’s chapter shows Plutarch’s keen interest in urban sanctuaries but points up his preference for the peace and quiet of the out-of-town sanctuaries as loci for philosophical discussion over the hustle and bustle of life in the city. In Chapter 5, Lucia Athanassaki turns to Athens and explores the significance of the architectural and artistic environment in shaping Plutarch’s subject matter, narrative style, and take on the glorious Greek past in De gloria Atheniensium. Taking her lead from the overt reference to Euphranor’s painting of the battle of Mantinea in the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios and the covert references to the wall painting of the battle of Marathon in the Stoa Poikile, she follows Plutarch’s steps in the Athenian Agora and argues that Plutarch places himself mentally (and

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perhaps physically) at the temple of Ares and in full view of Pindar’s statue in front of the Royal Stoa. Athanassaki interprets the speaker’s localization at the temple of Ares as an indication that the vehement denigration of Athenian cultural achievements must be taken with a grain of salt. On this reading De gloria was not a panegyric. It was probably a rhetorical exercise composed for oral delivery, actual or imaginary, perhaps with the expectation that it would be complemented by a counterargument. In terms of tone, it shows what Tim Whitmarsh in Chapter 17 of this volume calls ‘a mischievous rhetorical flair’. The identification of the speaker’s localization in the Agora enables Athanassaki to confirm Plutarch’s keen interest in Athenian architecture and topography and his tendency to focus on monuments of the classical period at the expense of postclassical Greek and Roman additions.¹² Athanassaki further suggests that Plutarch encouraged his audience/readers to engage in selective visualization, memory, and oblivion of the cultural landscape of the Agora and the people and the events celebrated in it. The chapters of Part II, ‘Cities of the Past: History, Politics, and Society’, examine Plutarch’s reconstructions of the history, character, and sociopolitical life of select cities: Athens, Sparta, Thebes, some northern cities, and Troy. Christopher Pelling and John Marincola focus on Plutarch’s historical sources and methods in reconstructing the past of the chief rival cities of the classical period, Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. Athena Kavoulaki explores the significance of Plutarch’s reconstructions of fifth-century Athenian rituals for space control, whereas Timothy Duff and Delfim Leão look at eminent Athenian citizens and their fortunes in a changing city. Katerina Panagopoulou’s survey of Plutarch’s references to northern Greek cities show that they offer a sharp contrast to his informed and imaginative reconstructions of the classical cities. In a chapter that heralds the next section, ‘Cities to Think With’, Judith Mossman demonstrates Plutarch’s debts to Homer in reconstructing Troy, but also his own visual imagination and second-century CE sensibility. Part II opens with Pelling’s ‘Stereotyping Sparta, Stereotyping Athens: Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch’ (Chapter 6). Pelling begins with a discussion of some famous Thucydidean and Herodotean characterizations of Athenians and Spartans, points out their differences, and explores their impact on Plutarch’s reconstructions of the two cities. Thucydides’ sharp and brilliant contrast between Athens and Sparta (1.70) is the first in a series of descriptions that show his profound influence on Plutarch’s depictions of Athens, despite his attempts to enhance his Lives with stories drawn from comedy and the likes of Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos. Such stories, showing Plutarch’s impressive knowledge of the Athenian cultural landscape, are—Pelling remarks ¹² For this tendency see McInerney 2004; and also Geiger (Chapter 4) and Stadter (Chapter 2) in this volume.

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wittily—‘cherries and icing, sometimes quite a lot of cherries and quite thick icing, on a recognizably Thucydidean political cake’. In Plutarch’s reconstruction of Athens, the energy and irrepressibility and the flaws as well as strengths of democracy are clearly recognizable. Sparta, on the other hand, is a different story. Plutarch’s depiction of Spartan character owes much less to Thucydides, a little to Herodotus, a little to Xenophon and a lot that bears the marks of Plutarch’s own views. His Sparta is militaristic and not reluctant to get involved in action; there is an emphasis on education which is owed partly, but only partly, to Xenophon’s Lacedaemonion Politeia, with a distinctive interest in the philotimia and philonikia that the Spartan educational system encouraged. Pelling’s discussion concludes with the question of how far that philonikia is a heightened version of a characteristic of Greece as a whole, not just of Sparta, which takes us back to Herodotus who had a keener eye than Thucydides for the similarities Spartans share with other Greeks. The next three chapters zoom in on Athens from the last quarter of the fifth century to the early years of the Hellenistic period and discuss Plutarch’s reconstructions of religious, social, and political life. Kavoulaki (Chapter 7) explores the importance of sacred spaces in Plutarch’s Lives by examining some famous processions, and in particular the Eleusinian procession led by Alcibiades in 407 . Kavoulaki frames her discussion of the Eleusinian procession by two important observations, namely that (a) Pericles’ building programme focused on the Acropolis, the sacred centre of Athens, and Eleusis, its most distinguished peripheral sanctuary; and (b) that Plutarch presents the Eleusinian procession in the fifth century at two very crucial times, at the rise of Athens’ power and at the beginning of its downfall, in the Themistocles and the Alcibiades respectively. Kavoulaki’s detailed analysis of Plutarch’s reconstructions of fifth-century processions and in particular that of Alcibiades to Eleusis leads her to the conclusion that, in addition to the opportunity for the display of civic identity, processions offered fertile ground for the promotion of individual political agendas and for the development of tensions between the interests of the polis and the individual. According to Kavoulaki, the tension between civic agenda and individual ambitions is discernible in Plutarch’s vivid depictions of ritual movement across the city towards Eleusis and across the Aegean towards Delos in the Alcibiades and the Nicias respectively. Timothy Duff (Chapter 8) focuses on chapters 4–8 of the Life of Alcibiades. In this section Plutarch presents young Alcibiades going around Athens and tells stories of events that took place partially or totally in private houses, for instance the house of Anytus, the house of Pericles, the house of Hipponicus, and Alcibiades’ own. These stories were part of the fifth- and fourth-century lore, but Duff argues that Plutarch rewrote them in order to shed light on Alcibiades’ relations with the Athenians, namely his domineering and often violent behaviour towards not only his intimates but also his fellow-citizens as a whole, and his

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luxurious, sensuous, and ostentatious lifestyle. As Duff points out, however, Plutarch’s vivid account is nuanced, and allows us to discern the attractive side of Alcibiades and understand the eros he inspired in the Athenians at large: the city longed for him, but hated him, and yet wanted him back, as the god Dionysus succinctly put it in Aristophanes’ Frogs (1425). Delfim Leão (Chapter 9) takes us to fourth-century Athens and explores the issue of civic identity in a city which has lost its sovereignty and is a democracy only in name, looking at the different trajectories of Phocion and Demetrius of Phalerum. Leão’s discussion begins with Plutarch’s vivid depiction of how Athens’ changed fortunes affect Phocion’s fortunes and lead to his death. The Athenians give Phocion the opportunity of a formal, but essentially, nominal trial. This ‘trial’ takes place in the theatre where the magistrates give access to everybody without distinction (men and women, slaves, foreigners, disfranchised people) who decide on the death penalty, which was already dictated to the Athenians by Antipater. Phocion is thus the last eminent polites of a nominally democratic and sovereign city. Demetrius of Phalerum, who established what was nominally an oligarchy, but essentially a monarchy according to Plutarch, experienced a dramatic change of fortunes when Demetrius Poliorcetes took the Athenians by surprise and occupied the city. Unlike Phocion, however, Demetrius of Phalerum fled, first to Thebes and then to Alexandria, where he wore the hat of the philosopher/scholar and probably exercised considerable influence over Ptolemy I Soter. For Leão this is an exchange of the identity of the polites for that of the cosmopolites which heralds different concepts of citizenship in the new political reality of the Hellenistic period. In ‘Plutarch and Thebes’ John Marincola (Chapter 10) discusses Plutarch’s account of Theban fifth- and fourth-century history in the Moralia and a number of Lives, focusing on (a) the Persian wars, (b) the Peloponnesian war and the Spartan hegemony, (c) the Theban hegemony, and (d) the conflict with Macedon and the destruction of the city in 335 . Despite his unease, Plutarch acknowledges Thebes’ Medism but, following Thucydides, attributes it to the city’s oligarchical regime at the time. The hostility of Thebes towards Athens during the Peloponnesian war and particularly the Theban proposal to enslave and raze Athens after her defeat was another headache for Plutarch, who counterbalanced these by highlighting the synergy of Thebes and Athens, emphasizing the support the Thebans gave to Thrasybulus and the Athenian exiles who wished to liberate their city and similarly the support that Athenians gave Thebans when the latter succeeded in expelling the Spartans from the Cadmea. The liberation of the Cadmea signalled the return of the patrios politeia in Thebes and the first step in its rise to the hegemony of Greece. Not surprisingly, Plutarch has much to say about Epaminondas and Pelopidas, the architects of Thebes’ prominent role on the Panhellenic stage, whose friendship distinguishes their relationship from the rivalries of Athenian politicians, such as Aristides and Themistocles, Cimon and

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Pericles, Nicias and Alcibiades. Thebes’ conflict with Macedon and destruction in 335  are reconstructed primarily from the Lives of Demosthenes and Alexander. Marincola’s reading brings out Plutarch’s tendency to connect Athens and Thebes, the city he admired and the city to which he felt loyal. Katerina Panagopoulou (Chapter 11) investigates Plutarch’s take on Northern cities lying within the natural boundaries set by the rivers Hebros, Nestos, Strymon, Axios, and Haliacmon. Although Plutarch mentions many northern cities, he does so sporadically without offering any information about their administration or their socio-political, religious, and cultural life. Panagopoulou observes that although historical and archaeological records indicate that a number of them, i.e. Beroia, Edessa, Dion, Amphipolis, and, above all Pella, the Macedonian capital since the early fourth century, continued to be prosperous in the Graeco-Roman period, they hold little interest for Plutarch. Plutarch’s silence about these cities’ civic institutions and cultural life contrasts sharply with his representations of Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Rome. Panagopoulou tentatively offers two alternative explanations for Plutarch’s lack of interest: (a) the memory of the Antigonid monarchy that led to the decline of many Northern cities or (b) the distaste that Plutarch shared with his audiences/readers for their loss of independence due to Macedon. In ‘Plutarch’s Troy: Three Approaches’ Judith Mossman (Chapter 12) looks at Plutarch’s take on Troy, a city which bulked large in imperial Greek literature. She argues that Plutarch shows no interest in contemporary debates on Troy’s location and its relationship with Ilium but constructs his own, imaginary Troy, taking his lead from his sources, above all Homer; in weaving Troy into his narratives Plutarch not only sheds light on his subjects’ aspirations, characters, and emotions, but succeeds in showing in vivid detail the tremendous significance of Homer at different historical periods. Mossman illustrates her thesis by two examples, Plutarch’s descriptions of Alexander’s visit to Troy—which is contrasted with his silence concerning Caesar’s visit—and his masterly portrayal of Cato’s daughter Portia and the effect that a painting of Troy had on her emotions, her actions, and her relationship with Brutus. Through his narrations of Alexander’s visit to Troy Plutarch shows at once what Homer means to Alexander, thus investing him with internal depth, and to the Ilians who increase the symbolic capital of their city by associating themselves with Homer’s Troy. The painting of Troy that Portia sees in Elea, on the other hand, is a catalyst of emotions and actions that are mediated by internal and external viewers/narrators. Mossman shows how Plutarch enables his readers to see Acilius and Brutus viewing Portia viewing the encounter of Hector and Andromache at the Scaean Gates, imagined by the anonymous painter, and shows the tremendous impact of Homer’s imaginary city and people on subsequent generations and cultures. Mossman’s emphasis on Plutarch’s imaginary city is at once a conclusion to the

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chapters examining Plutarch’s reconstructions of the past and an introduction to the book’s last section that looks at the city as a paradigm to think with. The chapters of Part III, ‘Cities to Think With’, explore Plutarch’s conception of the polis, focusing on polis metaphors (Zadorojnyi and Pérez Jiménez, Chapters 13 and 14, respectively), on the ideal polis, and on the tension between real and ideal, or pragmatism vs. idealism (Roskam and Van der Stockt, Chapters 15 and 16, respectively). The section concludes with Whitmarsh’s reassessment of Plutarch’s take on religious beliefs as a topic of civic debate, developed in an essay that is also in implicit dialogue with those in the opening section that capture Plutarch in action in Chaeronea, Delphi, and Athens. In ‘The City and the Self in Plutarch’ (Chapter 13) Alexei Zadorojnyi investigates Plutarch’s conception of the polis as a somatic, psychological, and moral entity and its relation to Plato’s Republic. Starting with the city as a somatic entity ἓν γάρ τι πρᾶγμα καὶ συνεχὲς ἡ πόλις ὥσπερ ζῷον (De sera 559a) Zadorojnyi proceeds to discuss the psychological reactions and moral qualities attributed to the polis with an eye to Plutarch’s innovations on his Platonic model. In the Republic (560b7–d1), for instance, Plato uses the metaphor of the gates of the citadel that shut when the citadel/soul is conquered by false and boastful logoi and doxai. Zadorojnyi shows that Plutarch departs from his model by emphasizing the defensive potential of the gates of the soul, if one is prepared to pay attention to and guard them (De aud. poet. 14f–15a; Quaest. conv. 705e). Another interesting difference is that whereas Plato thinks of an enemy within the city/soul, Plutarch thinks of foreign invaders. According to Zadorojnyi the city/soul metaphor enables Plutarch to examine both the human soul and character and city-state politics from a timeless idealistic, but also pragmatic, perspective without being preoccupied with the Roman empire. By Plutarch’s time the image of the city as a ship was a familiar metaphor. In ‘The City and the Ship: Reception and the Use of a Metaphor in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives’ Aurelio Pérez Jiménez shows how Plutarch managed to breathe new life into what must have been by then a trite metaphor. Inspired by Plato’s and other philosophers’ use of the image, Plutarch expanded on every single aspect: the rigging, sails, helm, anchor, crew, subordinate commanders, and a ship-captain who either makes the right decisions for which he is praised or suffers criticism for shifting the responsibility of his command onto another person when a storm is coming. The city confronts the swelling dangers that await her from the outside and from within, and sometimes bad news in times of good fortune is like a cloud that hangs over the city ὥσπερ ἐν εὐδίᾳ καὶ γαλήνῃ (Mar. 23.1). According to Pérez Jiménez Plutarch’s attention to and expansion of all aspects of the image of the ship and its natural environment demonstrates his originality and a ‘baroque’ literary aesthetic. Geert Roskam’s contribution (Chapter 15) introduces a sequence of discussions on the interplay of real and ideal cities and Plutarch’s religious outlook, his

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pragmatism and his idealism. Roskam brings out the tensions between the ideal and real polis, between Plutarch’s philosophical debts to Plato and his own pragmatism. Roskam begins his analysis by suggesting that one should go beyond Praecepta gerendae reipublicae and An seni respublica gerenda sit, which have so far monopolized the interest of scholars. He argues that other works such as the collections of apophthegmata, antiquarian works such as the Quaestiones Romanae, or rhetorical pieces such as De fortuna Romanorum can also throw light on different aspects of Plutarch’s political thinking. Roskam does not deny either Plutarch’s ethical conception of the polis or its significance in Plutarch’s works, but draws attention to the importance of the imperium Romanum, pointing out that even in a treatise like Praecepta gerendae reipublicae he emphasizes the importance of international friendships. In Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum, Plutarch suggests that the philosopher should try to maximize his usefulness by benefiting many through the agency of one (πολλοὺς δι᾿ ἑνός). For Roskam, Plutarch’s pragmatism, shaped by his social and political experience, was as important as his debts to Plato. Luc Van der Stockt’s ‘Plutarch’s “Civitas Dei” ’ argues that Plutarch’s concept of the ‘ideal’ city was a deeply religious one, on account of which gods are represented as having great impact on the cities of men. Taking the example of Rome, Van der Stockt (Chapter 16) argues that despite Plutarch’s knowledge of and keen interest in the city as a physical and socio-historical entity, demonstrated by scholars such as Paolo Desideri and John Scheid, Plutarch’s perception and description of the historical city of Rome is also inspired or tinged by what he regards as ‘civitas dei’. In De fortuna Romanorum, for instance, Plutarch states that ‘Fortune (Τύχη) and Virtue are engaged in a direct and continual strife and discord with each other, yet, at least for such a welding together of dominion and power, it is likely that they suspended hostilities and joined forces; and by joining forces they co-operated in completing this most beautiful of human works’ (316e). As Van der Stockt points out, this assessment should not surprise us, because as a Platonist, Plutarch believed in divine Providence and the manifestation of the divine in human affairs. But Plutarch takes the role of the divine a step further, Van der Stockt argues, and develops an analogy between the organization of human society and that in heaven. In Against Colotes, for instance, Plutarch expresses a belief in divine Providence, divine justice (1125a), and divine government and law as ‘the underpinning and base that holds all society and legislation together’ (1125e). Elsewhere he develops the analogy between the organization of human society with that in heaven and suggests that the politician’s task on earth should be modelled upon the role of Providence and Zeus in the cosmos. Van der Stockt concludes his discussion with the reminder that Plutarch’s ideal city is not on earth, but in heaven. In ‘Plutarch on Superstition, Atheism and the City’, Chapter 17, Tim Whitmarsh takes a fresh look at the puzzling On Superstition, which he compares

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with other treatises, especially with A Pleasant Life, and suggests that it is part of an implicit dialogue that ‘seeks to intervene self-consciously within a public and ongoing debate over the relationship between religion and the city in Plutarch’s time’. Prima facie the treatise criticizes both the atheists, who deny the existence of gods, and the superstitious, who claim that the gods are malevolent beings, intent on destroying humans. Yet the real, underlying, target of Plutarch’s criticism, Whitmarsh argues, is the Epicurean critique of superstition, namely the view that conventional civic religion is superstition and nothing more; in a demonstration of ‘mischievous rhetorical flair’ Plutarch succeeds in refuting the Epicurean nonprovidential view of religion on its own terms. He also succeeds in creating a new space of religion that is pious and generates pleasure. The essay’s loose structure and spontaneous tone, that have troubled scholars, lead Whitmarsh to the view that On Superstition may have been composed for delivery in a public debate about the role of religion. Whitmarsh illustrates the nature of civic debate he has in mind by discussing the analogies between the Plutarchan treatise and Lucian’s dramatization of the sophisticated debate about atheism in Zeus the Tragedian. Whitmarsh’s Plutarch is not a preacher. He is an astute observer of the world around him who cleverly refutes the arguments of his opponents. The book’s multifocal and multi-perspectival examination of Plutarch’s cities— past and present, real, and ideal—yields some remarkable corrections of his conventional image and opens up some new lines of enquiry, adumbrated in Part IV by Athanassaki (Chapter 18). Plutarch was neither an antiquarian nor a philosopher of the desk. He did not travel to Rome, Athens, and elsewhere simply in order to visit libraries and consult the books he did not have in Chaeronea. He was not oblivious to his surroundings. He had a keen interest in painting, sculpture, monuments, and inscriptions, about which he acquired impressive knowledge in order to help him understand and reconstruct the past. Cult and ritual proved equally fertile for Plutarch’s visual imagination. Whereas historiography was the backbone of his reconstruction of the past and his evaluation of the present, material culture, cult, and ritual were inspirational means to enliven past and present alike. Plato’s descriptions of Athenian houses and the Attic landscape were also a source of inspiration, but Plutarch clearly did his own research, based on autopsy and on oral and written sources. Plutarch, Plato’s disciple and Apollo’s priest, was on balance a pragmatist. He did not resist the temptation to contemplate the ideal city, but he wrote much more about real cities, as he experienced or imagined them. Some of his provocative treatises may have been conceived for oral delivery to provoke debate, a time-honoured Greek institution and pastime.

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PART I

CONTEMPORARY CITIES: TR AVEL , SO J O UR N, A UTOP SY , AND INSPIRATION

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1 Plutarch’s Chaeronea Ewen Bowie

This chapter opens with a glance at how, in the centuries following Plutarch’s death, he was remembered as Chaeronea’s most important citizen, then reviews his involvement in his city’s administration. Its first major section (The Long History of Chaeronea) explores the knowledge he displays of the city’s political and military history, from its foundation and the mythical age of the Amazons down to the Roman civil wars of the first century , and argues that he was often ready to draw on his local historical and topographical knowledge when it could be used to confirm or add vividness to his account, but that he was careful not to do this to what non-Boeotian readers might have considered to be excess. The second major section (The Religious and Cultural Life of Chaeronea) reviews his references to local cults that he must have known well and re-examines the evidence for the various locations which he presents as the settings of his Sympotic Questions, a subject that has received much recent attention. I argue for a more systematic patterning of these locations, with Athens opening and closing Books 1, 3, 5, and 7 (as well as providing the setting for the whole of Book 9), and Chaeronea repeatedly juxtaposed with much grander cities—Delphi, Corinth, and Rome as well as Athens—in a way that suggests its cultural life was comparable to theirs.

The Impact of Plutarch’s Fame on Posterity In a much-cited passage at the opening of his Demosthenes Plutarch expresses his love for his small home city and asserts that he continued to live there to prevent it becoming smaller, despite the problems this created for his access to libraries and learned colleagues: τῷ μέντοι σύνταξιν ὑποβεβλημένῳ καὶ ἱστορίαν, ἐξ οὐ προχείρων οὐδ’ οἰκείων, ἀλλὰ ξένων τε τῶν πολλῶν καὶ διεσπαρμένων ἐν ἑτέροις συνιοῦσαν ἀναγνωσμάτων, τῷ ὄντι χρῆν πρῶτον ὑπάρχειν καὶ μάλιστα ‘τὰν πόλιν εὐδόκιμον’ καὶ φιλόκαλον καὶ πολυάνθρωπον, ὡς βιβλίων τε παντοδαπῶν ἀφθονίαν ἔχων, καὶ ὅσα τοὺς γράφοντας διαφυγόντα σωτηρίᾳ μνήμης ἐπιφανεστέραν εἴληφε πίστιν, ὑπολαμβάνων ἀκοῇ καὶ διαπυνθανόμενος, μηδενὸς τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐνδεὲς Ewen Bowie, Plutarch’s Chaeronea In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0002

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’  ἀποδιδοίη τὸ ἔργον. ἡμεῖς δὲ μικρὰν μὲν οἰκοῦντες πόλιν, καὶ ἵνα μὴ μικροτέρα γένηται φιλοχωροῦντες . . . But if any man undertakes the writing of a history that has to be collected from materials gathered by observation and the reading of works not readily to hand and in one’s own place, but most of them foreign and dispersed in other hands, for him, undoubtedly, it is in the first place and above all things most necessary to reside in some ‘city of good note’, devoted to liberal arts, and populous; where he may have an abundance of all sorts of books, and upon inquiry may hear and inform himself of such particulars as, having escaped the pens of writers, are more faithfully preserved in the memories of men, so that his work be not deficient in anything necessary, even those which it can least dispense with. But for me, living in a small city, and wanting to show my fondness for it lest it should grow smaller . . . (Dem. 2.1–2)

One advantage that Plutarch may not have foreseen in small city origins is that one can become its most important citizen for all time. Thus it is that for several later thinkers Plutarch is referred to simply as ‘the Chaeronean’, as, for example, by Proclus in his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus¹ or by John the Lydian.² For Proclus of Lycia and Alexandria in the fifth century and for John of Lydian Philadelphia in the sixth no other Chaeronean mattered. In the second century, admittedly, Plutarch’s own eminence brought other members of his family into the public eye. His nephew Sextus was one of Marcus Aurelius’ teachers,³ and Apuleius in his Metamorphoses could mention him in the same breath as Plutarch, crediting both with a renown that reached Thessaly.⁴ Both were also certainly remembered in Chaeronea itself, where members of their family continued to bear the name Sextus in the middle of the third century , as is shown by a laudatory epitaph: Σέξτον Κλαύδιον Αὐτόβουλον, ὁμώνυμον τῷ πατρί, ἕκτον ἀπὸ Πλουτάρχου, ἀρετὴν πᾶσαν ἐν βίῳ καὶ λόγοις ἐπιδειξάμενον, ἐντ[ῆ] φιλόσοφον, ἐτῶν [κ]β 0 , ἡ πρὸς μητρὸς μάμμη Καλλίκλε[ια κα]ὶ οἱ γονεῖς καὶ αἱ ἀδελφαὶ τν ἥρω[α]. η[φίσματι] β(ουλῆς) δ(ήμου) ¹ Fr. 195 Sandbach = Procl. In Ti. 1 p. 415 Diehl: καὶ δεῖ μεμνῆσθαι καὶ ὧν ὁ Χαιρωνεὺς εἶπε περὶ τοῦ τῆς προνοίας ὀνόματος (‘and one must also recall what the Chaeronean said about the word pronoia’). ² Fr. 194b Sandbach = Lyd. Mens. 4.86. ὁ δὲ Χαιρωνεύς φησιν ὅτι τοῦ πυρὸς τὴν δύναμιν . . . (‘the Chaeronean says that the power of fire’ . . . ). Cf. later the rubric in the Marcianus Graecus 196 (second half of the ninth century ) ἐκ τῶν τοῦ Χαιρωνέως. ³ M. Ant. 1.9, cf. Philostr. VS 2.1.557. ⁴ Thessaliam—nam et illic originis maternae nostrae fundamenta a Plutarcho illo incluto ac mox Sexto philosopho nepote eius prodita gloriam nobis faciunt . . . petebam (‘I was heading for Thessaly—for there too the foundations of my mother’s family, set down by the famous Plutarch and then by his nephew the philosopher Sextus, creates renown for us’), Apul. Met. 1.2.

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Sextus Claudius Autobulus, of the same name as his father, sixth in descent from Plutarch, whose all-round excellence was displayed in his life and in his words, aged [thirty]-two, (was honoured) by his maternal grandmother Callicleia and his parents and his sisters as a hero. By the decree of the Council and the People. (IG vii 3425, Chaeronea)

At about the same time at Eleusis the hieroceryx and holder of the Athenian chair of rhetoric M. Iunius Nicagoras was boasting on a statue base of his descent from both Plutarch and Sextus: Νικαγόρας | ὁ τῶν ἱερῶν κῆρυξ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς καθέδρας | σοφιστὴς | Πλουτάρχου καὶ Σέκστου τῶν φιλοσόφων | ἔκγονος Nicagoras, herald of the mysteries and sophist in the chair, descendant of the philosophers Plutarch and Sextus.⁵ (IG ii² 3814, Eleusis)

Some time after the middle of the third century the memory of Sextus fades, and when the Suda entry σ 235 (or its source) was compiled Plutarch’s nephew is conflated with his near-contemporary Sextus Empiricus: Σέξστος, Χαιρωνεύς, ἀδελφιδοῦς Πλουτάρχου, γεγονὼς κατὰ Μάρκον Ἀντωνῖνον τὸν Καίσαρα, φιλόσοφος, μαθητὴς Ἡροδότου τοῦ Φιλαδελφαίου. ἦν δὲ τῆς Πυρρωνείου ἀγωγῆς καὶ τοσοῦτον πρὸς τιμῆς τῷ βασιλεῖ ἦν, ὥστε καὶ συνδικάζειν αὐτῷ. ἔγραψεν Ἠθικά, Ἐπισκεπτικὰ βιβλία ι 0 . . . A Chaeronean, a nephew of Plutarch, born in the time of Caesar Marcus Antoninus; a philosopher, and a student of Herodotus of Philadelphia. He adhered to the teachings of Pyrrhon, and was so esteemed by the emperor that he sat in judgement with him. He wrote Ethica and 10 books of Episceptica . . .

Plutarch’s Involvement in the Affairs of Chaeronea Notoriously, Plutarch credits himself with management of Chaeronea’s drainage, and not surprisingly he held its eponymous archonship.⁶ On the other hand he is ⁵ cf. Philostr. VS 2.33.628: καὶ περὶ Νικαγόρου τοῦ Ἀθηναίου, ὃς καὶ τοῦ Ἐλευσινίου ἱεροῦ κήρυξ ἐστέφθη . . . οὐκ ἐμὲ δεῖ γράφειν (‘and about Nicagoras of Athens, who was also crowned herald of the Eleusinian precinct, . . . there is no call for me to write’). Cf. Suda ν 373 Νικαγόρας, Μνησαίου ῥήτορος, Ἀθηναῖος, σοφιστής· γέγονε δὲ κατὰ Φίλιππον τὸν Καίσαρα. Βίους ἐλλογίμων, Περὶ Κλεοπάτρας τῆς ἐν Τρῳάδι, Πρεσβευτικὸν πρὸς Φίλιππον τὸν Ῥωμαίων βασιλέα (‘Nicagoras, son of the rhetor Mnesaeus; an Athenian, a sophist; he lived under the Caesar Philip. Lives of Famous People, On Cleopatra in the Troad, an Embassy Speech to Philip the Roman Emperor’). On his relationship to Minucianus see Heath 1996: 66–70; Puech 2002: 357–60. It is possible that Nicagoras owes his decision to write Lives to his pride in Plutarchan ancestry. ⁶ Quaest. conv. 2.10 = Mor. 642f., Quaest. conv. 6.8 = Mor. 693f.; πολλάκις at Prae. ger. reip.15 = Mor. 811b may suggest that he held an office involving attention to drainage more than once.

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not found among the witnesses of the decision of T. Flavius Eubulus concerning a land dispute between Memmius Antiochus and the city of Daulis (situated on one of the two routes between Chaeronea and Delphi) recorded in  118 by IG ix 1.61—witnesses who do include a certain L. Mestrius Soclarus, almost certainly his son.⁷ Perhaps by  118 Plutarch was getting too old for such involvements, and he might even have been dead. By his later years his enquiring mind must have led to the accumulation of much knowledge of Chaeronea past and present, and in what follows I explore the evidence for how he imagined his city’s history.

The Long History of Chaeronea Chaeronea’s Mythical Past Plutarch introduces Chaeronea into his account of Theseus’ successful defence of Attica against Amazon invaders, one of a number of places where he links his presentation of Chaeronea with that of Athens. He relates that after the truce between Theseus and the partially defeated invaders some wounded Amazons went undercover to Chalcis, that Amazons’ graves are displayed by the Megarians and Thessalians, and that others were said to have died near Chaeronea: λέγεται δὲ καὶ περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ἑτέρας ἀποθανεῖν καὶ ταφῆναι παρὰ τὸ ῥευμάτιον ὃ πάλαι μέν, ὡς ἔοικε, Θερμώδων, Αἵμων δε νῦν καλεῖται—περὶ ὧν ἐν τῷ Δημοσθένους βίῳ γέγραπται. It is said that others died near Chaeronea and were buried by the brook which in the past, it seems, was called the Thermodon, but is now called the Haemon (I have written about this in the Life of Demosthenes). (Thes. 27.6)

Here Plutarch is referring to Demosthenes 19.1–3, where he discusses a Sibylline oracle said to have been ‘sung’ at the time of the fourth-century  battle of Chaeronea and involving the name Thermodon, a name which ‘they’ say is that of a small tributary of the Cephisus at Chaeronea, but which Plutarch asserts is no longer used of any river in the area. There he suggests it may have been an earlier name of the Haemon, which flows past the precinct of Heracles where the Greeks opposing Philip camped, and that the river might have acquired the latter name from its having been filled with blood and corpses. He adds, however, that Duris of Samos (FGrH 76 F40) thought Thermodon to be the name not of a river but of a man whose name was inscribed on a small statue of a figure carrying a wounded ⁷ The witnesses are Λ(ούκιος) Μέστριος Σώκλαρος, Κλεομένης Κλεομένους, Νείκων Συμφόρου, and Λαμπρίας Νείκωνος, IG ix.1 61.42. This Soclarus is surely one of Plutarch’s sons, contrary to Ziegler 1951: 648 f., 684 f. = Ziegler 1964: 13–14 and 48–49. Cf. Puech 1981 and 1992: 4879–83.

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Amazon discovered there by people erecting a tent. Plutarch was manifestly knowledgeable concerning Chaeronean topography, but this is one of few places he chooses to display that local knowledge, and he is drawn to do so in the Demosthenes by the Thermodon’s mention in an oracle in which (as elsewhere) he is chiefly interested. At a slightly later point in the city’s early history Plutarch reports that when Peripoltas the mantis brought king Opheltas and his people to Boeotia from Thessaly he ‘left behind a family which remained distinguished for many years, and of it most settled in Chaeronea, the first city they seized when they drove out the barbaroi’: γένος εὐδοκιμῆσαν ἐπὶ πολλοὺς χρόνους κατέλιπεν, οὗ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ κατῴκησεν, ἣν πρώτην πόλιν ἔσχον ἐξελάσαντες τοὺς βαρβάρους.⁸ Here Plutarch, with characteristic reserve, does not reveal that he is himself one of the Opheltiadae,⁹ but as with his references to Chaeronea in his Theseus and Demosthenes, it may not be accidental that his readers find this item in the Life of one of the subjects he chose from Athens’ much more glorious past. These are rather thin pickings, and although we also learn something from Plutarch of local cults (discussed p. 33), rather more on the foundation and cults of Chaeronea is offered by Pausanias (9.41) than by those writings of Plutarch that are extant.¹⁰ Did he write more about its foundation in a work we have lost, or did he judge that the avoidance of self-praise required him not to be too overt in his campanilismo? I shall return to this question in my conclusions.

The Persian Wars Chaeronea is not mentioned at all by Herodotus, and none of Plutarch’s accounts of the Persian wars bring it in. No doubt Chaeronea’s decisions were strongly influenced by those of Orchomenus, and perhaps it Medized with little hesitation or indeed much room for manoeuvre. We do, however, read at the opening of the Cimon that most of the descendants of the founding king Opheltas, brave fighting men by nature, perished in the Persian and Gallic invasions ‘giving their lives unstintingly’ (ἀφειδήσαντες ἑαυτῶν).¹¹ Plutarch does not reveal for which side these warriors lost their lives in the Persian wars, and whereas his On the Malice of

⁸ Plut. Cim. 1.1, leading into the story of Damon, set around the 80s . ⁹ Cf. De sera 13 = Mor. 558a, where Plutarch’s brother Timon is said to be among the Opheltiadae. It is admittedly possible that Timon was a half-brother (so Ziegler 1954 against Einarson 1952, 1955), cf. Jones 1971: 8, Stadter in this volume, Chapter 2, n. 1. ¹⁰ Paus. 9.40.5–6 thinks that Chaeronea is Homer’s Arne (Il. 2.507, 7.9), and that its name came from Chaeron, son of Apollo and Thero, citing Hes. fr. 252 M–W. At 9.41.11–12 he highlights local worship by daily sacrifices and food-laden tables of a spear found on the border between Chaeronea and Panopeia (made by Hephaestus, used by Agamemnon, and brought—he opines—to Phocis by Electra). ¹¹ Cim. 1.1–2.

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Herodotus fiercely attacked the Herodotean presentation of Theban medism, Chaeronea’s total absence from Herodotus may have been seen by Plutarch as legitimizing his silence too in his Persian-war narratives.¹²

The Later Fifth Century and the Peloponnesian War We know from Thucydides that in 447  the Athenians, under the generalship of Tolmides, attacked dissident Boeotians in Orchomenus and Chaeronea, captured Chaeronea, enslaved its inhabitants, and left a garrison on the site. In the course of their return to Attica they were attacked and defeated at Coronea, and as a result Athens made a truce involving its total abandonment of Boeotia.¹³ Plutarch mentions the Athenian debacle and Tolmides’ death in Boeotia, but never the capture and enslavement of Chaeronea, whereas in his retelling of these events Pausanias notes that it fell to an Athenian siege.¹⁴ Nor does Plutarch mention the role of Chaeronea in the Athenian plan of 424  to engineer regime change (i.e. ‘democratic’ revolutions) there and in Siphae. These were to be coordinated with Athenian seizure of the Tanagran Delion, and it is in this context that Thucydides (4.76.3) tells us that at this time Chaeronea was a dependency of Orchomenus. The Athenian defeat at the Delion, with Athenian losses running at the unusually high figure of around 14 per cent of the fighting force,¹⁵ is itself mentioned several times, but Plutarch does not trumpet it as a great Boeotian victory.¹⁶ Plutarch does, however, pass on a local story about the Delians expelled from their island by the Athenians in 425 (cf. Thuc. 3.118–20): an oracle from Delphi told them to find the place Apollo had been born and there to sacrifice, and it gave a further clue: . . . ὅτι κορώνη φράσει τὸ χωρίον αὐτοῖς. ἀπιόντας οὖν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ γενέσθαι καὶ τῆς πανδοκευτρίας ἀκοῦσαι πρός τινας ξένους βαδίζοντας εἰς Τεγύρας περὶ χρηστηρίου διαλεγομένης, τῶν δὲ ξένων, ὡς ἀπῄεσαν, ἀσπαζομένων καὶ προσαγορευόντων τὴν ἄνθρωπον, ὅπερ ὠνομάζετο, Κορώνην, συνεῖναι τὸ λόγιον καὶ θύσαντας ἐν ταῖς Τεγύραις τυχεῖν καθόδου μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον. (De def. or. 5 = Mor. 412b–d) ¹² Plut. De Her. mal. 31 = Mor. 864e–f, cf. Marincola in this volume, Chapter 10, pp. 185–8. ¹³ Th. 1.113 (omitting or suppressing the death of Tolmides, for which cf. Diod. Sic. 12.6.1–2). ¹⁴ Per. 18.3, Sync. Per. and Fab. Max. 3.3, Ages. 19.2; contrast Paus. 1.27.5 παραστησάμενος πολιορκίᾳ Χαιρωνείαν, ‘after reducing Chaeronea by a siege’. In the De glor. Ath. 1 = Mor. 345d Plutarch identifies himself so far with an Athenian perspective that he mentions only Tolmides’ successes: καὶ Τολμίδαν Πελοπόννησον περιπλέοντα καὶ Μυρωνίδην νικῶντα Βοιωτοὺς ἐν Οἰνοφύτοις (‘and Tolmides sailing round the Peloponnese and Myronides defeating the Boeotians at Oenophyta’). Tolmides is not mentioned elsewhere in the Moralia. ¹⁵ Cf. Lazenby in OCD ⁴ 2012: 426, s.v. Delion. ¹⁶ Nic. 6.3, Alc. 7.6, Lys. 29.6, De gen. 11 = Mor. 581d–e, Adv. Col. 118 = Mor. 1117e.

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. . . that a crow would reveal the place to them. So they went off, and in Chaeronea they happened to hear the woman who ran the hotel talking to some guests who were walking to Tegyra for a consultation; and when they heard the guests as they left saying good-bye to her and calling her by her name, Crow (Korōnē), they understood the oracle, sacrificed at Tegyra, and soon got back to Delos.

What we find in these traditions is an occasional readiness to exploit local knowledge, but little to suggest that Plutarch the Chaeronean identifies much more with fifth-century Boeotians at large than with fifth-century Athenians. In this his reticence may be partly attributable to reflection on his readers’ probable interests and orientation—the Greek and Roman readership he expected will have seemed much more likely to be interested in the history of Athens, Sparta, or Thebes than in that of Chaeronea.

The Early Fourth Century Whereas Xenophon nowhere mentions Chaeronea, either in the Hellenica or in his other works, Plutarch contrives to mention his own city in his impressively detailed account of Lysander’s attempt in 395  to seize Haliartus, of his death, and of the losses of the Spartan force (around 1000 strong), defeated by the Thebans who got to Haliartus first (Lys. 28). Thus, to explain the topography of the Theban attack on the Spartans, Plutarch mentions the spring Cissusa (Lys. 28.4), and then adds that this was where local myth had it that his nurses bathed the newly born Dionysus; he then digresses to note a stand of Cretan gum trees, cited by Haliartus to support its claim to foundation by Rhadamanthys, along with his tomb and a monument to Alcmēnē. Finally, he records (Lys. 29.3) that Lysander was buried in the territory of the Spartans’ allies the Panopeans, just outside Boeotia, adding νῦν τὸ μνημεῖόν ἐστι παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν εἰς Χαιρώνειαν ἐκ Δελφῶν πορευομένοις (‘now his monument stands by the road taken by those travelling from Delphi to Chaeronea’)—an oblique way of supporting his statement by the implication of personal observation on what must have been numerous journeys he made between Chaeronea and Delphi.¹⁷ In the following year, 394 , Plutarch relates how Agesilaus passed through Phocis and on entering Boeotia camped at Chaeronea before fighting the battle of Coronea, a detail not found in Xenophon’s account, and perhaps drawn from local tradition:¹⁸

¹⁷ Paus. 9.32.5 claims that Lysander was buried at Haliartus, but see Buckler 1992: 4810 n. 77. ¹⁸ Xen. Ages. 2.5–15.

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’  διοδεύσας τὴν Φωκίδα φίλην οὖσαν, ἐπεὶ τῆς Βοιωτίας πρῶτον ἐπέβη καὶ περὶ τὴν Χαιρώνειαν κατεστρατοπέδευσεν, ἅμα μὲν τὸν ἥλιον ἐκλείποντα καὶ γινόμενον μηνοειδῆ κατεῖδεν . . . After marching through Phocis, which was friendly, as soon as he had entered Boeotia, and had pitched camp near Chaeronea, he saw the sun being eclipsed and becoming moon-shaped . . . (Ages. 17.2)

No further detail relating to Chaeronea is then offered. But it is in these years following the death of Socrates that Plutarch sets his dialogue De genio Socratis and in it gives a starring role to a presumably fictional character, Timarchus of Chaeronea, who descended into the Trophonium at Lebadeia and there had weird and wonderful visions.¹⁹

The Middle Decades of the Fourth Century Plutarch says nothing of the Phocian attack on Chaeronea by Phalaecus, which resulted in an ephemeral Phocian occupation,²⁰ but not surprisingly he has a long and diverse catalogue of references to Philip of Macedon’s momentous victory at Chaeronea in 338 , though unlike his contribution to our understanding of the Sullan battle (discussed pp. 29–31) he makes very little use of his local knowledge of the topography.²¹ Two of these references concern the Theban Sacred Band, which, he notes, had remained undefeated ever since its creation by Gorgidas (Pel. 18.1) until the defeat at Chaeronea. After that battle Philip, awed by the massed ranks of its 300 dead, exclaimed ‘May a dreadful death take any who harbour the thought that these men did or had done to them anything shameful’ (ἀπόλοιντο κακῶς οἱ τούτους τι ποιεῖν ἢ πάσχειν αἰσχρὸν ὑπονοοῦντες, Pel. 18.7). We also read in the Alexander that Alexander was the first to charge into the ranks of the Sacred Band; and that ‘still even in our time there would be pointed out an ancient oak tree by the Cephisus called “Alexander’s oak”, beside which he had his tent on that occasion; and the common tomb of the Macedonians is not far away’ (ἔτι δὲ καὶ καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς ἐδείκνυτο παλαιὰ παρὰ τὸν Κηφισὸν Ἀλεξάνδρου καλουμένη δρῦς, πρὸς ἣν τότε κατεσκήνωσε, καὶ τὸ πολυάνδριον οὐ πόρρω τῶν Μακεδόνων ἐστίν, Alex. 9.2–3). We can only guess why he did not add a few words to mention the statue of a lion that marked (and still marks) that tomb.²² Another nugget in the

¹⁹ De gen. 21–23 = Mor. 589f–93a. ²⁰ Known to us from Diod. Sic. 16.39.8: again, an item like Chaeronea’s probable medism about which Plutarch might prefer to be silent, but he might simply have had no occasion to mention it. ²¹ For his account of the battle see Marincola in this volume. Buckler 1992: 4801 gives the impression that Plutarch said less of this battle than he does, and attributes this to his dislike of Philip II. ²² On the lion see especially Ma 2008.

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Alexander that bears on Chaeronea concerns Timocleia, the sister of the Theban general Theagenes. Raped by a Thracian commander, she tricked him into thinking her family treasures were at the bottom of the house’s well, and when he peered down threw him to the bottom and dropped stones on him until he was dead. Taken bound to Alexander she was pardoned by him because of her proud reply, that she was the sister of the man who had marshalled the army which fought Philip for the freedom of the Greeks, and who fell while commanding it at Chaeronea (τοῦ παραταξαμένου πρὸς Φίλιππον ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐλευθερίας καὶ πεσόντος ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ στρατηγοῦντος, Alex. 12). Plutarch develops the story at greater length in his essay On the virtues of women (De mul. vir. 12 = Mor. 259d–60d), and elsewhere includes Philip’s release without ransom of the Athenians captured during the battle—this in an anecdote whose main point is his witty reply to their request to be allowed to take their clothes and bedding.²³ Anecdotes about the momentous battle must have been numerous both at Thebes and at Chaeronea itself. I have already discussed the passage in the Demosthenes where Plutarch offers the explanation of the potamonym Haemon—that it got its new name from being choked with blood and corpses at the battle of Chaeronea.²⁴ That Life also understandably zooms in on Demosthenes’ own position after the ‘misfortune’ (ἀτυχία, Dem. 21.1), picking out the Athenians’ respect for their adviser, demonstrated by choosing him to deliver the funeral speech praising the dead when their bones were brought back from Chaeronea for burial, and noting that he died soon after (Dem. 21.2–4). Another anecdote transmits Phocion’s bon mot on Philip’s death—the force which won at Chaeronea was only one person smaller (καὶ τὴν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ παραταξαμένην πρὸς αὐτοὺς δύναμιν ἑνὶ σώματι μόνον ἐλάττω γενέσθαι, Phoc. 16.8).²⁵ That the disaster of Chaeronea was never far from Plutarch’s mind is also illustrated by its appearance in a lengthy, digressive account of good and bad months and days in the Camillus (19.3–12). After listing months in which Greeks

²³ τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων, ὅσοι περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ἑάλωσαν, ἀφεθέντων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ δίχα λύτρων, τὰ δὲ ἱμάτια καὶ στρώματα προσαπαιτούντων καὶ τοῖς Μακεδόσιν ἐγκαλούντων, γελάσας ὁ Φίλιππος εἶπεν ‘οὐ δοκοῦσιν ὑμῖν Ἀθηναῖοι νομίζειν ἐν ἀστραγάλοις ὑφ’ ἡμῶν νενικῆσθαι;’ (‘when the Athenians who had been captured at Chaeronea were released by him without a ransom and asked to take their himatia and bedding too, and complained about the Macedonians, he laughed and said “Do you not think that the Athenians believe that it is at dice that they have been beaten by us?” ’, Reg. et imp. apophth., Philip 8 = Mor. 177e–f). For a defence of the authenticity of the Apophthegmata and their introductory letter addressed to Trajan see M. Beck 2002. ²⁴ Dem. 19.1–3, cf. p. 22 in this volume. ²⁵ There are many references to Chaeronea in the spurious Lives of the Ten Orators, and in the probably spurious Ancient Customs of the Spartans 42 = Mor. 240a–b an interesting identification of the battle as a significant stage in Sparta’s decline from nobility and freedom to its current subjection to Rome: καὶ παραπλήσιοι τοῖς ἄλλοις γενόμενοι τὴν πρόσθεν εὔκλειαν καὶ παρρησίαν ἀπέθεντο καὶ εἰς δουλείαν μετέστησαν, καὶ νῦν ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίοις καθάπερ οἱ ἄλλοι Ἕλληνες ἐγένοντο (‘and so they became much like the rest, and put from them their former glory and freedom of speech, and were reduced to a state of subjection; and now they, like the rest of the Greeks, have come under Roman sway’).

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have won great victories,²⁶ Plutarch turns to a month which was inauspicious for Greeks, the Attic Metageitnion (in Boeotia called Πάνεμος/Panemos): on 7th Metageitnion the Greeks suffered total defeat by Antipater at Crannon, and earlier experienced misfortune fighting Philip at Chaeronea (καὶ πρότερον ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ μαχόμενοι πρὸς Φίλιππον ἠτύχησαν), on the very same day that Greeks in Italy with Archidamus were annihilated by barbaroi.²⁷

Third Century  As noted above, in the section Persian Wars, the opening of the Cimon refers to brave Chaeronean descendants of Opheltas who gave their lives unsparingly in the Gallic invasion of 279 . It is perhaps remarkable that we hear no more than this in Plutarch’s extant writings, but no more remarkable than that he never mentions Delphi’s saving from Brennus by divine intervention.²⁸ In the Aratus Plutarch mentions the Aetolian victory of 245  over the Boeotian League near Chaeronea which enabled the Aetolians to strengthen their dominant position in central Greece:²⁹ ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος αἱρεθεὶς στρατηγὸς τὸ πρῶτον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, τὴν μὲν ἀντιπέρας Λοκρίδα καὶ Καλυδωνίαν ἐπόρθησε, Βοιωτοῖς δὲ μετὰ μυρίων στρατιωτῶν βοηθῶν, ὑστέρησε τῆς μάχης, ἣν ὑπ’ Αἰτωλῶν περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ἡττήθησαν, Ἀβοιοκρίτου τε τοῦ βοιωτάρχου καὶ χιλίων σὺν αὐτῷ πεσόντων. But Aratus, now for the first time chosen general of the Achaeans, ravaged the parts of Locris and Calydon across the gulf from Achaea and then went to the aid of the Boeotians with ten thousand soldiers, but arrived too late for the battle near Chaeronea, in which they were defeated by the Aetolians, with the loss of the Boeotarch Aboeocritus and a thousand men with him. (Arat. 16.1)

Sulla’s Battles of Chaeronea and Orchomenus The Life of Sulla (15–21) offers a detailed account of the first-century  battles of Chaeronea and Orchomenus, rich in topographical detail: as Buckler noted,

²⁶ Boeotian victories at Leuctra and Ceressus on 5th ἱσταμένου of Hippodromios (as he says, the equivalent to the Attic Hecatombaion); the Hellenes at Marathon, Plataea, and Mycale on 6th and 3rd Boedromion respectively, and on the 5th φθίνοντος at Arbela; also in Boedromion the Athenians at Naxos (Chabrias) and Salamis; in Thargelion Alexander at the Granicus and Timoleon in Sicily; Thargelion was also the month in which Troy fell according to Ephorus, Callisthenes, Damastes, and Phylarchus. ²⁷ The Greeks were Tarentines, the barbaroi Lucanians, Diod. Sic. 16.88.3. ²⁸ Cf. Lipka 2017: 304. ²⁹ Arat. 16, cf. Plb. 20.4.

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‘here is indisputable evidence of Plutarch’s autopsy’ used ‘to augment his literary sources’.³⁰ Plutarch highlights the action of Caphis, either from Chaeronea or from the nearby town of Tithora, who guided Hortensius and his forces coming from Thessaly across Parnassus to Tithora, a place that (he tells us) had been a Phocian refuge at the time of the Persian wars (15.5).³¹ He also includes exciting cameos of the saving of Chaeronea from the armies of Mithridates VI by Gabinius together with those Chaeroneans who were already fighting on Sulla’s side, and of the taking of a hill called Thurium, occupied by Archelaus, by a group of Chaeroneans led by Homoloïchus and Anaxidamus, whose local knowledge enabled them to surprise and rout his Pontic troops (17.6–19.10):³² they used a ‘track invisible to the enemy leading from the so-called Petrachus past the sanctuary of the Muses’.³³ The hill Thurium is that now called Isoma, 224 metres high and 1500 metres west of Chaeronea, on the edge of the Cephisus plain. South of it was the temple of Apollo Thurius, mentioned by Plutarch with a short digression on its name: ὠνόμασται δὲ ὁ θεὸς ἀπὸ Θουροῦς, τῆς Χαίρωνος μητρός, ὃν οἰκιστὴν γεγονέναι τῆς Χαιρωνείας ἱστοροῦσιν. οἱ δέ φασι τὴν Κάδμῳ δοθεῖσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Πυθίου καθηγεμόνα βοῦν ἐκεῖ φανῆναι, καὶ τὸν τόπον ἀπ᾿ αὐτῆς οὕτω προσαγορευθῆναι· θὼρ γὰρ οἱ Φοίνικες τὴν βοῦν καλοῦσι. The god got this name from Thuro, the mother of Chaeron, who they say was founder of Chaeronea. But some say that the cow which was given by Apollo to Cadmus as his guide appeared there, and that the place was given this name from it; for the Phoenicians call a cow thor. (Sull. 17.4–5)

Since 1990, the names of the Chaeroneans Homoloïchus and Anaxidamus have also been known from an inscription on a stone that was thought by those who discovered it to belong to one of the trophies Sulla erected after the battle, one in

³⁰ Buckler 1992: 4803. ³¹ For the reading Τιθορεὺς ὤν instead of the MSS ἡμέτερος ὤν at 15.5, proposed by Robert 1960, 82–84, see Jones 1971, 41–42, with the attractive suggestion that Plutarch’s friend Soclarus of Tithora may be descended from Caphis and be the source of this detail: cf. Caphis of Tithora, IG ix.1 192.1–2 (early second century ). ³² On Sulla’s campaign cf. App. Mith. 42–45. Plutarch also refers twice to these Sullan battles in his Lucullus : τὰς δὲ Σύλλα πρὸς Ὀρχομενῷ καὶ περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ὑμνουμένας ἀριστείας ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ θήσεσθαι Ῥωμαίους (‘and that the Romans would not attach any importance to Sulla’s celebrated achievements at Orchomenus and near Chaeronea’), Luc. 3.6; Σαλουστίου δὲ θαυμάζω τότε πρῶτον ὦφθαι Ῥωμαίοις καμήλους λέγοντος, εἰ μήτε πρότερον τοὺς μετὰ Σκιπίωνος νικήσαντας Ἀντίοχον ᾤετο μήτε τοὺς ἔναγχος πρὸς Ὀρχομενῷ καὶ περὶ Χαιρώνειαν Ἀρχελάῳ μεμαχημένους ἐγνωκέναι κάμηλον (‘and I am surprised at Sallust saying that this was the first time Romans saw camels, and that he did not think Scipio’s troops who defeated Antiochus at an earlier date or those who had recently fought Archelaus near Chaeronea had become acquainted with a camel’), Luc. 11.6. ³³ ἀτραπὸν γὰρ εἶναι τοῖς βαρβάροις ἄδηλον, ἀπὸ τοῦ καλουμένου Πετράχου παρὰ τὸ Μουσεῖον ἐπὶ τὸ Θούριον ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς ἄγουσαν, Sull. 17.6.

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the plain and a second on the hilltop itself: Ὁμολώϊχος|F̣ανα[ξ]ίδαμος|ἀ̣ρ[ισ]τῖς.³⁴ Plutarch, like the text of the inscription, praises the two as ἀριστεῖς:³⁵ διὸ καὶ τοῖς τροπαίοις ἐπέγραψεν Ἄρη καὶ Νίκην καὶ Ἀφροδίτην, ὡς οὐχ ἧττον εὐτυχίᾳ κατορθώσας ἢ δεινότητι καὶ δυνάμει τὸν πόλεμον. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν τὸ τρόπαιον ἕστηκε τῆς πεδιάδος μάχης ᾗ πρῶτον ἐνέκλιναν οἱ περὶ Ἀρχέλαον παρὰ τὸ Μόλου ῥεῖθρον, ἕτερον δέ ἐστι τοῦ Θουρίου κατὰ κορυφὴν βεβηκὸς ἐπὶ τῇ κυκλώσει τῶν βαρβάρων, γράμμασιν Ἑλληνικοῖς ἐπισημαῖνον Ὁμολόϊχον καὶ Ἀναξίδαμον ἀριστεῖς. He therefore inscribed upon his trophies the names of Mars, Victory and Venus, in the belief that his success in the war was due no less to good fortune than to military skill and strength. This trophy of the battle in the plain stands on the spot where the troops of Archelaus first gave way, by the brook Molus, but there is another planted on the crest of Thurium, to commemorate the encirclement of the barbarians there, and it indicates in Greek letters that Homoloïchus and Anaxidamus were awarded the prize for an outstanding achievement. (Sull. 19.5–6)

The stone that was discovered is a rectangular, grey base surmounted by a torus moulding: it has the inscription on its front. It was found in 1990 by John Camp and others, built into a field wall on the hill, and is now in the Chaeronea Museum. It has since been demonstrated, however, that it cannot be what Camp and his colleagues thought it was. Yiannis Kalliontzis has shown that the stone is a votive or funerary monument from the third-century , and that the last line ΑΡΙΣΤΙΣ is a proper name, not a term of military praise extolling the exploit of the two Chaeroneans in 86 .³⁶ In a review of the book in which Kalliontzis’ re-identification was published John Ma showed himself sympathetic to the idea that ‘the whole Chaironeian tradition [is] a bogus story, conjured out of a misinterpreted funerary monument’.³⁷ That a piece of local tradition was believed by Plutarch certainly does not guarantee its historicity, for all his interest and knowledge. The final testimony to Plutarch’s interest in the events of the Sullan campaign is his mention of a statue of Sulla in On the Fortune of the Romans, pointing out that the Greek Ἐπαφρόδιτος corresponds to his Roman cognomen Felix:

³⁴ Eds. prs. Camp, Ierardi, McInerney, Morgan, and Umholtz 1992 (with photograph and drawing), suggesting that this Homolοϊchus could be the great-great-grandfather of Plutarch. cf. SEG 41.448, also discussing IG vii 3224, SEG 28.455 (for Ἀναξίδαμος with initial digamma), and SEG 38.380. On the passage as evidence for Plutarch’s attention to inscriptions see Buckler 1992: 4796 with n. 26. ³⁵ For the possibility that the third line has been added and was influenced by the text of Plutarch see SEG 41.448. ³⁶ Kalliontzis 2014. ³⁷ Ma 2016.

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καὶ Ῥωμαϊστὶ μὲν Φήλιξ ὠνομάζετο, τοῖς δ᾿ Ἕλλησιν οὕτως ἔγραφε ‘Λούκιος Κορνήλιος Σύλλας Ἐπαφρόδιτος’. καὶ τὰ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ τρόπαια κατὰ τῶν Μιθριδατικῶν οὕτως ἐπιγέγραπται, καὶ εἰκότως . . . (De fort. Rom. 4 = Mor. 318d) In Latin he was called Felix, but for the Greeks he wrote his name as follows: Lucius Cornelius Sulla Epaphroditus. And the trophies set up over Mithridates’ troops in our city Chaeronea are inscribed with these names, and rightly so . . .

The Sullan campaign may well have loomed larger than that of Philip in Chaeronean local memory, and it is conceivable that as a child Plutarch had heard things from 80-year-olds who claimed likewise to have heard something in their youth from very old Chaeroneans who could lay claim to autopsy.³⁸ But we should also, perhaps, allow that Plutarch may have expected such details to be of more interest to those of his readers who were from Italy and western provinces.

After Sulla Plutarch offers two vivid pieces of local knowledge for the half century after Sulla. First, to introduce his choice of the pair Cimon and Lucullus for his Lives, he tells the story he had heard from his family of a descendant of the mythical king Opheltas, led by the mantis Peripoltas to Boeotia, where most of his followers settled in Chaeronea. This youth Damon, also called Peripoltas, handsome but coarse and uncultivated, feared that the sexual attentions of the commander of a Roman cohort wintering in Chaeronea would culminate in violence, so conspired to kill him. Together with some sixteen friends he murdered first him and his entourage as they sacrificed in the agora, and then the members of the Council (who had condemned him in absentia) as they dined in the city hall (τὸ ἀρχεῖον). Lucullus, who happened to be passing, pronounced the city innocent, and Damon was lured back, elected gymnasiarch, and then murdered in the calidarium (πυριατήριον) of the baths, which were thereafter haunted. A Roman was paid by the nearby and often hostile Orchomenus to prosecute the city of Chaeronea for the murder of Damon’s victims, but it was saved by the testimony of Lucullus, which at the city’s request had been sought from him by the Roman magistrate responsible for jurisdiction, the proconsul of Macedonia (Achaea not yet being a province). Chaeronea accordingly honoured Lucullus with a stone statue ‘near that of Dionysus’. Plutarch writes that he wants himself to perpetuate the city’s

³⁸ At Sull. 14.3 Plutarch supports his account of Athens’ capture by an assault on the wall at the Ἑπτάχαλκον by the sentence ὡς Ἀθηναίων οἱ πρεσβύτατοι διεμνημόνευον (‘as the oldest of the Athenians used to recall’), but no Athenian alive in Plutarch’s childhood could have been a witness to the events of the 80s .

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gratitude and to honour Lucullus with a literary image (eikōn) that depicts his character.³⁹ The impression that the episode is still a part of the city’s living history is reinforced by his observations that disturbing sights and noises were still experienced at the baths, and that some of Damon’s family, living near Steiris in Phocis, were known as Ἀσβολωμένοι, ‘Sooted’, because Damon and his gang had smeared their faces with soot before perpetrating their atrocity.⁴⁰ Plutarch’s decision to tell this story and to place it at the beginning of his Cimon once again links the history of Chaeronea with that of Athens and highlights the events at Chaeronea as establishing the city’s generous treatment by benevolent Romans.

Rome’s Civil Wars A final glimpse of the impact of Rome’s wars on Greece is offered by the account given by Plutarch’s great-grandfather Nicarchus of Antony’s oppressive demands on the local population in the 30s , felt even in Chaeronea;⁴¹ ὁ γοῦν πρόπαππος ἡμῶν Νίκαρχος διηγεῖτο τοὺς πολίτας ἅπαντας ἀναγκάζεσθαι τοῖς ὤμοις καταφέρειν μέτρημα πυρῶν τεταγμένον ἐπὶ τὴν πρὸς Ἀντίκυραν θάλασσαν, ὑπὸ μαστίγων ἐπιταχυνομένους· καὶ μίαν μὲν οὕτω φορὰν ἐνεγκεῖν, τὴν δὲ δευτέραν ἤδη μεμετρημένοις καὶ μέλλουσιν αἴρεσθαι νενικημένον Ἀντώνιον ἀγγελῆναι, καὶ τοῦτο διασῶσαι τὴν πόλιν· εὐθὺς γὰρ τῶν Ἀντωνίου διοικητῶν καὶ στρατιωτῶν φυγόντων διανείμασθαι τὸν σῖτον αὐτούς. At any rate, my great-grandfather Nicarchus used to tell how he and all his fellow-citizens were compelled to carry on their shoulders a stipulated measure of wheat down to the sea at Anticyra,⁴² and how their pace was quickened by the whip; they had carried one load in this way, he said, the second was already measured out, and they were just about to set out, when news came that Antony had been defeated, and this was the salvation of the city; for immediately the agents and soldiers of Antony took to flight, and the citizens divided the grain among themselves. (Ant. 68.4–5)

Such oppressive requisitioning, likely to precipitate famine, can be long recalled in collective memory, as similar acts by the German army in occupied Greece in World War II testify.

³⁹ Cim. 1.2–2.3. ⁴⁰ Cim. 1.6–7. ⁴¹ Cf. (but without any claim to family tradition) the conscription of huge numbers of Greeks mentioned at Ant. 62.1 and the notes of Pelling 1988b on both passages. ⁴² The port on the Corinthian gulf (Str. 9.3.1; 3.13; Paus. 10.36.5; Ps.-Scyl. 37, cf. IG ix 1 1062), some 35 km (via Distomo) from the fertile Boeotian plain whose produce was being requisitioned.

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The Religious and Cultural Life of Chaeronea Local Cults Like any Greek city Chaeronea had cults of a wide range of divinities, some with unusual epicleseis or involving epichoric rituals. All must have been known to Plutarch, and in some he will have been personally involved. But, by contrast with the rich panorama briefly painted by Pausanias three generations later, Plutarch’s own surviving works disclose only a very few cultic details, something prima facie surprising for a writer of whom it has been said that ‘matters of cult’ were ‘the uppermost of his interests’.⁴³ In Sympotic Questions 6.8 = Mor. 693e–4a, he presents himself discussing with Soclarus, Cleomenes, and others the name and content of the ritual of ‘driving out hunger’ (βουλίμου ἐξέλασις—or in Boeotian πουλίμου ἐξέλασις), described as ‘a traditional sacrifice’ (θυσία τις πάτριος), which he in his capacity as archon had just performed at the city’s ‘common hearth’ (κοινὴ ἑστία).⁴⁴ In the Roman questions he explores ‘Why also in our city Chaeronea in front of the precinct of Leucothea the temple-warden takes a whip and pronounces “No male slave may enter, no female slave, no Aetolian man, no Aetolian woman” ’.⁴⁵ In the preface to Book 8 of Sympotic Questions he refers to the Dionysiac festival Ἀγριώνια (Agrionia) παρ’ ἡμῖν, ‘among us’ (Mor. 717a), most probably, but not certainly, meaning ‘in Chaeronea’ than more generally ‘in Greece’,⁴⁶ and in the Cimon (2.2), as we have seen, he refers to a statue of Dionysus in the agora in a way that suggests he expected it to be familiar to at least some of his readers, as it presumably would be to the dedicatee of the Lives, Sosius Senecio.

Cultural Life in Chaeronea Whereas in Plutarch’s other extant works we are given only occasional glimpses of Chaeronea, and these more of its past than of its present, in his Sympotic Questions ⁴³ Buckler 1992: 4800, noting also (4808–9) that Plutarch says almost nothing of cultic practices at Delphi and concluding (4811) ‘Plutarch is no Pausanias in that he devotes little attention or space to the splendors of Delphoi that he knew so well, and he passed down to posterity little first-hand information about the sites, rituals, and customs that he took for granted’; and on Athens (4821) ‘He did not work very hard even at being an antiquarian, as a comparison of his observations with those of Pausanias amply proves’. Note however Plutarch’s detailed descriptions of some Athenian cults and rituals, on which see Kavoulaki and Leão in this volume. ⁴⁴ For some discussion, noting the ritual’s uniqueness in this form but its analogy with the AtticIonic Thargelia, see Teodorsson 1990 (= vol. 2): 282–95. ⁴⁵ διὸ καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ πρὸ τοῦ σηκοῦ τῆς Λευκοθέας ὁ νεωκόρος λαβὼν μάστιγα κηρύσσει ‘μὴ δοῦλον εἰσιέναι μὴ δούλαν, μὴ Αἰτωλὸν μὴ Αἰτωλάν’, Quaest. Rom. 16 = Mor. 267d; cf. Cam. 5.1 and De frat. amor. 21 = Mor. 492d, identifying Rome’s Mater Matuta with Leucothea, on which see Graf 1996: 279. ⁴⁶ οὐ φαύλως οὖν καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν τοῖς Ἀγριωνίοις τὸν Διόνυσον αἱ γυναῖκες ὡς ἀποδεδρακότα ζητοῦσιν, εἶτα παύονται καὶ λέγουσιν ὅτι πρὸς τὰς Μούσας καταπέφευγεν καὶ κέκρυπται παρ’ ἐκείναις, Quaest. conv. 8 pref. = Mor. 716f.

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he presents a wide panorama of intellectual conversations at symposia, many of which seem to have a Chaeronean setting. Before assessing this well-populated tableau three issues must initially be addressed. First—and least resoluble—how close or remote a representation of symposia that actually took place does Plutarch expect his readers to take Sympotic Questions to be? Second, how many of these symposia are represented as happening in Chaeronea? Third, how frequent participants in Chaeronean symposia does Plutarch present his friends and patrons L. Mestrius Florus and Q. Sosius Senecio as being? On the first issue there is much scholarly disagreement: a recent discussion argues for a high proportion of historical reality, albeit refashioned by Plutarch on the basis of memory or notes made in ὑπομνήματα.⁴⁷ Titchener, conceding the question’s insolubility, suggested that it doesn’t matter.⁴⁸ For my investigation the primary question is how Plutarch wishes to represent Chaeronea in his lifetime, and that is what the following discussion attempts to answer. The majority of his intended ancient readers will not have been in a position to judge how authentic a picture he constructs. Residents of Chaeronea, men mentioned as participants who were still alive, or people who knew these participants well will have been able to judge how historical his depiction was, but its degree of historicity has little or no impact on the impression made by the picture itself. The second issue is bedevilled by Plutarch’s frequent (and presumably deliberate) omission of clear indications of a party’s location, or of its host, and sometimes of both.⁴⁹ The first certain indication of a Chaeronean setting comes only in the last symposium of Book 2, established by the opening sentence ‘When I was eponymous archon in my home town’ (ὅτε τὴν ἐπώνυμον ἀρχὴν ἦρχον οἴκοι, 642f); the next at the opening of Question 4.3, confirmed by both the toponym Chaeronea and the occasion of Plutarch’s son Autobulus’ wedding (666d).⁵⁰

⁴⁷ Nikolaidis 2017. A similar position was taken by Teodorsson 1989 (= vol. 1): 12–14, e.g. (p. 14) ‘I can see no reason to doubt that many of the talks actually took place where Plutarch locates them and with the participants stated’: variants of this position in Frazier 1996b: 192–207, Klotz and Oikonomopoulou 2011: 3–27, Stadter 2015: 35 n. 50, writing: ‘I take the reported talks as Plutarch’s reconstruction and literary refinement of actual conversations, and the speakers as real participants, although they—including Plutarch himself as a character—would not have expressed themselves so effectively over their wine’. ⁴⁸ Note especially ‘Are these relatives real? Yes. Is their speech and behavior in the Quaest. conv. typical? Yes. Did the dinner party conversation happen as reported? Maybe’, and ‘His choice, organization, and presentation of anecdotes, individuals, and language, as well as some kind of very subtle structure, give us a greater, or enhanced reality than that of the actual banquets. He is in a way the editor of our experience of these banquets, and indispensable to that experience. The Quaest. conv. do not need to be authentic to be real and true’ (both quotations from Titchener 2009: 400). ⁴⁹ See the Appendix, p. 42, for a tabular presentation of my conclusions about where each of the Sympotic Questions is probably or (in a few cases) certainly presented as taking place. ⁵⁰ In the manuscripts the first sentence runs ἐν τοῖς Αὐτοβούλου τοῦ υἱοῦ γάμοις συνεώρταζεν ἡμῖν παρὼν ἐκ Χαιρωνείας ὁ Σόσσιος Σενεκίων (‘At the wedding of my son Autobulus we were joined for the festivities by Sosius Senecio, who had come from Chaeronea’). In 1916 Hartman proposed to emend ἐκ Χαιρωνείας to ἐν Χαιρωνείαι, but that would create a problematic hiatus between Χαιρωνείαι and ὁ Σόσσιος, as Hubert noted, and Hubert’s own emendation εἰς Χαιρώνειαν is surely right: the mistake of

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Question 5.5 and its continuation 5.6 are attached to Chaeronea with reasonable certainty by their identification as parties welcoming Plutarch on his return from Alexandria (678c). Questions 6.7 and 10 are shown as very probably Chaeronean by their host being Plutarch’s compatriot Aristio and by the presence of another, Niger, described as ὁ πολίτης ἡμῶν, ‘our fellow-citizen’: but in Book 6 only Question 6.8 is demonstrated as quite certainly set in Chaeronea by Plutarch’s tying it to his ritual activity there as ἄρχων, ‘archon’ (693f). Question 7.7 is located in Chaeronea with rare explicitness—ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ λόγοι παρὰ πότον ἐγενοντο (‘at Chaeronea there was discussion during drinking’, 710b)—and it brings with it its continuation 7.8. Question 8.6 is shown as probably Chaeronean by its opening reference to Plutarch’s younger sons coming late from listening to performance ἐν θεάτρῳ (‘in the theatre’, Mor. 725f): moreover, only members of Plutarch’s and of his friend Theon’s family are present. None of the scenes in Book 9 is set in Chaeronea, all being set in a single symposium hosted by Ammonius in Athens. The absolutely certain settings of Questions in Chaeronea thus number only six (out of a total of ninety-five), spread over five symposia. To these, argument or conjecture can add many more, several with considerable probability.⁵¹ Tasos Nikolaidis assigned to Chaeronea forty-seven Questions (spread over thirty-one parties), while allowing that some might be elsewhere.⁵² One reason for this high total was his application of the principle that if no other clear indication is given a reader should assume a Chaeronean location. That may well be what Plutarch expects a reader to do. But his imprecision may itself to be taken as a signal to readers to exercise Academic suspension of judgement. Accordingly, until Question 2.10, the general statement in his prefatory letter to Sosius Senecio that he will gather banquets from those which happened σποράδην (‘scattered over a period of time’) ἔν τε Ῥώμῃ μεθ’ ὑμῶν καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν Ἑλλάδι (‘in Rome with you and chez nous in Greece’) can only be given precision and certainty by the location of Athens for the Questions that book-end Book 1, i.e. 1 and 10; of Patras and Eleusis for Questions 2.1 and 2; and of Delphi for Questions 2.4 and 5. Readers may suppose Questions 1.2–3 to be set in Chaeronea because the host for that

EK for ΕΙC is very easy (full discussion in Teodorsson 1990 [= vol. 2]: 66, defending ἐν Χαιρωνείαι). Senecio, then, came to Chaeronea for the wedding (perhaps, as suggested by Stadter 2015: 37, while in Achaea during his quaestorship c. 85–88, though his n. 64 concedes chronological difficulty). ⁵¹ Cf. Teodorsson 1991 (= vol. 3): 100 on the phrase ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ at Question 7.7 = Mor. 710b: ‘it may be assumed that Plut. was the host and that the dramatic place was his home, as in IV 3 and probably in II 10 and VIII 6, and perhaps in I 4, II 3, 8–9, III 8–9, VI 4–6, 8, VIII 1–2. However, it may also be that he is a guest in a friend’s home in Chaeronea, as in V 8–9’. Together with the continuation of Question 7.7 in 7.8 and with Questions 5.8–9 (where Teodorsson does not comment on ἐν Χαιρωνείαι) this would give seven certain or probable, and a further twelve possible Chaeronean locations of Questions: to these 3.7 (since it is apparently continued in 3.8) should be added, and likewise 1.2–3, hosted by Plutarch’s brother Timon. ⁵² Nikolaidis 2017: 261 n. 18 allowing that 2.3, given by Senecio, might be in Rome; 270 allowing that 3.10 given by his fellow-priest Euthydemus might be at Delphi; and that 6.1–3 and 8.9 might be at Hyampolis (like 4.1, explicitly at Hyampolis, they involve Philo the physician).

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symposium is Plutarch’s brother Timon, but they cannot be sure. Book 3 opens with two Questions (investigated in one symposium) set in Athens, but for the rest of Book 3 uncertainty prevails. For those who think Florus’ hosting shows a party to be set in Chaeronea Questions 3.4–6 will be there; for me they are more probably imagined as set in Thermopylae, like Question 8.10. Questions 3.7–9, in which Plutarch’s father participates and may even be imagined to be the party’s host, may well also be Chaeronean. Question 3.10, however, is hosted by Euthydemus of Sunium: as his identification as ὁ Σουνιεύς is intended to tell us, this is a different man from Plutarch’s συνιερεύς, ‘fellow-priest’, Euthydemus, of Question 7.2, who is C. Memmius Euthydamus, well attested at Delphi.⁵³ Outside Attica Euthydemus of Sunium would be Euthydemus ὁ Ἀθηναῖος, ‘the Athenian’, as Moeragenes describes himself in a party at Aedepsus (Question 4.6, Mor. 671c) and as Eustrophus is described in a party in Rome (Question 7.4, Mor. 702d): that he is given the demotic ὁ Σουνιεύς establishes the party of Question 3.10 as being in Athens, just as in Question 9.14, certainly set in Athens, Dionysius is given the demotic ὁ Μελιτεύς, ‘of the deme Melite’ (Mor. 744f). With Question 3.10 tied to Attica, Book 3 thus replicates Book 1 in having its first and last symposia in Athens. The surviving six parties of Book 4 have clearly indicated settings: Question 1 Hyampolis, Question 2 Elis (presumably at or near Olympia), Question 3 Chaeronea, Questions 4–6 Aedepsus: thus, of the six Questions that survive of Book 4 only one is set in Chaeronea. Book 5 (like Books 1 and 3) opens with a Question set in Athens, followed by Questions set in Corinth (5.2) and Delphi (5.3): Chaeronea is the probable imagined setting of Questions 5.5–6 and 5.8–9, since Plutarch’s grandfather is present at both parties. Question 5.10, however, is hosted by Florus: the pattern set by Books 1 and 3 hints that its setting should be imagined as Athens. All ten Questions of Book 6 might well be set in Chaeronea, making it the most Chaeronean book, but of these only the setting of Question 6.8 is explicit and certain. Book 7, by contrast, is ostentatiously cosmopolitan: Questions 7.4 and 6 are set in Rome, Question 7.5 in Delphi, Questions 7.9–10 in Athens: of the remaining five Questions 7.3 and 7–8 are perhaps set in Chaeronea: but Question 7.1, attended and perhaps hosted by Florus, could be in Athens—thus giving Book 7 the pattern apparently set by Books 1, 3, and 5. Book 8 is also cosmopolitan, but its sequencing is different. Questions 1–2 and 5 are probably set in Chaeronea, though Thermopylae should not be excluded for 8.1. Question 3 is certainly set in Athens, Question 4 in Corinth, Question 6 in Chaeronea, Questions 7–8 in Rome, Question 10 in Thermopylae (with Florus explicitly the host). Question 8.9 may be in Chaeronea or Hyampolis. The Athenian setting that

⁵³ FdD iii.1 466 etc., cf. Puech 1992: 4849–50.

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seems to open and close odd-numbered books extrudes all others in Book 9, which has fifteen questions, not ten, all set in a symposium given in Athens by Ammonius. The resulting presentation of Chaeronea in Questions certainly or probably set there is of a city where Plutarch’s family and friends could expect to be entertained not only in its small theatre by ἀκροάματα (whether vocal or musical performances) but also in symposia by cultivated conversations with visiting intellectuals. Such intellectuals in parties that are certainly Chaeronean are the ἰατρός Cleomenes in Question 6.8, and the Stoic philosophers Philip of Prusias ad Hypium and the ‘sophist’ who may be Euphrates in Questions 7.7–8.⁵⁴ From symposia whose location is probably imagined as Chaeronea one may add the local poet Sosicles from Coronea, Questions 1.2 and perhaps 5.4; some unnamed γραμματικοί in Questions 5.8–9;⁵⁵ Philo the ἰατρός and fellow ἰατροί in Questions 6.1–3; an unnamed philological ξένος (‘guest’ or ‘visitor’) in Question 6.4. If Question 7.1 were thought to be in Chaeronea, then Protogenes the γραμματικός from Tarsus and Nicias the ἰατρός from Nicopolis could be added, but (as I suggest above) it seems more probably to be set in Athens. Of several physicians in Sympotic Questions some might themselves be Chaeronean, not visitors: Crato at Question 1.4—related by marriage to Plutarch and also present at Questions 1.1 in Athens, 2.6 in Chaeronea or Tithora, and perhaps 4.4 in Aedepsus; Onesicrates at Questions 5.5–6; Trypho at Question 5.8; and Cleomenes at Question 6.8. Certainly Chaeronean is the ‘sophist’ and Stoic Niger, whom Plutarch clearly did not admire, as is amply shown by the unsympathetic treatment of his contribution at Question 6.7 and of his death partly caused by his vanity while performing in Gaul (De tuend. san. 131a). The concentration of intellectuals is noticeably less than in symposia set at Delphi, Aedepsus, Corinth, or Athens, but their numbers are comparable to those of family members, all of whom are likewise represented as fully capable of cultured conversation. The third issue that requires consideration is the location of parties hosted by Florus and its implication for where in the Roman province Achaea Florus had a house or houses. Question 8.10 presents him hosting a party at Thermopylae, implying he owned or at least had the use of a house there. Many scholars think that he is also represented as having a house in Chaeronea and as hosting several parties there, but to me this seems far from certain. Not one of the symposia hosted by Florus is unambiguously set in Chaeronea. On the grounds that the ⁵⁴ Philip also appears in De def. or. 16 = Mor. 418d, etc. For the identification of the ‘sophist’ with Euphrates of Tyre see Jones 2003: 160–62: Puech 1992: 4860 n. 107 had already noted that IG ii² 3945 gives Euphrates the nomen Mestrius. ⁵⁵ Apollophanes the γραμματικός figures in Question 5.10, put by Nikolaidis 2017: 270 in Chaeronea, but see my discussion of Florus pp. 37–8. Aufidius Modestus, also apparently a γραμματικός (cf. Jones 1971: 60 with n. 76) is mentioned in the presumably Chaeronean symposium given by Timon at 1.2 (Mor. 618f) but not in a way that demonstrates his presence; nor does his mention in Question 2.1 at Patras (Mor. 632a) imply his presence.

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γραμματικός Apollophanes in Question 5.10 may be one of the unnamed γραμματικοί τινες in Questions 5.8–9 Fuhrmann believed that Question 5.10, hosted by Florus, is to be taken as a continuation of Questions 5.8 and 9, hosted by Plutarch in Chaeronea, and hence that Florus ‘vécut un temps a Chéronée . . . où, dès lors, nous devons placer, sans doute, le “banquet” de la septième question, et aussi les autres prétendus “banquets” offerts par l’illustre romain, voire la plupart des autres auxquels il est censé avoir assisté’.⁵⁶ But Question 5.10 opens ἐζήτει Φλῶρος, ἑστιωμένων ἡμῶν παρ’ αὐτῷ . . . , ‘Florus inquired, when we were being dined in his house’, where I would take the phrase ἑστιωμένων ἡμῶν παρ’ αὐτῷ, ‘when we were being dined in his house’, as prima facie indicating a change of location from that of Question 5.9. In the same way I would take the opening of Question 5.8 ἑστιωμένων ἡμῶν ποτ’ ἐν Χαιρωνείαι, ‘once when we were feasting in Chaeronea’, to signal a change of location from 5.7, which is attached to Florus explicitly at 680c by the phrase ὁ δ’ ἑστιῶν ἡμᾶς Μέστριος Φλῶρος (‘Mestrius Florus, who was our host’). So, the sequence is: Question 5.7 a banquet chez Florus; Questions 5.8–9 a banquet in Chaeronea; Question 5.10 a banquet chez Florus. If this interpretation is correct, Questions 5.7 and 10 do nothing to represent Florus as having a house in Chaeronea—they tell us that Florus hosted a party, but not where—and Fuhrmann’s assumption that other parties offered by Florus took place there becomes questionable. The case for imagining Question 5.10 as set rather in Athens is stated above. I am inclined to think Florus had two houses in Greece, one in Athens (even if for this there is no explicit evidence in Sympotic Questions) and one in Thermopylae, forty-five Roman miles from Chaeronea (a journey of eight hours, or less in a horse-drawn carriage), where in Question 8.10 Plutarch represents himself as visiting him with Autobulus and other sons, and from where he could readily visit Chaeronea to be hosted by Plutarch. Elite Romans much preferred to have sea-side villas with a nice view of the sea.⁵⁷ For me, then, Florus is represented as an occasional visitor to Chaeronea, not as a resident.⁵⁸ He is at symposia probably set in Chaeronea and probably hosted by Plutarch for Questions 8.1–2 (a celebration of Plato’s birthday); perhaps also for Question 7.2, though its setting might be Delphi.⁵⁹ Where he hosted Questions 1.9, 3.3–5, and 5.7 is quite unclear: Chaeronea cannot be excluded, but nor can Thermopylae or Athens, where I have suggested Florus hosts the book-ending Questions 5.10 and 7.1. Plutarch’s grander, and younger, Roman friend to whom he dedicated both Sympotic Questions and the Parallel Lives (and the essay De profectu in virtute),

⁵⁶ Fuhrmann 1978: 53. ⁵⁷ Cf. Plin. Ep. 2.17.5, Longus 4.3.1 with Bowie 2019: 262. ⁵⁸ Contra Teodorsson 1989 (= vol. 1): 37 on 1.9 = Mor. 612e: ‘later Florus spent a long time in Greece and probably lived at Chaeronea. All but one (VIII 10) of the talks in which Florus participates seem to take place there’. ⁵⁹ So Nikolaidis 2017: 270.

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makes only one virtually certain appearance in Chaeronea—in Question 4.3, when he has come there for Autobulus’ wedding (666d). In Question 2.3 he is the host: Nikolaidis (2017: 270) assigned this party to Chaeronea, but only one member of Plutarch’s family is present, a γαμβρός, (?) ‘son-in-law’, Firmus, who seems likely to be the Delphic archon T. Calavius Firmus:⁶⁰ so a Delphic location should also be considered, and the presence of Sextius Sulla might rather point to Athens or Rome.⁶¹ It is certainly in Athens that Senecio hosts the work’s very first party, Question 1.1, and that he is present at one hosted by Boethus the Epicurean, Question 5.1—note σοῦ παρόντος, ‘when you were present’, at 673c. At Patras he hosts Question 2.1, and probably at Rome Question 1.5. A reader is left with the impression that when in Greece Sosius Senecio is most likely to be found in Athens. The Chaeronea depicted, then, is one where intellectual Greek friends are quite often invited by Plutarch to banquets—and, one imagines, to stay for some days— and that Mestrius Florus might come from time to time, whether from his house at Thermopylae or possibly from one in Athens. Senecio is present with certainty in Chaeronea only for a special occasion, the wedding of Plutarch’s son Autobulus. That said, Plutarch goes to some lengths to create a tableau from which a reader might come away with the impression that Chaeronea is a lively centre of intellectual conversations meriting comparison with Delphi, Athens, and Rome, and that his local circle of educated friends and relations, afforced by visitors, provided him with satisfying intellectual exchanges in his own city. The many Questions set in Chaeronea put that small city on the same level as Athens, and their transposition to Chaeronea of the fictional philosophical dialogue to which Plato had repeatedly given Athenian settings invites readers to see it as recreating the philosophical excitement of fifth- and fourth-century Athens. By setting these symposia in Chaeronea Plutarch elevates his friends and their conversations to a level comparable to that of Athenian parties described in his epidemiae by Ion of Chios (an author much cited by Plutarch) and above all of those described by Plato and Xenophon. Thus in the programmatic Question 1.1, set in Athens, Plato’s and Xenophon’s Symposia are explicitly mentioned (1.1.3 = Mor. 613d), and as Klotz has argued ‘it is tempting to see the first question of the Table Talk as a microcosm of Plato’s Symposium’.⁶² Xenophon’s Symposium is again referred to in the preface to Book 2 (Mor. 629c) and in Question 3.6, Plato’s at Questions 3.1 = Mor. 645f and 7.7 = Mor. 710b–d; the prefatory letter to Book 6 refers to Ion of Chios and to Plato’s and Xenophon’s Symposia (Mor. 686b–d). A related strategy is evident in the way Chaeronea plays an equipollent role alongside the top cities of Achaea. With the exception of Book 6, perhaps wholly ⁶⁰ FdD iii 4.111, cf. Puech 1992: 4850. ⁶¹ Cf. Puech 1992: 4878–79. ⁶² Klotz 2011: 171, and 167–71 for the importance of Pl. Symp. for Plutarch’s Sympotic Questions overall.

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Chaeronean, Chaeronea is embedded in sequences of more illustrious locations. Book 5 is a good example. Question 5.1 is set in Athens, Question 5.2 in Delphi, Question 5.3 in Corinth, during the Isthmia. Although Question 5.4 is not explicitly anchored in any setting it could be imagined to be in Chaeronea,⁶³ while Question 5.5 is a party thrown after Plutarch’s return from Alexandria, and his grandfather’s presence very probably indicates that its setting is Chaeronea; Question 5.6 continues the discussion of Question 5.5. After a banquet at the house of Mestrius Florus, 5.7, suggested above more probably to be in Athens or Thermopylae than in Chaeronea, there follows in Question 5.8 the banquet set in Chaeronea and continued in Question 5.9. The book concludes (Question 5.10) with a banquet chez Mestrius Florus, suggested above to be set in Athens. Chaeronea thus rubs shoulders with Athens, Corinth, and Delphi, just as Plutarch’s Chaeronean family and friends rub shoulders with his distinguished Roman friends Mestrius Florus and Sosius Senecio.⁶⁴

Public Entertainment We should presume that Plutarch attended some of the performances for which the still-standing theatre in Chaeronea was used—perhaps occasionally dramatic, perhaps more often by visiting musicians, poets, and sophists—but he never mentions this, and seems to suggest that whereas his younger sons lingered in the theatre listening to ἀκροάματα he himself either did not linger or did not attend on that occasion at all (Mor. 725f). Nor does it seem that Chaeronea had its own athletic or musical competition. This may partly have been because there were several well-established and internationally known ἀγῶνες γυμνικοί and/or μουσικοί accessibly near to Chaeronea. Thus, at Coronea there were the Pamboeotia, a federal festival held in the precinct of the ancient temple of Athena Itonia.⁶⁵ That men from Chaeronea might be involved in its administration seems to be shown by SEG 38.380, an account of naopoioi from early imperial Chaeronea, whose secretary is a Nicarchus son of Homoloïchus of Chaeronea, very probably an ancestor of Plutarch,⁶⁶ though no Chaeronean appears among the almost exclusively local victors of IG vii 2781. At Chalcis there were Ῥωμαῖα (cf. SEG 38.179), at Plataea the Ἐλευθέρια going back to the year 479 , at Lebadea the even older Τροοφώνια (cf. SEG 36.258), and at Thebes the Ἐλευσίνια

⁶³ So Nikolaidis 2017: 270. ⁶⁴ I am grateful to Lucia Athanassaki for pointing out this possible strategy and suggesting several details to support it. ⁶⁵ Cf. IG vii 2871, a victor-list of the first century  and 2711, a document of  37, and the party at Question 2.4 that celebrates the Pythian victory of Sosicles of Coronea in a poetry competition. ⁶⁶ ἀπολογία γραμματέως τῶν ναοποιῶν Νικάρχου τοῦ Ὁμολωΐχου Χ̣αιρωνέω̣ς̣. For the stone’s attribution to Chaeronea see Knoepfler 1988: 263–94 and discussion in SEG 38.380.

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(SEG 13.310). We also know from his On Desire (Ἐρωτικός/Amatorius) that the Thespian sanctuary of the Muses at the foot of Helicon, where the dialogue is narrated by his son Autobulus as having taken place, was somewhere that Plutarch could visit, as, we are told, he had done with his bride Timoxena, to make a sacrifice to Eros during a penteteric celebration of the Erotidia. Presumably Plutarch might have come both for the Erotidia and for the better attested Museia, engaging—as during the visit for the Erotidia recounted in the Amatorius—in philosophical conversation in palaestrae between events (Amatorius 2 = Mor. 749c).⁶⁷ It was from Thespiae, imperial Boeotia’s most important city, that his young friend Philinus came, the Philinus who set up a statue at Chaeronea honouring Plutarch with the following inscription on its base:⁶⁸ Φιλεῖνος Πλού|ταρχον τὸν εὐ[ε]|ργέτην θεοῖς |[ἀ]νέθηκεν Philinus dedicated his benefactor Plutarch to the gods.

But most famous of all, and most likely to have been attended by Plutarch, were the Pythia at Delphi, during which four of his Sympotic Questions are set: 2.4 and 5 (the first of these celebrating a poetic victory at the Pythia by Sosicles of Coronea), 5.2 and 7.5.⁶⁹

Conclusions Plutarch clearly identified himself as a Chaeronean, and despite spending much of his time in Athens and Delphi, and on occasion travelling further afield, westwards to Rome and northern Italy or eastwards to provincia Asia and (perhaps only in his youth) Alexandria, he attached considerable importance to his continued involvement with his city’s administration and with the social life of its elite.⁷⁰ Some of the

⁶⁷ As Lucia Athanassaki points out to me, this image of philosophizing in palaestrae may be offered partly to recall Plutarch’s philosophical idol, Plato, but it cannot have been unusual in imperial Greek cities either. For the Museia see Knoepfler 1996, Robinson 2012, and for the epigraphic record Roesch 2007–2009. For Thespiae in the first century  cf. Jones 1970: esp. 246–49; for the Erotidia see Geiger in this volume. ⁶⁸ IG vii 3422 = Syll.³ 843b; for Philinus’ numerous appearances in the Moralia and his friendship with Plutarch see Ziegler (1964: cols 44–45), Puech (1992: 4879–83); for his Thespian family and the importance of Thespiae in the period Jones 1970: 230–35, 246–49. ⁶⁹ For the Pythia see Stadter in this volume, Chapter 2, pp. 49, 53. For Sosicles cf. Quaest. conv. 1.2 and 5.4: item 57 in the Lamprias Catalogue registered as Σωσικλῆς, βιβλία β 0 seems to me more likely to be a two-book collection of Sosicles’ poems that had found its way into Plutarch’s library than a work of Plutarch entitled Sosicles. ⁷⁰ He will have had little to do with Chaeroneans who were not among the elite, even πεπαιδευμένοι like the M. Mettius Epaphroditus, of servile birth but successful as a γραμματικός in Rome between the reigns of Nero and Nerva (i.e. an older contemporary of Plutarch), cf. Suda ε 2004 s.v. Ἐπαφρόδιτος and Bowie 2021: 22–23: it is no surprise that Epaphroditus does not appear in Plutarch’s writings.

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details of Chaeronea’s history mentioned above are also known from other texts, but many are not, and even though he is no Pausanias, Plutarch would have been pleased that his readers learned them from him and might be grateful for his autopsy—just as he may well also have been pleased (though never saying so in so many words) that after centuries of relative obscurity his pan-Hellenic profile had put Chaeronea, hitherto associated in the Greek imaginaire only with battles, on the pan-Hellenic cultural map alongside the great cities so prominent in his Lives, Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. I have argued that a subtle but compelling instrument for giving Chaeronea so high a profile was the major work he composed in his later years, the Sympotic Questions, whose careful interlacing of banquets presented as certainly or probably set in Chaeronea with others located in Athens, Delphi, Corinth, and Rome has succeeded in inducing readers to accord it a comparable intellectual life. Unlike some writers of his age—e.g. Arrian of Nicomedia or Telephus of Pergamum⁷¹—Plutarch the philosopher did not set himself the task of writing a local history, but the Sympotic Questions is subtle and effective tribute to his native place. It is far from surprising that he decided to give his last, shortlived child the name of the city’s mythical founder, Chaeron.⁷²

Appendix The places presented by Plutarch as the locations of his Sympotic Questions, with a note of the symposium’s host and its other participants. Places where symposia are explicitly set, or should with great probability be located, are in bold. Place

Host

1.1

Athens

1.2

Probably Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea Probably Rome

Unclear, perhaps Senecio Aristo, cousin of P.’s father Autobulus (cf. De soll. an. 965c); Crato (i.e. γαμβρός 620a) Timon (P.’s brother) P.’s father; Lamprias; Sosicles, 618f; others Timon (P.’s brother) Continues 1.2

1.3 1.4 1.5

Participants other than Plutarch and the host

Perhaps Crato γαμβρός73 ἔν τινι πότῳ suggests a new party: Theon ὁ ἑταῖρος, 620a Sosius Senecio Only Senecio named; P. implicitly there

⁷¹ For Arrian’s Bithyni(a)ca see Photius Codex 93; for Telephus’ work on Pergamum Suda τ 495 s.v. Τήλεφος. ⁷² Consolatio ad uxorem 4 = Mor. 609d4 (Χάρων MSS; Χαίρων Xylander); for the founder see Sull. 17.4, discussed p. 29. The name is attested at Lebadea (IG vii 3160) and Orchomenus (SEG 30.448C) but not yet at Chaeronea, though there Charondas is found several times (IG vii 3377, 3379, 3408). ⁷³ Himself a physician, cf. 4.4 (Mor. 669c).

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Place

Host

Participants other than Plutarch and the host

Perhaps Plutarch

Thespian Philinus 623e points to Boeotia ἐζητεῖτο 625 suggests new party: no names Continues 1.7: Lamprias; others

1.10

Perhaps Chaeronea Perhaps Chaeronea Perhaps Chaeronea Unclear: Themistocles may suggest Athens Athens

Philopappus

2.1 2.2

Patras Eleusis

Sosius Senecio Glaucias ὁ ῥητωρ

2.3

Athens, Delphi, or Chaeronea74

Sosius Senecio

2.4

Delphi

Plutarch

2.5 2.6

Delphi Chaeronea or Tithora77 Unclear

Plutarch Soclarus (of Tithora)78

Probably Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea Chaeronea

Perhaps Plutarch

1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9

2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Athens Athens Unclear: perhaps Athens Unclear: perhaps Athens

Perhaps Plutarch Perhaps Plutarch Mestrius Florus

Perhaps Plutarch

Perhaps Plutarch Plutarch as ἄρχων Erato ὁ ἁρμονικός Erato ὁ ἁρμονικός Florus (προύβαλεν 650a) Florus

Theon γραμματικός; Themistocles. a Stoic (Ammonius’ pupil with P., Them. 32.6) Sarapion’s victory party, 93/97 Jones 1971: 27: Milo ἑταῖρος; Marcus γραμματικός (both 628b; Marcus again 9.5); Glaucias ῥήτωρ (628d; again 2.2, 7.9, 9.12) P. and Senecio à deux Lamprias; Xenocles, Epicurean from Delphi γαμβρός Firmus (= ? T. Calavius Firmus, archon at Delphi FdD iii 4.111);75 Sulla; Alexander, an Epicurean76 Victory party for Coronean poet Sosicles (cf. 1.2, 5.4); Lysimachus ἐπιμελητής of Amphictyons; Philinus Continues 2.4 Crato, Philo (?of Hyampolis, where host 4.1) Chaeremonianus of Tralles, cf. Jones 1971: 40 Presence of father hints at Chaeronea? Continues 2.8: γαμβρός Patrocleas (also 5.7, 7.2, De sera, De anima) ὅτε τὴν ἐπώνυμον ἀρχήν marks as different party from 2.9: Hagias (older than in 3.7) Ammonius;79 Erato; Trypho ἰατρός Continues 3.1: Erato again 9.1 etc. Sulla present Continues 3.3; Apollonides τακτικός (cf. De fac. 920f etc); ἰατρός Athryitus of Thasos

⁷⁴ So Nikolaidis 2017: 270, but at 261 n. 18 allowing the possibility of Rome (as suggested by both Fuhrmann and Teodorsson, whom he cites). ⁷⁵ But note the [πυρ]φόρος ἐξ ἀκρο[πόλεως] Licinnius Firmus c. 100 in IG ii² 3563. ⁷⁶ For the problem of identification see Puech 1992: 4833–35: Jones 1972: 265–67 rightly argues against identity with T. Flavius Alexander, sophist of Hypata, proposed by Pouilloux 1967. ⁷⁷ Tithora, Nikolaidis 2017: 270. ⁷⁸ T. Flavius Soclarus of Tithora (FdD iii 3.232 et iv 47, Syll.³ 823, IG ix.1 200), cf. Puech 1992: 4879–83, Nikolaidis 2017: 270: i.e. not L. Mestrius Soclarus of Chaeronea (IG ix.1 61.42) as Ziegler 1951, 1964, Stein in PIR², and Teodorsson 1989 (= vol. 1): 245–46, cf. n. 7. ⁷⁹ Cf. Jones 1966b, Puech 1992: 4835–36.

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Host

Participants other than Plutarch and the host

Unclear: ?Athens Unclear: ? Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea

Florus Unclear

Probably Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea Athens82

Perhaps Plutarch

Continues 3.4; Athryitus Soclarus, Zopyrus Epicurean ἰατρός,80 Olympichus (?= O. of De sera 549b etc.) P.’s father present, perhaps host: μειράκια Aristaenetus of Nicaea, Hagias cf. 2.1081 Continues 3.7

Perhaps Plutarch

Continues 3.8; Aristion (cf. 6.7, 10)

Euthydemus ὁ Σουνιεύς Philo ἰατρός Agemachus (unknown)

4.3 4.4

Hyampolis Elis (perhaps Olympia) Chaeronea Aedepsus

Satyrus; Moschio ἰατρός (in De tuend. san. too) Philinus; Marcio, perhaps an ἰατρός Dorotheus ῥήτωρ

4.5 4.6

Aedepsus Aedepsus

3.5 3.6 3.7

3.8 3.9 3.10 4.1 4.2

Perhaps Plutarch

Plutarch Callistratus σοφιστής (cf. 7.5) Callistratus σοφιστής Callistratus σοφιστής

4.7–10 ONLY TITLES SURVIVE 5.1 Athens 5.2 Delphi (Πύθια) 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7

5.8

Boethus Epicurean (L. Cassius) Petraeus of Hypata, ἀγωνοθέτης85 Corinth (Ἴσθμια) Lucanius ἀρχιερεύς

Unclear: Chaeronea? Chaeronea Chaeronea Perhaps Chaeronea87 or Thermopylae Chaeronea

Unclear Onesicrates ἰατρός Onesicrates ἰατρός Florus

Plutarch?

Senecio; wedding of P.’s son Autobulus Lamprias, (Ti. Claudius) Polycrates of Sicyon (dedicatee of Aratus, Arat. 1.5);83 Symmachus of Nicopolis; Zeno ἰατρός Continues 4.4 Continues 4.5; Symmachus; Moeragenes Ἀθηναῖος.84 Senecio; other Epicureans Others Praxiteles περιηγητής (again 8.4); an unnamed ῥήτωρ present Sosicles ὁ ποιητής; Niceratus of Macedon and Antipater, ἑταῖροι86 Grandfather Lamprias Continues 5.5 Patrocleas (cf. 2.9, 72); Soclarus; Florus’ γαμβρός Gaius (= ?Caesernius, 7.4 & 6)88 Trypho; P.’s grandfather; γραμματικοί τινες

⁸⁰ Teodorsson 1989 compares Zopyrus of Gortyn or Gordion in Scribonius Largus 172. ⁸¹ The same Hagias as in 2.10, but younger (Teodorsson 1989). ⁸² Nikolaidis 2017: 270 suggests Chaeronea or Delphi, taking Euthydemus ὁ Σουνιεύς (as does Teodorsson ad loc.) to be the συνιερεύς of Question 7.2. But see p. 36. ⁸³ Father of the homonymous Helladarch PIR² C969, cf. Puech 1992: 4874. ⁸⁴ Puech 1992: 4861 identifies as Moeragenes of Phyle, chorodidaskalos of Oeneis in archonship of Philopappus, IG ii² 3112. ⁸⁵ Puech 1992: 4867–68 puts ἀγωνοθεσία in 115. Teodorsson has him ἐπιμελητής of Amphictyons 99 and 103 or 103 and 107: both note his involvement with Delphic enhancement at De Pyth. or. 409c. ⁸⁶ Glucker 1978: 265–66 showed that Plutarch also uses ἑταῖροι of pupils. ⁸⁷ So Nikolaidis 2017: 270. ⁸⁸ So Puech 1992: 4842, cf. PIR² C178.

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5.9 5.10

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 7.1 7.2

7.3

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Place

Host

Participants other than Plutarch and the host

Chaeronea Athens or Chaeronea89 or Thermopylae Perhaps Chaeronea Perhaps Chaeronea? Perhaps Chaeronea? Probably Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea Chaeronea Perhaps Chaeronea Probably Chaeronea Athens or Chaeronea Probably Delphi90

Plutarch? Florus

Continues 5.8; P.’s grandfather Apollophanes γραμματικός; Philinus

An ἰατρός 689a

Philo ἰατρός; fellow ἰατροί 687b

An ἰατρός

Continues 6.1

An ἰατρός

Continues 6.2

Plutarch?

An unnamed philological ξένος

Plutarch?

Continues 6.4

Plutarch?

Continues 6.5

Aristio Plutarch as ἄρχων 693f Perhaps Plutarch

Fellow-citizen Niger, a sophist who later died in Gaul, De tuend. san. 131a Soclarus; ἰατρός Cleomenes Others

Aristio

Others

Plutarch or Florus

Protogenes γραμματικός; Nicias ἰατρός

Plutarch or Florus

Florus; Euthydemus, P.’s συνιερεύς (C. Memmius Euthydamus FdD iii.1 466 etc.); Patrocleas γαμβρός; others Alexio ὁ πενθερός

7.4

Probably Chaeronea Rome

7.5

Delphi (Πύθια)

7.6 7.7

Rome Chaeronea

7.8 7.9 7.10

Chaeronea Athens Athens Place

8.1

Probably Chaeronea

Probably Plutarch

Caesernius his γαμβρός (cf. 5.7, 7.6); Lucius his son; Eustrophus of Athens Callistratus ἐπιμελητής of Lamprias Amphictyons 83/491 Florus or Caesernius Plutarch Diogenianus; Philip of Prusias; a Stoic σοφιστής (Jones thinks he is Euphrates) Plutarch Continues 7.7 Nicostratus (of Athens?) Glaucias (as at 1.10, 2.2, 9.12) Nicostratus (of Athens?) Continues 7.9: P.’s brother added Host Participants other than Plutarch and the host Plutarch (Plato’s Florus; Diogenianus of Pergamum; birthday) Tyndares of Sparta92 Florus

⁸⁹ So Nikolaidis 2017: 270. ⁹⁰ So Nikolaidis 2017: 270, suggesting either Plutarch or Florus may be the host. ⁹¹ The year of De def. or. (cf. 410a): cf. Puech 1992: 4842, suggesting he is also the βουλευτής of FdD iii.4 111. ⁹² Diogenianus father of the Diogenianus of De Pyth. or.; for Tyndares see discussion Puech 1992: 4889–91: he is the father of the Zeuxippus of IG v.1 74, 87, 111, 446.

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8.2 8.3

8.4

8.5 8.6 8.7

8.8 8.9 8.10 9.1

’  Place

Host

Participants other than Plutarch and the host

Probably Chaeronea Athens

Plutarch

Continues 8.1: Autobulus added

Ammonius celebrating third στρατηγία (i.e. 81)

Ammonius’ son Thrasyllus;93 Aristodemus of Cyprus; Boethus the Epicurean (cf. 5.1) Protogenes γραμματικός; Praxiteles (περιηγητής, cf. 5.3); Herodes ῥήτωρ;94 Theon’s son Caphisias No participant named

Corinth (Ἴσθμια) (Antonius) Sospis (2nd ἀγωνοθεσία) cf. Corinth viii.3 226 Unclear: Unclear Chaeronea? Chaeronea (ἐν Plutarch? θεάτρῳ 725f) Rome Sextius Sulla, Fundanus’ interlocutor in De coh. ira (cf. 452e) Rome Sextius Sulla Chaeronea or Hyampolis Thermopylae Athens (all of Book 9)

9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

9.6 9.7–11 ONLY TITLES SURVIVE 9.12 9.13 9.14

9.15

Unclear Florus Ammonius στρατηγῶν

Theon’s & P.’s sons; Soclarus; Theon; P.’s brother Lamprias (a familial party) Lucius (Caesernius’ son or the Etruscan of De facie in orbe lunae),95 Philinus Continues 8.7 plus Theon γραμματικός; Empedocles; Nestor of Lepcis (730d) Philo there, so Hyampolis(?); Diogenianus Favorinus; Autobulus; other sons of P. The ephebes’ teachers; Erato singer to lyre Hermeas γεωμέτρης; Protogenes γραμματικός Hermeas; Zopyrio γραμματιστής Hermeas; Zopyrio; Maximus ῥήτωρ Hylas γραμματικός; Sospis ῥήτωρ, Lamprias; Marcus γραμματικός (cf. 1.10) Hylas; Lamprias; Menephylus, a Peripatetic Sospis; Glaucias ῥήτωρ; Protogenes Sospis; Glaucias; Protogenes Erato; Herodes ῥήτωρ (cf. 8.4); Lamprias; Trypho ἰατρός; Menephylus; Dionysius ὁ Μελιτεύς (‘of Melite’) a γεωργός (744f)96 Thrasybulus; Meniscus a παιδοτρίβης is mentioned at 747a97

⁹³ Archon 61, IG ii² 1990, Puech 2002: 4835; cf. M. Annius Thrasyllus ephebe in archonship of Hadrian 112/3 IG ii² 2024, when he was winner of the λαμπάδα and joint winner of the ναυμαχία. ⁹⁴ For the possibility that this is the father of Herodes Atticus see E. L. Bowie 2002: 42–43. ⁹⁵ So Puech 1992: 4879, arguing for the setting of this symposium and of De fac. during a visit by Plutarch to Rome in the reign of Trajan. ⁹⁶ Note the family links of Sospis with the Claudii of Melite, Puech 1992: 4884–85, Kapetanopoulos 1969. Of several attested Dionysii of Melite the father Dionysius of the Dionysius who was γραμματεύς of ephebes in 125/6 (IG ii² 2037.73) is a possible candidate for Ammonius’ guest. Melite is also the deme of the family of Themistocles of Question 1.9. ⁹⁷ Cf. Meniscus παιδοτριβοῦντος c. 50–54, SEG 38.176.

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2 Plutarch and Delphi Philip Stadter

The sanctuary at Delphi in many ways generated Plutarch’s understanding of the world, reaching beyond his deep acquaintance with cities like Athens, Thebes, and Rome. Plutarch’s defining gift as a writer and thinker may be seen as a broadness of vision, opening his eyes to every aspect of human thinking and emotion. Whether moral, protreptic, philosophical, or educational, he scanned them all and penetrated as deeply as any ancient thinker. Fundamental to his all-inclusive vision, even more perhaps than his extensive philosophical and rhetorical training, was his intellectual and moral association with Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi. For this reason, it is essential to recognize the influence of the sanctuary and its multiple meanings for Plutarch. What were Plutarch’s ties to Delphi and to the sanctuary of Apollo that was its glory? We most often think of Plutarch as a Chaeronean, proud of his connection with that crossroads city and ever ready to speak of its history and his connection to Chaeronea’s founder Opheltas. But Plutarch was also certainly a citizen of Delphi, as we know was the case with other priests of Apollo’s sanctuary, and moreover probably traced his heritage also to the Phocian hero Daiphantus, whose life he had written.¹ In this chapter, I would like to touch on four topics: 1) Plutarch’s various roles at Delphi, 2) the presence of history at Delphi, and especially the Roman presence, 3) the divine enigmas of Delphi, and 4) the influence of Delphi on Plutarch.

Plutarch’s Roles at Delphi We know about several Delphic priests of the first century  from manumission records, but this evidence ends in the 90s , just as Plutarch came to prominence. Therefore, we must extrapolate Plutarch’s activity from the known careers of earlier priests. Like them, he would have been a leading citizen of this tiny city. ¹ Citizenship: Lefèvre 2002, no. 150 (= SIG³ 829A,). According to Daux 1943, of the eleven known first-century priests, eight are identified as archons, seven as bouleutes, and five as secretaries. The life of Daiphantus: De mul. vir. 244b. Plutarch’s brother Timon was descended from Daiphantus as well as the Boeotian hero Opheltas (De sera 558a) so presumably Plutarch was too (thus Einarson 1952, 1955), though Ziegler 1954 suggests he was only a half-brother. On the family, cf. Jones 1971: 8–10.

Philip Stadter, Plutarch and Delphi In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0003

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It is probable that he served on Delphi’s council and held the annual archonship, as we know other priests did. We may add that it is likely, as I have discussed elsewhere, that on his various trips to Rome he represented the city before the Flavian emperors. In this period Titus honoured the city by serving as archon, and Domitian paid for the reconstruction of Apollo’s temple, perhaps in part as a result of Plutarch’s efforts on behalf of Delphi.² Moreover, Plutarch served as hieromnemon, that is, as a member of the Amphictyonic council which oversaw the management of the sanctuary, and so was directly involved in the maintenance of the sanctuary, the administration of its funds, and the rules of its organization. He is known to have served as the council’s epimelete, or president, towards the end of his life, and may have held the post earlier as well. While on the Amphictyonic council he would have been involved in the planning and financing for the quadrennial Pythian games, and also in supervising the new construction and other improvements undertaken in the reigns of Domitian and Trajan.³ In addition, as one of the two priests of Apollo from as early as the mid-nineties to his death c.120 , Plutarch oversaw and participated in the rituals associated with the temple: sacrifices, oracular consultations, festivals, dances, and processions. As priest, Plutarch would make regular sacrifices, especially on the occasion of an oracular consultation. On the day Apollo responded to men through his prophetess, the Pythia, questioners would assemble at the temple with their sacrificial victims and their inquiry. Plutarch, if the priest on duty, would see to the preparation of the sacrificial victim, most commonly a goat, but for more important consultations a boar or bull. He would invite a sign of the god’s presence, eliciting a movement from the animal by sprinkling cold water on it, or throwing barley or chickpeas before it. Once the victim moved, it would be ritually killed, and Plutarch would see that choice parts of the victim were set aside for himself as priest.⁴ Then the Pythia would enter the temple, and, inspired by the god, utter the response. Plutarch watched over the whole process. His duties as priest required that he be intimately involved with the worship of the god and the god’s oracular manifestation.⁵ In addition to the attraction represented by the temple and its oracle, the quadrennial Pythian games drew throngs of visitors, both distinguished and common, to Delphi. Most famously, the emperor Nero presented himself as a contestant while visiting Greece in 67 and 68, shortly before his death. Plutarch sets one of his most important dialogues, On the E at Delphi, on this occasion, ² Cf. Stadter 2015: 74–75; and this chapter n. 25. ³ Cf. Stadter 2015: 75–76. ⁴ On the importance of the trembling in indicating the god’s presence, see Ammonius’ comments at De def. or. 435bc. ⁵ Cf. De def. or. 435c, 437c, 438ac, De Pyth. or. 398a, 408c and, on the ὅσιοι Quaest. Graec. 292d. The scene is reconstructed in Roux 1976, 91–118, with figs. 7–8, and 134–35. It is still debated whether priest and prophetes were the same person. Nicander in the mid-first century  is referred to with both titles: Roux argues (56–57) that he was first prophet, then priest; others that the titles indicate different aspects of the same office.

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though, strikingly, he says nothing of Nero’s victories or of the attitude of the spectators to them. The reader is drawn away from the hoopla which we may imagine accompanied the exhibitionist emperor’s appearance and into the quiet philosophical discussion of Plutarch and his friends. During the Pythian games, as well as on other occasions, Plutarch, as a member of the Amphictyonic council, as priest of Apollo, as well as a citizen of Delphi, a wealthy provincial, and a Roman citizen, hosted or attended dinners with friends and visitors. In his various roles he met and even sought out Roman proconsuls, quaestors, and other imperial officials. One can imagine how imperial dignitaries and leading local figures gathered on these occasions to see and be seen, to honour and be honoured, or, as Plutarch would have us believe, simply to enjoy good conversation together, as described in his Table-Talk. Of course, entertaining important people was not a simple matter: Plutarch in one of the discussions in Table-Talk refers to the distress which the arrival of a great man with a large and hungry retinue could cause (Quaest. conv. 708b). Plutarch was one of a circle of friends particularly devoted to the sanctuary. Three of these, Theon, Polycrates, and Petraeus, are memorialized in On the Pythian Oracles, along with the unnamed leader, καθηγεμών, ‘the initiator of this policy, who takes thought and cares for most of these achievements’ (409cd), who I believe was Plutarch himself, although many other names have been suggested.⁶ Other friends included Flavius Soclarus, who held the archonship at Delphi and as epimelete of the Amphictyons was responsible for building ‘from the money of the god’ a house for the Pythia, a library and another building of uncertain purpose,⁷ and Flavius Megalinus, who as epimelete rebuilt ‘the fountain, the aqueduct, and the walls from the income of the god’.⁸ Nor should we forget Plutarch’s brother Lamprias, who apparently also served as Delphic archon.⁹ As a result of their industry and generosity, Delphi prospered. However, it might still be vulnerable to Roman interference or neglect. Plutarch recognized that contacts close to the emperor could be invaluable for the future of the sanctuary and the city, and certainly hoped for support from his ‘friends in high places’ (Prae. ger. reip. 814c), such as Mestrius Florus, the Avidii, and Sosius Senecio. The latter especially was in an excellent position, as a close associate of Trajan, to help Plutarch and Delphi, if so inclined.¹⁰ ⁶ Trans. Russell 1993. Thus also Jones 1966a: 63–65, 72 (= rep. in Scardigli ed. 1995: 100–104) and Swain 1991. Others think of Domitian (Weir 2004: 162–63), or Hadrian (Flacelière 1971), or some unknown figure (Schröder 1990: 15–22; Frazier 2003/2004). ⁷ Cf. Puech 1992: 4879–83; Lefèvre 2002, nos. 146–48 (= SIG³ 823ac). ⁸ Cf. Puech 1998; Lefèvre 2002, no. 141 (= SIG³ 813c). Note that of the sixteen known epimeletes, four (Callistratus, Flavius Soclarus, L. Cassius Petraios, and Lysimachus) are mentioned by Plutarch, though he is silent on his own service in the post. ⁹ Bourguet 1905: 32, SIG³, 868c, if this Lamprias is indeed Plutarch’s brother, rather than a nephew or other relative. ¹⁰ Cf. Jones 1971: 48–49, 51–54, 54–57; Stadter 2015: 34–42, 233. In Stadter 2015: 233 and 73 n. 19, Plutarch’s Roman name should be given as L. Mestrius Ploutarchos, without Florus.

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Plutarch’s dedication of his anecdote collection, Sayings of Kings and Commanders, to the emperor Trajan, if accepted as genuine, may reflect an effort to ingratiate himself with the emperor, though it reveals no direct plea for Delphi. Some high-level contact with the imperial administration is implied by the report that Trajan granted him consular ornamenta (Suda Π 1793 Adler; Jones 1971: 29–30; Stadter 2015: 209). In addition, it is possible that the future emperor Hadrian had occasion to meet Plutarch: he had served as archon at Athens, may have been close to Sosius Senecio, and was said to have considered the younger Avidius Nigrinus as a possible successor, before Nigrinus was executed along with others to remove possible rivals.¹¹ An uncertain report tells us that Hadrian made Plutarch procurator of Greece (ἐπιτροπεύειν Ἑλλάδος ὑπὸ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος κατεστάθη). It is difficult to imagine—always granted that there is some truth in the notice—that this could have been an official position, unless it referred to his role as epimelete of the Amphictyons. Perhaps it was some kind of honorary post, recognizing Plutarch’s distinction.¹² These contacts and honours both reflected the importance of his position at Delphi and the influence he may have been able to use on behalf of the city and its sanctuary of Apollo. Delphi in Plutarch’s day was a pilgrimage spot, a cult centre, and a place to recall Greece’s past. A continuous stream of visitors flowed to the site, eager not only to view the games or consult the oracle but to admire the monuments and the grand temple, as tourists and nostalgic lovers of the Hellenic past. Plutarch mentions the clumps of visitors and the local guides who expounded the history of the place and proffered interpretations of the innumerable inscriptions and dedications (On the Pythian Oracles 395a, 396c).¹³ Plutarch and his friends preferred to shepherd their distinguished visitors around the sanctuary themselves, considering the monuments, recounting stories, and pondering philosophical and religious problems, as illustrated in On the Pythian Oracles and On the Decline of Oracles 410a, 412d. We can imagine Plutarch walking up the sacred way towards the temple, followed by a small group of students and friends, speaking perhaps with a visitor from Asia Minor or Egypt, Britain, or Rome itself, reviewing the history of Greece physically present in the dedications along the way, and considering where this history might lead. For Plutarch, the monuments were much more than a tourist attraction, but an invitation to consider larger issues. As he observed the passage of time and the rise and fall of cities in the monuments of the sanctuary, the question of the role of the god in a man’s life, and in human history, was never far off.

¹¹ Hist. Aug., Hadr. 4.2 (if ‘Sosi Papi’ refers to two people, not one), Hadr. 7.1 (Nigrinus); ILS 308 (Hadrian archon). ¹² Cf. Jones 1971: 34 and n. 44. ¹³ On these guides, cf. Jacquemin 1999, 264–67; see in this volume P. Desideri, Chapter 3, p. 63, and J. Geiger, Chapter 4, p. 76.

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The Presence of History This brings me to my second point, the insistent presence in the sanctuary of the past of Greece, including Rome’s domination during the recent centuries. After flourishing in the archaic and classical periods, over the centuries Delphi had seen declines and revivals as circumstances changed and new rulers assumed power. Delphi was famously a place of memory, a ‘lieu de mémoire’.¹⁴ But what kind of history did it recall? Plutarch and Pausanias, in their tours of the sanctuary, speak chiefly of classical Greek monuments. In On the Pythian Oracles, the company consider the monument of the nauarchs erected by Lysander after Aegospotami (395b), then pause (it seems) at the hemistyle of the Argive kings (396c), the statue of the tyrant Hiero (397e), and the rock of the Sibyl (398c), and remark the bronze palm tree in the Corinthian treasury (399f). They continue to the Acanthian treasury and the place where the spits dedicated by Rhodopis had been placed (400f) and observe the dedications of Mnesiarete (the courtesan also known as Phryne, 401a). On this occasion some of the group are scandalized that the dedications of courtesans were accepted in the sanctuary, but Theon reproaches them for pouncing on these women’s behaviour when ‘you feel no indignation at seeing the god surrounded by the tithes and first-fruits of murder, war, and robbery, and a temple full of booty taken from Greeks’, and cites the inscriptions dedicating the spoil that one set of Greeks took from another (401cd).¹⁵ Theon’s later praise of the oracle and of his own times complements and develops this scathing view of classical Greece, where continuous war among the cities wrought nothing but disaster. Plutarch here chooses to suppress any mention of the monuments of the Persian Wars, when the Greeks fought side by side to defend their freedom and defeat a great empire, although he knew those monuments well and cited them on other occasions.¹⁶ Finally Plutarch and his friends sit on the steps of the temple of Apollo, looking towards the shrine of Earth (Gê, 402c). The monuments Plutarch mentions recalled moments of glory, but also the terrible tragedy of Greeks warring against Greeks. Those fraternal conflicts ended with Rome’s expansion into Greece in the second century . In his Parallel Lives, Plutarch noted especially three moments of Delphic history closely associated with Rome. The first saw Flamininus’ victory and ‘liberation’ of Greece, a dramatic assertion of Roman power, which the conqueror memorialized at Delphi by dedicating his own shield, along with other shields and a gold crown, to the god (Flam. 12.11–12). Next came the defeat of King Perseus and the collapse of Macedonian power. Aemilius Paullus marked Rome’s triumph by erecting directly before the temple a monument originally projected by Perseus ¹⁴ Cf. esp. Jacquemin 1991. ¹⁵ Trans. Russell 1993. ¹⁶ Most famously, the serpent column (De Her. mal. 873c, Them. 20.3).

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for himself. The equestrian statue, high on its pedestal directly in front of the temple of Apollo, was a visible symbol of the new order, and remained there even in Plutarch’s day.¹⁷ The third came with the final consolidation of Roman rule in Greece, when Sulla defeated the army of Mithridates at Chaeronea. To pay his troops, Sulla stripped the most precious dedications from the sanctuary, even the enormous silver jar which was the last remnant of Croesus’ gifts—and the god seemed to acquiesce (Sull. 12.6–8). In this case, the theft of the dedications demonstrated Roman power, which then was confirmed by Sulla’s victory. These dedications, and Sulla’s theft, marked Rome’s dominion over Greece. But we must not forget that the pilgrimage route had a number of more recent dedications and inscriptions, as the French excavations have revealed. Among these there were many signs of Roman presence, including proclamations, laws, honorary decrees, and dedications.¹⁸ On the orthostates of the interior south wall of the pronaos of Apollo’s temple Plutarch could read the decisions of Manius Acilius Glabrio in 190  establishing Delphic boundaries. The decisions were reaffirmed by the Amphictyons in another inscription c. 117 .¹⁹ Augustus early in his reign drastically revised the membership of the Amphictyonic council to give his new foundation of Nicopolis a leading role, guaranteeing Roman domination of the shrine, and no doubt strongly affecting the relation of local families to the sanctuary.²⁰ Complementing this initiative, his wife Livia dedicated a great golden Epsilon which was affixed to the temple, perhaps hanging between the central columns. The Epsilon is found on imperial coins, and became the subject of one of Plutarch’s most thoughtful works, On the E at Delphi.²¹ A number of dedications honour the emperors and members of their family.²² Other inscriptions honour

¹⁷ Aem. 28.4. Livy 45.27.5–28.5 and Polybius 30.10 speak of multiple statue bases and statues, but Plutarch of one, clearly the one of which fragments of the great pedestal which held the equestrian statue remain, with the terse inscription still visible in the Delphi museum, L. Aemilius L. f. inperator de rege Perse/Macedonibusque cepet (SIG³, 652; cf. Colin 1922–30, 29–32; Kähler 1965, 10–11; Jacquemin and Laroche 1982: 207–14; Maass 1996: 54–55; Jacquemin 1999: no. 424). ¹⁸ Jacquemin 1999 has assembled a list of the monumental dedications which helps trace this activity. ¹⁹ For Glabrio’s letter, see Sherk 1969, nos. 1 and 37; Rousset 2002: 250–69. On the affair of c. 117  (previously dated to 125 ), see Sánchez 2001: 408–15; Rousset 2002: 128–42. ²⁰ Cf. Lefèvre 1998: 132–33; Sánchez 2001: 426–28. ²¹ Cf. De E apud Delphos 385f–86a; for the coins see Imhoof-Blumer and Gardner 1887, 15 and plate LXXIV, X.XXII and XXIII, also Flacelière 1974, 3. ²² Dedications (cf. Jacquemin 1995: 150–51): for Tiberius, one by the Delphians, one by the Amphictyons; Gaius or Claudius, by the Amphictyons; for Drusilla, sister of Gaius, as Nea Pythia, between 38 and 41, by the Amphictyons; two for Claudius by the Delphians, in 43 and 46; for Agrippina the younger in 54–55 by the Delphians; for Nero, at the end of 54, by the Amphictyons; for Titus or Domitian by the city of Delphi; for Nerva, by the Delphians; for Trajan (c. 103) by the Amphictyons with the sacred money and another by L. Cassius Petraeus (the friend of Plutarch); for Hadrian, by L. Mestrius Plutarchus (i.e. Plutarch) as epimelete and priest on behalf of the Amphictyons; another for Hadrian by the Delphians.

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two imperial legates.²³ Claudius and Titus accepted nominal positions as archons of the city.²⁴ Nero’s visit occasioned some refurbishment, especially in the theatre, as well as the excitement and confusion of a visit by the imperial athlete and performer. Delphi, like the other Greek cities, received freedom from Nero after his proclamation in Corinth of the liberation of Greece (Flam. 12.13, IG vii 2713). The emperor also seems to have granted Delphi a large sum of money, while stripping it of some five hundred bronze statues, confiscating sacred territory at Cirrha for a military colony (an action soon aborted by Vespasian), and perhaps even violating the sacred oracular cleft in the temple (Paus. 10.7.1, 10.19.1; Cassius Dio 63.14.2). Domitian in 84  restored the temple of Apollo, as he proudly states in the grand inscription on the temple that we can still see in the Delphi Museum: Imp. Caesar Divi Vespasiani f. Domitianus Aug. Germanicus pont. maxim. trib. potest. III p.p. imp. VII cos. X des. XI templum Apollinis sua impensa refecit.²⁵ In addition to his renewal of the temple, Domitian revived the Dodekaïs, the special procession from Athens to the sanctuary, and gave instructions for the regulation of the Pythian games.²⁶ Trajan also interested himself in Delphi, writing from Germany to the proconsul Herennius Saturninus in the last months of 98. The Delphians took care to have the letter beautifully inscribed on an orthostate of the temple, though it only routinely confirmed earlier grants of freedom and autonomy for the city.²⁷ A few years later a grand bilingual inscription was added in the pronaos, recording the decisions of Trajan’s legate Avidius Nigrinus confirming the boundaries of the land of Apollo and of the city.²⁸ These inscriptions, prominently displayed at the entrance of the temple, affirmed the emperor’s care for Delphi. A walk through the sanctuary offered two major lessons in recent Delphic history. First, although Greek dedications and trophies dominated the earlier period of Delphi, the Romans now had been a highly visible presence for some three centuries. Second, Delphi could rise or fall at the whim of an emperor, and it

²³ P. Memmius Regulus, imperial legate, under Claudius; T. Avidius Quietus, proconsul, in 91–92, by the Amphictyons, cf. Jacquemin 1995: 151. ²⁴ Claudius: Mulliez 2001, 301–303, with Rigsby 2004; Titus: Colin 1922 (= FdD iii.4), nos. 34 (= SIG³ 817) and 35. ²⁵ ‘Imperator Caesar, son of the divine Vespasian, Domitian Augustus Germanicus, pontifex maximus, in his third tribunician power, father of his country, imperator for the seventh time, consul for the tenth time, consul designate for the eleventh time, rebuilt the temple of Apollo at his own expense’. Flacelière 1954 (= FdD iii.4), no. 120 (= SIG³, 821, ILS 8905, McCrum and Woodhead 1961, 463a). ²⁶ Cf. Stadter 2015: 75, with references. ²⁷ Plassart 1970 (FdD 3.4) no. 287 and plate VIII; cf. Flacelière 1976: 98–99. ²⁸ Cf. Rousset 2002: 81–83, 91–108, 145–47 and Stadter 2015: 77–80.

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was essential to keep on his good side. While his friend Theon could celebrate the flourishing of the sanctuary, more glorious than ever in the last thousand years (On the Pythian Oracles 409a), Plutarch knew that there was no guarantee of continued prosperity.

The Divine Enigmas of Delphi The god of Delphi spoke to men through oracles and enigmas. As philosopher and priest, Plutarch considered it his duty to ponder and interpret the god’s oracular pronouncements as a means of deepening his understanding of the world and of divine involvement in it. In the practices and history of the shrine, he found many puzzles to stimulate his (and his readers’) curiosity. In On the E at Delphi (385bc) Plutarch writes, ‘The god is no less a philosopher than a prophet. Inquiry and wonder and uncertainty is the beginning of philosophy’. This dialogue in fact concerns the letter E, the enigmatic symbol so visible in Livia’s gift to the god. In the dialogue the speakers offer several possible interpretations of the sign.²⁹ Two deal especially with time. Theon, interpreting the E as εἰ, ‘if ’, speaks of the contingent causal links which connect past, present, and future, which the god admonishes us to remember. The last and most profound argument is advanced by Ammonius, Plutarch’s Platonist teacher, who affirms that the E is a statement of wonder from the awed worshipper: εἶ, ‘You are’, an assertion of the timeless existence of the god (391e–94c). In contrast, man is called to ‘know thyself ’, to remember his mortality and weakness (394c). Ammonius’ words suggest that the divine enigma posed by the E may point to the contrast between man’s perception of time as continual change and the divine understanding of past, present, and future as one. This dialogue thus traces an extraordinary trajectory, from its beginning with the visit of Nero to Delphi, surely one of the most bizarre intrusions of Roman dominance into the life of the sanctuary, to its conclusion propounding the insight that human history must be understood, in so far as possible, from a divine perspective.³⁰ Oracles in Decline (De defectu oraculorum) likewise faces the widespread diminishment of oracular sites in general, and of Delphi in particular, but looks to different solutions: Greece’s shrunken population, or the theory that oracles function through intermediate spirits, daimones, which are mortal and could thus ²⁹ Note that the classical name for epsilon was εἶ (LSJ s.v.). Plutarch himself, in his younger incarnation as a speaker in the dialogue, gives reasons to support its interpretation as the numeral ‘five’, in support of which he offered a dense cloud of numerological lore (387f–91d). ³⁰ Another dialogue, The Delay of Divine Vengeance, at a key moment ambivalently imagines the soul of Nero, who was both a tyrannical matricide and liberator of Greece, as pierced by fiery nails and being readied for living as a viper, once it had eaten its way out of its mother’s womb, but then spared this fate to be reincarnated as an operatic frog (567f): two contrasting (divine?) views of this enigmatic emperor.

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die, or changing exhalations from the earth. Plutarch’s treatment accepts the challenge of change in the oracle—and Greek history—over time but subsumes it in marvellous stories and a striking vision of the afterlife. From the Pindaric opening reference to eagles or swans flying from the ends of the earth to the Delphic navel, through the Herodotean stories of wonders in Egypt, the British Isles, the Ionian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, the dialogue explores suggestions of divine activity and evidence for change. Lamprias’ closing speech explores the interaction between natural and divine causes and stresses the necessity of the proper relation between the two. In On the Pythian Oracles Plutarch’s interlocutors find numerous puzzles arise as they stroll past the different monuments. A more disturbing puzzle for Plutarch’s contemporaries, and the focus of the dialogue, was the fact that the oracle no longer gave responses to momentous matters of war and peace, such as were famously reported in the narratives of Herodotus and Thucydides, but dealt with insignificant personal questions. Moreover, the oracle currently responded in prose rather than verse. This fact ‘especially weakens faith in the oracle, since it appears that either the Pythia does not come close to the place where the divine is, or the spirit has been snuffed out and its power gone’ (On the Pythian Oracles 402c). Plutarch treats this as another Apollonian enigma, requiring careful thought and discussion, but ultimately leading to respect for the wisdom and providence of the god. The changing pattern of the oracles could be taken as a sign of decline, but instead it is a sign of peace. One of the participants in this dialogue, Theon, whose thinking seems close to Plutarch’s view, is enthusiastic: not only does the oracle prosper, as seen by the many new constructions both at Delphi and at its associated sanctuary at Thermopylae, but the world is seeing a new era of quiet and peace. ‘War has ceased; there are no migrations and civil wars, no tyrannies or other troubling diseases demanding desperate cures’—or momentous oracles (On the Pythian Oracles 408b, 409a).

The Influence of Delphi on Plutarch Thus, our interest turns from the enigma of Apollo’s oracular presence to the enigma of history as seen in the dedications. Greek history has not been all glorious, and Roman domination has brought many advantages as well as troubles. What meaning could be drawn from the panorama of the past which Plutarch saw in the course of thoughtful walks through Apollo’s sanctuary? Ammonius in On the E at Delphi (392a–93a) speaks of the constant change in all mortal substance and of our consequent inability to apprehend anything and to hold it fixed. Only the god has true being. The argument goes back to Heraclitus, whom he cites, and lies at the basis of Plato’s distinction of the worlds of becoming and of being. This vision, which sees every event, every object, every emotion as so

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much water slipping through our fingers, to use Ammonius’ image (392b), might seem to render any action meaningless. Instead, both Plato and Plutarch see this fluidity as an opportunity for movement towards god, a chance to achieve some aspect of divinity. Plutarch’s activity as a philosopher, exploring the nature of man and of the divine, and as an educator, sharing his insight with others and especially encouraging them to pursue the goals of virtue and imitation of the divine, found fruitful expression in his historical work, as he used the past both to discover how men have lived and to teach how they should live. In practical terms, this meant for him drawing on the abundant resources of his Hellenic heritage, not only the writings of his master Plato, but the riches of the poets, of other philosophers, and of history. Chaeronea was permeated with history, from the earliest legends down to Sulla’s victory in 88  and his great-grandfather’s forced labour for Antony. But Delphi may have had a more decisive role in shaping Plutarch’s understanding of history and of his own mission, as Paolo Desideri has suggested.³¹ The Pythian dialogues explore at length the divine mystery with relation to time in all its aspects: past, present, and future. Of special interest is the theory of mental functions set out in the speech of Lamprias in Oracles in Decline: we all can perceive and in some sense possess and control events before and after the flowing constant of the present moment. Think of the marvelous work memory does in preserving and safeguarding the past—no, not the past, but the non-existent, since nothing in past is or subsists, but everything comes to be and passes away in a moment! Deeds, words, events—the stream of time bears all away! Yet this capacity of the soul somehow grasps and invests in appearance and being that which no longer exists. (432ab, trans. Russell)

Lamprias balances this mental function of memory with its complement, the ability to imagine the future. And so, as I said, there is no cause for wonder if the soul which can grasp things no longer present can also anticipate much that has not yet happened (εἰ κρατοῦσα τῶν μηκετ᾽ὄντων προλαμβάνει πολλὰ τῶν μηδέπω γεγονότων. (432b, trans. Russell)

Given this natural ability of the mind to range over time, Lamprias goes on to suggest, some persons may have a peculiar sensitivity, and that this may explain the oracular gift of the Pythia. Natural phenomena such as the Delphic exhalations

³¹ Desideri 2012a.

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from the earth must increase the Pythia’s receptivity to the future. Such a natural explanation would not exclude divine action, he argues, since the god, who himself sees past, present, and future, can use natural causes to permit the oracular message according to his own purpose. Nor can the god be forced. Lamprias, himself apparently a participant in the oracular rituals, offers a vivid account of a consultation gone wrong when the priest and his attendants attempted to force a propitious sign before a consultation, when the god had not signalled through the victim that the time was ripe (438ab).³² We know only the fleeting present, but the soul in memory roams in the past, and can also reach out to the future. This faculty in us is weak, Theon asserts in On the Epsilon at Delphi (387b), but the god, in Homer’s words (Il. 1.70), knows ‘what is, and what is to be, and what has been’. In the same dialogue, Ammonius sees the god as eternally present, in contrast to humans, who are contingent and living in a changing world. This sense of history as constantly in flux, but presided over by the divine which is stable, permitted Plutarch both to recognize the tremendous changes which had led to the present Roman Empire and the subordinate position of Greece within it, and to appreciate how the cultural and philosophical heritage of Greece had contributed and could contribute to its own well-being and that of the Roman Empire. Delphi was deeply rooted in the Hellenic past, and for three centuries had been closely bound to Rome as well. But as the seat of Apollo’s oracle, it looked also to the future. The shrine honoured the god’s wisdom and his timeless existence, but also testified to a divine concern for humankind, expressed through oracles, maxims, and enigmas. The oracular centre had gone through difficult years, and apparently had become insignificant in the past century. Now Plutarch believes it has revived. He reads the lesser significance of the oracle as a sign of the prosperity and peace of the times, and the recent building programme as a sign of the sanctuary’s significance. Such renewal pointed also towards the future. The many dedications at Delphi and its rich oracular tradition reminded every visitor of the dynamics of past history, but also posed the question, ‘Where are we going?’ Plutarch, living in constant contact with this historical record, seems to have been led to a fundamental rethinking of the nature of heroism and the role of a civic leader, while looking towards the future: What kind of leaders should be honoured now? How were they to be formed? What would be their achievements? Delphic history demanded a rethinking of political statesmanship at both the local and imperial level: what qualities and attitudes were demanded by Greece’s subordinate state, and by imperial rule? We may think of Plutarch’s Lives of the Caesars as being exploratory: studying the first century of emperors to evaluate ³² Lamprias might have been one of the hosioi who assisted the priest: see De def. or. 437a, πράττομεν, ‘we act’, perhaps including himself among those performing the sacrifice. He also participated in rites at Lebadeia: De def. or. 431d.

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their strengths and weaknesses, their triumphs and follies. In more mature years, coincident with his service as priest of Apollo, Plutarch reached deeper into history for lessons that might help him understand the present and mould the future. Most significantly, in his Parallel Lives he placed Roman and Greek side by side, perhaps influenced by the juxtaposition of such monuments as those of Philopoemen and Flamininus, or of statues of Greek commanders side by side with those of second-century  Roman generals or current emperors. He found Roman history present at Delphi in monuments, inscribed decrees, and political power, and incorporated that history into a larger historical and biographical vision of two cultures, out of phase in time, but each able to offer lessons for the educated reader, one who knew how to learn from the past so as to prepare for the future. Plutarch suggests that we can understand the past as a kind of puzzle or riddle given us by the gods to interpret, similar to the enigmas offered by Delphic maxims or symbols, or the dedications with their associated stories. If we consider Greek and Roman history as manifest at Delphi and attempt to understand the actions of leading men within its constant fluctuations, we gain some idea, Plutarch seems to think, both of behaviour to imitate or avoid and of divine providence working in history. When we study history, we are, so to speak, reading the signs given us by the gods. Such divine signs need a worthy reader to interpret them and to employ the divine wisdom to act for the best. Plutarch attempted through his philosophical, political, and moral essays, and especially through his Parallel Lives, to interpret the signs worthily and convey their wisdom to his contemporaries and to his future readers, hoping to encourage and inspire personal virtue and tranquil civic and imperial government. The god of Delphi would have approved.

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3 Plutarch and the City of Rome in Plutarch’s Own Times Paolo Desideri

Plutarch’s relationship with Rome can be investigated from different points of view: one may ask oneself what opinion Plutarch may possibly have had about the Roman Empire, especially as regards the position of the Greek world within it; or one may be interested in the history of the city’s gradual rise to world domination, as he saw it; or rather one might be curious about the question of Plutarch’s private ties with Roman personalities, or even with the Roman emperors; and so on.¹ In this chapter some of these issues will inevitably be touched upon; but its focus is Plutarch’s interest in the city of Rome itself, with its buildings and monuments, and the features of its daily life, as it might appear to an intelligent and curious Greek politician and traveller of the first to second centuries , eager to penetrate the secret(s) of that city’s extraordinary political success, without however renouncing the right to uphold and proclaim the superiority of Greek cultural values. Given Plutarch’s historiographical (and especially biographical) interests, this approach will provide the opportunity to underline, first of all, an aspect of his working method in the Lives: that is, to appreciate the remarkable sensitivity displayed in his exploitation of monuments or places as instruments of historical knowledge. Unfortunately, Plutarch very seldom tells us whether his information is based on autopsy or on some kind of literary evidence: therefore, we can only examine, among Plutarch’s relevant passages, those in which the first option is much more likely than the second: in other words, a very limited number of cases. This does not mean, in any case, that we agree with John Buckler’s conclusions that ‘for the most part, topography and the monuments serve only as ingredients in his [sc. Plutarch’s] compositions, but not necessarily important ones’, and that ‘autopsy was neither of particular nor central interest to him’.² Convinced as we are of the contrary, we will endeavour to show that, to say the least, close examination of monumental and topographic materials found in the

¹ On the multiple facets of Plutarch’s relationship with Rome see Stadter 2014a. ² Buckler 1992: 4825 and 4829. For a similar assessment of Buckler’s views see Athanassaki, in this volume, Chapter 5, pp. 82, 84, 100. Paolo Desideri, Plutarch and the City of Rome in Plutarch’s Own Times In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0004

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city of Rome allowed Plutarch to develop meaningful observations on the psychology and the political qualities of some of his Roman heroes. In any case, apart from the effects that the direct contact with Rome may have had on the composition of the Roman Lives, a number of passages from his Moralia—in particular from De fortuna Romanorum and Quaestiones Romanae—indicate clearly that, even though he does not bother to emphasize it, Plutarch was actually able to acquire accurate knowledge of the city, or of its central parts at least: as a consequence, his observations even now represent useful evidence for its ancient topography and monuments, as Filippo Coarelli has often reminded us. Finally, in some other, completely random, Plutarchan contexts we can not only find fortuitous references to topographical features of the city, but also watch Plutarch himself moving through its streets and inside its buildings. This is why, in the last section of this chapter, I will also propose some reflections on the social context in which he moved when in Rome. As Konrad Ziegler’s, Christopher Jones’, and ultimately—with exhaustive biographical details—Philip Stadter’s investigations have abundantly shown, in his Roman sojourns, many of which had arisen from political missions on behalf of his homeland Chaeronea or of the Delphic sanctuary, Plutarch had the opportunity of enjoying good, and in some cases friendly, relations with people at the top level of the Roman political and cultural society, while at the same time limiting his—severely restricted— involvement in imperial politics—as regards the Flavian dynasty, at least. But—I want to reiterate my main concern in this chapter—he also took advantage of these trips to explore the city, obtaining from this direct experience (autopsy) maximum profit for his intellectual work—his biographical work, above all. In his time Rome was, after all, the most important city of the civilized world, and a cultured man, like Plutarch, couldn’t afford to ignore its topographical and monumental structure, any more than he could some essential aspects of its everyday life.

Comparing Athens and Rome At the beginning of his Theseus, Plutarch writes that, having completed the Life of Numa, the second king of Rome, he has resolved to go further back to the life of the first, Romulus, in spite of the great documentary difficulties involved in such a project. But—he adds—the very first difficulty he had to face was: which Greek hero could he place alongside the founder of Rome, in order to obtain a pair of heroes that could make sense? And Plutarch’s final choice was Theseus, the founder of Athens, as

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it seemed to me that I must make the founder of lovely and famous (καλῶν καὶ ἀοιδίμων) Athens the counterpart and parallel to the father of invincible and glorious (ἀνικήτου καὶ μεγαλοδόξου) Rome.³

This decision is very interesting, indeed: in a way, it confirms the logic of the Lycurgus—Numa pair, whose parallelism is firstly based on the juxtaposition of two cities of the Greek and the Roman worlds—Sparta and, obviously, Rome—as represented by their greatest legislators. By analogy, in the case of Romulus the founder of Rome, the parallel was to be found among the founders of a Greek city. But, by choosing Theseus, Plutarch replaces Sparta with Athens as the representative of the Greek world: a change which supposes a shift in Plutarch’s interest from the institutional—so to speak, to the cultural and political fields, as also indicated by the adjectives with which the two cities are characterized. What we have here, actually, is a concise specification of the main qualities of the city of Rome, which are defined in contrast to those of Athens: the manifest emphasis is on its strength and military glory, as opposed to Athens’ beauty and cultural prestige.⁴ In Plutarch’s works, two well-known passages may be found which in a way presuppose this juxtaposition: one from the Comparison between Pericles and Fabius, and the other from the Life of Valerius Publicola. In the former Plutarch, implicitly referring to Pericles 13.3, where the Athenian works of art of the great statesman’s period are extolled for their beauty and freshness, comments on the eternal fascination of the Athenian Acropolis, and declares that by the side of the great public works, the temples, and the stately edifices, with which Pericles adorned Athens, all Roman attempts at splendour down to the times of the Caesars, taken together, are not worthy to be considered.⁵

A very harsh judgement on Roman Republican art, indeed! But not even in the Imperial period, apparently, had the gap between Athens and Rome on the artistic level been filled, according to Plutarch. This can be seen in the second passage, from the Valerius Publicola, which calls for a closer examination. At the end of the large section in which the vicissitudes of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline hill are related,⁶ moving from the mention of the construction of the temple in Publicola’s time, Plutarch tells the story of all the destructions and reconstructions of the celebrated building, which was, since its foundation at the end of the sixth

³ Thes. 1.3 (all the translations of Plutarch’s texts are those of the Loeb edition of Plutarch); on this passage see Desideri 2021. ⁴ The phrase ‘fair Rome’ of Mor. 963c is, in my opinion, an idiomatic one (for its context, see p. 70). ⁵ Comp. Per. et Fab. 3.5. ⁶ Publ. 14–15; on that passage see now J. Geiger, in this volume, Chapter 4, p. 75.

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century , the very centre of the official religious life of the Roman community.⁷ The reason why Plutarch decided to dedicate two long chapters of that Life to the story need not detain us now (on this aspect, anyway, I share completely Philip Stadter’s position); what we are interested in is its last part, the one in which Plutarch himself is directly involved—as an eyewitness at least. At the end of this long passage, after mentioning the troubled events in the decade beginning with the ‘year of the four emperors’, 69 , when the building was destroyed twice, Plutarch talks about Domitian’s final reconstruction of what was to become the fourth (after Publicola’s, Sulla’s, and Vespasian’s) temple, observing that it had cost an enormous amount of money; and concludes—implying that he speaks from his own experience: Its pillars are of Pentelic marble, and their thickness was once most happily proportioned to their length; for we saw them at Athens. But when they were recut and shaped at Rome, they did not gain as much in polish as they lost in symmetry and beauty and they now look too slender and thin. However, if anyone who is amazed at the costliness of the Capitol had seen a single colonnade in the palace of Domitian, or a basilica, or a bath, or the apartments for his concubines, then . . . he would have been moved to say to Domitian: ‘This is not pious, nor nobly ambitious that thou art; thou art diseased; thy mania is to build; like the famous Midas, thou desirest that everything become gold and stone at thy touch’. So much, then, on this head.⁸

Apart from Plutarch’s (posthumous) polemics against Domitian—we will go back to that at the end—the above quoted passage gives us the opportunity to better understand Plutarch’s ideas about artistic achievements in the field of architecture, and, above all, about Roman inferiority with respect to Greek (Athenian) accomplishments. Through direct observation of the Capitoline temple, apparently, he had noticed a fundamental flaw in its structure, despite the gigantic costs which had been incurred to embellish it: its columns were too thin as compared with the overall mass of the building, so that the complex lacked harmony and balance. Plutarch pokes fun at the Roman architects, who had received the properly finished columns from Athens, and presumed themselves capable of improving on the Greek work, while actually jeopardizing the general effect of the monument.⁹

⁷ The ideological implications of this section have recently been re-examined by Stadter 2015: 171–73. See also Theander 1950–51: 3, and then briefly Pelling 2010b: 221 (in a different context). ⁸ Publ. 15.4–5. ⁹ See also Pelling 2010b: 221.

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Plutarch as an Autoptic Researcher of Documents for Roman History From the passage of the Publicola quoted above it is clear that Plutarch had very precise knowledge not only of the temple of Jupiter, but of the innermost parts of Domitian’s imperial palace on the Palatine hill as well: this implies, of course, that he had important personal relationships inside the Roman imperial court, and probably with the emperor Domitian himself. Such an achievement cannot be considered to have been particularly easy for an anonymous Greek in Rome. Thus, taking into account that the refurbishment of the Flavian palace was completed in 92 , Christopher Jones supposed fifty years ago that Plutarch had probably been there, sometime after that date, for a public appointment (say a diplomatic mission),¹⁰ and more recently, Philip Stadter has offered an appropriate possible context for that visit: Plutarch could have visited Domitian’s palace during one of his (supposed but probable) Delphic missions to the emperor.¹¹ His negative moral judgement of Domitian, on the other hand, suggests that Plutarch’s recollection of that experience cannot have been written before the tragic end of Domitian; so we can further infer, as regards the chronology of the composition of the pair Solon–Publicola, that it cannot have been composed before 96 . Neither the problems of Plutarch’s biography, however, nor those of the chronology of his Lives, are of particular interest to us now. From what has been said one can at least infer that Plutarch, who was very fond of travelling,¹² had visited Rome, probably on more than one occasion, during the Flavian period—for certain, as we will see, already in Vespasian’s time—and therefore had the opportunity of visiting the city, examining its monuments (occasionally having conversations with the people who lived nearby, or professional guides),¹³ and in this way acquiring a first-hand idea of some aspects of both its history and its contemporary way of life.¹⁴ It is even possible—at least this is John Scheid’s belief¹⁵—that the complex of the Quaestiones Romanae is the result of many long walks Plutarch may have taken through the streets and the buildings of the most central areas of Rome— from the Circus Maximus to the Forum Boarium, from the Forum Romanum to the Capitolium—which stimulated his interest in the city, and encouraged his ¹⁰ Jones 1971: 23; Stadter 2015 [2004]: 74 says that embassies were ‘undoubtedly’ sent to Rome from Delphi when Domitian ascended the imperial throne. ¹¹ See Dem. 2.2 (with Theander 1950–51: 6; Stadter 2002a: 10 and n. 58); more on this passage can be found on p. 64. ¹² On Plutarch’s travels see Ziegler 1965: 27–31; Buckler 1992: 4799–4828, and now J. Geiger, in this volume, Chapter 4, pp. 75–7. ¹³ See J. Geiger, Chapter 4, this volume, p. 75. ¹⁴ On Plutarch’s stays in Rome see Ziegler 1965: 28–31; Buckler 1992: 4821–28; Stadter 2014a: 16. ¹⁵ Scheid 2012b (cf. Boulogne 2002: 100 “la plupart des sujets paraissent fournis par l’expérience même du voyageur qu’est Plutarque, au titre de choses vues”).

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project of revisiting even its earlier history, writing the Lives of the most important heroes of the kingly and early republican periods. There is, after all, a famous passage from the beginning of the Life of Demosthenes which confirms and fills out this perspective: in that passage, Plutarch says that for a historian (like himself), rather than living in a small town, like Chaeronea, it would be better to live in a city which is famous, friendly to the liberal arts, and populous, in order that he may have all sorts of books in plenty, and may by hearsay and inquiry come into possession of all those details which elude writers and are preserved with more conspicuous fidelity in the memory of men.¹⁶

The prevalent opinion among scholars is that—taking into account what he says immediately afterwards about the public duties he has to perform there—with these words Plutarch is alluding to Rome.¹⁷ In the capital of the empire he ‘spent many years’—Philip Stadter conclusively said—‘meeting with close associates of the emperors and probably speaking in embassies before the emperor himself ’;¹⁸ but also, as I would add, gathering in many different ways the information he needed for his (future) historical works, especially, of course, as regards his Roman Lives. In other words, the city of Rome itself, with its streets, buildings, and monuments, became for him a sort of living archive which he could explore and interrogate, sometimes having recourse, for their correct interpretation, to the historical memory of its inhabitants. However, as Carl Theander wrote some decades ago,¹⁹ ‘we can only seldom distinguish the information he obtained from Rome’s inhabitants from his other sources’; and it would be unmethodical to rule out in principle the possibility that his information came from books or any other written sources. As a consequence, in my survey of Plutarchan passages containing references to physical testimonials of the Roman past still visible in contemporary Rome I will limit myself to taking into account solely those recollections which are most likely to be truly eyewitness accounts, that is, either those in which Plutarch says that he has personally seen the places and objects he is speaking about, or those in which he at least gives so many circumstantial details that we can consider it highly probable that he is speaking from personal experience, possibly combined with what he could gather from the locals. Let us now pass, therefore, to a rapid review of the most important passages in which Plutarch is at work in Rome as an out-and-out historian, that is, using the materials that Rome, and only Rome, could afford to a historical researcher who had a special interest in the biographies of great Roman men. Plutarch wrote of the biographers’ need, as compared with historians in the strict sense of the term, to make use of multiple types of evidence in order to achieve their more ¹⁶ Dem. 2.1. ¹⁷ Flacelière and Chambry 1976: 131. ¹⁹ Theander 1950–51: 11–12.

¹⁸ Stadter 2002a: 10–11.

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specifically biographical objectives, not only in the Demosthenes passage that we have just read, but also in another, similarly famous passage of his Nicias.²⁰ In this last passage Plutarch mentions in particular ancient inscriptions, which help—he says—to better understand the hero’s character. In Rome, for example, Plutarch was able to find a document which was truly the best possible testimony for outlining not only Cato the Elder’s main ideas about his duties as a Roman censor, but also the Roman people’s gratitude for his commitment: ‘It appears’—Plutarch says—‘that the people approved of his censorship to an amazing extent. After erecting a statue to his honour in the temple of Health (Ὑγίεια/Salus), they commemorated in the inscription upon it, not the military commands nor the triumph of Cato, but, as the inscription may be translated, the fact that “when the Roman state was tottering to its fall, he was made censor, and by helpful guidance, wise restraints, and sound teachings, restored it again” ’.²¹

We must observe that, as no other extant author writes about this statue and inscription, Plutarch was probably the first to ‘discover’ this monument and use it in a historiographical context; a possibility which, moreover, could be confirmed by the fact that he explicitly mentions his own efforts to give a faithful translation of the inscription into the best possible Greek. This passage may indeed lead us to imagine Plutarch’s stays in Rome as opportunities for documentary research campaigns, in which he could have been aided by his numerous and influential Roman friends;²² but unfortunately, we do not have any specific information to support this assumption. What we do have, however, are some other scattered testimonies of the same type as that previously mentioned (i.e. inscriptions on monuments). The first one that we can quote comes from the beginning of Flamininus. ‘What his (i.e. Flamininus’) outward appearance was may be seen by those who wish it’, Plutarch says, ‘from his bronze statue in Rome. It stands by the side of the great Apollo from Carthage, opposite the Circus, and has upon it an inscription in Greek characters’.²³

In this case, too, we have a statue with an inscription, and Plutarch emphasizes that the statue gives us a sense of the hero’s physical features; and as for the inscription, Plutarch simply says that it was written in Greek letters—which is ²⁰ Nic. 1.5 see Desideri 2012b [1992]: 249; 2012b [1995a], 222. ²¹ Cat. mai. 19.4. ²² For a list of his Roman friends see Ziegler 1965: 66–75; Jones 1971: 48–64; Stadter 2015 [2000]: 233s.; 2014a: 16s. and 2015: 8s. ²³ Flam. 1.1: see LTUR s.v. Statua: T. Quinctius Flamininus: IV, 368 (E. Papi); the importance of Plutarch’s testimony, as regards particularly the placement of the statue, is underlined by Coarelli 1988: 157.

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perhaps the very reason why he decided to mention the monument: it was, evidently, concrete proof of Flamininus’ well-known philhellenism. A third document of this type is Sulla’s funerary monument, mentioned at the end of his Sulla; Plutarch says that it stands in the Campus Martius, and the inscription on it, they say, is one which he wrote for it himself, and the substance of it is, that no friend ever surpassed him in kindness, and no enemy in mischief.²⁴

In this case Plutarch does not claim to give an exact translation of the text of the inscription, but the statement itself that his intention is to provide its substance (κεφάλαιον) indicates, in my opinion, that he had had that inscription before his eyes, and simply decided that it was not worthwhile to report its entire text. In any case, the location itself in which the mention of this monument, and related inscription, is placed—the end of the Life—seems to proclaim Plutarch’s intention to give, in this way, a sort of final, and all the more authoritative as autobiographical, comment on Sulla’s political personality. Statues, nevertheless, can be important historical (and biographical) documents even without inscriptions. As an example, the statue of Iunius Brutus can be adduced, which Plutarch mentions at the beginning of his Brutus as being on the Capitol among those of the kings; in this case, it is the detail of Brutus being represented ‘with a drawn sword in his hand’—which is not recorded in any other source—that suggests an autoptic reconnaissance of this complex of statues.²⁵ Another example of their importance as documents are the many Roman statues representing Romulus’ triumph: in this case Plutarch notes that all these statues, which ‘may be seen in Rome’, are on foot; which proves—he observes—that Dionysius (of Halicarnassus) is wrong when saying that on this occasion ‘Romulus used a chariot’.²⁶ A third, even more interesting example, is the following, which comes from the Life of Fabius Maximus: (Fabius)—Plutarch says—removed the colossal statue of Heracles from Tarentum, and set it up on the Capitol, and near it an equestrian statue of himself, in bronze.²⁷

²⁴ Sull. 38.4; see LTUR s.v. Sepulcrum: L. Cornelius Sulla: IV, 286 (E. La Rocca). ²⁵ Brut. 1.1 (cf. 1.5 e 9.3); the complex is mentioned by other authors: see LTUR s.v. Statuae Regum Romanorum: IV, 368s. (F. Coarelli), but nowhere does the detail of the sword appear. See also Edwards 2003: 47. ²⁶ Rom. 16.8 (cf. Dion. Hal. A.R. 2.34); LTUR s.v. Statua: Romulus Tropaiophoros: IV, 369 (M. Sehlmeyer). ²⁷ Fab. 22.5; LTUR s.v. Equus: Q. Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator: II, 229 (E. Papi). The statue of Heracles remained on the Capitol until 325 , when it was moved to a basilica in Constantinople, and afterwards to the spina of the hippodrome; it was melted down by the Latins in 1204 : LTUR s.v. Statua Colossea: Hercules: IV, 361 (E. Papi).

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The context is Fabius’ dealing with the Tarentine paintings and statues of gods, after the Romans recovered Tarentum, which had been held by Hannibal. The successful Roman general decided to leave them to the Tarentines, but made the above-mentioned exception for the colossal statue of Heracles, which he dared to place on the Capitol, side by side with a completely new statue of himself. Clear proof, Plutarch underlies, of his excessive political ambition (φιλοτιμία): He thus appeared far more eccentric in these matters than Marcellus; nay rather, the mild and human conduct of Marcellus was thus made to seem altogether admirable by contrast, as has been written in his Life.²⁸

In this case, the two-statue system, so to speak, created by Fabius Maximus becomes an important clue to his psychology.

The Topography of Ancient Rome Some more examples can be found, especially in the already-mentioned Lives of the earlier Roman heroes (Romulus, Numa, Valerius Publicola, Coriolanus, Camillus), of what can plausibly be seen as Plutarch’s topographical reconnaissance on the site of Rome, aiming at identifying traces of ancient monuments (and places) in the context of the modern city of his time.²⁹ Particularly interesting is the passage from the Romulus in which Plutarch, writing about the foundation rites of Rome, says: a circular trench was dug around what is now the comitium . . . : they call this trench, as they do the heavens, by the name mundus.³⁰

Even though one may suppose that he took the description of Romulus’ undertaking from the twelfth book of Varro’s Antiquitates rerum humanarum (and even though he probably mixed some things up in interpreting Varro’s passage), there is no reason at all for doubting that he knew well what the comitium really was, and where it was: that is, obviously, in the forum area. The problems, from the topographical point of view, arise from the fact that Plutarch establishes a physical contiguity of the comitium with the mundus, which usually is not placed in the forum, but on the Palatine hill. Coarelli, on the other hand, observes that the ²⁸ Fab. 22.6 (in 22.4 he is defined as φιλοτιμίας ἥττων); for the comparison with Marcellus see Marc. 21. ²⁹ For a list of the more relevant passages see the Appendix, pp. 71–2 (with references to the corresponding LTUR entries); for a similar topic (material in common between Lives of early Romans and Quaestiones Romanae) see Verdegem 2008. ³⁰ Rom. 11.1–2; Ampolo and Manfredini 1988: 298–99.

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mundus’ traditional location ‘non è confermato da nessuna testimonianza antica’: so, the best connoisseur of the topography of ancient Rome states resolutely that ‘il dato topografico fondamentale . . . è quello di Plutarco’, and ‘non è legittimo dubitare di questa precisa affermazione’.³¹ But what is probably the most important piece of evidence pertaining to Rome’s topography in Plutarch’s works comes from the small essay De fortuna Romanorum which, even though included in the Moralia, exhibits a very strong antiquarian, if not historical, approach: it is, in fact, this essay that—in Philip Stadter’s words—‘rivela che Plutarco aveva una sorprendente conoscenza sia di Roma repubblicana che della storia imperiale’, while at the same time ‘propone un’idea del ruolo della fortuna nell’ascesa e nel potere contemporaneo di Roma che si accorda bene con asserzioni che si trovano più tardi nelle Vite Parallele’:³² a particularly evident instance of the simultaneous presence in Plutarch of documentary and ideological interest. As is well known, in De fortuna Romanorum we have, inter alia, a sort of catalogue of the temples of Fortuna which existed in Rome,³³ with topographical details about many of them; and in this case, too, I agree with the opinion of Carl Theander, who said that their mention ‘fundamentally depends on Plutarch’s personal recognition, combined with oral information’, and that it is ‘highly unbelievable that he had found all [Theander’s italics] the dates in literary texts’.³⁴ Three passages give, anyway, a particularly strong impression that Plutarch is depending on his own direct experience. The first is when he says, just at the beginning of the catalogue, that the ‘temples of Fortuna are splendid and ancient, and almost interwoven with the foundations of the city’,³⁵ which seems to imply Plutarch’s ability to observe and distinguish the various layers of construction in the buildings. The second is when he speaks about the location—‘near the river . . . , in the gardens bequeathed by Caesar to the People’—of the temple of Fortuna fortis.³⁶ And here is the third, and most important, passage: Servius Tullius . . . of his own initiative attached himself to Fortune and bound his sovereignty fast to her, with the result that it was even thought that Fortune consorted with him, descending into his chamber through a certain window which they now call Porta Fenestella.³⁷

³¹ LTUR s.v. Mundus: III, 288 (Coarelli); Plutarch’s testimony had already been highly appreciated by Coarelli 1983: 209–26. ³² Stadter 2007: 193; this passage does not appear in the (partial) English translation of the essay in Stadter 2015. ³³ Mor. 322f–323a. See now J. Geiger, in this volume Chapter 4, p. 75. ³⁴ Theander 1950–51:12. ³⁵ Mor. 318e. ³⁶ Mor. 319b. ³⁷ Mor. 322e; see Coarelli 1988: 305; LTUR s.v. ‘Murus Servii Tulli’; Mura repubblicane: Porta Fenestella: III, 327 (Coarelli).

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Porta Fenestella is also mentioned by Plutarch in his Quaestiones Romanae, as the name of one of the gates (sc. of the Servian wall). Here he declares himself sceptical as regards the connection of the gate with Servius Tullius: but, in a way, adding that there is the so-called Chamber of Fortune (Τύχης θάλαμος) close by,³⁸ he confirms it. It is evident, in fact, that he alludes to some room near the gate, where the meetings between the king and the goddess might have taken place: thus Coarelli has raised the possibility that this θάλαμος was part of the great complex of the temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta in the Forum Boarium.³⁹ In this case, too, it is worthwhile recalling Coarelli’s trust in Plutarch’s reliability, which is called into question by the majority of the archaeologists: Coarelli is even confident that the complex still existed in Plutarch’s times,⁴⁰ namely that Plutarch spoke out of personal autopsy (eventually combined with antiquarian information). Scheid, for his part, definitely inserts this quaestio into the itinerary of one of the ‘archaeological’ walks which, in his opinion, Plutarch might have taken in the centre of Rome.⁴¹

Plutarch’s Everyday Life in Rome (and a Conclusion) Additional passages from Plutarch’s Moralia may be briefly commented upon, passages which are important above all as unintentional documents of what must have been the author’s everyday life when he was in Rome, even though the first three of them also give some information about places in the city. In a passage from De curiositate he says that at Rome there are some who take no account of paintings or statues or even, by Heaven, of the beauty of the boys and women for sale, but haunt the monstermarket (τεράτων ἀγορά), examining those who have no calves, or are weaselarmed, or have three eyes, or ostrich-heads, and searching to learn whether there has been born some ‘commingled shape and misformed prodigy’.⁴²

No other ancient source mentions this τεράτων ἀγορά; on the contrary, we have some other testimonies of the ‘Greek market’ which Plutarch mentions in De sollertia animalium, when speaking—here the speaker is actually Aristotimos, one of the dialogue’s characters, but he can almost certainly be considered Plutarch’s ³⁸ Mor. 273b; for Porta Fenestella see also Ovid Fast. 6.569–78. ³⁹ Coarelli (1988: 307–12; LTUR s.v. Fortuna et Mater Matuta, aedes: II, 281) believes that this Τύχης θάλαμος (whose original Latin name, unattested, could have been cubiculum Fortunae) ought to be the ‘grande ambiente coperto a volta che occupa lo spazio compreso tra i due templi’ (sc. of Fortuna and Mater Matuta). ⁴⁰ Coarelli 1988: 306. ⁴¹ Scheid 2012b: 53s. ⁴² Mor. 520c (the reference is to Euripides TGF², fr. 996, also quoted in Thes. 15.2). On this passage see Trentin 2011: 197.

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alter ego⁴³—of ‘a certain barber at Rome [who] had his shop directly opposite the precinct that they [i.e. the Romans] call the market of the Greeks (Ἑλλήνων ἀγοράν)’.⁴⁴ In fact, this place has been convincingly interpreted as the same as that of the Graecostadium, which is attested by the Forma Urbis and in the Regional Catalogues: originally, it ought to have been the place of a (Greek) slave market, situated just behind the Basilica Iulia.⁴⁵ Then, the same De sollertia—and the speaker is still Aristotimos—provides us with Plutarch’s memory of a show involving a dog that took place in the theatre of Marcellus: a show which Plutarch had attended, sitting close enough to the ‘old emperor Vespasian’, also present in the theatre, to be able to observe his reactions.⁴⁶ This is, in fact, indubitable proof of the very high level of Plutarch’s relations with the Roman government at the time. Finally, we have the passage, again from De curiositate, in which Plutarch narrates the episode of Arulenus Rusticus’ refusal to interrupt the lecture by Plutarch (on a philosophical subject, apparently)⁴⁷ that he was attending in Rome, so as to read the message he had suddenly received from the emperor Domitian.⁴⁸ Plutarch specifies that this Rusticus is the famous figure who would later be killed by the same Domitian. This passage is obviously invaluable testimony to Plutarch’s cultural activity as a lecturer in Rome in Domitian’s times, but at the same time it is crucial in defining his ideological and political position. In a way, it confirms the extremely cautious way Plutarch has of behaving towards the Flavians, even after the bloody end of that dynasty. The minimalist, so to speak, explanation of the cause of Rusticus’ killing—Domitian killed him, Plutarch says, ‘through envy at his repute’—is the best testimony to his insensitivity towards the main problem which had troubled the Roman (and in part also the Greek) intellectual society of the Flavian age: that of political freedom. In fact, as we know from Suetonius, Rusticus was killed, in 93 , for writing a eulogy of two of the heroes of the ‘Stoic senatorial opposition’, Paetus Thrasea in the Neronian period and Helvidius Priscus under Vespasian: Rusticus’ murder, Suetonius says, paved the way for the philosophers’ general ban from Rome and Italy.⁴⁹ We are not surprised, at this point, that in his long digression on the Capitoline temple examined above, Plutarch does not recall Helvidius’ political battle—which cost him his life—when he affirmed that it was the Senate, and not the emperor

⁴³ Theander 1950–1: 8; Ziegler 1965: 29. ⁴⁴ Mor. 973bc. ⁴⁵ LTUR s.v. Graecostadium: II, 372 (Coarelli). ⁴⁶ Mor. 973e–974a; this was evidently one of the ‘countless examples of the docility and native capacity of beasts of which fair Rome has provided us a reservoir from which to draw in pails and buckets, as it were, from the imperial spectacles’ (963c). ⁴⁷ See Stadter 2015: 8 (‘while in Rome he taught philosophy’). ⁴⁸ Mor. 522d. ⁴⁹ See Suet. Dom. 10.5: (interemit) Iunium Rusticum, quod Paeti Thraseae et Heluidi Prisci laudes edidisset appellassetque eos sanctissimos uiros; cuius criminis occasione philosophos omnis urbe Italiaque summouit; see also Tac. Agr. 2.1, Cassius Dio 67.13.3 (Xiph. 222, 31). On the Flavian policy towards the intellectuals (and the reactions of the intellectuals), see now Desideri 2017.

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(Vespasian), who had the right to reconstruct the temple.⁵⁰ As Arnaldo Momigliano wrote many years ago (1947), the fact is that ‘Plutarch was relatively indifferent to the two interrelated conflicts [of these times] . . . the conflict between libertas and tyrannical government, and the conflict between political life and good life . . . The conflicts of his age’, Momigliano says with conviction, ‘leave him aside’.⁵¹ It is definitely not very pleasant to conclude our overview of Plutarch’s personal activities in Rome with this episode, which shows that living in Rome, although useful from many points of view, could also prove a risky experience. We do not have any information about Plutarch’s reaction to Domitian’s ban against the philosophers, even though one would expect that, if he had been personally involved in its consequences, he would have somehow let us know: the most plausible explanation for his silence is perhaps that he no longer resided in Rome at the time. Actually, we have no evidence of a later stay in Rome by Plutarch after Domitian’s fall,⁵² in spite of the fact that he (possibly) received the ornamenta consularia from Trajan.⁵³ His experiences in the world capital would have taught him that it was better to give advice to the emperors—which, in his opinion, was one of the major duties of a philosopher—while staying far away from there. The memory of those visits, anyway, and maybe the notes he possibly had taken of them, as well as of the suggestions he had collected during the conversations with his Roman friends, would have been of great help to him when, at the beginning of the Trajanic era, he began to compose his magnum opus, the Parallel Lives. At that time, the monuments he had seen in the streets of the city of Rome (and the documents he had presumably studied in its libraries), together with the impressions and the emotions he had experienced there, would have been a powerful stimulus for his rethinking and reconstructing the lives of the great men of the kingly and republican Roman periods.

Appendix Roman monuments and toponyms in Plutarch’s Lives of the earlier Roman heroes Rom. 3.5 (Cermalus: LTUR I, 262 Coarelli) Rom. 5.5 (Velabrum: LTUR V, 102–108 Guidobaldi—Angelelli) Rom. 11.1 (Comitium: LTUR I, 309–314 Coarelli) Rom. 11.2 (Mundus: LTUR III, 288–89 Coarelli) Rom. 18.7 (Regia: LTUR IV, 189–92 Scott) Rom. 18.7 (Vesta: Aedes: LTUR V, 125–28 Scott) Rom. 19.7 (Comitium: LTUR I, 309–314 Coarelli) ⁵⁰ Tac. Hist. 4.9 and 53; Suet. Vesp. 15. ⁵¹ Momigliano 2012: 147. ⁵³ Stadter 2015 [2004]: 80 n. 58 and 2015: 42.

⁵² Stadter 2014a: 16.

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4 City and Sanctuary in Plutarch Joseph Geiger

As I was travelling from the holy city of Jerusalem to the sacred site of Delphi, my subject chose me, as it were.¹ Our eponymous hero, of course, was a great traveller—πολλῶν δ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω. His travels were probably much more wide-ranging than is reported in his surviving² writings—one is reminded that one incidental remark is our only evidence for a visit to Alexandria,³ a major trip no doubt, and even this notice is not in his important work on Egyptian religion—and though we have no evidence whatsoever, we may guess that on that occasion he also ventured further afield in Egypt. Now, we undertake travel for three reasons—for business, for pleasure (that is, tourism), and with a religious purpose in mind. For my present objective it is of little importance whether I include this last category under the wide umbrella of pilgrimage⁴ or whether I agree with various critics of the term.⁵ In the following I shall use the term ‘pilgrim’ for convenience only when denoting any sort of journey with a religious end in mind. Whatever definitions we adopt, clearly many trips are embarked on with a view to exploiting two, or even all three, of these goals, or having one or two of them at least as an added benefit. This was true of Plutarch too, of course: evidently the main goal of some of his trips was business— private business, that is, the various scholarly tasks he set himself, such as lecturing, philosophical discussions, or availing himself of the greater abundance of books and like-minded persons found in places like Athens, as well as business on behalf of his city⁶ and possibly as ambassador for other entities as well. In some instances pilgrimage is expressly acknowledged, or to put it differently, he appears as both theoros and what may be construed as hiketes,⁷ and in some others tourism

¹ This chapter has largely benefited from the insights and remarks of the editors and the anonymous readers. ² One may guess for some more evidence in such works as Πόλεων εὐεργεσίαι in three books (Lamprias Catalogue 51), and Πόλεων κτίσεις (Lamprias Catalogue 195). ³ Quaest. conv. 5.5.1, 678c. ⁴ For a general typology see e.g. Morinis 1992; Elsner and Rutherford 2005: Introduction, with their reservations. ⁵ Price 2012: 8 n. 36 (posthumous paper), found the label unhelpful outside discussions of Christianity. He was following the lead of Scullion 2005: 111, who termed it ‘misleading’. ⁶ See e.g. the trip of young Plutarch to the proconsul of Achaea, Prae. ger. reip. 816d. ⁷ For the distinction see Naiden 2005. Joseph Geiger, City and Sanctuary in Plutarch In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0005

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seems to have been the main reason,⁸ though of course it has been recognized by some authorities⁹ that the boundaries of the two are ill-defined. And Plutarch’s world was not only a world full of gods, it was a world full of temples, too. Whatever the aim of the trip, temples of the gods, and even shrines of heroes and altars were often the most impressive, and always among the most imposing buildings of an ancient city¹⁰—you could hardly ignore them, even were you so inclined. But that was certainly not Plutarch’s inclination. At Non posse the speaker Aristodemus is no doubt conveying Plutarch’s own views in the following passage:¹¹ No visit delights us more than a visit to a temple; no occasion than a holy day; no act or spectacle than what we see and what we do ourselves in matters that involve the gods, whether we celebrate a ritual or take part in a choral dance or attend a sacrifice or ceremony of initiation.¹² (Mor. 1101e)

Although some important shrines like those at Miletus and Samos were located outside the cities, as a rule a visit to a temple, whether it was the main objective or a bonus, was connected with a stay in a city. No one could do otherwise than venerate the temples—in Athens the Theseum was revered like the Parthenon and the Eleusinium, even though Theseus had been exiled (De exil. 607a). Moreover, to the inquisitive mind of Plutarch these sanctuaries posed innumerable opportunities for scholarly investigation, whether this was an intention from the outset or an issue raised incidentally. Thus sanctuaries, in addition to their pronounced aims, were also places to look at or enquire about. In the following, I will give some instances of Plutarch the learned tourist or the inquisitive man of affairs and will then discuss the specific use he had for sanctuaries as a ‘pilgrim’—a little-noticed aspect of Plutarch’s life—and finally the contrast he found between them and cities. A good instance of an opportunity for encountering a plethora of shrines was the city of Rome, visited by Plutarch more than once, primarily, it seems, on public business,¹³ but certainly not neglecting the extraordinary opportunities for sightseeing.¹⁴ This must have been eye-opening for the citizen of the small town of

⁸ Aedepsus on Euboea, a tourist resort and spa, is the venue of Quaest. conv. 4.4, 667c, though the natural flow of the themes makes it highly likely that the next two conversations took place on the same occasion. ⁹ E.g. Elsner and Rutherford 2005: 4–5. ¹⁰ See e.g. Tomlinson 1992: 17. ¹¹ Cf. Burkert 1996: 13. The anti-Epicurean Non posse and the following Adversus Coloten, where Plutarch is the principal speaker, should be read together. ¹² Translation by Einarson and De Lacy 1967. ¹³ It is not clear for whom were the χρεῖαι πολιτικαί (Demosth. 2.2) in Rome intended. ¹⁴ Plutarch in Rome is discussed, from slightly different angles, by Paolo Desideri in this volume, Chapter 3, pp. 63, 67. I note with satisfaction that there is no clash between our views.

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Chaeronea, and essential to the private business of expanding his, and consequently his readers’ learning. Plutarch was certainly one for multi-tasking! Thus he discusses twice the various shrines to Fortuna dedicated by king Servius Tullius, in Quaestiones Romanae 74 (Mor. 281de) and again in De fortuna Romanorum (Mor. 322f–23a).¹⁵ I shall quickly repeat them in the order of the first text—the question there discussed was why did Servius Tullius build a shrine to Fortuna Brevis.¹⁶ The other shrines mentioned are those to Τύχη Εὔελπις, perhaps only a sacellum, mentioned only by Plutarch, so that the Latin name is anybody’s guess: Fortuna Bonae Spei?, Fortuna Bene Sperans?, Fortuna Bona?, Fortuna Felix?,¹⁷ Fortuna Tutela? Τύχη Ἀποτρόπαιος is also otherwise unknown,¹⁸ Fortuna Obsequens,¹⁹ Fortuna Primigenia,²⁰ Fortuna Virilis,²¹ Ἰδία Τύχη, certainly Fortuna Privata, though the name is not attested,²² Fortuna Respiciens,²³ Fortuna Virgo,²⁴ and, as a curiosity, indeed also not known from other sources, Fowler’s Fortune, or Fortuna Viscata.²⁵ Impressive as Plutarch’s learning is, these shrines of Servius Tullius certainly did not exhaust Plutarch’s acquaintance with temples of Fortuna—thus, e.g. at Mar. 26.3 he mentions the Aedes Fortunae Huiusce diei, dedicated after the battle of Vercelli by Q. Lutatius Catulus. This may have been a rapid look at Plutarch’s studies—I refrain from using the much-abused word ‘research’—when he was preparing an essay, but he was no less inquisitive in learning for its own sake. An excellent example of investigating a temple, its history, and attesting autopsy is to be found in the Life of Publicola (13–15): here we get a complete history of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, from before its consecration, then its destruction by fire, rebuilding by Sulla, destruction again under Vitellius, rebuilding by Vespasian, to its burning down again and rebuilding by Domitian. He adds the remark that he saw the pillars of this last one in Athens, and then again in Rome, where they had been made too slender. This is as learned and as inquisitive a tourist as one may wish, even with a dash of architectural criticism—one imagines that learning the history of the shrine,

¹⁵ For another discussion of these temples see Desideri in this volume, Chapter 3, p. 68. ¹⁶ See LTUR s.v. Fortuna Brevis (J. Aronen): this shrine is not mentioned in De fortuna Romanorum or elsewhere, its site is unknown, and brevis is perhaps only espressione letteraria. See also the extended discussions in Champeaux 1982–87. ¹⁷ See LTUR s.v. Fortuna Τύχη Εὔελπις (J. Aronen). ¹⁸ See LTUR s.v. (J. Aronen): known only from Quaest. Rom. 74; its site is unknown, Coarelli would identify it with Fortuna in the Forum Boiarium; perhaps Fortuna Mala. ¹⁹ See LTUR s.v. (L. Chioffi). ²⁰ See LTUR s.v. (J. Aronen): it does not belong to the Fortunae Tres. ²¹ See LTUR s.v. (F. Coarelli). ²² See LTUR s.v. (J. Aronen). It is not clear how it relates to F. Publica populi Romani. Most recently Siwicki 2020 devotes a major part of his book to the history of the Temple of Jupiter, with a major discussion of the Publicola passage at 193–97. ²³ See LTUR s.v. (L. Anselmino, M. J. Strazzulla). ²⁴ See LTUR s.v. (J. Aronen). ²⁵ See LTUR s.v. (J. Aronen): I don’t know where the term ‘Viscatrix’ comes from; Plutarch uses the term Ἰξευτρία at De fort. Rom. 322f and Ἰξευτηρία at Quaest. Rom. 74, 281b.

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probably making use of the local guides,²⁶ followed on having seen the pillars first at Athens, and then in Rome.²⁷ However, in this instance we also learn that temples may have been major touristic destinations but were far from exclusive as such. Almost in the same breath we are told about Domitian’s palace, basilica, bath, and concubines’ quarters. Nevertheless, in the same Life the author also shows acquaintance with the shrines and colonnades of the Tiber isle and the temple of Vica Pota. In other instances, such as the Delphic dialogues, we learn about guides showing and explaining the sights, and there can be little doubt that much of the information Plutarch displays concerning Rome and elsewhere was derived from such sources. Indeed, it is easy to envisage him as a mirror image of the foreign visitor in De Pythiae oraculis, eager to learn everything about the city and its monuments. And Plutarch is not a dispassionate reporter of facts, reciting without reviewing whatever he encounters; it has been pointed out, for instance, that the sights and monuments of Delphi described by him are those of the classical age, almost without reference to Hellenistic or Roman monuments,²⁸ an attitude that can be demonstrated in his description of other sights as well.²⁹ In this attitude, indeed, Plutarch has been compared to Pausanias,³⁰ and reflects, no less to the point, the practice of Second Sophistic orators in choosing their subjects.³¹ Indeed it has also been observed³² that Plutarch discusses only archaic and Republican sites—the above-mentioned history of the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter may be recorded as an only partial exception—and ignores, for instance, the Imperial fora³³ and the Augustan projects on the Campus Martius: so the Greeks privileged not only some parts of their past, they treated in similar manner the Roman past as well.³⁴ To return to Delphi, one would have thought that this was a place exclusively to be visited for religious reasons, but Plutarch teaches us otherwise. A good example of an erudite tourist in Plutarch is Cleombrotus of Sparta in De defectu oraculorum. We are expressly told that he travelled not on business (οὐ κατ’ ἐμπορίαν) but because he was φιλοθεάμων . . . καὶ φιλομαθής (Mor. 410ab); we are also told that not only Delphi, but the shrine of Amon as well he visited as a tourist, and not as a pilgrim. As for the visitor from the other end of the earth in the dialogue,

²⁶ For guides in general see Jones 2001; some instances of guides will be mentioned in what follows. ²⁷ For another discussion of the history of this temple see Desideri in this volume, Chapter 3, p. 61. ²⁸ For Plutarch and Delphi see Philip Stadter in this volume, Chapter 2, note especially his enumeration and discussion of the various historical monuments pp. 51–54. ²⁹ Cf., e.g. Lucia Athanassaki in this volume, Chapter 5, p. 96: ‘Plutarch’s focus on the city’s (viz. Athens’) classical past, however, allows him to keep silent about its Roman present’. ³⁰ See McInerney 2004. ³¹ See Hamilton 1969: xxii. ³² Scheid 2012a: 210. Scheid 2012b is a somewhat simplified version of the book. ³³ This agrees, with a slight modification, with the observations in Geiger 2005, repeated at Geiger 2008: 197–200. ³⁴ Cf. Geiger 2017.

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Demetrius Grammaticus on his way home to Tarsus from Britain (Mor. 410a),³⁵ his situation is more complicated. We are told (Mor. 419e) that he was undertaking a voyage of enquiry and observation on the emperor’s behalf, that is to say his declared objective was business. As for his visits to Delphi and to the oracle of Mopsus (434d) he clearly enjoyed the pleasures of the tourist, though he may have combined these with the purposes of the man of affairs—and, who knows, may even have displayed the sentiments, and the actions, of the pilgrim. These two interlocutors are indeed a very good example of the various sorts of journeys undertaken, and of the enduring connection in such journeys between city and sanctuary, whatever the main reason for travel. One could add, of course, the above-mentioned foreign visitor in De Pythiae oraculis, a tourist, not a pilgrim (395ab), and one who is φιλοθεάμων and φιλήκοος.³⁶ If temples were monuments to be admired and studied, they could also be put to practical uses as places of quiet contemplation or refined discourse. The setting of the dialogue De sera numinis vindicta is either the temple of Apollo in Delphi or a place next to it, and of course the friends in the dialogue On Love while away their time ‘at the Muses’ (Mor. 748f) as things are happening in the city—certainly many more learned conversations took place in the secluded quiet of temples. But of course the main function of temples was religious. I will not enlarge on Plutarch’s religious activities in his native Chaeronea or in Delphi, some of which are covered by other chapters in this volume, but will refer to some of his visits to various localities that fall under the category of pilgrimage or religious visit, still more often than not in his native Boeotia or adjacent Phocis. The discussion at Table-Talk 4.1, 660d, on ‘Whether a variety of food is more easily digested than one kind alone’ takes place at Hyampolis, near Abae in Phocis; Plutarch expressly acknowledges that the company went there for the festival of the Elaphebolia, a festival sacred to Artemis the huntress. We may also learn from Plutarch’s remarks on the differences between the celebration of the annual Agrionia in Chaeronea and in Orchomenus that he attended the festival also in the latter town³⁷—perhaps actually to learn about these differences. Eusebius preserves two fragments, one of them extremely long, from a work Περὶ τῶν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς Δαιδάλων, On the Festival of the Wooden Images at Plataea, also attested in the Lamprias Catalogue (no. 201). Though nothing in the fragments is expressly helpful for our quest, it can be most plausibly conjectured that the work was in dialogue form and that its venue was on, or near,

³⁵ Demetrius was probably an historical figure, Cleombrotus fictional; see Brenk 1977: 90–91. Brenk characterizes also the not-pilgrim Cleombrotus as ‘devout’. ³⁶ De Pyth. or. 394f; cf. De def. or. 422b, where he describes himself as λιπαρὴς . . . καὶ πρόθυμος ἀκροατής. ³⁷ See Quaest. Graec. 299F and cf. Quaest. Rom. 291a; Quaest. conv. 8 Introd., 716f–17a, and see also Ewen Bowie in this volume, Chapter 1, on the relative paucity of Plutarch’s references to the cults of his native town.

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Mt. Cithaeron. It seems not too fanciful to guess that the dramatic occasion of the dialogue was the festival, and that the dramatis personae were pilgrims discussing religious and mythological issues arising in connection with the celebrations. Needless to say, for Plutarch the Boeotian and Delphic priest such an occurrence was not to be missed—the Lesser Festival took place every seventh year, the Greater only every sixtieth, or at any rate at long intervals occurring, if one was lucky, once in one’s adult lifetime. Since the Lesser Festival was local, and the Greater a general Boeotian one, we may be fairly confident that it was this latter one that Plutarch attended. One imagines that in this case the goals were those of both the pilgrim—one can easily imagine Plutarch at this federal Boeotian event representing his town, on theoria—and the scholarly tourist,³⁸ as indeed they often were and are even today.³⁹ Another sort of trip is that to athletic or musical competitions. We have some examples of Plutarch’s attendance at the various events, always mixing their musical and/or athletic aims with a religious celebration, though we do not know whether Plutarch was present privately or on an official theoria. Next to home, both the discussions in Table-Talk 2.4 and 2.5, and at 5.2 take place at the Pythian Games in Delphi, though it is quite possible that Plutarch would have been in town anyway. Table-Talk 1.10, on ‘Why the chorus of the phyle Aiantis at Athens is never judged last’ is set at a victory celebration of the Dionysia. The frequent visitor to Athens, a source of books and friends, would no doubt use every opportunity to attend the festival—or was attending the festival providing the opportunity for the other activities? Table-Talk 4.2, 664b, ‘Why truffles are thought to be produced by thunder, and why people believe that sleepers are never struck by thunder’, is set at Elis—one may hazard the guess that this was at the time of the Olympic Games.⁴⁰ Two Table-Talks take place in Corinth during the Isthmia (5.3, 675e; 8.4, 723a–24f), and though we can deduce that these were on two different occasions in both of the essays, one of the speakers is Praxiteles the περιηγητής—clearly touristic interests as well religious intentions were mixed with the proper business of learned discussion—or whatever order of preference you wish to maintain. In all these festivities the appropriate shrines and altars were very much at the centre of the stage. But certainly the best example of the contrast between city and sanctuary we encounter is Plutarch’s loveliest, and most ingenious dialogue, on the loveliest of subjects. Moreover, the setting is an instance of a pilgrimage of the most personal sort undertaken by our author. The narrator of the Amatorius, Plutarch’s son Autobulus provides the setting: his parents came to Thespiae for the festival of ³⁸ See discussion in Schachter 1981: 245–50; Knoepfler 2001. ³⁹ Another instance is the pilgrimage of the Aenianes in Thessaly to Cassiopaea in Epirus, Quaest. Graec. 26. ⁴⁰ Lamprias Catalogue 204, Ὁ πρὸς Δίωνα ῥηθεὶς ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ (cf. no. 227, Διάλεξις πρὸς Δίωνα) seems to attest that a visit to Olympia could also be used for professional activity.

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Eros to sacrifice in order to settle a family dispute. Typically, it seems, Plutarch and his friends used the occasion of the pilgrimage—though they are not there for healing we may nevertheless describe them as hiketai—for learned conversations, taking place in the palaestras, as we are told (Mor. 749c). Now the work itself progresses on two parallel lines, like the Daimonion of Socrates, it is a so-called ‘novellistischer Dialog’:⁴¹ on Helicon—we are not expressly told that we are in the shrine of the Muses, but that the company encamped ‘at the Muses’ (Mor. 749c ἐν ταῖς Μούσαις)—in the dialogue the friends discuss Eros and its various manifestations, while in the novella in Thespiae, the love affair between the beautiful widow Ismenodora and handsome Bacchon, which initiated the discussion in the first place, culminates in the abduction of the youth and eventually in a marriage celebration. The highly artistic texture of the dialogue, weaving the warp of the events in Thespiae with the woof of the conversation at the sanctuary on Helicon into a gaudy design, also highlights the contrast between city and sanctuary. While the shrine provides a place for philosophical reflection and abstract argument, in the city real events, of great importance for the participants, take place. Yet it is the synchronization between the two that endows the dialogue with its special charm. But for the love affair in the city we would not have been led into a conversation on Eros, and only that conversation provides us with the necessary tools to appreciate the story of the rich widow and the handsome young man. Indeed, the sanctuary of Eros in Thespiae is a special example, situated as it is outside the city and providing a refuge of pastoral calm. In a passage from De curiositate Plutarch is explicit about the uses of such sanctuaries: yet nothing is more true than this, that those who make most use of the intellect make fewest calls upon the senses. We observe, for instance, that men have built their sanctuaries of the Muses far from cities and that they have called night kindly (εὐφρόνην) from a belief that its quiet and absence of distraction is greatly conducive to the investigation and solution of the problems in hand.⁴² (Mor. 521d)

One should not lose sight of the differences between temples in cities and rural, pastoral shrines. To return to the Amatorius, not every story in a city closes with a happy ending, nor is the city, especially a big city like Rome, always a happy place. First, indeed, one has to remember the advantages of town, such as described at the beginning of the Life of Demosthenes (1–2), quoting the encomium (of Alcibiades?) according to which the first requisite for happiness is being born in ‘a famous city’ (τὰν πόλιν εὐδόκιμον). But for true happiness, says Plutarch, which ⁴¹ Hirzel 1895: II, 153. ⁴² Translation by Helmbold 1962. On Plutarch’s acquaintance with the temple of the Muses on Helicon see also fr. 82 from his Commentary on Hesiod’s Works and Days.

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depends mostly on character and disposition (ἐν ἤθει καὶ διαθέσει) it is no disadvantage to belong to an obscure and mean city (ἀδόξου καὶ ταπεινῆς πατρίδος). But a writer of history needs a city that is famous, friendly to the liberal arts and populous (εὐδόκιμον καὶ φιλόκαλον καὶ πολυάνθρωπον), to have books and oral information. Other advantages to be enjoyed in the city were admiring paintings (De glor. Ath. 346b-f), watching the pantomime in the theatre,⁴³ or, as he puts it negatively at De curiositate 520c, some do not look at the statues, paintings, and beautiful boys and women who are for sale but prefer the monster market, τῶν τεράτων ἀγοράν.⁴⁴ But the city has its disadvantages, too. Indeed, already in the Amatorius the group of friends had left the noisy town for the quiet of the sanctuary of the Muses on Helicon. From On Solititude, the single surviving fragment of a lost work by Plutarch, preserved by Stobaeus, we possess the following few lines, which certainly must be typical of the tone of the entire composition: This, surely, is the reason why it was in solitary spots that man founded all those shrines of the gods that have been long established from ancient times, above all those of the Muses, of Pan and the Nymphs, and of Apollo and all gods who are our guides in music; to my mind, they kept the blessings of education away from the dreadful and abominable influences of the towns.⁴⁵ (fr. 143, Stob. 4.16.18)

It is as well to be reminded that Plutarch was an older contemporary of Juvenal— in fact it is not to be rejected out of hand that middle-aged Plutarch may have come across, or heard of, the angry young man when in Rome. Be that as it may, Juvenal was surely not alone in representing those longing for the peace and quiet of a sanctuary in the hustle and bustle of the big city.⁴⁶ This must have been particularly true of small-town Plutarch, especially when visiting the great metropoleis of his day, Rome and Alexandria. It was both pleasurable and instructive to admire the numerous shrines in Rome, many of them to gods and goddesses that presumably even the learned Plutarch had never heard about, but the turmoil of a city of a million must have been as disorienting to him as to any resident of a small town. It is not by chance that in the Stobaeus fragment, it is the temples of the Muses, of Pan, and of the Nymphs that the traveller longs for first. The city no doubt has its charms—as long as one can retreat from it to the safety of the sanctuary, in the city or outside it.

⁴³ At De soll. an. 973e–f Aristotimus, no doubt representing Plutarch, is present in the theatre of Marcellus at a pantomime. Cf. also Desideri in this volume, Chapter 3, p. 70. ⁴⁴ See Desideri in this volume, Chapter 3, p. 69, on τῶν τεράτων ἀγοράν. ⁴⁵ Translation Sandbach 1969. ⁴⁶ Sat. III.

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5 Athenian Monumental Architecture, Iconography, and Topography in Plutarch’s De Gloria Atheniensium Lucia Athanassaki

It has long been thought that De gloria Atheniensium is an epideictic oration composed for delivery in Athens. This view is supported by the deictic pronoun ἥδε in the phrase ἡ πόλις ἥδε (345f) which introduces Plutarch’s discussion of Athenian painters and paintings.¹ In what follows I shall explore the rich nexus of overt and covert references to Athenian public buildings and artefacts by means of which Plutarch indicates his geographical co-ordinates and enables his audience to follow his steps through the Athenian Agora. I shall argue that (a) Plutarch makes a witty show of his familiarity with and keen interest in Athenian monumental architecture, iconography, and topography in an epideictic speech that, as it stands at least, is not panegyric, but was composed for an informal occasion like an oration before a small audience in the Agora;² (b) his hyperbolic praise of military deeds must be taken with a grain of salt, because it is cleverly undermined by his actual or imagined localization in the sanctuary of Ares in the old Athenian

¹ ‘Declamatio certe Plutarchea Athenis habita’: Nachstädt, Sieveking, and Titchener 1971 (repr. of 1935 ed.): 121; Jones 1971: 68; Frazier 1990: 165–66; Gallo and Mocci 1992: 7–8; more cautiously Babbitt 1936: 490: ‘we may perhaps infer from the words (345f), “This city has been the mother and kindly nurse of many other arts,” that it was delivered at Athens’. ² My assessment of De gloria chimes with that of Babbitt 1936: 490–91, but it is reached through different considerations and arguments: ‘It is strange that this vigour should be devoted to glorifying the men of arms and vilifying the men of letters, and yet this is precisely what Plutarch attempts to do in this essay. It is true that he lived in an era of profound peace, when the horrors of war were remote, but it is somewhat surprising to find him arguing for this thesis, especially since he shows by incidental statements that he is thoroughly aware of the contributions that Athens has made to literature. We may, then, be justified in the inference that the essay is a tour de force, like other rhetorical discussions which were popular in Plutarch’s day; it does not necessarily represent his own belief ’. The possibility of a panegyric on a big public occasion like the one for which Aelius Aristides composed later his Panathenaic Oration has been tentatively proposed by Frazier 1990: 167: ‘Il n’est pas impensable qu’il ait donné cette conference alors qu’il était déjà célèbre pour quelque grande occasion, comme le fit plus tard Aelius Aristide avec son Panathénaique, mais rien ne permet de l’ affirmer’. The idea of a panegyric was half-formed by Ziegler 1964, see further, pp. 97–98. Lucia Athanassaki, Athenian Monumental Architecture, Iconography, and Topography in Plutarch’s De Gloria Atheniensium In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0006

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Agora;³ and (c) more importantly, De gloria Atheniensium highlights the significance of the polis as physical entity in shaping Plutarch’s subject matter, narrative style and his relationship with the glorious Greek past.⁴ The beginning of the oration is missing.⁵ The preserved part opens with a remark Themistocles made to some generals and continues with a catalogue of war exploits that support the argument that it is men of action who provide the subject matter for men of letters: men of action are therefore indispensable, whereas men of letters are not (ἂν γὰρ ἀνέλῃς τοὺς πράττοντας, οὐχ ἕξεις τοὺς γράφοντας, 345c). Thucydides leads the catalogue of those who depend on men of action such as Pericles, Phormio, Nicias, etc. and the long list concludes with the observation that words are sometimes mirrors of deeds (ἐμφαινομένης διὰ τῶν λόγων τῆς πράξεως ὡς ἐν ἐσόπτρῳ, 345f). The simile of words as mirror of deeds serves as a bridge in the transition from verbal to visual representations of war feats. This city has invented or significantly advanced many arts, Plutarch continues, and begins with Athenian painters and paintings. He spotlights the following:

Euphranor’s Wall Painting of the Battle of Mantinea in the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios After a list of painters and paintings Plutarch gives a detailed account of Euphranor’s representation of the battle of Mantinea in 362 .⁶ The description begins with approval of Euphranor’s inspirational painting (γέγραφε δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐν

³ Cf. Johnson 1972: 74 who put forward the proposition that Plutarch spoke from the rostrum in front of the Stoa of Attalus: ‘If Plutarch stood on the βῆμα to deliver his oration, this concentration of memorials would have been before his eyes as he spoke, for the rostrum stood before the Stoa of Attalos, on the east side of the Panathenaic Way, almost directly across from the Metroon’. The interpretation I offer here is in many ways different from Johnson’s, but I share with him the conviction that Plutarch’s keen interest in and good knowledge of the topography, iconography, and architecture of the Athenian Agora informs De gloria. ⁴ The suggestion that the topography and the monuments of Athens ‘supplied Plutarch with the outline of his argument’ was made by Johnson almost half a century ago (Johnson 1972: 78 and passim). For a similar argument see now Scheid 2012b who demonstrates that topography is the organizing principle of the Quaestiones Romanae; see his conclusions Scheid 2012b, 16–57. For the importance of Plutarch’s familiarity with Roman topography, sculpture and architecture for his biographical project see now Desideri in this volume Chapter 3. Pelling 2017 has drawn attention to the emotional aspect of Plutarch’s ‘hodological’ account of the sanctuary of Delphi. For Plutarch’s references to contemporary Athens see also Frazier 2017. Kavoulaki’s discussion of Plutarch’s representations of fifth-century ritual processions in this volume, Chapter 7, is another demonstration of Plutarch’s keen interest in Athenian topography and architecture. ⁵ For the bad state of preservation of the text see Thiolier 1985: 28–29; Frazier 1990: 159–60 and 183–84. ⁶ For the chronological and thematic confusion of events leading from Leuctra (371) to Mantinea (362) by Plutarch see Thiolier 1985: 71 and Johnson 1972: 101–115, who attributes the confusion to the fact that Plutarch describes Euphranor’s painting.

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Μαντινείᾳ . . . ἱππομαχίαν οὐκ ἀνενθουσιάστως Εὐφράνωρ, 346b) and concludes with praise of the vividness of the representation: τοῦτο τὸ ἔργον Εὐφράνωρ ἔγραψε, καὶ πάρεστιν ὁρᾶν ἐν εἰκόνι τῆς μάχης τὸ σύρρηγμα καὶ τὴν ἀντέρεισιν ἀλκῆς καὶ θυμοῦ καὶ πνεύματος γέμουσαν. (De glor. Ath. 346e) This was the action which Euphranor depicted, and in his portrayal of the battle one may see the clash of conflict and the stout resistance abounding in boldness and courage and spirit.⁷

Despite the merits of the painting, Plutarch expects his audience to give precedence to the deeds over their representations in a statement that has a strong Platonic ring: ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι τῷ ζωγράφῳ κρίσιν προθείητε πρὸς τὸν στρατηγὸν οὐδ᾽ ἀνάσχοισθε τῶν προτιμώντων τὸν πίνακα τοῦ τροπαίου καὶ τὸ μίμημα τῆς ἀληθείας. (De glor. Ath. 346e) But I do not think you would award judgement to the painter in comparison with the general, nor would you bear with those who prefer the picture to the trophy of victory, or the imitation to the actuality.

Euphranor’s painting is also described by Pausanias, who offers important topographical information. The painting decorated one of the walls of the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios in the Agora:⁸ στοὰ δὲ ὄπισθεν ᾠκοδόμηται γραφὰς ἔχουσα θεοὺς τοὺς δώδεκα καλουμένους. ἐπὶ δὲ τῷ τοίχῳ τῷ πέραν Θησεύς ἐστι γεγραμμένος καὶ Δημοκρατία τε καὶ Δῆμος. δηλοῖ δὲ ἡ γραφὴ Θησέα εἶναι τὸν καταστήσαντα Ἀθηναίοις ἐξ ἴσου πολιτεύεσθαι . . . ἐνταῦθά ἐστι γεγραμμένον καὶ τὸ περὶ Μαντίνειαν Ἀθηναίων ἔργον, οἳ βοηθήσοντες Λακεδαιμονίοις ἐπέμφθησαν. συνέγραψαν δὲ ἄλλοι τε καὶ Ξενοφῶν τὸν πάντα πόλεμον . . . ἐν δὲ τῇ γραφῇ τῶν ἱππέων ἐστὶ μάχη, ἐν ᾗ γνωριμώτατοι Γρύλος τε ὁ Ξενοφῶντος ἐν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις καὶ κατὰ τὴν ἵππον τὴν Βοιωτίαν Ἐπαμινώνδας ὁ Θηβαῖος. ταύτας τὰς γραφὰς Εὐφράνωρ ἔγραψεν Ἀθηναίοις καὶ πλησίον ἐποίησεν ἐν τῷ ναῷ τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα Πατρῷον ἐπίκλησιν. (Paus. 1.3.3–4)

⁷ Greek quotations and English translations are taken from Babbitt’s Loeb edition. ⁸ See Palagia 1980: 50–54; Morris 1995: 350; Palagia 2017.

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  ,  A portico is built behind with pictures of the gods called the Twelve. On the wall opposite are painted Theseus, Democracy and Demos. The picture represents Theseus as the one who gave the Athenians political equality . . . . Here is a picture of the exploit, near Mantinea, of the Athenians who were sent to help the Lacedaemonians. Xenophon among others has written a history of the whole war . . . In the picture is a cavalry battle, in which the most famous men are, among the Athenians, Grylus the son of Xenophon, and in the Boeotian cavalry, Epaminondas the Theban. These pictures were painted for the Athenians by Euphranor, and he also wrought the Apollo surnamed Patroos (Paternal) in the temple hard by.

The Stoa is dated to 430–420 , but Zeus’ epithet Eleutherios would encourage the association of this building with the altar of Zeus at Plataea which was dedicated by the Greeks after their victory over the Persians.⁹ Unlike Pausanias, Plutarch makes no mention of the building that hosted Euphranor’s painting.¹⁰ As we shall see in moment, if Plutarch delivered this oration in the Agora, he had no need to mention the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, for all he had to do was a gesture pointing in its direction;¹¹ but even if he never delivered the oration, it is natural to assume that he expected Athenians and those visitors familiar with the city to know the location of the famous painting. Moreover, Plutarch mentions the altar and the festival in honour of Zeus Eleutherios at Plataea in the Life of Aristides.¹² The thrust of his argumentation in De gloria suggests that he must have associated the Athenian Stoa with the Plataean sanctuary and with the Persian wars, despite the lack of overt reference to the Stoa.

The Wall Painting of the Battle of Marathon in the Stoa Poikile Immediately after the completion of the description of Euphranor’s vivid representation of the battle of Mantinea, Plutarch cites the famous Simonidean definition of painting as silent poetry and of poetry as speaking painting and states that the media differ in the material and manner of imitation, but they have the same aim, namely the vivid representation of emotions and characters.¹³ Thucydides springs to Plutarch’s mind: ⁹ Cf. Camp II 2001: 104. ¹⁰ I take it to be an oversight that Buckler 1992: 4820 states that the painting of Euphranor was in the Stoa Poikile. I also disagree with Buckler’s subsequent conclusion, Buckler 1992: 4820: ‘In short, topography, monuments, and arts of Athens were not particularly important sources of information for him, and the example of the later Nikias proves that he could be quite careless in interpreting what he had seen’. ¹¹ Boegehold 1999 offers a number of examples illustrating the importance of gestures. ¹² Plut. Arist.19 mentions the sacrifices the Plataeans offered to Zeus Eleutherios. For the festival Eleutheria see Wallace 2011. ¹³ For other Plutarchan variants of this dictum and the issue of attribution see Thiolier 1985: 73–74.

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πλὴν ὁ Σιμωνίδης τὴν μὲν ζωγραφίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει, τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσαν. ἃς γὰρ οἱ ζωγράφοι πράξεις ὡς γιγνομένας δεικνύουσι, ταύτας οἱ λόγοι γεγενημένας διηγοῦνται καὶ συγγράφουσιν. εἰ δ᾽ οἱ μὲν χρώμασι καὶ σχήμασιν οἱ δ᾽ ὀνόμασι καὶ λέξεσι ταὐτὰ δηλοῦσιν, ὕλῃ καὶ τρόποις μιμήσεως διαφέρουσι, τέλος δ᾽ἀμφοτέροις ἓν ὑπόκειται, καὶ τῶν ἱστορικῶν κράτιστος ὁ τὴν διήγησιν ὥσπερ γραφὴν πάθεσι καὶ προσώποις εἰδωλοποιήσας. ὁ δ᾽ οὗν Θουκυδίδης ἀεὶ τῷ λόγῳ πρὸς ταύτην ἁμιλλᾶται τὴν ἐνάργειαν, οἷον θεατὴν ποιῆσαι τὸν ἀκροατὴν καὶ τὰ γιγνόμενα περὶ τοὺς ὁρῶντας ἐκπληκτικὰ καὶ ταρακτικὰ πάθη τοῖς ἀναγινώσκουσιν ἐνεργάσασθαι λιχνευόμενος. (De glor. Ath. 346f‒347a) Simonides, however, calls painting inarticulate poetry and poetry articulate painting: for the actions which painters portray as taking place at the moment literature narrates and records after they have taken place. Even though artists with colour and design, and writers with words and phrases, represent the same subjects, they differ in the material and the manner of their imitation; and yet the underlying end and aim of both is one and the same; the most effective historian is he who, by a vivid representation of emotions and characters, makes his narration like a painting. Assuredly Thucydides is always striving for this vividness in his writing, since it is his desire to make the reader a spectator, as it were, and to produce vividly in the minds of those who peruse his narrative the emotions of amazement and consternation which were experienced by those who beheld them.

Plutarch illustrates his point citing several examples from Thucydides’ Histories. Plutarch’s account, now lacunose, concludes with the observation that if it is not worthwhile to compare painters with generals, one should not put historians in the picture either. At this point Plutarch offers yet another reiteration of the superiority of deeds over their representations by visual and verbal media: the example of the soldier who ran to Athens, announced the victory at Marathon and died. What makes the difference is that the runner was a participant in the battle. If, however, a mere spectator had announced the victory, it would be outrageous for such a messenger to consider himself worthy of such honours as were due to Cynegirus, Callimachus, and Polyzelus: τὴν τοίνυν ἐν Μαραθῶνι μάχην ἀπήγγειλεν, ὡς μὲν Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικὸς ἱστορεῖ, Θέρσιππος ὁ Ἐροιεύς: οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι λέγουσιν Εὐκλέα, δραμόντα σὺν τοῖς ὅπλοις θερμὸν ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης καὶ ταῖς θύραις ἐμπεσόντα τῶν πρώτων, τοσοῦτο μόνον εἰπεῖν, ‘χαίρετε: νικῶμεν’, εἶτ᾽ εὐθὺς ἐκπνεῦσαι. πλὴν οὗτος μὲν αὐτάγγελος ἧκε τῆς μάχης ἀγωνιστὴς γενόμενος. φέρε δ᾽ εἴ τις ὑπὲρ λόφου τινὸς ἢ σκοπῆς αἰπόλων ἢ βοτήρων τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἄπωθεν γενόμενος θεατής, καὶ κατιδὼν τὸ

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  ,  μέγα καὶ παντὸς λόγου μεῖζον ἐκεῖνο ἔργον ἧκεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἄτρωτος ἄγγελος καὶ ἀναίμακτος, εἶτ᾽ ἠξίου τιμὰς ἔχειν ἃς Κυνέγειρος ἔσχεν, ἃς Καλλίμαχος, ἃς Πολύζηλος, ὅτι τὰς τούτων ἀριστείας καὶ τραύματα καὶ θανάτους ἀπήγγειλεν: ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐδόκει πᾶσαν ὑπερβάλλειν ἀναίδειαν; ὃπου γε Λακεδαιμονίους φασὶ τῷ τὴν ἐν Μαντινείᾳ φράσαντι νίκην, ἣν Θουκυδίδης ἱστόρηκεν, εὐαγγέλιον ἐκ φιδιτίου κρέας ἀποστεῖλαι. καὶ μὴν οἱ συγγράφοντες ἐξάγγελοί τινές εἰσι τῶν πράξεων εὔφωνοι καὶ τῷ λόγῳ διὰ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἐξικνούμενοι, οἷς εὐαγγέλιον ὀφείλουσιν οἱ πρώτως ἐντυγχάνοντες καὶ ἱστοροῦντες. ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ ἐγκωμιάζονται μνημονευόμενοι καὶ ἀναγινωσκόμενοι διὰ τοὺς κατορθώσαντας: οὐ γὰρ οἱ λόγοι ποιοῦσι τὰς πράξεις ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰς πράξεις καὶ ἀκοῆς ἀξιοῦνται. (De glor. Ath. 347c–e) Again, the news of the battle of Marathon Thersippus of Erchia announced, as Heracleides Ponticus relates; but most people say that it was Eucles who ran in full armour, hot from the battle, and, bursting in at the doors of the first men of the State, could only say, ‘Rejoice! we are victorious!’ and straightway expired. Yet this man came as a self-sent messenger regarding a battle in which he himself had fought; but suppose that some goatherd or shepherd upon a hill or a height had been a spectator of the contest from far away and had looked down upon that great event, too great for anybody to describe, and had come to the city as a messenger, a man who had not felt a wound nor shed a drop of blood, and yet had insisted that he have such honours as Cynegeirus received, or Callimachus, or Polyzelus, because he had reported their deeds of valour, their wounds and death; would he not have been thought that he had surpassed all impudence? Why, as we are told, the Spartans merely sent meat from the public commons to the man who brought glad tidings of the victory in Mantinea which Thucydides describes! And indeed writers are, as it were, messengers of great exploits who are gifted with the faculty of felicitous speech, and achieve success in their writing through the beauty and force of their narration; and to them those who first encountered and recorded the events are indebted for a pleasing retelling of them. We may be sure that such writers are lauded also merely through being remembered and read because of the men who won success; for the words do not create the deeds, but because of the deeds they are also deemed worthy of being read.

According to Pliny the Elder Miltiades, Callimachus and Cynegirus were all represented in the Stoa Poikile (HN 35.34).¹⁴ From the Life of Cimon it is clear that Plutarch was familiar with the paintings of the Stoa Poikile.¹⁵ As in the case of Euphranor’s painting, in this instance too Plutarch does not draw attention to the

¹⁴ Paus. 1.15 singles out for mention only Miltiades and Callimachus. ¹⁵ See Life of Cimon 4.5–7: ‘And indeed in other cases too they say that Elpinice was not very decorous, but that she had improper relations also with Polygnotus the painter, and that it was for this reason that, in the Peisianacteum, as it was then called, but now the Painted Colonnade, when he was

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fact that his exempla were the subject of the visual representations of another Stoa, the Stoa Poikile.¹⁶ There can be little doubt, however, that he expected his audience, whom he had already oriented towards the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios through the description of the painting of Euphranor, to recall the famous wall painting of the Marathon fighters in the Stoa Poikile, which was nearby and visible across the Panathenaic way.¹⁷ But there are additional reasons that lead me to the view that Plutarch points to the Stoa Poikile. From an inscribed statue base, found in front of the Stoa Poikile in 2013, we learn that Polycharmus ‘set up the new Hero Eucles, son of Herodes, of Marathon’. Polycharmus was the son of Eucles IV, ancestor of Plutarch’s contemporary Ti. Claudius Atticus Herodes, father of the famous sophist Herodes Atticus.¹⁸ On the basis of this inscription and other considerations I have argued elsewhere that (a) it was the great Marathonian family, in which the names Eucles and Herodes alternated regularly, that had an interest in spreading a version according to which the heroic soldier that announced the victory at Marathon and died was named Eucles, thus forging links with the emblematic battle; and (b) the family encouraged the association long before Herodes Atticus’ concerted efforts to link himself as tightly as possible with Marathon and Miltiades. I have also suggested that if Plutarch delivered this oration somewhere in the Athenian Agora with a view to the Stoa, it is tempting to imagine him gesturing towards the monument and the statue of Eucles IV, thus making the association between the Marathon runner, Eucles (IV), and the representation of the famous battle in the Stoa more vivid and meaningful to his audience.¹⁹ In what follows I offer additional arguments in support of this view and I adduce evidence that indicates a more precise localization of our speaker in the Agora.

Reminiscing about the Other Great Boeotian, Whom the Athenians Honoured, in the Sanctuary of Ares After a citation of Odyssey 19.208 and an anecdote showing the importance Menander attributed to plot as opposed to diction, Plutarch relates Corinna’s famous advice to the young Pindar. Corinna chastized Pindar for privileging

painting the Trojan women, he made the features of Laodice a portrait of Elpinice. Now Polygnotus was not a mere artisan, and did not paint the stoa for a contract price, but gratis, out of zeal for the welfare of the city, as the historians relate, and as Melanthius the poet testifies after this fashion: . . . ’. ¹⁶ For Plutarch’s silence concerning the Stoa see Athanassaki 2016: 224–25. ¹⁷ For the location of the Stoa Poikile see Camp II 2015; cf. McAuliffe-Martin and Papadopoulos 2012: 349–51. ¹⁸ See Athanassaki 2016: 221–22. ¹⁹ Athanassaki 2016. In light of our evidence it is impossible to tell whether the Marathonian Attici coined this version or adopted an already existing version which featured a Eucles as the Marathon runner.

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diction, music and rhythm at the expense of myth. Pindar took her advice seriously, composed a song full of mythological references (fr. 29 Snell-Maehler) and showed it to her. Corinna laughed and advised him to sow with the hand, not with the whole sack. The anecdote featuring the two Boeotian poets is framed by reference to Plato’s assessment of the centrality of mythmaking in poetry and by the authorial observation that the poets lag behind the historians as the historians come short of those whose acts they narrate. Athens did not distinguish herself either in epic or in melic poetry, Plutarch continues, but tragedy blossomed, won great acclaim and became a wondrous audio-spectacle in the fifth century. But did tragedy benefit the city as much as the Themistoclean wall, Pericles’ building programme, the freedom Miltiades bestowed on her, or the hegemony that Cimon secured? Is it worth comparing drama with trophies, the generals’ headquarters with the theatre, and their aristeia with didaskalia? This rhetorical question leads Plutarch to conjure up a theatre populated by ghosts divided into two groups, poets and generals, whom he summons to appear, granting each group their own parodos.²⁰ The tragedians are asked to enter the theatre singing four lines taken from the parodos of the Chorus in Aristophanes’ Frogs: εὐφημεῖν χρὴ κἀξίστασθαι τοῖς ἡμετέροισι χοροῖσιν, ὅστις ἄπειρος τοιῶνδε λόγων ἢ γνώμην μὴ καθαρεύει 355 ἢ γενναίων ὄργια Μουσῶν μήτ᾿ εἶδεν μήτ᾿ ἐχόρευσεν, μηδὲ Κρατίνου τοῦ ταυροφάγου γλώττης Βακχεῖ᾿ ἐτελέσθη. (Frogs 354–57) Nor speak not a word of evil sound, and keep clear the way for our chorus, whoever in words like these is unskilled and whose mind is not free from uncleanness, who never has sung and never has danced in the rites of the noble Muses, nor has ever been trained in the Bacchic rites of the tongue of bull-eating Cratinus!

Plutarch imagines the singing tragedians carrying their equipment, i.e. masks, altars, stage machinery etc. He then invites some famous actors to accompany the poets as well as a big crowd in charge of various tasks and of expensive paraphernalia. Once he has shown how expensive such productions are, he registers his disapproval of the lavish Athenian choregia, especially in view of the hardships soldiers suffer, and concludes by citing Demetrius’ devastating judgement of the tripod as an empty memorial to the vanished estates of the choregoi.

²⁰ See De fort. Rom. 317c–318c where Plutarch conjures up two similar processions of ghosts under the leadership of Virtue and Fortune.

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After the scathing account of outrageous choregic expenditures, Plutarch asks his audience to watch the generals entering the theatre with Miltiades and Themistocles leading the way: τοὺς δὲ στρατηγοὺς αὖ πάλιν ἐνθένδε παριόντας σκοπῶμεν, ὧν παρερχομένων ὡς ἀληθῶς ‘εὐφημεῖν χρὴ κἀξίστασθαι’ τοὺς ἀπράκτους καὶ ἀπολιτεύτους καὶ ἀστρατεύτους, ‘ὅστις’ ἄτολμος πρὸς ἔργα τοιαῦτα ‘καὶ γνώμην μὴ καθαρεύει’, μηδὲ Μιλτιάδου τοῦ μηδοφόνου μηδὲ τοῦ περσοκτόνου Θεμιστοκλέους χειρὸς ‘βακχεῖ᾽ ἐτελέσθη’. Ἀρήιος ὁ κῶμος οὗτος ἐκ γῆς ἅμα φάλαγξι καὶ στόλοις ἐκ θαλάττης καὶ μεμειγμένοις σκύλοις καὶ τροπαίοις βεβριθώς. κλῦθ᾽ Ἀλαλά, Πολέμου θύγατερ, ἐγχέων προοίμιον, ᾇ θύεται ἄνδρες τὸν ἱρόθυτον θάνατον (fr. 78 Snell-Maehler) ὡς ὁ Θηβαῖος Ἐπαμεινώνδας εἶπεν, ὑπὲρ πατρίδος καὶ τάφων καὶ ἱερῶν ἐπιδιδόντες ἑαυτοὺς τοῖς καλλίστοις καὶ λαμπροτάτοις ἀγῶσιν. (De glor. Ath. 349c) Now then let us watch the great generals as they come in here, to whom, as they pass by, all those who have never performed any civil service or military task must ‘speak fair and rise up’, ‘whoever lacks boldness and purity of wisdom for such deeds’, ‘nor is initiated by Miltiades the slayer of Medes or by Themistocles the killer of Persians’. This komos belongs to Ares at once combatting with phalanxes on land and engaging with fleets by sea is laden with the spoils of both. Hear Alala, daughter of War, prelude to spears, to whom men offer their lives for their cities—a holy sacrifice of death as the Theban Epaminondas said, for your country, your tombs, and your sanctuaries, throwing yourselves into the best and most illustrious contests.

A long account of victories, trophies and spoils and their beneficial effects on the power and glory of Athens follows, and concludes with the observation that the Athenians instituted public celebrations of war victories, not of dramatic victories. As we shall see in a moment, the designation of the group of generals as Ἀρήιος ὁ κῶμος οὗτος has deictic force. The account of victories is framed in ring-form by yet another quotation from Pindar, this time the famous lines from his dithyramb for the Athenian victory at Artemisium: ταῦτα τὴν πόλιν ᾖρεν εἰς δόξαν, ταῦτα εἰς μέγεθος˙ ἐπὶ τούτοις Πίνδαρος ‘ἔρεισμα τῆς Ἑλλάδος’ προσεῖπε τὰς Ἀθήνας, οὐχ ὅτι ταῖς Φρυνίχου τραγῳδίαις καὶ Θέσπιδος ὤρθουν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι πρῶτον, ὥς φησιν αὐτός, ἐπ᾽ Ἀρτεμισίῳ ‘παῖδες Ἀθαναίων ἐβάλοντο φαεννὰν κρηπῖδ᾽ ἐλευθερίας˙ (fr. 76, 77 Snell-Maehler) ἐπί τε Σαλαμῖνι καὶ Μυκάλῃ καὶ Πλαταιαῖς ὥσπερ ἀδαμαντίνοις στηρίξαντες τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τῆς Ἑλλάδος παρέδοσαν τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀνθρώποις. (De glor. Ath. 350a–b)

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  ,  These are the things that raised the city to glory and greatness; it was for these that Pindar called Athens ‘bulwark of Hellas’, not because she guided the Greeks aright with the tragedies of Phrynichus and Thespis, but because, as he says, first in Artemisium ‘the sons of the Athenians laid the brilliant foundation of freedom’; and when at Salamis and Mycale and Plataea they had firmly secured, as by adamantine columns, the liberty of Greece, they handed it down to the other people.

Isocrates, whom Plutarch mentions in the last section of De gloria but not in relation to Pindar, informs us that it was on account of this dithyramb that the Athenians awarded Pindar with proxenia and generous financial remuneration: ἔτι δὲ δεινότερον, εἰ Πίνδαρον μὲν τὸν ποιητὴν οἱ πρὸ ἡμῶν γεγονότες ὑπὲρ ἑνὸς μόνον ῥήματος, ὅτι τὴν πόλιν ἔρεισμα τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὠνόμασεν, οὕτως ἐτίμησαν ὥστε καὶ πρόξενον ποιήσασθαι καὶ δωρεὰν μυρίας αὐτῷ δοῦναι δραχμάς, ἐμοὶ δὲ πολὺ πλείω καὶ κάλλιον ἐγκεκωμιακότι καὶ τὴν πόλιν καὶ τοὺς προγόνους μηδ᾽ ἀσφαλῶς ἐγγένοιτο ἐπιβιῶναι τὸν ἐπίλοιπον χρόνον. (Antid. 166) It would be even more absurd if, whereas Pindar, the poet, was so highly honoured by our forefathers because of a single line of his in which he praises Athens as ‘the bulwark of Hellas’ that he was made ‘proxenos’ and given a present of ten thousand drachmas, I, on the other hand, who have glorified Athens and our ancestors with much ampler and nobler encomiums, should not even be privileged to end my days in peace.

To these honours Pausanias adds another one, a statue that he saw by the temple of Ares (see Figure 1). τῆς δὲ τοῦ Δημοσθένους εἰκόνος πλησίον Ἄρεώς ἐστιν ἱερόν, ἔνθα ἀγάλματα δύο μὲν Ἀφροδίτης κεῖται, τὸ δὲ τοῦ Ἄρεως ἐποίησεν Ἀλκαμένης, τὴν δὲ Ἀθηνᾶν ἀνὴρ Πάριος, ὄνομα δὲ αὐτῷ Λοκρός. ἐνταῦθα καὶ Ἐνυοῦς ἄγαλμά ἐστιν, ἐποίησαν δὲ οἱ παῖδες οἱ Πραξιτέλους˙ περὶ δὲ τὸν ναὸν ἑστᾶσιν Ἡρακλῆς καὶ Θησεὺς καὶ Ἀπόλλων ἀναδούμενος ταινίᾳ τὴν κόμην, ἀνδριάντες δὲ Καλάδης Ἀθηναίοις ὡς λέγεται νόμους γράψας καὶ Πίνδαρος ἄλλα τε εὑρόμενος παρὰ Ἀθηναίων καὶ τὴν εἰκόνα, ὅτι σφᾶς ἐπῄνεσεν ᾆσμα ποιήσας. (Paus. 1.8.4) Near the statue of Demosthenes is a sanctuary of Ares, where are placed two statues of Aphrodite, one of Ares made by Alcamenes, and one of Athena made by a Parian whoose name was Locrus. Here is also a statue of Enyo, made by the sons of Praxiteles. About the temple stand statues of Heracles, Theseus, Apollo binding his hair with a fillet, and statues of Calades who, as it is said, composed

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Figure 1 Plan of the Athenian Agora, American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Agora Excavations. Within the quadrangle, triangle 1 (in front of the Royal Stoa) indicates the position of Pindar’s statue, triangle 2 (near the temple of Ares) the position of the speaker of De gloria. nomes for the Athenians, and of Pindar who received other rewards from the Athenians and the statue, because he praised them in a song he composed.

The temple of Ares mentioned by Pausanias, a fifth-century building, was moved from Pallene to the Agora in the first century .²¹ A moment ago I suggested that the designation of the generals as Ἀρήιος ὁ κῶμος οὗτος has deictic force. I now add that Plutarch conceived the delivery of his oration somewhere in its vicinity and composed it from this perspective (see plan of the Agora). Pausanias does not specify the position of Pindar’s statue in relation to the temple, but another testimony, an epistle attributed to Aeschines, but probably belonging to the second century CE,²² offers a description of the statue and

²¹ Korres 1998; Camp II 2001: 189–92. ²² For the date see Martin and de Budé 1962: 121–22 with references to earlier scholarship.

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  , 

indicates that it was placed in front of the Royal Stoa, which was adjacent to the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios: οἱ δὲ ἡμέτεροι πρόγονοι διπλῆν αὐτῷ τὴν ζημίαν ἀπέδοσαν μετὰ τοῦ καὶ εἰκόνι χαλκῇ τιμῆσαι· καὶ ἦν αὕτη καὶ εἰς ἡμᾶς ἔτι, πρὸ τῆς βασιλείου στοᾶς καθήμενος ἐνδύματι καὶ λύρᾳ ὁ Πίνδαρος, διάδημα ἔχων καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν γονάτων ἀνειλιγμένον βιβλίον. (Aeschin. Epist. 4) our ancestors, however, gave him the double amount of the penalty and simultaneously honoured him with a bronze statue. And this statue was preserved to my time: in front of the Royal Stoa Pindar is sitting dressed and holding a lyre. He is crowned and has an unrolled book on his knees.

The author of this letter records a position different from that of Pausanias who saw the statue by the temple of Ares. Like temples, statues could be relocated, of course, but if we look at the plan of Athens, it is clear that the two testimonia are not incompatible. Both authors locate Pindar’s statue in the quadrangle bounded by the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, the Royal Stoa, the Stoa Poikile and the temple of Ares. The temple of Ares and the Royal Stoa stood very close to each other. Therefore, the difference in the two accounts may be due either to a different point of view or else to a slight lapse of memory.²³ Plutarch’s overt reference to Euphranor’s painting, housed in the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, his covert references to one of the wall-paintings of the Stoa Poikile and to the sanctuary of Ares, and the mention of Pindar’s famous dithyramb for which the Athenians honoured him with a statue together suggest that he localized himself in the sanctuary of Ares and delivered, or imagined delivering, his oration in full view of Pindar’s statue, which must have stood no more than a hundred metres away. His localization in the vicinity of Pindar’s statue explains the otherwise inexplicable frequency of references to Pindar in an oration that focuses on the relative merits of Athenian generals, painters, sculptors, poets, and prose writers. Plutarch did not simply wish to put in a good word for Boeotian excellence in poetry. If he did, he clearly had alternatives: he could have mentioned Hesiod, for instance.²⁴ But it was Pindar’s, not Hesiod’s statue, that he had in sight. Yet another archaeological find argues in favour of Plutarch’s localization in the quadrangle formed by the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, the Royal Stoa, the Stoa Poikile, and the temple of Ares. One of the inscribed herm bases that helped archaeologists identify the Royal Stoa was dedicated by Onesippus from Cephisia

²³ Note that all Pausanias says is that Pindar’s statue was περὶ τὸν ναόν without further specification. ²⁴ Note that he points out that Athenians did not distinguish themselves either in epic or in melic poetry.

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during his term as archon basileus, probably in 403 .²⁵ The inscribed herm records the poets and their choregoi who won the comedy and tragedy at the Lenaea, Sosicrates and Nicochares, and Stratonicus and Megacleides respectively. The herm was found in situ on the steps of the building.²⁶ I suggest that this inscribed herm may have triggered Plutarch’s tirade against theatrical extravaganza, if of course Plutarch had taken notice of it. With the exception of the comic poet Nicochares, nothing else is known about the archon basileus, the choregoi and the tragic poet.²⁷ If Plutarch had seen the inscribed herm, did he think that these choregoi wasted their money? The relevant passage in De gloria illustrates Plutarch’s disapproval of extravagant choregic expenditure: οἱ δὲ χορηγοὶ τοῖς χορευταῖς ἐγχέλεια καὶ θριδάκια καὶ σκελίδας καὶ μυελὸν παρατιθέντες, εὐώχουν ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον φωνασκουμένους καὶ τρυφῶντας. καὶ τούτων τοῖς μὲν ἡττηθεῖσι περιῆν προσυβρίσθαι καὶ γεγονέναι καταγελάστους· τοῖς δὲ νικήσασιν τρίπους ὑπῆρχεν, οὐκ ἀνάθημα τῆς νίκης, ὡς Δημήτριος φησιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπίσπεισμα τῶν ἐκκεχυμένων βίων καὶ τῶν ἐκλελοιπότων κενοτάφιον οἴκων. (De glor. Ath. 349b) But the men who paid for the choruses gave the choristers eels and tender lettuces, roast-beef and marrow, and pampered them for a long time while they were training their voices and living in luxury. The result for the defeated choregoi was to be held in contumely and ridicule; but to the victors belonged a tripod, which was, as Demetrius says, not a votive offering to commemorate their victory, but a last oblation of their wasted livelihood, an empty memorial of their vanished estates.

This is clearly a hyperbolic assessment with a comic ring which chimes with the Aristophanic quotation from the Frogs that Plutarch uses a little earlier, when he imagines the parodos of the dramatic poets and actors (348de). The Aristophanic quotation and the comic effect of the hyperbolic assessement invites us to take Plutarch’s polemic against drama and choregia with a grain of salt. Plutarch knew Pindar’s poetry. It is worth noting, therefore, that within sight of Pindar’s statue Plutarch argues a position that Pindar would find difficult to agree with, for time and again Pindar stresses the importance of song for the survival of the memory of great achievements. The relevant lines of the Seventh Nemean offer a representative example of Pindar’s views: πόλιν γὰρ φιλόμολπον οἰκεῖ δορικτύπων Αἰακιδᾶν· μάλα δ᾿ ἐθέλον-

²⁵ Agora Inventory I 7168: (SEG 32.239) see Shear Jr 1971; Edmonson 1982 dated it to the archonship of Onesippus which he dated tentatively to 403 . For the Royal Stoa see Papadopoulos 2003: 289–92. ²⁶ Camp II 2001: 46. ²⁷ Edmonson 1982.

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  ,  τι σύμπειρον ἀγωνίᾳ θυμὸν ἀμφέπειν. εἰ δὲ τύχῃ τις ἔρδων, μελίφρον᾿ αἰτίαν ῥοαῖσι Μοισᾶν ἐνέβαλε· ταὶ μεγάλαι γὰρ ἀλκαί σκότον πολὺν ὕμνων ἔχοντι δεόμεναι· ἔργοις δὲ καλοῖς ἔσοπτρον ἴσαμεν ἑνὶ σὺν τρόπῳ, εἰ Μναμοσύνας ἕκατι λιπαράμπυκος εὕρηται ἄποινα μόχθων κλυταῖς ἐπέων ἀοιδαῖς. (Pind. Nem. 7, 9–16²⁸)

For he lives in the song-loving city of the spear-clashing Aeacidae, and they most eagerly cherish a spirit that has been tested in competition. If a man succeeds in an exploit, he casts a honey-minded cause into the Muses’ streams, for great deeds of valour remain in deep darkness when they lack hymns. We know of a mirror for noble deeds in only one way, if, by the grace of Mnemosyne with the shining crown, one finds a recompense for his labours in poetry’s famous songs.

It is true that unlike Plutarch, Pindar does not attempt to prioritize between deeds and their representations. If he were to take part in such a debate, he might have wished to modify its topic and ask instead if deeds can survive without words. If we were to imagine a debate between Pindar and Plutarch, Pindar would express the communis opinio whereas Plutarch would be the devil’s advocate. I shall argue that this is the role he chose for himself in this oration, a role which he, however, cleverly undermines. Plutarch treats Pindar with more respect than he treats the dramatic poets. Yet he rounds off his reference to Pindar’s famous dithyramb by a statement that prima facie at least sounds dismissive: poetry is children’s pastime. The last part of his speech is dedicated to orators whose initial treatment gives the impression that they have more in common with the generals. But as soon as this view is spelled out, a number of rhetorical questions show, once again, the superiority of deeds over words. Did Plutarch simply play devil’s advocate or was he serious? And if he was serious, how serious can he have been? Did he believe that the highest encomium he could bestow on the Athenians was the praise of their military achievements? How effective would this line of praise have been in the first century CE? These are complex questions that I shall try to answer by taking into account Plutarch’s selflocalization in the sanctuary of Ares and his overt and covert references to buildings and works of art of the late archaic and classical periods.

²⁸ The Greek quotation and the English translation are taken from Race’s Loeb edition (1997).

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Plutarch in Athens We do not know if Plutarch was aware that the temple of Ares was relocated from Pallene to the Agora in the time of Augustus. The temple looked very much like the Hephaesteion and some have even thought it was designed by the same architect.²⁹ It is therefore possible that Plutarch knew that it was part of the Periclean building programme, which he so much admired and assessed as follows: ὅθεν καὶ μᾶλλον θαυμάζεται τὰ Περικλέους ἔργα πρὸς πολὺν χρόνον ἐν ὀλίγῳ γενόμενα. κάλλει μὲν γὰρ ἕκαστον εὐθὺς ἦν τότε ἀρχαῖον, ἀκμῇ δὲ μέχρι νῦν πρόσφατόν ἐστι καὶ νεουργόν: οὕτως ἐπανθεῖ καινότης ἀεί τις ἄθικτον ὑπὸ τοῦ χρόνου διατηροῦσα τὴν ὄψιν, ὥσπερ ἀειθαλὲς πνεῦμα καὶ ψυχὴν ἀγήρω καταμεμιγμένην τῶν ἔργων ἐχόντων. (Life of Pericles, 13.4–5) For this reason are the works of Pericles all the more to be wondered at; they were created in a short time for all time. Each one of them, in its beauty, was even then and at once antique; but in the freshness of its vigor it is, even to the present day, recent and newly wrought. Such is the bloom of perpetual newness, as it were, upon these works of his, which makes them ever to look untouched by time, as though the unfaltering breath of an ageless spirit had been infused into them.

This is, of course, a famous passage, whose focus on the Periclean buildings’ appearance, said to be untouched by time, accounts for Plutarch’s highly selective mention of artefacts in De gloria. We do not know how the sanctuary of Ares looked in Plutarch’s time, but archaeological finds make clear that it was touched both by time and history. Inscriptions and statues of Augustus and his grandsons Lucius and Gaius Caesar as well as the neigbouring Odeon of Agrippa, a massive construction that had taken an awful lot of space in the old square, leave no doubt that the appearance of that part of the Agora had already radically changed from the time of Augustus onward and had acquired a distinctly Roman look.³⁰ All these developments are suppressed in De gloria, which points only to late archaic and classical buildings and fills the space with the ghosts of the most illustrious generals, historians, poets, and orators of the classical past.³¹ We have seen that the two other buildings to which Plutarch points are both associated with the Persian wars. The earlier monument, the Stoa Poikile, was designed, funded, and decorated by Cimon and his circle and commemorated the victory at Marathon and the contribution of Miltiades, whom Plutarch places at

²⁹ Camp II 2001: 189–91. ³⁰ For the Roman Agora see Camp II 2001: 182–93; for the imperial cult see Spawforth 1997; for the Augustan cult group in the temple of Ares see Stewart 2016. ³¹ For Plutarch’s elision of Roman presence in Apollo’s Delphic sanctuary see McInerney 2004.

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  , 

the head of the Ἀρήιος ὁ κῶμος in De gloria.³² The cult of Zeus Eleutherios was introduced after the Persian wars and the Stoa was erected sometime between 430 and 420 . In Plutarch’s time, it housed statues and the cult of the Roman imperial family in two chambers that were set aside for this purpose in the Roman period.³³ Plutarch’s focus on the city’s classical past, however, allows him to keep silent about its Roman present. Finally, Pindar’s statue was also associated with his lavish praise of the Athenians for their contribution in the Persian wars. Plutarch’s strategy is much more powerful if he delivered this speech beside the temple of Ares pointing in turn to the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, the Stoa Poikile and Pindar’s statue: all he needed were a few gestures that would direct his audience to look at these artefacts in order to conjure up a different landscape, populated by the ghosts of their illustrious ancestors (see map of the Agora, Figure 1). His localization at the sanctuary of Ares would add a witty dimension and thus lighten the tone of his oration.³⁴ In other words, Plutarch would be telling the Athenians something along the following lines: ‘Look, I’m praising your city under the influence of Ares—I might have come up with a different encomium, I might have extolled your cultural achievements, if I was inspired by another god, Apollo whom you worship as Patroos, over there, next to the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios’. In this scenario Plutarch would undermine wittily his prioritization of military deeds over cultural achievements and would encourage his audience to take it all with a grain of salt. Plutarch’s own work indicates that we should take his arguments in De gloria with a grain of salt. In the Life of Lysander Plutarch tells how Athens’ cultural legacy saved the city from total destruction:³⁵ ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ προτεθῆναί φασιν ὡς ἀληθῶς ὑπὲρ ἀνδραποδισμοῦ γνώμην ἐν τοῖς συμμάχοις, ὅτε καὶ τὸν Θηβαῖον Ἐρίανθον εἰσηγήσασθαι τὸ μὲν ἄστυ κατασκάψαι, τὴν δὲ χώραν ἀνεῖναι μηλόβοτον. εἶτα μέντοι συνουσίας γενομένης τῶν ἡγεμόνων παρὰ πότον, καί τινος Φωκέως ᾄσαντος ἐκ τῆς Εὐριπίδου Ἠλέκτρας τὴν πάροδον ἧς ἡ ἀρχή Ἀγαμέμνονος ὦ κόρα, ἤλυθον, Ἠλέκτρα, ποτὶ σὰν ἀγρότειραν αὐλάν, πάντας ἐπικλασθῆναι, καὶ φανῆναι σχέτλιον ἔργον τὴν οὕτως εὐκλεᾶ καὶ τοιούτους ἄνδρας φέρουσαν ἀνελεῖν καὶ διεργάσασθαι πόλιν. (Lys. 15) And some say that in very truth a proposition to sell the Athenians into slavery was actually made in the assembly of the allies, and that at this time Erianthus the

³² For the Stoa Poikile see Castriota 1992: 76–89. ³³ See Thompson 1966. ³⁴ See Whitmarsh in this volume, Chapter 17, p. 293, who suggests that not all Plutarch’s works must be judged as the great works of a great mind. ³⁵ See also Life of Nicias 29 where Plutarch reports that the Syracusans spared the lives of and set free a number of Athenian hostages who could recite and sing Euripidean tragedies.

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Theban also made a motion that the city be razed to the ground, and the country about it left for sheep to graze. Afterwards, however, when the leaders were gathered at a banquet, and a certain Phocian sang the first chorus in the ‘Electra’ of Euripides, which begins with O thou daughter of Agamemnon, I am come, Electra, to thy rustic court, all were moved to compassion, and felt it to be a cruel deed to abolish and destroy a city which was so famous, and produced such poets.

It is worth noting that in the Hellenica Xenophon attributes the Spartans’ decision to spare the Athenians from enslavement and destruction to their great contribution to the defeat of the Persians (Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ οὐκ ἔφασαν πόλιν Ἑλληνίδα ἀνδραποδιεῖν μέγα ἀγαθὸν εἰργασμένην ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις κινδύνοις γενομένοις τῇ Ἑλλάδι, 2.2.20).³⁶ Plutarch knew his Xenophon well.³⁷ His choice to offer a different version of the Peloponnesian league’s decision not to destroy Athens is significant, because the Plutarchan version privileged the importance of the Athenian cultural legacy over military achievements.³⁸ His departure from Xenophon’s version, highlighting the significance of Athenian military achievements, in the Life of Lysander indicates that his attack on Athenian cultural achievements in De gloria should not be taken at face value. Ziegler entertained the idea that Plutarch composed this speech to thank the Athenians for granting him citizenship but hesitated between a public delivery and an epideixis in a rhetorical school.³⁹ Frazier, on the other hand, proposed tentatively a public occasion similar to the occasion for which Aelius Aristides later composed his Panathenaicus. But the crucial difference between De gloria and the Panathenaicus is that Aristides has words of praise for Athenian cultural achievements as well. Athens’ claim to fame in Plutarch’s time was its still rich cultural life and its far richer cultural legacy. It was for this reason precisely that the city appealed to intellectuals like Plutarch and to patrons like Hellenistic and Roman rulers.⁴⁰ No matter what the objections a Platonist like Plutarch could raise against theatrokratia and rhetorical practices, it was neither diplomatic nor graceful to depreciate the city’s cultural legacy on a panegyric occasion, especially since it possessed no military prowess at the time. Scholars have pointed out that there is no inconsistency between Plutarch’s argument in De gloria and his other ³⁶ For the impact of nondestruction of cities/places see Alcock 2012. ³⁷ For Plutarch’s familiarity with Xenophon see Pelling in this volume, Chapter 6 with references to the relevant literature. ³⁸ Julius Caesar’s famous question to the Athenians ‘ποσάκις ὑμᾶς ὑπὸ σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀπολλυμένους ἡ δόξα τῶν προγόνων περισώσει’; (‘How often will the glory of your ancestors save you from selfdestruction?’) (App. B Civ, 2.88.368) shows how useful ancestral glory could be at times of need. ³⁹ Ziegler 1964: 17–18 but cf. 89–90. Ziegler does not elaborate on the scope and effect of the hypothetical thanksgiving speech composed for delivery in a rhetorical school. ⁴⁰ For the importance of Athenian culture to Plutarch see Podlecki 1988; Swain 1997.

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works, for he privileges deeds over words in the Lives too.⁴¹ This is certainly true, but the problem is not the prioritization, because most people would find it difficult to prioritize representations of deeds over the deeds per se. The problem is the vehemence of the attack he launches against the arts for which the city had become famous. It is the vehement attack that makes De gloria unsuitable for a panegyric occasion. Moreover, Plutarch’s advice to statesmen in the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae argues, in my view, against a panegyric occasion:⁴² τὰ μὲν γὰρ μικρὰ παιδία τῶν πατέρων ὁρῶντες ἐπιχειροῦντα τὰς κρηπῖδας ὑποδεῖσθαι καὶ τοὺς στεφάνους περιτίθεσθαι μετὰ παιδιᾶς γελῶμεν, οἱ δ᾽ ἄρχοντες ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν ἀνοήτως τὰ τῶν προγόνων ἔργα καὶ φρονήματα καὶ πράξεις ἀσυμμέτρους τοῖς παροῦσι καιροῖς καὶ πράγμασιν οὔσας μιμεῖσθαι κελεύοντες ἐξαίρουσι τὰ πλήθη, γέλωτά τε ποιοῦντες οὐκέτι γέλωτος ἄξια πάσχουσιν, ἂν μὴ πάνυ καταφρονηθῶσι. πολλὰ γὰρ ἔστιν ἄλλα τῶν πρότερον Ἑλλήνων διεξιόντα τοῖς νῦν ἠθοποιεῖν καὶ σωφρονίζειν, ὡς Ἀθήνησιν ὑπομιμνήσκοντα μὴ τῶν πολεμικῶν, ἀλλ’ οἷόν ἐστι τὸ ψήφισμα τὸ τῆς ἀμνηστίας ἐπὶ τοῖς τριάκοντα· καὶ τὸ ζημιῶσαι Φρύνιχον τραγῳδίᾳ διδάξαντα τὴν Μιλήτου ἅλωσιν· καὶ ὅτι, Θήβας Κασάνδρου κτίζοντος, ἐστεφανηφόρησαν· τὸν δ’ ἐν Ἄργει πυθόμενοι σκυταλισμόν, ἐν ᾧ πεντακοσίους καὶ χιλίους ἀνῃρήκεσαν ἐξ αὑτῶν οἱ Ἀργεῖοι, περιενεγκεῖν καθάρσιον περὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἐκέλευσαν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς Ἁρπαλείοις τὰς οἰκίας ἐρευνῶντες μόνην τὴν τοῦ γεγαμηκότος νεωστὶ παρῆλθον. ταῦτα γὰρ καὶ νῦν ἔξεστι ζηλοῦντας ἐξομοιοῦσθαι τοῖς προγόνοις· τὸν δὲ Μαραθῶνα καὶ τὸν Εὐρυμέδοντα καὶ τὰς Πλαταιάς καὶ ὅσα τῶν παραδειγμάτων οἰδεῖν ποιεῖ καὶ φρυάττεσθαι διακενῆς τοὺς πολλούς, ἀπολιπόντας ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς τῶν σοφιστῶν. (Prae. ger. reip. 814ac) Furthermore when we see little children trying playfully to bind their fathers’ shoes on their feet or fit their crowns upon their heads, we only laugh, but the officials in the cities, when they foolishly urge the people to imitate the deeds, ideals, and actions of their ancestors, however unsuitable they may be to the present times and conditions, stir up the common folk and, though what they do is laughable, what is done to them is no laughing matter, unless they are merely treated with utter contempt. Indeed there are many acts of the Greeks of former times by recounting which the statesman can mould and correct the characters of our contemporaries, for example, at Athens by calling to mind, not deeds in war, but such things as the decree of amnesty after the downfall of the Thirty Tyrants,

⁴¹ See e.g. Johnson 1972: 14–23; Frazier 1990: 172–77 and Swain 1996: 168; Lamberton 1997b: 156 who points out that the Lives commemorate men of action. For Plato’s influence on Plutarch’s judgment of poetry see Frazier 1990: 172; Gallo and Mocci 1992: 9–12; Hunter and Russell 2011: 2–10; cf. Van der Stockt 1990 who draws attention to Aristotelian influences in De gloria. ⁴² Frazier 1990: 173–74 also cites this passage but does not seem to see a contradiction between the advice given here and Plutarch’s different practice in De gloria. For the political significance of this view see most recently Ursin 2019: 92–103 with the references to earlier scholarship.

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the fining of Phrynichus for presenting in a tragedy the capture of Miletus, their decking their heads with garlands when Cassander refounded Thebes; how, when they heard of the clubbing at Argos, in which the Argives killed fifteen hundred of their own citizens, they decreed that an expiatory sacrifice be carried about in the assembly; and how, when they were searching the houses at the time of Harpalus’s frauds, they passed by only one, that of a newly married man. By emulating acts like these it is even now possible to resemble our ancestors, but Marathon, the Eurymedon, Plataea, and all the other examples which make the common folk vainly to swell with pride and kick up their heels, should be left to the schools of the sophists.

Taking this passage into consideration and especially Plutarch’s point that Marathon, Eurymedon, and Plataea are suitable topics for rhetorical training and performance, I wish to explore a less formal occasion for the performance of De gloria. The text of De gloria may preserve Plutarch’s thoughts for an informal debate, real or imaginary. The coexistence of classical and Graeco-Roman buildings and sculpture in close proximity must have provided the stimulus. The reason for the erection of Pindar’s statue was the famous dithyramb that called Athens the bulwark of Greece after the victory at Artemisium. The placement of Pindar’s impressive statue in the vicinity of the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, a monument that commemorated the liberty the Athenians secured for all Greeks under the leadership first of Miltiades and then of Themistocles, was undoubtedly appropriate. Its closeness to the temple of Ares, which was relocated to the Agora, eventually served the needs of the imperial cult and commemorated Roman military prowess, offered a sharp contrast between the time Plutarch’s compatriot, Pindar, extolled Athenian war feats and the time Plutarch was contemplating the city’s past and present. An intellectual of Plutarch’s calibre would recognize that meanwhile Rome could boast not only of military, but of cultural achievements as well, which might not be comparable to those of Athens, but were not insignificant either.⁴³ It is not hard to imagine how this landscape of military memorials of different periods could provide the stimulus for a real or imaginary debate in which one speaker argues for the superiority of cultural achievements, the other for military achievements and leave it to their audience to decide which is the stronger argument. If De gloria was designed as part of such a debate, I imagine that both arguing positions would focus on Athens. Rome would be the elephant in the room, for in Plutarch’s time it was Rome, not Athens, that enjoyed military superiority and had, therefore, a say in the cultic matters and aesthetic choices ⁴³ For Plutarch’s familiarity with Periclean buildings see Podlecki 1988; Beck 2012: 443–44 and Kavoulaki in this volume, Chapter 7.

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in the Athenian Agora, as it was plain to all. All these considerations lead me to the view that the speech was designed for an informal or semi-formal occasion. The deictic pattern of the treatise could equally facilitate deixis ad oculos and deixis am Phantasma. We can envisage Plutarch delivering De gloria in the old Agora in front of not too big an audience—perhaps with the expectation of another virtuoso display presenting the counter-argument.⁴⁴ The possibility that Plutarch himself had composed the counter-argument in the now missing part of De gloria should not be excluded. But we should keep in mind that, once delivered in Athens, Plutarch expected his oration to be read by the pepaideumenoi in many other places. In this case it it reasonable to assume that he expected such sophisticated and well-travelled readers to orient themselves mentally in the Agora and specifically at the temple of Ares in full view of Pindar’s statue. Like his predecessors Plutarch composed sub specie aeternitatis. From the point of view of posterity deixis am Phantasma was clearly more important than deixis ad oculos. Whatever the circumstances of the composition and delivery of this enigmatic piece of work may have been, we are on much firmer ground concerning Plutarch’s familiarity with Athenian architecture, sculpture and topography as well his power of observation. His knowledge of and interest in the statues and monuments of the Athenian Agora shed light on another side of his personality that remains largely underexplored. Plutarch’s tremendous erudition and prodigious output has led a number of scholars to imagine him working at his desk or travelling to big cities mainly to use their libraries.⁴⁵ This is to some extent a fair assessment and we may enhance the picture by imagining Plutarch pacing upand-down in a portico in his estate in Chaeronea looking at his gardens, while dictating to a scribe. But my reading of De gloria broadens this picture by looking at Plutarch as an interested, observant, and sophisticated sight-seer, whose familiarity with Athenian monumental architecture, iconography, and topography was such that it allowed him to compose a witty encomium on Athenian military achievements by pointing to some of the famous classical buildings and artefacts that commemorated them, while ignoring monumental post-classical additions to the Athenian Agora, which were the material evidence of the subsequent decline of Athenian military power. This kind of familiarity required consultation of

⁴⁴ There is always the possibility that De gloria preserves Plutarch’s notes for a debate in a different context, e.g. a symposium somewhere in Athens or even in Chaeronea. That would be a case of deixis am Phantasma, which would be effective as long as the interlocutors were familiar with the old Agora of Athens. ⁴⁵ See for instance Buckler 1992: 4789: ‘Above all, he used his travels to seek books and documents that were otherwise unavailable to him at home. Thus, his explorations were as much intellectual as physical. In that respect, he resembles a modern scholar who travels to foreign places to consult and collect materials for his research’. Buckler’s assessment seems to me to underestimate Plutarch’s interest in what he saw and how deeply the built environment influenced him. See also Desideri, Geiger, and Kavoulaki in this volume, Chapters 3, 4, and 7 respectively.

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written sources. But when it came to Athens, consultation of written sources was for Plutarch the means, not the end, which was vividly to relate the location of his performance to a reconstructed classical past. Plutarch, however, went beyond a witty encomium of classical Athens and its citizens. By using classical monumental architecture, sculpture, iconography, and topography of the Agora as a source of inspiration, subject matter, and organizational principle of this prima facie strange encomium he took an active part in shaping the landscape of the city’s cultural memory.⁴⁶ Through praise, blame, and elision Plutarch invited his audience(s) and his readers to engage in selective observation, visualization, evocation, memory, and oblivion of the landscape of the Agora and the people, the events and the eras it commemorated.⁴⁷

⁴⁶ This is of course in keeping with the wider Greek tendency that influences linguistic, literary, and cultural choices as Bowie 1970 has shown. For similar selectivity in Pausanias’ monumental memory (and oblivion) see Whitmarsh 2015b with references to earlier scholarship. ⁴⁷ Warmest thanks to Ewen Bowie, John Papadopoulos, and Chris Pelling for helpful comments and suggestions on this version, to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens for permission to reproduce the map of the second-century  Agora, and to George Tsimpoukis for his help with details on this map.

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PART II

CI T I E S O F T H E PA ST: H IST OR Y , POLITICS, AND SOCIETY

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6 Stereotyping Sparta, Stereotyping Athens Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch Christopher Pelling

Thucydides You Spartans do not seem to have worked out yet what sort of adversaries you will have in the Athenians, and how different they are from you in every way. They are people who want to change things, quick to develop a thought and to carry it through; your style is to keep hold of what you have, not to form any new ideas, and to fail to reach even essential goals. Then again, they are bold even beyond their capacity; they take risks against their judgement; they keep their spirits up even in adversity. Your tendency is to do less than you can, to refuse to trust your judgement even when it is sound, and to think that dangers will never end. They never shrink from action, you are hesitators; they love to be abroad, you to stay at home, for they think that travel will bring them profit while you think that it might endanger what you have already. When they win they follow up their victory to the maximum; when they lose they fall back as little as they can. They view their bodies as barely part of themselves at all, expendable for the city’s sake; but they develop their individual intelligence as something that can benefit their city. If they have a plan and fail to bring it to success, it is as if they have lost something of their own; when they are successful, they view it as just a stepping stone to bigger things. If an enterprise goes wrong they find another prospect that can bring them what they need; for them alone possession and aspiration come to the same thing, so quick are they to turn a thought into action. This means toil, danger, and hard work all their lives, and they get the least enjoyment from what they have because they are always on the make. Even a holiday is for them an opportunity for doing what they need to do, and they regard idle rest rather

Christopher Pelling, Stereotyping Sparta, Stereotyping Athens: Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0007

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 ,   than hard work as a disaster. You could say that they have been born to have no quiet themselves and to stop everyone else from having any—and you’d be right.¹ (The Corinthians at Thucydides 1.70)

This chapter will eventually focus on Plutarch—but even so, this is the place to start. Few passages of Thucydides are so familiar.² It is that picture of slow, cautious, reluctant Sparta and the eager beavers of Athens, one city full of Mr Never-Take-ARisk, the other full of Mr Never-Take-A-Holiday. It is so powerful and so brilliantly done that it is hard to get it out of one’s mind. But of course it is not Thucydides’ last word on either Sparta or Athens.³ It is not even his first word, as we have had something on both in the Archaeology, where Athens and Sparta did not seem very different in their level of activity—the two of them spent the years after the Persian Wars alternately making peace and making war either on one another or on their own disaffected allies, 1.18.3—even though their way of handling their respective alliances was different, 1.19. We have also already seen ‘the powers that be at Sparta’ promising to invade Attica if Athens attacks Potidaea (1.58.1), which does not sound unbelligerent. Nor have the Athenians been so uncomplicatedly get-up-and-go as all that: they decided they had no alternative to becoming involved with Corcyra, but we can sense their tentativeness and hesitation, even some half-heartedness (1.44.1, 45.3, 49.4, 49.7, 50.5). We have to remember that the Corinthians at 1.70 are speaking to needle the Spartans, and they may already be felt to be overstating and oversimplifying. The wise Spartan king Archidamus reasonably replies by doubting whether people are really as different as all that (1.84.4). All the same, the Corinthians there are not talking total nonsense, at least if we judge by the rest of Thucydides’ narrative.⁴ Athens does show a taste for risk and enterprise: the narrative of the Pentekontaetia is skilfully managed to convey its jack-in-the-box irrepressibility, bouncing back swiftly after each reverse.⁵ The

¹ All translations are my own. ² And few are so discussed. The scholarly bibliography on both Herodotus and Thucydides is immense, and that on Plutarch is not small; this is not the place for full citation. ³ On this and what follows cf. esp. Connor 1984: 36–47; Rood 1998: 43–45, 240–22; Apfel 2011: 200–202; and on Thucydides’ Sparta, Cartledge and Debnar 2006. ⁴ Particularly in book 1, see Allison 2013 for an analysis of the book’s ‘transparent attempts by Thucydides to create an antithetical balance between Athens and Sparta’ (258). 1.118.2 restates in Thucydides’ own voice much of the judgement of 1.70, especially the part concerning Sparta, while adding that this Spartan caution was partly the consequence of their precarious ‘domestic wars’: he is presumably thinking especially of the helot revolt, 1.101–103. Luginbill 1999 (cf. n. 7) gives a strong version of the view that Thucydides’ narrative backs up the 1.70 analysis. ⁵ Take for instance the speedy narrative of 1.105–106: first a Corinthian victory, then an Athenian victory, then a further Athenian victory, all within nine lines of the Oxford text; then Athens unexpectedly managing to fight in Megara as well as continuing their Aeginetan campaign, with an engagement ending in something of a draw; then a further encounter with the Corinthians, followed up by particularly bloody ambush. Connor 1984: 44–45 cites 1.108.2–3 as similarly corroborating the ‘determination and vigor of the Athenians’.

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Athenians need to be reassured and persuaded into war, but once it has started the same characteristics are there: it is indeed a paradox that Pericles has to convince them to adopt a policy of restraint, ‘not looking for additional empire and not taking on voluntary risks’ (1.144.1). There is equal insight in his words that immediately follow, ‘I fear our own mistakes more than anything the enemy may devise’, for this requires them to set aside precisely that expansionist and risk-taking mentality that made them great. And the biggest and most decisive hazard will turn out to be, of course, Sicily. By then the apprehensive Nicias will only echo the notion of Periclean restraint without being able to re-evoke any of his leaderly magnificence (6.9–14, e.g. 6.10.5 on ‘not reaching for extra empire’); the Periclean mantle has been torn, with the strategic half passing to Nicias and the charismatic to Alcibiades, and catastrophe ensues. What makes Syracuse so formidable a foe is that they are so like Athens, so ὁμοιότροποι (8.96.5, quoted p. 108). Still, by that stage the picture of both states has been filled out quite a lot. We have seen more of Athenian internal politics, with Thucydides’ trenchant analysis of what went wrong after Pericles’ death (2.65): the self-seeking of the lesser politicians who followed was largely to blame, together with the need for them to play to the popular gallery and their inability to tell the people home truths in Periclean manner. One person who could tear the people off a strip was, paradoxically, Cleon, the biggest demagogue of them all; but his tirade against dazzling rhetoric at 3.37, besides displaying exactly the qualities that he was deriding, was also in the service of the divisive and short-sighted antagonism that was the antithesis of Pericles’ undisputed leadership.⁶ On the other side, we have seen a good deal of the ‘unspartan Spartan’, the men who show unusual speed and decisiveness and diplomatic skill, Brasidas and Gylippus; yet it is also true that those presentations have particular point because we realize how unspartan they are, most pointedly in Brasidas’ description as ‘not a bad speaker, for a Spartan’ (4.84.2). Of course things do move on, and the landlubberly Spartan Elephant has learnt how to mix it on sea by Book 8 with the more experienced, but no longer universally successful Athenian Whale; nor have Spartan enterprise and energy on land been limited to Brasidas and Gylippus.⁷ But still a lot of that truth of Book 1 remains. Sparta misses its chance yet again to sail directly on to the Piraeus after taking Euboea: ⁶ On this see esp. Macleod 1978 = 1983 ch. 10, particularly his remarks (1978: 70 = 1983: 94) on the way Cleon’s description of the Athenian character forms ‘a debased version of those Athenian qualities against which the Corinthians warn the Spartans in i. 70 . . . . This reveals another dangerous conflict between Athens as a democracy and as an empire: the characteristics which gave her power abroad, when displayed in her assembly, are ruinous’. ⁷ Cf. Rood 2000, in criticism of Luginbill 1999: ‘Thucydides suggests that the Spartans can act with speed when their interests are attacked. And it is that concern for self-interest that is one of the constants of human nature that, in Thucydides’ presentation, overrides differences of national character’. Luginbill in contrast finds that such out-of-character actions are ‘almost invariably’ to be attributed to particular leaders, while Athenian activity ‘consistently remains true’ to their established character (1999: 105, 134).

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 ,  

This was not the only occasion when the Spartans proved the ideal enemies for Athens; there were many such cases. The two were so very different, the one swift to act and the other slow, the one eager to get to grips and the other lacking in daring; and those differences gave Athens a particularly great advantage given that their empire depended on naval power. The Syracusans made the point clear, for they were the people most similar to Athens and the most formidable enemies. (Thuc. 8.96.5)

So that is Thucydides’ immensely powerful characterization. We should not forget also that he stressed how difficult it was to find out what was going on at Sparta because of ‘the secrecy of their political set-up’, τῆς πολιτείας τὸ κρυπτόν (5.68.2), and he is notably sparing in details of how that ‘political set-up’ actually worked. We arguably find out more about the dynamics of internal Spartan politics, especially concerning the kings but also on the kings’ relations with ephors, from Herodotus than we do from Thucydides.⁸ It is clear in Thucydides that Archidamus cannot rely on getting his own way (1.88) and that a change of ephorate can mean a change of policy (5.36.1, 46.4), but we do not get as much insight into the power of the non-kings as we do in Herodotus when, for instance, his relatives order Cleomenes to be put in fetters (6.75.2), or of the shenanigans inside the regal house, involving the ephorate, that come over the dubious parentage of Leotychidas (6.61–70, esp. 63.2 and 65.4). With Athens it is the other way round, and we discover much more about the workings of Athenian democracy in Thucydides than in Herodotus. Still, Thucydides gives a picture of what Spartans were like, which must have been difficult for Plutarch to evade, knowing his Thucydides as intimately as he did. We shall see later how far he managed to escape, indeed how much he tried.

Herodotus Herodotus’ Sparta is rather different. There is a lot to say about Herodotus’ Sparta, and indeed his Athens.⁹ But the first thing is that Herodotus’ Spartans are strange—strange enough for him to give an ethnographic summary of what the Spartans are like (6.56–60), the sort of thing he normally does only for foreign peoples. When the wise Anacharsis says that the rest of the Greeks score poorly for wisdom, but the Spartans alone know how to give and receive logos (4.77.1)—well, he is strange too, and the story is anyway marked as probably false, the sort of ⁸ See Cartledge and Debnar 2006: 563–69 for what we do learn from Thucydides and for the uncertainties that linger. ⁹ See esp. the good summaries of Stadter 2006 and Blösel 2018; and on Athens, see Moles 2002, all with references to further bibliography. There are good remarks too in Munson 2001, particularly 52–70, 173–78, 191–93, and 212–17.

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thing that Greeks (evidently the other Greeks, the clever ones) make up. Other Greeks find Spartans difficult to fathom too. Herodotus can have fun with their Laconism, as in the delightfully told ‘bag needs meal’ story (3.46), but he knows too that they can overdo it. At the beginning of Book 9 the Athenian envoys are about to lose patience with the Spartans and conclude that there is no prospect of assistance, when they are told airily by the ephors that the force is already on the march and well on the way to Athens (9.11). ‘Well, you might have said,’ they must have thought. But that Thucydidean slowness? Caution? Reluctance to engage? There is a question whether there is any hint of that at all in Herodotus. I have argued elsewhere that yes, there is a slight hint¹⁰—but it really is only slight. The first we see of the Spartans is their readiness to engage in support of Croesus: they are indeed ‘delighted’ by his approach, 1.69.3, with all the ominousness that ‘delight’ and ‘joy’ normally conjure up.¹¹ Cleomenes too, we remember, was not unmoved by the prospect of all that Persian gold that Aristagoras dangled in front of him at 5.49, first collectively as the prize of an eastern campaign, then privately as a tempting bribe (5.50–51). Herodotus’ Spartans are rarely reluctant to start or continue a fight with Samos or with Argos or with Thebes, and they are heavily involved in Athens with the overthrow of the Peisistratids; a few years later they are keen to intervene again in Athens when the new-found democracy is getting above itself, and they have to be dissuaded by, in particular, the Corinthians (5.91–3), with all the ironies that this would have suggested when the run-up to the Peloponnesian War had shown the tables so decisively turned. It is true that the Spartans have a habit of celebrating festivals when they are most needed elsewhere (and Spartan religiosity is an interesting theme,¹² one that we will see that Plutarch has rather little to say about); but in Herodotus there is little suggestion that those religious reasons were just excuses rather than genuine, overwhelming motives.¹³ No-one could doubt the Spartan enthusiasm to give a lead at Thermopylae. What we do get—again with an eye to what will be relevant for Plutarch—is a strong suggestion of, first, durability. When Croesus sends to Greece to find out who is top dog there at the moment, the flashback to Sparta in Book 1 has to go all the way back to Lycurgus, whereas all that needs to be filled in about Athens relates to the last few years and the rise of Peisistratus (1.59–68). And, secondly, their militarism, or at least their strict discipline when at war—something that of

¹⁰ Pelling 2007: 191–92, stressing especially the incident at 8.132 when the Spartans shied from advancing any further eastwards than Delos. Cf. also Munson 2001: 213. ¹¹ Lateiner 1977; Flory 1978: esp. 150–51. ¹² On this see Flower 2009 with further bibliography, esp. 197–98 on Herodotus. ¹³ See Goodman and Holladay 1986: 152–60 and, on the Marathon case, Hornblower and Pelling 2017: 234 on Hdt. 6.106.3.

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course became a regular part of the ‘Spartiate mirage’.¹⁴ Here the famous exchange of Xerxes and the exiled Spartan king Demaratus is fascinating. Xerxes has expressed his disbelief that any disorganized Greeks could stand up to his vast numbers; they might achieve something if they had the cohesion that one-man rule can bring, whipped forward into action through fear, but this motley crew will surely not be able to get any act together. ‘Sire,’ said Demaratus, I will tell you the truest thing of all: The Spartans, when they fight individually are no worse than anyone else, but together they are the finest men of all. For though they are free, they are not wholly free: they have a master whom they fear much more than your men fear you, and that master is law. So they do whatever that master commands: and it commands the same thing always, never to flee from battle no matter how great the foe, but to stand their ground and to win or to die . . . (7.104.3–4)

Great stuff, and often quoted as emblematic of the whole Greek resistance to Xerxes; and certainly there are times when Spartans are allowed to be mouthpieces for Greek liberty, most notably a little later in the text when they tell some unbelieving Persians that they just do not understand: if you knew freedom the way we know freedom, you would fight for it not just with staves but with axes too (7.135.3). But in this exchange Demaratus has just been explicit that ‘what I am going to say is not about all of them, just about the Spartans’ (7.102.2, cf. 104.1), and one can see what he means. There is something distinctively Spartan, even grim, about that stern insistence on obedience, kill or be killed.¹⁵ This is not that inspiring power of freedom, with everyone fighting for themselves rather than for their master, that we see on the Athenian side, driving them on to fight and defeat their neighbours (5.78, quoted p. 111): it is collective fear, not individualistic aspiration, that is the driver here. And it is clear what this is preparing for: Thermopylae, and the quintessential collective Spartan moment under Leonidas. Not, of course, that all Spartans are quintessential, not even in battle: the movements before the battle of Plataea are a shambles because commanders refuse to obey orders (9.55–57). And one thing that Herodotus shares with Thucydides is his interest in the oddball. Apart from Leonidas, the most interesting Spartans are

¹⁴ To use the term that has become familiar since Ollier 1933. This is not the place to discuss how far that ‘mirage’ reflects reality or whether Sparta was really so exceptional, as some, especially Hodkinson (e.g. 2000, 2009b, and on ‘militarism’ in particular 2006), have come to doubt; or to address the important historiographic corollary and discuss why, if Sparta was not exceptional, so many in antiquity thought that it was. ¹⁵ Cf. Millender 2002 and Balot 2014: 82–83, though both are more negative than I would be about this depiction of Spartan courage. Fornara 1971: 49–50 tilts too far the other way; Lateiner 1989: 185 keeps the balance well. Raaflaub’s formulation ‘the Spartan variant of Greek freedom’ is good (2004: 234; so also Provencal 2015: 8–9), though Raaflaub goes on to give what is to my mind an over-rosy description of the Athenian version: this chapter, n. 19. See also Pelling 2019: 165–66 and 284 n. 9.

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Cleomenes, who is highly reminiscent of the unbalanced Persian king Cambyses (so that ‘internal other’ again),¹⁶ and Pausanias, who is also clearly rather taken with eastern ways and the attraction of eastern-style tyranny: a flash-forward looks forward to his aspiration to become ‘tyrant of Greece’ (5.32). After Plataea the triumphant Pausanias orders two meals to be set out, one a sumptuous Persian dinner, one the gloomy Spartan version (9.82). We might expect the moral to be ‘no wonder we won, tough as we are’: the text has laid enough preparation for that insight, with an interest in eastern softness (ἁβρότης) from Book 1 onwards.¹⁷ But it is not what we get: the moral Pausanias himself draws is ‘why on earth did they bother?’ He cannot see the point of coming to the ends of the earth for the dubious delights of a Spartan meal, and we can sense which dinner he would prefer himself. So for Herodotus too the theme of the unspartan Spartan has attractions, even if they are unspartan in different and more unsettling ways than their Thucydidean successors. And Athens? Nothing in Herodotus is simple, and it is futile to debate whether he is pro- or anti-Athenian. He is not rosy-eyed about democracy: he is scathing about the assembly’s gullibility with Aristagoras. It is much more of a pushover, so it seems, to put one across a mass than to do so with one individual, if Aristagoras was not able to put one across the single Lacedaemonian Cleomenes but could do so with thirty thousand Athenians.¹⁸ (Herodotus 5.97.2)

Nor has Herodotus any illusions about Athenian internal harmony. He has no doubt that there was a shield lifted to send a signal to the Persians at Marathon: there was indeed a traitor within (6.124.2). But he emphasizes too the inspiring power of democratic freedom: There are many indications, not just one, of what a good thing is freedom of speech, if the Athenians were no better warriors than their neighbours while under the tyrants but once they were rid of them became pre-eminent by a distance. That makes it clear that while under the power of others they deliberately played the coward because they were working for their ruler, but once free everyone was eager to achieve success for their own good. (Hdt. 5.78)

And the Athenians’ rhetoric at the end of Book 8 is thunderous: ‘as long as the sun travels the same path in the sky’ and ‘as long as a single Athenian survives’, they ¹⁶ Griffiths 1989. ¹⁷ Especially 1.71, 125–26, 155–56 and then Aristagoras’ tendentious portrayal of the trouserwearing Persians as easy meat at 5.49: the theme will culminate enigmatically in the work’s closing chapter, 9.122. Cf. Pelling 1997a: 61–4 (repr. 2013: 374–45). ¹⁸ For defence of these colloquial translations ‘pushover’ and ‘put one across’ see Pelling 2007.

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will never come to terms with Xerxes (8.143.2, 144.3). Admittedly, there is some ambiguity just a few chapters later, when they seem to be planning to do just that—or so they tell the Spartans (9.11.1), and we have to wonder whether the disingenuousness is in what they say then or in what they said before to Xerxes. But in the final verdict Herodotus is emphatic: his audience will not like him saying so, but the Athenians were the saviours of Greece (7.139). That alertness to the unpopularity of the claim makes a point too. The Athenians were not popular, and we can see why. Freedom, as that passage at 5.78 made clear, does not stop driving once one has cast off the dominance of another; when it can, it carries on to assert domination over others. Miltiades’ inspiring words before Marathon tell the same tale: if the polemarch Callimachus takes the right path, ‘Athens can become the first of the cities of Greece’ (6.109.3).¹⁹ There are many hints of the coming Athenian empire in the closing books, explicit and implicit, and we can see why it was not loved. There is more than a hint of some looming similarities between that empire and the despotic Persian rule that Athens had so proudly opposed; almost the closing panel of the Histories deals with the violence and torture inflicted by the victorious Athenians on the Persian Artaÿctes (9.119–20). It was Thucydides who later developed the motif of Athens as ‘the tyrant city’, for Pericles an analogy (2.63.2), for Cleon an equivalence (3.27.2). Such language was certainly in the air (Ar. Knights 1114).²⁰ The idea is there in Herodotus too.

Plutarch To put my thesis simply, a good deal of Plutarch’s Athens comes from Thucydides, but not much of his Sparta: his Sparta has a little of Herodotus but only a little (one recalls all those strictures in On Herodotus’ Malice²¹), a substantial admixture from Xenophon,²² and a great deal of emphasis that bears the marks of being Plutarch’s own.

¹⁹ Contrast Raaflaub 2004: 234: ‘The Athenian conception of freedom, by contrast [with the Spartan], was less narrowly concentrated on Athenian advantage; it is not an end in itself but is more idealistic, generous, and committed to a higher communal and Panhellenic objective. This, at any rate, was the view propagated in the Periclean era, variously reflected in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Euripides’ suppliant plays’. Similarly Millender 2002: 42, 45–47. But what is also reflected, especially in Herodotus and Thucydides, are the reasons for thinking that the reality fell well short of any such ideal. I say more about freedom at Pelling 2019: 174–89. ²⁰ Cf. Raaflaub 1979 and Tuplin 1985. ²¹ Among many other passages in Herodotus’ Malice, note on Sparta in particular 858c–d, 859c, 860f, 861d–f, 864b, 865d–f, 871e–72b, 873f–74a. ²² Gengler 2020 makes the case for systematic intertextuality with Xenophon through the Spartan Lives, building Plutarch’s authority through modifications, additions, and corrections to the works of his predecessor. That is an attractive view, and it chimes well with what I will suggest here about his use of Plato.

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Let us start with the Athens of the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, contrasted there with its equivalent at Carthage. Take, for instance, the demos of the Athenians, easily stirred to anger, easily shifted to pity, preferring a sharp dart of suspicion to a slow process of instruction: just as it is more eager to help men who are obscure and lowly, so it welcomes and prefers speech which is playful and humorous; it takes more pleasure than anyone else in those who praise it, and takes less offence at those who make fun at its expense; it is a source of fear to everyone, even its magistrates, then generous to everyone, even its enemies. The Carthaginian demos is different, bitter, grim, deferring to its magistrates, harsh to its subjects, most ignoble in its fears, most savage in its angers, sticking resolutely to what it has decided, firm in resisting the blandishments of humour and amusement. They were not the sort of people who would have agreed with a laugh and applause, if Cleon asked them to postpone the assembly on the grounds that he had already sacrificed and was about to entertain some guests; or who, if Alcibiades had let a quail escape from his tunic when he was speaking, would have enthusiastically joined in to capture it and return it; no, they would have killed the men on the grounds of insulting arrogance and self-indulgence. (Precepts on Public Life, 799c–e)

Of course some of Plutarch’s characterization is familiar from broader ancient stereotyping of a demos, especially that of the unsympathetic Plato; but this contrast between Carthage and Athens is enough to show that we are not just dealing with that, as there are significant differences among different democracies. In fact neither city quite fits the familiar stereotype. Carthage’s lack of fickleness and Athens’ willingness to take a joke are both some distance from Plato. The anecdotes themselves are retold in the Lives,²³ and—predictably, given their texture—do not in fact come from the austere Thucydides; but, like most of the Praecepta examples, they do seem to come from the same phase of reading and writing about the fifth century as the Lives, and that demos, here as in the Pericles and Nicias and Alcibiades, seems highly reminiscent of the demos we see in Thucydides. To be sure, the characterization may vary from one Life to another.²⁴ In Pericles we see the leader instil some of his own μεγαλοφροσύνη into the city; in Nicias it is more a question of the intimidating threat that the demos poses to its generals given its tendency to punish failure without sympathy; in Alcibiades there is the way in which the man mirrors much of the city’s own flair and unpredictability—for good and for ill. Still, none of those features is going to surprise anyone who knows their Thucydides and has breathed in the atmosphere ²³ Cleon’s postponement: Nic. 7.7. Alcibiades’ quail: Alc. 10.1–2. ²⁴ Or so I argued in Pelling 1992: 21–27 (repr. 2002: 125–30.)

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of the demos there: the irresponsibility, even the sense of fun—think of the debate before they send Cleon off to Pylos (4.28); the ‘source of fear, even to its magistrates’—think of Nicias’ fears of what might happen if he comes home from Sicily (7.48), not at all unreasonable if we remember what had happened to those earlier generals after a much less spectacular Sicilian failure eleven years earlier (4.65). And the Periclean μεγαλοφροσύνη too squares with the elaborate analysis of his wise leadership at 2.65, even if the Thucydidean spotlight falls on the times when confidence is faltering before and after the outbreak of the war: the Funeral Speech, though, gives an idea of how inspiring that leadership could be, and—surely—had been for so long. Also picked up from Thucydides is the way that Pericles can convince the Athenians that the Spartan negotiating ploys are just tests of strength, not indications of any genuine reluctance to fight (one of two alternatives at Per. 31.1; cf. Thuc. 1.140.4–5); that too insinuates a further Thucydidean subtlety, for in both authors it is important that such persuasion is needed, for—despite the usual Athenian impetuosity, another emphasis that Plutarch shares (e.g. Per. 20.3–21.1, 27.2, 33.3, Comp. Per. et Fab. 1.4, Alc. 26.3–4)—there would otherwise have been popular pressure to keep the peace. One recalls again that tentativeness that we noticed over the Corcyrean affair, p. 106. True, not all Plutarch’s presentation is drawn from Thucydides,²⁵ and not everything is taken over. That idea of the ‘tyrant city’, for instance, does not surface much. Plutarch knows that politics changed within the fifth century itself, with the transformation of Athenian politics, and consequently of Pericles’ own political style, that came with the rise and then overthrow of Thucydides son of Melesias (Per. 11.2–4, 15.1–2): that cannot come from Thucydides the historian, taciturn as he is about Athenian internal politics before the war, but it does help Plutarch to tussle with the worrying discord between Plato and Thucydides, both writers whom he deeply respected. He can simply decide that there was justice in what both said about Pericles but that each was right about different periods.²⁶ What he does draw from Thucydides can also be retouched or reinterpreted. His treatment of the Corcyrean affair itself may be a case of that, with the choice of Cimon’s son Lacedaemonius boldly reinterpreted in terms of those internal political antagonisms (Per. 29) and much more weight given to the Megarian Decrees and to Pericles’ personal motives.²⁷ There is also all the richness of atmosphere that comes from quotations and anecdotes from fifth-century ²⁵ A good deal more on this in Pelling 1992 (repr. 2002 ch. 5), with further references. ²⁶ Cf. the way Plutarch poses the problem and his solution at Per. 9.1–2, not naming Plato but clearly aimed in his direction (Stadter 1989: 111). The narrative also stresses that not all the pleasures that Pericles even in his demagogic period offered the city were vulgar (Per. 11.4, διαπαιδαγωγῶν οὐκ ἀμούσοις ἡδοναῖς τὴν πόλιν, and esp. 12–13 on the building programme: Stadter 1987: 259–60). Once the change has come, the description of his leadership at 15.1 elegantly mixes Thucydides and Plato in its echoes and quotations: cf. Stadter 1987: 267–68 and 1989: xxxviii–xl, 187–93. ²⁷ Pelling 2000b: 106–109, esp. 107 on Lacedaemonius.

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comedy, which would have reinforced some aspects such as the city’s energetic irrepressibility, and from the likes of Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos:²⁸ these are doubtless drawn from Plutarch’s own broad knowledge of the cultural landscape. But these are cherries and icing, sometimes quite a lot of cherries and quite thick icing, on a recognizably Thucydidean political cake. The characterization of the demos itself remains much the same. That is the fifth-century demos, and Plutarch knew that things could change. They have certainly changed by the time we rejoin Athens in the second half of the fourth century, and see the city of Demosthenes and Phocion and, most disturbingly of all, the visiting Demetrius, with his habit of entertaining prostitutes in the Parthenon, so deeply offending to Athena’s own taste for virginity (Demetr. 23.5, 25.6.). These, said Demades, were politicians who were steering the shipwreck of the city (Phoc. 1.1), and it showed. The Athenians are all more bad-tempered now (Phoc. 2), and that makes them even harder to handle. There is not the same style as of old, and what remains may be closer to a more generalized democratic stereotype of fickleness and irresponsibility and vindictiveness. There may still be a dash of that Periclean backbone, as it is stressed that the demos employed the non-demagogic Phocion for its serious business (Phoc. 8.3). Still, the style has gone. They are even so ill-mannered as to celebrate the news of the death of the tyrant Philip with exhilaration, and Plutarch does not think much of that (Dem. 22). Yet the fifth-century picture even lurks in those fourth-century Lives, with the great figures of the past, Pericles in particular, as the benchmark, bringing out how Demosthenes matches up for oratory but not for morality (Dem. 14.2, cf. 20.4–5, 25). And Sparta? There is not much of Thucydides 1.70, at least. Plutarch has little explicit contrasting of the characters of Athens and Sparta: Spartan customs and mindset are distinctive, certainly, but the contrast is with normal Greek expectations rather than with Athens in particular. There are several echoes of Thucydides’ broader analysis of the background to the Peloponnesian War, sometimes with verbal echoes (esp. Per. 17.1 and 29.1), but there is no hint of that Thucydidean stress on Spartan slowness or reluctance to engage. What gets space before the war is the Spartan involvement in the Sacred War, and Pericles’ priority then is to ἀνείργειν Λακεδαιμονίους—‘to keep the Spartans in check’ (Per. 21.1). When war is already looming Archidamus can calm his countrymen down (Per. 29.7), but there is a lot to calm down. Nor can one sense much Spartan excess of caution in the campaigns of Lysander or Agesilaus: ephors may rein in their generals’ eagerness in individual cases, but there is no overall slowness or battle-shyness.

²⁸ For these see the exemplary survey of Stadter 1989: lviii–lxxxv.

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The Spartan Lives show an unusual degree of coherence, perhaps even more than the Athenian: these in fact provide one of the clearest cases of a feature that has rightly become a preoccupation of research in the last fifteen years, the looking for cohesion and links that go beyond the synkritic pairings.²⁹ Lycurgus, the person and the Life, is in the background throughout. It takes five centuries and fourteen generations for Lycurgus’ story to be complete (Lyc. 29.10–11), and so that Herodotean stress on durability—admittedly a Thucydidean one too, 1.18.1— certainly recurs. And that durability has its origin and explanation in Sparta’s internal workings, another theme that we found earlier to be more characteristic of Herodotus than Thucydides: that relationship of kings to ephors, for instance, is traced (Lyc. 7: it is again linked with durability, the diminished kingship being ‘in fact greater because it will last for longer’, μείζω μὲν οὖν . . . ὅσῳ χρονιωτέραν), and the kings’ submission to other magistrates too (12.5). Those other Spartan Lives all then have material on the various threats to the Lycurgan constitution, culminating in its final crisis in the days of Agis and Cleomenes: the clashes of kings and regents with those other magistracies, especially the ephorate; the paradox that Lysander, so financially austere and restrained himself, should have introduced the foreign wealth into Sparta that proved so damaging;³⁰ the blots on Spartan reputation caused by their treatment of other states during their early fourth-century domination (a theme too of a disillusioned late chapter that Xenophon included in his Lacedaemonion Politeia, another work that influenced Plutarch greatly); the catastrophe of Leuctra, treated in Agesilaus, and the crisis that this brought. Agesilaus did well after the battle . . . but was not able to restore the city’s power and reputation after the defeat. It was similar to what you see with a healthy body that has always followed an excessively strict and ascetic diet: one slip and one shift in the balance destroyed the whole prosperity of the city. One can understand that. It was a constitution that was very well set up for virtue and peace and harmony, but the onset of cases of violent rule³¹ and domination brought them down—things that Lycurgus thought would be quite unnecessary for a city that was going to live well. (Ages. 33.3–4) ²⁹ This has been demonstrated in Michele Lucchesi’s 2014 Oxford D.Phil. thesis on the Spartan Lives, which I hope will appear in book form in due course; Gengler 2020 argues similarly. For earlier treatments of cross-Life cohesion and complementarity see esp. Mossman 1992, 103–104, Harrison 1995; Beneker 2005; Buszard 2008; Stadter 2010; and Pelling 2010b and 2011: 33–35; on Lysander and Alcibiades, see Alexiou 2010; on Agesilaus and Alexander, Nevin 2014, though her weight falls more on Plutarch’s comparisons of Agesilaus to the figures Alexander and Agamemnon than on connections with Alex. itself. ³⁰ Esp. Lys. 2.6, 17, Comp. Lys. et Sull. 3.7–8; more on this in Pelling forthcoming. Candau Morón 2000: 466–73 interestingly suggests that Lysander’s own paradoxes and ambiguities mirror related but not identical paradoxes in Sparta itself, both austere and covetous, both liberator and oppressor. ³¹ There is probably a pun here on the two senses of ἀρχή, ‘rule’ and ‘beginning’: their rule is what starts their decline.

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One notices too that this durability is interpreted in secular terms, what Lycurgus did and did not foresee, the strengths and frailties of the human leaders that followed. The gods may have wished Lycurgus well and signified approval as they sent him on his way (Lyc. 5.4, cf. 6.1, 28.13, 29.5–6, Comp. Agis–Cleom. et Gracch. 2.4): but after that Sparta is pretty much on its own, and the really ‘heavenly good fortune’ to Sparta is Lycurgus himself (θεῖον . . . εὐτύχημα, 7.5).³² The interest in religion that we saw in Herodotus is also recurrent in Xenophon (esp. Lac. Pol. 13) and is even visible in Thucydides (7.18.2), but seldom surfaces in Plutarch; when religion does crop up with the later Spartans, the interest usually falls on human manipulation of oaths or divine signs rather than any more direct heavenly intervention (e.g. Lys. 8.4–5, 19.3, 20.6–8, 25–26, Comp. Ages. et Pomp. 1.2, Agis–Cleom. 11), or on the way that worship or religious feeling illuminates character (Ages. 14.2, 19.2–4, 30.1, Agis–Cleom. 30[9]), or just on divine approval or disapproval for human plans (e.g. Ages. 9.5, Agis–Cleom. 28[7].3). Even the extraordinary turnaround of fortune at Aegospotami gets no more than ‘therefore some people took it to be divine’ (διὸ καὶ θεῖόν τινες ἡγήσαντο τὸ ἔργον, Lys. 11.13).³³ The Lycurgan emphasis goes with another dominant interest in the Spartan Lives, one that marks the most distinctive contribution of Plutarch himself: education.³⁴ Education becomes the dominant ordering principle in the Life of Lycurgus itself, as in the second half we follow a young Spartan through his life cycle: that structural technique is again one that Plutarch may have picked up from Xenophon’s Lacedaemonion Politeia, but he follows it through more elaborately. Education starts even before Lycurgus sets his hand to the reforms, for Thaletas, the lyric poet whom he imported from Crete, brought a music whose rhythms habituated listeners to order and stability ‘so that in a way he paved the way for Lycurgus to educate them’ (Lyc. 4.3).³⁵ Even when it comes to adult life in Lycurgus’ Sparta, education has not finished: the elderly have responsibilities towards the young.

³² Notice for instance Lyc. 22.5–6, praising the choice of an embaterios paean to accompany the march into battle for its effect on morale ὡς τοῦ θεοῦ συμπαρόντος: it is a point about human mentality, the impression that the god is present, and the wisdom of institutionalizing that musical choice. A chapter later, there does seem to be a divine stimulus working directly on Lycurgus (23.3–4), but even there the point is that his own human presence is needed if a particular institution (the Olympic truce) is to be got right. ³³ The καί there is interesting too: ‘even divine’ (i.e. ‘they went so far as to . . .’, as in Perrin’s version ‘some actually thought the result due to divine intervention’), or ‘also divine’ (as well as wrought by Lysander’s human judgement)? The omens accompanying the battle, including the alleged appearance of the Dioscuri and a fall of a great rock from heaven, are similarly introduced by a cool ‘there were some who said . . . ’, Lys. 12.1. Plutarch moves on quickly to discuss the physics of meteorites. ³⁴ On this Plutarchan preoccupation see Xenophontos 2016. ³⁵ See de Blois and Bons 1995: 102–103 and de Blois 2005a: 148–451 on the way Lyc. emphasizes this need to prepare the citizens’ mentality if they are to accept such radical reforms.

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It was shameful for the elderly to be seen spending all their time on such things in the agora, rather than spending most of the day in the gymnasia and the so-called leschai. They would gather there and spend the time with one another in appropriate leisure activities, not giving a thought to any money-making activities or any needs concerned with the agora: the main part of their activity was to praise something good or criticize something bad, always with joking and laughter, with a lightness of touch that was important for advising the young and putting them right. (Lyc. 25.2–3)

Once again we can detect Plutarch’s own hand here: the ideal is given a Spartan tinge (the shame of spending all day in the agora!), but one can still hear the same voice as in An seni respublicae gernda sit, urging that the role of the elderly is to give wise and discreet guidance to the young.³⁶ Not all of this Lycurgan education is good, though that part might be. There is some nimble footwork in Lycurgus allowing Plutarch to intimate, but also to mask, his reservations in ways that allow a generally positive presentation: it is a particularly elaborate version of that humane generosity to his subjects which he projects elsewhere, not concealing their faults but not accentuating them either (Cim. 2.3–5). One of his ploys is the use of Plato.³⁷ There is a heavy philosophical texturing in particular to the chapter where he deals with marriages and eugenics (Lyc. 15), including such oddities as the male seizing a bride by abduction, visiting her only at night so that some couples have children before the husband sees the wife in daylight, and older husbands asking a younger and fitter man to serve as a surrogate father or the younger man thinking it appropriate to offer his services. It is hard to think that the author of Amatorius would really approve of much of this, but at least the playing with Plato (and Aristotle too, though Aristotle is more

³⁶ Xenophontos 2016: 139–43. ³⁷ Besides the explicit Plato quotation at the beginning (15.1), note especially the animal-breeding analogy at 15.15 and the similarity to Plato, Rpb. 459a–b. On this see de Blois and Bons 1995; Stadter 1999; de Blois 2005a and b; Pelling 2014: 151; and esp. the nuanced treatment of Lane 2013, who argues that Plutarch out-Platonizes Plato by insisting on Lycurgus’ rejection of written laws (ctr. Phdr. 258b10–c5, Laws 858e3–4): ‘Plutarch’s Lycurgus can be understood to be pursuing a deeply Platonic path in respect of the debate over writing, law and virtue, by constructing an ideal polity in a form which Plato himself stopped short of doing’ (60). This goes with Plutarch’s stress on education, presented as more powerful than written laws in habituating Spartans to think rightly: Lane 2013: 70–75. Schneeweiss 1979 similarly observed some retouching in Plutarch’s treatment of female exercising, with Plato’s emphasis on preparing girls for battle (Rpb. 452a–c, Laws 805d–6b, 813d– 14b) reinterpreted in terms of broader moral education (Lyc. 14.7): that emphasis on understanding principles could similarly be seen as out-Platonizing Plato, though it goes too far to see it as ‘transferring Plato’s theory of ideas to history’ (Schneeweiss 1979: 382). In a paper given in Fribourg in 2017 Noreen Humble pointed out that the classical evidence is thin for Spartan females exercising in the nude (cf. Lyc. 14–15); this too may be a case of Plutarch out-Platonizing the master, though Humble also observed that scholars have sometimes misinterpreted Plato’s own text (Rpb. 5.452b–e, 457a–b) in the light of Plutarch and assumed a close analogy with Spartan practice.

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usually rebutted than followed³⁸) insinuates that this is the appropriate register for judging such things. A further aspect is the way that he wraps up his reservations about Spartan militarism so that it comes out as primarily a judgement on Rome, not on Sparta at all: But did not Rome progress to the better through warfare? That is a question requiring a long answer for people who define ‘the better’ in terms of wealth and luxury and domination rather than safety and gentleness and self-sufficiency accompanied by justice. (Comp. Lyc. et Num. 2.12)

In other Lives we can see more clearly how those reservations about militarism play out, how they fill in more of the picture of how that healthy body proved itself so vulnerable, how indeed the elements that built its strength turned out to be so destructive. The distinctive elements of that education were the ways it encouraged φιλοτιμία and φιλονικία/-νεικία, ambition and contentiousness, two terms that so often go together in Plutarch.³⁹ With a whole volume now devoted to the ‘lash of ambition’, the point needs no elaboration here;⁴⁰ I commented there that φιλότιμ- language was more than twice as frequent in the Spartan Lives than in either the Roman or the other Greek ones.⁴¹ Philip Stadter has also discussed and clarified φιλονικία in a different volume, and Sophia Xenophontos’ book too is most illuminating.⁴² Lysander and Agesilaus in particular have a lot to say about those qualities, and both introduce them by explaining that they come from that distinctive Spartan education (Lys. 2.4, Ages. 1–2);⁴³ they also dwell on the way that the φιλοτιμία, so important in driving both characters on, ended up by being much more damaging when it turned to hostile rivalry between the two.⁴⁴ The maladministration of the ³⁸ Aristotle rebutted, or at least not unequivocally accepted: Lyc. 1.2, 5.12, 6.4, 14.1, 28.1, and 12; but he is allowed a line of unqualified praise at the end, 31.4. ³⁹ Here too he is following a hint in Plato (Rpb. 548c): cf. Hodkinson 2006: 124; Lucchesi 2018: 42. ⁴⁰ Roskam, de Pourcq, and Van der Stockt 2012, esp. 19–98 on Plutarch (papers by Ingenkamp, Nikolaidis, Schmitz, Stadter 2012, and Pelling 2012). ⁴¹ Pelling 2012, esp. p. 57 on the statistics. Cf. also Lucchesi 2018, demonstrating that these qualities are emphasized much more in Plutarch’s treatments of Sparta than they are by Herodotus, Thucydides, or Xenophon. ⁴² Stadter 2011; Xenophontos 2016, esp. ch. 5. ⁴³ Cf. Candau Morón 2000: 467–69; Alexiou 2010: 334–45. Education is still important in Agis– Cleomenes, but in a different way: see esp. Agis–Cleom. 23(2) on the influence of the Stoic Sphaerus upon Cleomenes, with Roskam 2011: 213. ⁴⁴ φιλοτιμία and φιλονικία in Lys. 2.4, τὸ μὲν οὖν φιλότιμον αὐτῷ καὶ φιλόνικον ἐκ τῆς Λακωνικῆς παρέμεινε παιδείας ἐγγενόμενον . . . ; then 4.6, 6.2, 13.9, 19.1–2, 21.6, then 23.3 and 7 and Comp. Lys. et Sull. 4.3; for discussion, see Pelling 1988a: 268–74 (repr. 2002b: 292–97); Stadter 1992a: 44–45 (repr. 2015: 261–62); and Duff 1999: 179–80. In Agesilaus, esp. 1, on the importance of his sharing the standard Spartan ἀγωγή; 2.2–3, φιλονικότατος γὰρ ὢν καὶ θυμοειδέστατος ἐν τοῖς νέοις καὶ πάντα πρωτεύειν βουλόμενος; 4.4; 5.5, οὕτως ἔοικεν ὁ Λακωνικὸς νομοθέτης ὑπέκκαυμα τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν τὸ φιλότιμον καὶ φιλόνικον, ἀεί τινα τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς διαφορὰν καὶ ἅμιλλαν εἶναι πρὸς

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decarchies, such a blot on the Spartan reputation, is tied into that picture as well, with the suffering subject states so uncertain about where they should turn.⁴⁵ Agesilaus’ own distinctive version of this takes a particularly damaging turn too when it becomes an almost pathological φιλονικία against Thebes, a theme traced insistently in the second half of the Life and tied in closely with the ups and downs of the Leuctra campaign:⁴⁶ it is a telling irony then when his excesses of φιλοτιμία are answered by a mirroring ambition of the victorious Epaminondas to drive his success home (32.5). It is interesting again to compare this with Xenophon’s Lacedaemonion Politeia, where there is certainly a stress on φιλονικία but it is much less developed. The same goes for Xenophon’s Agesilaus.⁴⁷ It is clear that this is a distinctive emphasis of Plutarch himself, one that again will not surprise us at all: he after all develops those ideas also in his Philopoemen and Flamininus, eventually using the distinction between the two qualities as the key to the two men’s differences (Comp. Phil. et Flam. 1.4). Those are not the only features of Spartan education that could prove weaknesses as well as strengths. There are things to say about friendship as well, for instance, those strong bonds of friendships that the educational system encouraged in the young: Agesilaus in particular plots how those friendships can go wrong. But let us end on a different note, one suggested by that parallel with Philopoemen and Flamininus. We have so far been tracing what is distinctive about Plutarch’s Sparta and his Spartans: in a way those Spartan Lives could perhaps be said to follow the Herodotean and Thucydidean interest in the unspartan Spartans, as all these figures after Lycurgus are at odds with their communities. In some ways even Lycurgus is too. In another way, though, these figures are all too Spartan, and the way they rock the Spartan boat follows from their Spartan education. Yet this distinctive φιλονικία captures something not just about Sparta, but also about Greece: the wranglings at home that can get in the way of their success are a version, writ small, of all the troubles that beset the whole Greek world. Agesilaus is summoned home from Asia when he is on the verge of a great campaign of conquest: he could have been Alexander ahead of his time.

ἀλλήλους βουλόμενος; . . . 7.4, 8.5–7, 11.5–6, 18.4–5, 20.9, 21.7, 23.11, and 26.6 (quoted at n. 46), 33.2, 35.5, 36.3, Comp. Ages. et Pomp. 1.7; see Duff 1999: 84–85; Stadter 1999: 479–86; and Stadter 2011: 247–49 (repr. 2015: 279–81). ⁴⁵ Lys. 23, Ages. 7–8. ⁴⁶ Ages. 22.1–8, 23–26, 28, 31–35; for the link with φιλοτιμία and φιλονικία, esp. 23.11, τῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ καὶ τῇ φιλονικίᾳ πολλαχοῦ συνεκφερόμενος, καὶ μάλιστα τῇ πρὸς Θηβαίους, 26.6, θυμῷ τινι καὶ φιλονικίᾳ τοὺς Θηβαιους ἀπολέσαι ζητῶν (and cf. 28.7), Comp. Ages. et Pomp. 1.7; for the origin of the antipathy, 6.9–11; for its necessary abandonment, 33.2. ⁴⁷ In Xenophon’s Lac. Pol., at 4.2 (producing ἔρις at 4.5–6); Xenophon’s Agesilaus is φιλοτιμότατος (Xenophon, Ages. 10.4) and trains men to have φιλονικία (2.8), but neither theme is so sustained. Hamilton 1994 notes the brushes of Lysander and Agesilaus (n. 44) as one of the main instances where Plutarch diverges from Xenophon.

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But at this moment Epicydidas the Spartiate arrived, announcing that a great Greek war was besetting Sparta, and so the ephors were summoning him and commanding him to help the people at home. ‘You Greeks! You are the inventers of barbarian evils’.⁴⁸ For what else could one call that jealousy and that combination and array of Greek forces against themselves? Fortune was on an upward surge, yet they laid hold upon her; they turned upon one another the arms that were levelled against barbarians and the war that they had driven out of Greece. I do not myself agree with Demaratus of Corinth when he said that those Greeks had been robbed of a great pleasure who had not seen Alexander sitting on Darius’ throne; no, I think they would have done better to shed tears at the thought that this had been left for Alexander by those who had at that time expended the lives of Greek generals at Leuctra, Coronea, Corinth, and in Arcadia. (Ages. 15.2–4)

The last chapter of Cimon similarly reflects on the way that ‘bouts of Greek faction and turbulence’ came to exclude any eastern campaigning, ‘leaving Persian tribute-collectors amidst Greek allies and friends when not even a Persian messenger or horse would have come within 400 stades of the sea in Cimon’s day’ (Cim. 19.3–4). There are similar remarks too when centuries later Flamininus proclaims the freedom of the Greeks, brought to them by Roman φιλοτιμία when it had been their own φιλονικία/-νεικία that had denied them that freedom for so long (Flam. 11.3–7). The theme recurs in On the Pythian Oracles as well (401c–d). It is not just le vice Spartiate; it is le vice grec. We saw in Herodotus that Demaratus’ words said something specific about Sparta as well as gesturing to something more general about Greece and in particular about Greek freedom, so bewildering as that is to Persian eyes and ears. Thucydides knew how to penetrate below the differences between Athens and Sparta to explore the features, often discomfiting ones, of the human nature that they shared. It is part of Plutarch’s genius too that he can use very individual cases—individual people, individual cities—to broach broader questions and suggest broader truths: truths about Greece, truths about Rome, truths about human nature too. And this is yet another way that he treads in a path where Herodotus and Thucydides had walked all those centuries before.

⁴⁸ A quotation from the ‘barbarian’ Andromache in Euripides’ Trojan Women (764), though there it is the evils that the victorious Greeks have imposed on the defeated ‘barbarian’ Trojans. There may be a point here too in transposing it to evils that they are inflicting on one another: ‘a great Greek war’, as he has just put it.

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7 ἄγειν πομπάς Ritual Politics and Space Control in Plutarch’s Alcibiades and Other Athenian Lives Athena Kavoulaki

Introduction ‘Plutarch’s cities’, the topic of this volume, constitutes an interesting, fresh, and challenging area of study.¹ Although there are classic works on Plutarch and some major cities of the ancient world,² the emphasis placed herein on the ‘social formula of the “city” ’ and the ‘presentation of civic life’³ brings to the foreground an aspect that has been relatively overshadowed by the justified primary attention to the dominant ethical axis of Plutarch’s work. As regards the Lives, modern scholars have amply demonstrated that their basic purpose is moral, i.e. the depiction of human qualities and character so that the reader can make a moral choice.⁴ Undoubtedly, individual character is important;⁵ but it is character not in isolation or in seclusion but (as has been often repeated) character in action, human virtue or vice manifested in political life or more broadly in public affairs. Thus, apart from individual character, there are also communities, cities, and states. In Pelling’s apt formulation, ‘it is the interrelation between individuals and city that is so often stressed’ in the Lives.⁶ Such an emphasis points at directions of more complicated patterns of polis dynamics drawn in Plutarch’s texts that deserve further examination. The following discussion seeks to focus on aspects of this interrelation in the context of some of his Athenian Lives (mainly Alcibiades). It will be argued that major cultural events such as processions which seem to define the identity of the Athenian polis appear also at focal points of the narrative. Apart from shaping the text, these scenes illuminate the

¹ This chapter has greatly benefited from the meticulous care and scholarly rigour of the editors as well as the thoughtful comments and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers. I express my warmest thanks to all. ² See e.g. Jones 1972; Podlecki 1988; Stadter 2014a. ³ Editors’ introduction. ⁴ For a recent comprehensive presentation see Nikolaidis 2014 (with references to earlier literature). ⁵ ‘For Plutarch, the chief object of the biographer was to reveal his subject’s character’ (Duff 1999: 5). ⁶ Pelling 1992: 29. Athena Kavoulaki, ἄγειν πομπάς: Ritual Politics and Space Control in Plutarch’s Alcibiades and Other Athenian Lives In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0008

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interaction between polis and individual, suggesting Plutarch’s thoughtful treatment of polis affairs. In Pelling’s statement quoted above ‘city’ seems to denote citizens; the synecdoche used in this case (common in modern languages) seems to be long-standing and frequent. Ancient Greek texts attest to its use but also provide instances of the basic perception lying behind it, formulated often in memorable phrases such as the one attributed by Thucydides to Nicias (7.77.3): ἄνδρες πόλις, οὐ τείχη οὐδὲ νῆες ἀνδρῶν κεναί (‘the city is the men, not the walls, nor the boats empty of men’).⁷ Notwithstanding the truism of this emblematic expression, a city is indeed very much its walls and all its other monuments and material culture which can only be developed if there is the necessary space available to the community for its use.⁸ Without a demarcated space, potential co-habitants can hardly form and define themselves as a social body; thus the basic equation between city and citizens presupposes the reality of the spatial axis, which constitutes a necessary condition for the existence of a city. Yet, it does not seem to suffice for the city’s operation, definition, or identity. Historians of urban life⁹ have compared the city to a language. Monuments, public places, paths, centre, periphery, and extra-urban spots are the vocabulary, while the social and cultural life of the city is the language’s syntactical expression. The intertwining and co-operation of both these elements can only make possible the processes of signification and communication, or on the level of the polis, the processes of historical development. The Greek polis seems to be a paradigmatic case of such a ‘linguistic’ model. Acquisition and use of space tend to be connected with traditional cultural processes of legitimization and (re)authorization that go deep into the basis of polis formation. Modern theories have associated polis origins with procedures of territorial acquisition connected with important cult sites and the performance of public pompai,¹⁰ i.e. of ritual processional movements structured bipolarly, incorporated in the worship of gods and heroes and enjoying vast distribution and popularity in the Greek world. Processions would repeatedly demarcate polis space, transforming it into territory and vital living domain in the context of a traditional worldview acknowledging ontologically superior powers supervising world order. In this respect the interplay between significant sites and ritual processions seems to have played a crucial role in the articulation of the cities and their life in Antiquity; at the same time it provided important and regular occasion for a grand display of civic and cultic activity. Endurable traces of such public events are the various sacred ways—hierai hodoi—surviving in various ⁷ There are earlier formulations: Alc. fr. 112.10 Voigt ἄνδρες γὰρ πόλι]ος πύργος ἀρεύ[ιος. Cf. Aesch. Pers. 348–49; Soph. OT 55–57. ⁸ As Kant has argued in Critique of Pure Reason, space in itself is ‘the a priori representation forming the base of all intuitions’ (Kant 1966, I:1:2, 29). ⁹ Bloomer and Moore 1977. ¹⁰ Polignac 1995.

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places of the Greek world (such as Athens, Delphi, Didyma, Amyklai, Delos etc.) and attesting to the splendour of the ceremonies. The monumentality of these constructions may be proper for the eternal nature of the gods celebrated therein but can hardly be dissociated from the polis’ practical concerns for long-term control, use and re-use. Grand and vital though they may be, processions (as all ritual action) cannot be trusted to yield everlasting effects. Their periodicity implies tacit admission that results cannot be guaranteed and territorial (or other) claims must be restated and renewed. The dynamism inherent in the reperformance of these structurally important ritual events seems to stem paradoxically from their apparent fluidity.

Athens Athens seemed at first to be an exception to the aforementioned model of interplay between centre and periphery mediated by the performance of ritual pompai, an impression soon corrected by further studies of the Athenian paradigm.¹¹ Having a complex physiognomy consisting of an extended extra-urban territory, the polis of Athens corresponds to a more complex pattern of ‘syntactical structure’ (to revert to the metaphor mentioned above), achieved through a network of processional action radiating in multiple directions. This process leads to enhanced expressions of urban life and urban identity through processional ritual action, a situation that perhaps justifies the cultural stereotype of Athens as the best in ‘performing mysteries and ritual processions’ (Ἀθηναίους ἄγειν μυστήρια καὶ πομπάς . . . ὡς κάλλιστα τοῦτο ποιοῦντας).¹² This picture of Athens, widespread in the Greek world¹³ and attested by Plutarch himself,¹⁴ may have been originally encouraged by Athenians themselves. In an early example of Athenian selfpresentation, the authorial voice of the divine chorus in Aristophanes’ Clouds draws an ideal portrait of the Attic land as an almost holy abode: παρθένοι ὀμβροφόροι ἔλθωμεν λιπαρὰν χθόνα Παλλάδος, εὔανδρον γᾶν Κέκροπος ὀψόμεναι πολυήρατον: οὗ σέβας ἀρρήτων ἱερῶν, ἵνα μυστοδόκος δόμος

¹¹ Osborne 1994; Sourvinou-Inwood 1997; Seaford 2012: 24–53. ¹² In Stratonicus’ words attested by Plutarch (see n. 14). ¹³ See e.g. Heliod. Aeth. 3.1–3.3. ¹⁴ Plutarch (Lyc. 30.6): ‘To this position of Sparta Stratonicus would seem to have mockingly alluded when, in jest, he proposed a law that the Athenians should conduct mysteries and processions (Ἀθηναίους ἄγειν μυστήρια καὶ πομπάς), and that the Eleians should preside at games, since herein lay their special excellence, but that the Lacedaemonians should be cudgeled’ [trans. B. Perrin 1914]. Different traits of Athenian stereotyping are discussed by Pelling in this volume, Chapter 6.

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ἐν τελεταῖς ἁγίαις ἀναδείκνυται, οὐρανίοις τε θεοῖς δωρήματα, ναοί θ᾽ ὑψερεφεῖς καὶ ἀγάλματα, καὶ πρόσοδοι μακάρων ἱερώταται, εὐστέφανοί τε θεῶν θυσίαι θαλίαι τε, παντοδαπαῖς ἐν ὥραις, ἦρί τ᾽ ἐπερχομένῳ Βρομία χάρις, εὐκελάδων τε χορῶν ἐρεθίσματα, καὶ μοῦσα βαρύβρομος αὐλῶν. (Aristophanes, Clouds. Hall and Geldart: 299–310) Rain-bearing maidens,/ let us go to Pallas’ lustrous country, to see where stalwart men/ abound in Kekrops’ lovely land. / Where awe of sacred rites abides, / where the home in which the sacred mysteries are housed/ is opened up in sacred ritual acts. / The heavenly gods receive gifts there as well,/ high-roofed temples and glorious statues, / sacred processions for the blessed ones, garlanded sacrifices and feasts for the gods/ at every season of the year, / including springtime’s Dionysiac joy, / when the mellifluous choruses compete/ and the pipes’ deep-resonant notes resound. [Transl. S. Halliwell 2015: 32])

This memorable picture of Athens is composed of basic symbolic and literal elements: land appropriation and sacred rituals,¹⁵ periphery (Eleusis, denoted by the μυστοδόκος δόμος) and centre (City Dionysia [Βρομία χάρις]), monuments and ceremonies (temples, statues, most sacred processions, sacrifices, and banquets), mythical origins (Κέκροπος γᾶν) and diachronic, temporal sequence (παντοδαπαῖς ἐν ὥραις, ἦρί τ᾽ ἐπερχομένῳ).¹⁶ The combination of dynamic, temporal elements (stressed at the end of the description) with static, spatial ones gives the picture a distinct sense of inclusiveness. Undoubtedly temples and statues seem to enjoy pride of place in Athenian fifth-century (poetic) imagination but this monumentality can be enlivened (in space and time) through the performance of processions and ceremonies (ritual action). Significantly, this perception of the Athenian polis does not seem to have faded until Plutarch’s time (at least to the eyes of such a sensitive viewer as the biographer), as becomes obvious in his Athenian Lives. In Pericles the section on the building programme seems to indicate that the eminence and cultural identity of Athens are inextricably connected with the magnificent monuments that shaped and defined Athenian topography from the fifth century until his day.

¹⁵ Χθόνα Παλλάδος, εὔανδρον γᾶν, ἄρρητα ἱερά, etc. ¹⁶ It is worth noting that the generous reference to processional ritual (occupying a whole line) stands at the middle of the catalogue of ‘holy ingredients’ starting from οὗ (it is the fourth out of 7 lines).

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Applying a distinct insight into the symbolic significance of monuments and rituals,¹⁷ Plutarch underlines diachronicity, acknowledging that the Athenian monuments of the Classical period appeared up to his day (μέχρι νῦν) untouched by time, filled with a youthful vigour, ‘as if some ever-growing spirit and ageless soul’ permeated their construction and made them look even in his time as if they were newly built (ὥσπερ ἀειθαλὲς πνεῦμα καὶ ψυχὴν ἀγήρω τῶν ἔργων ἐχόντων Per. 13.3). Dedicated to the ageless gods (ἀναθήματα as characterized by Plut. Per. 12 ἡ τῶν ἀναθημάτων κατασκευή), these monuments managed through their perfection of form (μορφῇ ἀμιμήτῳ καὶ χάριτι) to retain and emanate a vigour that transcended temporal limitations and revealed diachronicity.¹⁸ Making this monumentality live and instrumental for the on-going process of spatial legitimation and social definition would necessitate cultural action of structural significance extending on the temporal axis. Plutarch seems to endorse this interrelation, linking the spatiotemporal projection of the ambitious Periclean programme with the foundation or re-inauguration of ritual ceremonies (ἀγῶνες Per. 13.11) to be carried-out τότε καὶ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον (‘then and in all other times’). As these ceremonies, repeated through time, were tied to important Periclean monuments (e.g. musical agones taking place at the Odeion),¹⁹ they encouraged the perception of a polis identity preserved through time but also constantly worked and reworked. Athens’ excellence in ἄγειν πομπάς cannot be dissociated from its symbolic and literal topography, its distinctive landmarks which defined its spatial identity and were given their classical, monumental form in the age of Pericles. It can hardly be accidental that Pericles’ building ¹⁷ Ritual in Plutarch has recently attracted scholarly attention (it is worth mentioning the conference ‘Ritual and Politics, Individual and Community in Plutarch’s Works’, organized by Lucia Athanassaki and Frances Titchener at Rethymnon, Crete in 2017); relevant publications: Pelling 2020 (on the Lives of Demetrius and Antony); Athanassaki, forthcoming (on the Life of Nicias); Mossman 2021. See further Athanassaki 2021. In the broader field of classical studies, however, the study of ritual has considerably developed (under the influence of anthropological approaches). Although ‘ritual’ has been defined differently by different authors (in the fields of anthropology, sociology or religion), it can be generally and loosely said that ritual is the performance of ceremonial acts prescribed by tradition connected with divine or largely cosmic powers. In my analysis below I place emphasis on the performance aspects of the rites and I treat ritual as dynamic and subject to change; on these aspects as well as on various other theoretical issues of ritual see (only indicatively) Kreinath, Snoek, and Stausberg 2006 and 2007. ¹⁸ Plut. Per. 13.3: ‘For this reason are the works of Pericles all the more to be wondered at; they were created in a short time for all time. Each one of them, in its beauty, was even then and at once antique; but in the freshness of its vigor it is, even to the present day, recent and newly wrought. Such is the bloom of perpetual newness, as it were, upon these works of his, which makes them ever to look untouched by time, as though the unfaltering breath of an ageless spirit had been infused into them’ (transl. B. Perrin 1916a). The degree of idealization operating in Plutarch’s representations of the monuments (and its possible ideological tinges) are brought out in Athanassaki’s contribution in this volume, Chapter 18. What Athanassaki also suggests (with regard to de Gloria Atheniensium) is that Plutarch himself seems to have been an eloquent and creative user of the spatial ‘code’ of ancient Athens. ¹⁹ Plut. Per. 6: ‘Then first did Pericles, so fond of honor was he, get a decree passed that a musical contest be held as part of the Panathenaic festival . . . . These musical contests were witnessed, both then and thereafter, in the Odeum’ (transl. B. Perrin 1916a).

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programme focused on two symbolic geographical loci: the Acropolis, the time-honoured sacred centre of Athens; and Eleusis, the most distinguished peripheral sanctuary which sealed the boundary between Athens and the Peloponnese. These two spatial foci defined centre and boundary of a geographical whole that was established in primordial times but kept being re-established in literal and symbolic terms. In Pericles’ times, as Plutarch notes (Per. 12–14), both these focal points were marked by monumental activity (including the Parthenon, the Propylaia, and the rebuilding of the Telesterion), and at the same time by periodic ritual action. More specifically, in the month Boedromion the hiera hodos, the main road artery that connected Eleusis with the asty, was traced by splendid sacred processions that demarcated the Attic land. On the eve of the Mysteria, the heorte in honour of Demeter and Kore, the hiera, the sacred objects of the Mysteries, were carried by the Eleusinian priesthood from Eleusis to the Acropolis where they were ceremonially received by the priestess of Athena Polias and other officials. The hiera were eventually carried back to Eleusis in procession by an escort that would leave the Eleusinion and through the Panathenaic Way, through the Agora, through the Ceramicus and through the Sacred Gate it would take the Ἱερὰν Ὁδόν or Ὁδόν Ἐλευσῖνάδε²⁰ to Eleusis. This sacred escort would be amplified and combined with the great procession of the mystai (the initiates) who would process to Eleusis singing the Iacchus.²¹ This event must have been one of the most spectacular of the year. Several thousand participants decked out in and equipped with ritual paraphernalia would set off from the centre of Athens and would proceed with ritual cries, singing and dancing for about 22 km up to Eleusis which they would reach at dusk. This bipolar, communal movement symbolically unified the social (and geographical) space and encouraged the integration of the body. At the same time, the periodic performance and re-performance of the procession seems to disclose an attempt at extending and perpetuating this unity in time.

Athenian Lives and Processional Action Even the above briefly drawn sketch of the evidence concerning the Eleusinian processional activity and more particularly the Mystai procession leaves no doubt that this event was of exceptional symbolic value in the context of the classical Athenian polis. An integral part of a strongly charged religious celebration of Panhellenic (or even ‘international’) range, the processional action constituted the most spectacular, open and public part of the Mysteries with a more pronounced ²⁰ See Foucart 1914: 329. ²¹ This is the standard accepted reconstruction (e.g. Deubner 1932; Mylonas 1961); but contrast Clinton 1988 (based on Mansfield’s 1985 dissertation). Parker 2005: 348 is aporetic but informative (on numbers of participants as well).

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Athenian character: it was sealed by the presence (and control) of Athenian public officials and members of the Attic gene and it demarcated the Attic land in two directions, from periphery to centre and return. The importance of this ritual course for the identity and the integrity of the Attic land is not missed by Plutarch who incorporates incidents related to the Eleusinian procession in two of his Athenian Lives in which the polis is presented to be in utmost danger.²² Interestingly these two Lives (i.e. Themistocles’ and Alcibiades’) cover the beginning and the end of the fifth century, pointing to the glory and the downfall of Athens respectively. In the Life of Themistocles the Mystai procession reference comes right at the point of the narration²³ when Themistocles’ genius and glory reach a peak.²⁴ During Xerxes’ advance against Greece and invasion of Athens, Themistocles’ insistence on naval defence and naval battle leads to victory and salvation, foreshadowed by a miraculous apparition of the Mystai procession resounding the Iacchus hymn and raising a dust cloud that covered the ships.²⁵ The fact that divine support was intimated through the apparition of the Mystai procession (at a moment when Athens was deserted and the enemies rampaged the country) is suggestive of the symbolic weight loaded upon such a cultural event. The supposed participants of the procession (like a quasi-army marching on the Thriasian field) leave their mark upon the Attic soil, joining forces on a different level with Themistocles and the Athenian navy. Although Themistocles himself is not involved in the incident, this confluence of human and divine effort leads to ultimate protection and leaves a diachronic stamp on the identity of the polis. At the end of the fifth century Athens is again under severe threat. This time the Spartans have invaded Attica and have occupied the northern region of Decelea impeding the Athenians from reaching areas such as Oropos or Eleusis overland. Territorial dominance of the Attic land is thus severely challenged and spatial continuity (ideally highlighted by the Periclean programme) has been long violated. At this critical moment Alcibiades, Pericles’ nephew on his mother’s side, returns to Athens victorious, almost triumphant, after having won many sea and ²² References to Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries in general seem to mark critical moments in various accounts of the careers of Athenian statesmen in Plutarch. Leão in this volume, Chapter 9, draws attention to Eleusinian references in Phocion’s Life and highlights points of contrasts of that Life with the Life of Alcibiades (without focusing on Alcibiades’ conduct of the Mysteries that will be analyzed below). My interest concentrates on the public, processional part of the extended Eleusis festival and its Plutarchean representations. ²³ Ch. 15 in the surviving text which comprises thirty-two chapters. (But if the proem is lost—an issue raised by the editor F. Titchener—the original structure—and impression—may have been different). ²⁴ Note Plutarch’s admiration for Themistocles’ mind (Them. 15) ‘that fair and notorious victory, than which no more brilliant exploit was ever performed upon the sea, either by Hellenes or Barbarians, through the manly valour and common ardour of all who fought their ships, but through the clever judgment of Themistocles’ (γνώμῃ δὲ καὶ δεινότητι τῇ Θεμιστοκλέους) (transl. B. Perrin 1914b). ²⁵ The episode is narrated also by Herodotus (perhaps ultimately Plutarch’s source) but with different focalization (Hdt 8.65).

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land battles abroad and having restored Athenian hegemony in the Hellespont and the Propontis (407 BCE). The situation in Attica, however, must have presented a real challenge for Alcibiades. A few months after his arrival, while in the midst of preparations for another naval expedition, he appears (in the sources) to take up this challenge on the occasion of the celebration of the Mysteries.²⁶ The choice of the occasion needs hardly any comment: Alcibiades was accused of the profanation of the Mysteries in 415 before the Sicilian campaign (and was eventually condemned in absentia). The charges (even the curses by the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes) were lifted upon his return (as Plutarch narrates in Alc. 33.3) but he had to wait to prove his eusebeia (piety). The feast of the Mysteries, coming up just few months after his return, must have appeared as an opportunity. Thus, he refused the conveyance of the hiera and the Mystai to Eleusis by sea²⁷ and decided to escort the Μystai procession by land—according to the ancient custom, which had been interrupted and which he now decided to restore (Alc. 34. 3–4). Alcibiades’ bold enterprise might have impressed his contemporaries,²⁸ if we are to believe Plutarch. However, ancient historians and biographers (whose accounts have survived at least) do not seem to be equally excited. In fact, Xenophon dedicates only a single sentence in his Hellenica to this event (I 4.20),²⁹ while Diodorus Siculus, Cornelius Nepos, and Justin keep silent on the matter.³⁰ Plutarch on the other hand (either relying on sources today lost or more probably elaborating on scanty information), aware as he seems to be of the importance of symbolic action for Athenian affairs and political developments (or at least for reconstructing the logic of Athenian public affairs), gives a memorable account of Alcibiades’ marshalling of the Mystai procession to Eleusis and the proper completion of the ritual in the traditional way. Through internal focalization (to a large extent) he manages to draw Alcibiades’ motives and general intentions, but he also manages to sketch a most vivid picture of polis dynamics. His text runs as follows:³¹ ἀφ᾽ οὗ γὰρ ἐπετειχίσθη Δεκέλεια καὶ τῶν εἰς Ἐλευσῖνα παρόδων ἐκράτουν οἱ πολέμιοι παρόντες, οὐδένα κόσμον εἶχεν ἡ τελετὴ πεμπομένη κατὰ θάλατταν, ἀλλὰ καὶ θυσίαι καὶ χορεῖαι καὶ πολλὰ τῶν δρωμένων καθ᾽ ὁδὸν ἱερῶν, ὅταν ἐξελαύνωσι τὸν Ἴακχον, ὑπ᾽ ἀνάγκης ἐξελείπετο. καλὸν οὖν ἐφαίνετο τῷ

²⁶ He arrived in Thargelion (May/June); the Mysteries were celebrated in Boedromion (September/ October). ²⁷ This was the alternative (and easy) way to conduct the Hiera back to Eleusis during the years of war. ²⁸ Vickers 2015 confirms this on the basis of associations he detects in Aristophanes’ Frogs. ²⁹ Xenophon was certainly not well-disposed to Alcibiades (the editor L. Athanassaki reminds me of Mem. 1.2.13 where Xenophon thinks that he and Critias harmed the city) and would be hardly inclined to credit Alcibiades with impressive conduct. ³⁰ Diod. Sic. XIII 68.2–69.3; Cornelius Nepos (Alc. 5.7–8); Justin (V 9–18). ³¹ The Greek quotation is taken from Perrin’s 1916 Loeb edition.

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Ἀλκιβιάδῃ καὶ πρὸς θεῶν ὁσιότητα καὶ πρὸς ἀνθρώπων δόξαν ἀποδοῦναι τὸ πάτριον σχῆμα τοῖς ἱεροῖς, παραπέμψαντα πεζῇ τὴν τελετὴν καὶ δορυφορήσαντα παρὰ τοὺς πολεμίους: ἢ γὰρ ἀτρεμήσαντα κομιδῇ κολούσειν καὶ ταπεινώσειν τὸν Ἆγιν, ἢ μάχην ἱερὰν καὶ θεοφιλῆ περὶ τῶν ἁγιωτάτων καὶ μεγίστων ἐν ὄψει τῆς πατρίδος μαχεῖσθαι, καὶ πάντας ἕξειν μάρτυρας τοὺς πολίτας τῆς ἀνδραγαθίας. ὡς δὲ ταῦτ᾽ ἔγνω καὶ προεῖπεν Εὐμολπίδαις καὶ Κήρυξι, σκοποὺς μὲν ἐπὶ τῶν ἄκρων ἐκάθισε καὶ προδρόμους τινὰς ἅμ᾽ ἡμέρᾳ προεξέπεμψεν, ἱερεῖς δὲ καὶ μύστας καὶ μυσταγωγοὺς ἀναλαβὼν καὶ τοῖς ὅπλοις περικαλύψας ἦγεν ἐν κόσμῳ καὶ μετὰ σιωπῆς, θέαμα σεμνὸν καὶ θεοπρεπὲς τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐκείνην ἐπιδεικνύμενος, ὑπὸ τῶν μὴ φθονούντων ἱεροφαντίαν καὶ μυσταγωγίαν προσαγορευομένην. μηδενὸς δὲ τῶν πολεμίων ἐπιθέσθαι τολμήσαντος ἀσφαλῶς ἐπαναγαγὼν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἤρθη μὲν αὐτὸς τῷ φρονήματι καὶ τὴν στρατιὰν ἐπῆρεν ὡς ἄμαχον καὶ ἀήττητον οὖσαν ἐκείνου στρατηγοῦντος, τοὺς δὲ φορτικοὺς καὶ πένητας οὕτως ἐδημαγώγησεν ὥστ᾽ ἐρᾶν ἔρωτα θαυμαστὸν ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου τυραννεῖσθαι, καὶ λέγειν ἐνίους καὶ προσιέναι παρακελευομένους ὅπως τοῦ φθόνου κρείττων γενόμενος καὶ καταβαλὼν ψηφίσματα καὶ νόμους καὶ φλυάρους ἀπολλύντας τὴν πόλιν ὡς ἂν πράξῃ καὶ χρήσηται τοῖς πράγμασι, μὴ δεδιὼς τοὺς συκοφάντας. Ever since Decelea had been fortified, and the enemy, by their presence there, commanded the approaches to Eleusis, the festal rite had been celebrated with no splendor at all, being conducted by sea. Sacrifices, choral dances, and many of the sacred ceremonies usually held on the road, when Iacchus is conducted forth from Athens to Eleusis, had of necessity been omitted. [4] Accordingly, it seemed to Alcibiades that it would be a fine thing, enhancing his holiness in the eyes of the gods and his good repute in the minds of men, to restore its traditional fashion to the sacred festival by escorting the rite with his infantry along past the enemy by land. He would thus either thwart and humble Agis, if the king kept entirely quiet, or would fight a fight that was sacred and approved by the gods, in behalf of the greatest and holiest interests, in full sight of his native city, and with all his fellow citizens eye-witnesses of his valor. When he had determined upon this course and made known his design to the Eumolpidae and Heralds, he stationed sentries on the heights, sent out an advance-guard at break of day, and then took the priests, mystae, and mystagogues, encompassed them with his men-at-arms, and led them over the road to Eleusis in decorous and silent array. So august and devout was the spectacle which, as general he thus displayed, that he was hailed by those who were not unfriendly to him as High Priest, rather, and Mystagogue. [6] No enemy dared to attack him, and he conducted the procession safely back to the city. At this he was exalted in spirit himself, and exalted his army with the feeling that it was irresistible and invincible under his command. People of the humbler and poorer sort he so captivated by his leadership that they were filled with an amazing passion to have him for their tyrant, and some proposed it, and

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actually came to him in solicitation of it. He was to rise superior to envy, abolish decrees and laws, and stop the mouths of the babblers who were so fatal to the life of the city, that he might bear an absolute sway and act without fear of the public informer. (Plut. Alc. 34.3–6, transl. B. Perrin 1916b)

Given that Alcibiades had previously left and betrayed Athens, burdened by accusations of the profanation of the Mysteries and the mutilation of the Herms, and given that he himself had advised the Spartans to fortify Decelea, his decision to conduct the Mystai procession and restore its traditional course seems to be an attempt to effect a reversal of all of the above (alleged or performed) previous actions. Instead of profaning the Mysteries, he is now shown trying to respect and protect them, by guaranteeing their ancestral proper conduct. And instead of mutilating the road markers, the Herms, Alcibiades now redraws the markers of the Attic soil,³² restoring the unity between Eleusis and the city centre, overpowering the enemies and re-establishing the Sacred Way as the spatial axis that traverses the Attic land. In a way, after many offences (alleged or perpetrated) against the gods, the men and even the land of Athens, Alcibiades tries to restore (or to show that he is trying to restore) his relationship to the total environment of Athens, animate and inanimate, human or divine. In Plutarch this attempt is cast in ritual, processional terms. As a true Athenian, Alcibiades is presented as manifesting his renewed relation to his polis in a most Athenian way, viz. through ἄγειν πομπάς, in the context of a procedure that sets the city on display. It is significant that in Plutarch’s account, Alcibiades’s original motives for undertaking the restoration of the procession are his feelings of devoutness; he considers first of all the divine benefits from his act (by proving his ὁσιότητα towards the gods) and then the human benefits, i.e. the glory and reputation among men (δόξαν) (revealing his ambition).³³ Alcibiades’ consideration of the procession as a proper context for the manifestation of his piety (ὁσιότητα) towards the gods confirms the significant status of the processional ritual in the complex of sacred Eleusinian rites (and justifies the inclusion of the processions in the portrait of Athenian eusebeia in Aristophanes’ Clouds mentioned above). The considerable sacred element contained in Alcibiades’ initiative (as narrated by Plutarch) is also made prominent in the characterization of the potential clash with the enemies as μάχην ἱερὰν καὶ θεοφιλῆ. The symbolic reestablishment of the territory and its literal military defence are made here to interact. This interaction or interconnection of the two acts, the symbolic and the literal establishment of space, is made obvious in the understanding and definition of the act as both a ³² If the phallus symbol signalled (as has been suggested) the potential power and aggressiveness lying in store as regards the defence of the border, the mutilation implies, albeit indirectly, the loss of this power and the fragility of the control of the border. ³³ See Verdegem 2010: 342–47 for a presentation of the ways in which the relevant chapters link up with the rest of the Life, rectifying (or positively completing) Alcibiades’ characterization and action.

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‘strategia’ and a ‘mystagogia’ by the internal audience (the non-envious part at least). It is worth noting that the terms ἱεροφαντίαν καὶ μυσταγωγίαν chosen by the attendants in order to characterize the event (τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐκείνην ἐπιδεικνύμενος, ὑπὸ τῶν μὴ φθονούντων ἱεροφαντίαν καὶ μυσταγωγίαν προσαγορευομένην) suggest that in the double character of Alcibiades’ conduct the religious element must have been pronounced; he must have created an imposing aura enveloping the escort, inspiring perhaps an impression of coaction between human and divine agents, and turning it to a truly ‘sacred’ στρατηγία (cf. μάχην ἱεράν). The conjunction of these two aspects (sacred and military) in Alcibiades’ daring initiative suggests and spells out the latent homology between the symbolic and the literal re-appropriation of the polis’ territory and points to his potential to restore the land and reestablish Athenian presence (reuniting perhaps the social body of the city in an all-inclusive albeit hierarchical manner, as the processional formulation would suggest). The conduct of the procession apparently made this potential manifest to all attendants, viewers or participants. In light of Alcibiades’ recent victories abroad, the exposition of his potential in the Attic land (albeit in ritual/symbolic and not realistic terms) must have boosted the injured morale of the people, especially the masses, composed of farmers deprived of their land due to the occupation by the Spartans. Alcibiades himself seems to have been carried away by his success (ἤρθη μὲν αὐτὸς τῷ φρονήματι³⁴), on which he tries to capitalize in order to win the favour of the army and the people (καὶ τὴν στρατιὰν . . . πένητας). The result was impressive. If at the Eleusinia the Mystai procession was led by Alcibiades, now in the aftermath of the feast the population of Athens fervently desired to be led by him singly (in an emotional reaction characterized as ἔρως by Plutarch, a true passion, ὥστ᾽ ἐρᾶν ἔρωτα θαυμαστὸν ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου τυραννεῖσθαι, 34.6).³⁵ Plutarch handsomely avoids ascribing tyrannical aspirations directly and explicitly to Alcibiades; he projects similar ideas to the mob and to his supporters who encouraged him to seize the power. Nonetheless, his narration suggests that Alcibiades capitalized on his success and manipulated reactions and procedures in the direction of a tyrannical takeover. The mobilization achieved by Alcibiades must have been strong without doubt. Nonetheless, it was not all-inclusive or unanimous. Plutarch does not conceal reactions of a different type to the event. Apart from admirers there were also disputers of the sacredness (or perhaps propitiousness) of Alcibiades’ display

³⁴ On the concept of φρόνημα cf. Frazier 1996a: 204–47, and in sources related to Alcibiades see Gribble 1999: 14–16. ³⁵ Saïd 2005 explores Plutarch’s treatment in the Lives of the people as being at the mercy of emotions.

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(φθονοῦντες in the text 34.5³⁶). Negative reactions can hardly be dissociated from widespread suspicion about Alcibiades’ political motives, a fact which Plutarch admits when he narrates the political developments in the aftermath of Alcibiades’ success in conducting the Mysteries by land (Alc. 35). Plutarch insists that there is no certainty regarding Alcibiades’ own plans and ideas about tyranny.³⁷ Yet, he introduces the themes of fear and suspicion of his tyrannical ambitions (35.2), echoing Thucydides’ explanation of Alcibiades’ original exile from Athens (Thuc. 6.15).³⁸ In such an emotional atmosphere Alcibiades’ opponents—once more— did everything possible to redirect the course of his movement externally and eventually out of Athens. Alcibiades is thus encouraged to leave the city of Athens, i.e. the public arena of contested interests, before any changes occurred (Alc. 35.2 οἱ δὲ δυνατώτατοι τῶν πολιτῶν φοβηθέντες ἐσπούδασαν αὐτὸν ἐκπλεῦσαι τὴν ταχίστην, τά τ᾽ ἄλλα ψηφισάμενοι καὶ συνάρχοντας οὓς ἐκεῖνος ἠθέλησεν [‘But the most influential citizens were afraid of it, and therefore anxious that he should sail away as soon as he could. They even voted him, besides everything else, the colleagues of his own choosing.’ transl. B. Perrin 1916b]). And in the five chapters following his departure (Alc. 35–40) Plutarch actually narrates his downfall, which can be characterized—in Verdegem’s words—as ‘truly tragic’.³⁹

Failure or Success? Alcibiades’ initiative to combine sacred and military elements and to assume responsibility for the procession as military commander does not constitute an innovation or a provocation (let alone profanation) by classical standards. The participation of military troops in processions was a frequent phenomenon and the city of Athens regularly ascribed the duty of the conduct of processions to certain officials and powerful individuals.⁴⁰ In Xenophon’s De equitum

³⁶ Φθονῶ denotes refusing, reducing, diminishing; see LSJ s.v. φθονῶ II and Chantraine s.v. (Φθόνος recurs in Alcibiades’ Life: apart from 34.6 and 34.7, see also 24.3–4 and 33.2. It is also a key theme in Alcibiades’ self-defence as presented in Thuc. 6.16.). On various aspects of envy in ancient Greek culture see Konstan and Rutter 2003. ³⁷ Alc. 35.1. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ἐκεῖνος ἣν εἶχε διάνοιαν περὶ τῆς τυραννίδος ἄδηλόν ἐστιν. ³⁸ ὡς τυραννίδος ἐπιθυμοῦντι πολέμιοι καθέστασαν Thuc. 6.15; cf. also Plutarch’s discussion in Alc. 16.2 and 8. Athenian fears that Alcibiades might want to make himself tyrant were linked by Thucydides with special traits of Alcibiades’ personality and way of life. Duff in this volume, Chapter 8, shows that Plutarch uses the anecdotes in Alc. 4–8 to highlight these characteristics and to offer support to Thucydides’ analysis. ³⁹ Verdegem 2010: 397; he analyses the tragic pattern of the narrative structure in ch. 10 of his monograph (Verdegem 2010: 351–98). On the tragic features permeating the Lives see also Mossman 2014; Pelling 2016 approaches the issue of ‘tragic colouring’ in Plutarch with perceptiveness and due caution. ⁴⁰ They were often honoured and crowned publicly afterwards, provided they succeeded in their duty. Numerous honorary decrees have survived on stone.

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magistro,⁴¹ for example,⁴² we hear that the duties of the cavalry commander involve the execution of processions (in great public celebrations such as the Dionysia) in such a way as to make them ἀξιοθεάτους (‘worth seeing’); to this purpose the historian makes various suggestions, so that the pompai are pleasing (κεχαρισμενωτάτας) to gods and men alike (3.2). This explicit requirement for pompai ‘worth-seeing’ to gods and men is interesting, when compared to some details contained in Plutarch’s narration. More specifically, the aspect of theasthai is prominent in Plutarch’s account which reveals the concern of Alcibiades himself for the grandeur of his enterprise. Such a concern seems well justified, as the Mystai procession must have been one of the most impressive and exuberant ritual events of the year.⁴³ In all relevant sources (historical or literary) the spectacle (which is audio-visual and not simply visual) is the pompe itself, object of viewing for gods and men alike.⁴⁴ In Plutarch’s account, however, subject and object of viewing seem to have been reversed. The pompeis, the participants of the pompe are visualized by Alcibiades as potential viewers of his feat (καὶ πάντας ἕξειν μάρτυρας τοὺς πολίτας τῆς ἀνδραγαθίας), while his parapompe and strategia prove to be the ultimate theama, displayed for public viewing and admiration (θέαμα σεμνὸν καὶ θεοπρεπὲς τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐκείνην ἐπιδεικνύμενος). In other words, Alcibiades’ involvement seems to shift the spectacular and ritual focus of the event from the pompe itself (which should be aksiotheatotate to gods and men alike) to his own parapompe, which he himself consciously displays as a spectacle σεμνὸν καὶ θεοπρεπές. The use of the participle ἐπιδεικνύμενος suggests conscious manipulation of ritual appearances on the part of Alcibiades, to the effect of attracting primary attention. Although Plutarch does not make any explicit comparison or comment, Alcibiades’ imposing spectacle and overall success seem to have raised his symbolic status even above that of the main collective escort, and in this way to have encouraged his supporters to press him to stand above other citizens and become a tyrant. ⁴¹ ‘Now we come to duties that the cavalry commander must perform himself. First, he must sacrifice to propitiate the gods on behalf of the cavalry; secondly, he must make the processions during the festivals worth seeing; further, he must conduct all the other obligatory displays before the people with as much splendour as possible . . . As for the processions, I think they would be most acceptable both to the gods and to the spectators if they included a gala ride in the marketplace. The starting point would be the Herms; and the cavalry would ride round saluting the gods at their shrines and statues. So at the Great Dionysia the dance of the choruses forms part of the homage offered to the Twelve and to other gods’. Xen. Eq. Mag. 3.2 (transl. E. Marchant 1925). ⁴² Alcibiades in Plutarch is an infantry commander, but the analogy still seems suggestive. ⁴³ The overwhelming impression of such a ceremony seems to be reflected in other texts too, and more particularly in the divine apparition of the 30,000 mystai crying the Iacchus song in Hdt. 8.65, as well as the dramatic chorus of the mystai in Aristophanes’s Frogs. ⁴⁴ Dionysus in the Frogs, Dicaeus and Demaratus in Herodotus. It is worth mentioning here that processions were multi-sensoral occasions—they addressed all the senses; in Aristophanes’ Frogs the coming Iacchus procession is first perceived through hearing and then through smelling: Frogs 312–14. The ‘spectacle’ as visual perception comes third.

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In this light, Plutarch’s text seems to imply a latent antagonism between Alcibiades and the collective body, a rivalry orchestrated in this case in powerful ritual terms. Such an implication would not be malignant or unjustified on the part of Plutarch. Alcibiades’ antagonistic and notoriously provocative behaviour at Olympia earlier in his career seems to be known to Plutarch who refers to it synoptically and selectively in 13.3 (‘and there is extant a certain speech . . . wherein, among other things, it is written that the city’s numerous ceremonial utensils of gold and silver were all used by Alcibiades at his regular table as though they were his own’ [transl. B. Perrin 1916b]). It is generally assumed⁴⁵ that Plutarch refers here to the speech Against Alcibiades by pseudo-Andocides where Alcibiades’ conduct at the Olympic Games⁴⁶ of 416  is described with dark colours as an excessive, anti-citizen behaviour which reveals aspirations to tyranny.⁴⁷ Plutarch, however, reproduces some of the allegations expressed therein and silences the incident of Alcibiades’ provocative ritual behaviour at the procession. More particularly (according to pseudo-Andocides) on the day of the great sacrifice at the Olympic Games, Alcibiades joined an escorting group (pompe) decked with the polis’ pompeia which he had usurped the previous day;⁴⁸ he thus surpassed in grandeur the escorting group of the polis which also took part in the great event later that day.⁴⁹ In that case (and in that text) the rivalry reached a hybristic level; Alcibiades seems to attempt to reverse the relationship between an individual and the city.⁵⁰ In the Eleusinia case the rivalry is much more confined and latent; Alcibiades seems to challenge the spectacular priority of the sacred pompe of the Mystai, much as he guards it and stands ready to fight for its protection and overland passage. His extraordinary strategia and conduct of the mystai procession proved his potential for the polis but may also have made evident his ambition for superior status. ⁴⁵ But not with total consensus; see Verdegem 2010: 176–79. ⁴⁶ By stating τῆς θυσίας, the text points at a well-known and distinctive event which must be the great hecatomb sacrifice to Zeus (and it is thus understood by historians, e.g. Miller 2003: 18 who also offers a reconstruction of the festival, 9–40). It is in the context of this major event that both Alcibiades’ and the polis’ sacrifice seem to have taken place according to the text. ⁴⁷ [And.] 4.29. See Gribble 1999: 64–66 (and passim) for interesting discussion. ⁴⁸ [And.] 4.29.5–6 ‘he then abused the trust placed in him and refused to return them, as he wanted to use the golden basins and censers next day before Athens did so’. ⁴⁹ [And.] 4. 29: ‘In order to make clear that he was insulting Athens as a whole in addition to Diomedes, he asked the leaders of the Athenian deputation to lend him the processional vessels, alleging that he intended to use them for a celebration of his victory on the day before the sacrifice; he then abused the trust placed in him and refused to return them, as he wanted to use the golden basins and censers next day before Athens did so. Naturally, when those strangers who did not know that they belonged to us saw the state procession taking place after that of Alcibiades, they imagined that we were using his vessels; while those who had either heard the truth from the Athenians present or else knew the ways of Alcibiades, laughed at us when they saw one man showing himself superior to our entire community’ (transl. K. Maidment 1941). ⁵⁰ In Thuc. 6.16 Alcibiades’ self-presentation mentions his display at Olympia as a gesture enhancing the impression of the city’s power.

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Such tensions might not have been rare. Nonetheless, in those days public processions, crucial for the definition of civic space and thus instrumental for the identity of the civic body, seem to have been ideally perceived as collective,⁵¹ public gifts and dedications to the gods on a par with sacrifices.⁵² This perspective was given monumental dimensions and an idealized, official expression by its depiction on the most conspicuous and amazing of all Periclean ἀναθήματα (dedications), i.e. the Parthenon. The memorable frieze occupying the internal upper zone of the temple celebrates an amazing (in all respects) sacrificial procession with a conspicuous all-inclusive character. As it stands, the Parthenon frieze creates and echoes an ideal and almost unworldly atmosphere of inclusiveness and harmonious synthesis of the world of the polis, achieved by means of the processional arrangement of the public body in front of the eyes of the divinities.⁵³ By including the pompe in the monumental Athenian anathemata,⁵⁴ Pericles seems to have taken the initiative in suggesting the symbolic dedication of the public body to the gods in perpetuity. Against this background of a ritually and artistically conceived presentation of polis unity in eternity, Alcibiades’ arrangement of the Eleusinian procession seems to suggest that in real life a whole range of ritual variants were possible (on the basis of a ‘code’ essentially common). Alcibiades’ leadership seems to have caused a shift of focus: from the traditionally sanctioned journey of the mystai (affirming the public body’s commitment for new or renewed relations with the deities) to his parapompe, an ad hoc expedient contrived to meet temporary conditions, effecting an intense focusing on the particular present situation. It is characteristic that the traditional Iacchus song which featured the invocation of Iacchus’ divine escort (as attested by Aristophanes in the Frogs Ἴακχε φιλοχορευτὰ συμπρόπεμπέ με) seems to be silenced (Plut. Alc. 34 ἦγεν ἐν κόσμῳ καὶ μετὰ σιωπῆς).⁵⁵ Alcibiades’ starting point was the restoration of the ancestral, diachronic form of the Mysteries celebration, a goal which would require the

⁵¹ The ritual focus seems to have concentrated on the collective body which constituted the koine pompe, cf. τὴν πομπὴν τὴν κοινὴν [And.] 4.29.9. ⁵² Characteristic testimonies: Pl. Alc. ii 148e ἀνθ’ ὅτου ποτὲ . . . πομπάς τε πολυτελεστάτας καὶ σεμνοτάτας ἐδωρούμεθα τοῖς θεοῖς ἀν’ ἕκαστον ἔτος; Pl. Euthphr. 14c τὸ θύειν δωρεῖσθαί ἐστι τοῖς θεοῖς. See Kavoulaki 2011. As concrete assemblages of people directed towards the deity and acting for the deity, processions might seem to present to the divine not only material goods and offerings but most importantly the community itself in a symbolic and representative form. The officials in charge of processions were assigned the duty of organizing the rituals for the sake of the community, so as to attract divine favour for the whole community. As is explicitly stated in a fourth-century inscription containing instructions about the Panathenaic procession, the pompe in honour of Athena is conducted every year ‘in favour of the demos of the Athenians’ (LSCG 33 B. 3–5 ὅπως πέμπηται ἡ πομπὴ παρεσκευασμένη ὡς ἄριστα τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ καθ’ ἕκαστον τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τοῦ δήμου τῶν Ἀθηναίων.) ⁵³ ‘In this procession the polis articulated itself as an open society’, Sourvinou-Inwood 2010: 19. ⁵⁴ Ἀναθήματα is the term used by Plutarch to characterize the monuments included in Pericles’ programme (Plut. Per. 12 ἡ τῶν ἀναθημάτων κατασκευή; also Plut. Per. 14.1). As Stadter 1989: 146 explains (referring to Dem. 22.76) the Acropolis buildings were dedications to Athena. ⁵⁵ The text does not make clear if this happened for practical reasons.

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performance of songs, dances and other rituals on the way. Nonetheless, under the cover of traditionality and diachronicity there seems to have been room for innovation (as Plutarch’s text seems to suggest); silence seems to have dominated and the focal point proves to be the military strategia. To marshal a public procession but divert the attention of the viewers (mortals or immortals) from the public body to the individual and topical element must have constituted a variation that might call into question the effect of the processional ritual as regards divine favour and attention. Nonetheless, as a flexible ritual mechanism, processions must have constituted a privileged ground for contestable interests and interpretations. A considerable number of attendants and participants in Alcibiades’ procession admired the sacred dimension of the event, characterizing it as hierophantia and mystagogia; the smooth and orderly completion of the whole ritual procedure (commended by Plutarch) may have been seen to be indirectly a sign of divine approvement, if not favour. Others, however, dissented and discerned apparently tyrannical aspirations. Plutarch himself does not seem to be critical; he may have seen perhaps in this symbolic picture the potential saving solution for Athens. Alcibiades’ innovations seem to prefigure developments that would be familiar to the biographer. Later historical developments prove the gradual concentration of ceremonial focus on distinguished individuals.⁵⁶ In the late fifth century, however, developments were still debated and fluid. Significantly, they were debated in ritual terms, terms belonging to the ‘syntax’ structure of the polis ‘language’, allowing the structuring and restructuring of polis conditions. The process is not new. It suffices to call to mind the famous episode of Pisistratus’ return to Athens, orchestrated as a spectacular ritual entry through the alleged mediation of the goddess Athena herself.⁵⁷ The performative ‘mechanism’ was composed of traditional elements (announcement by heralds, chariot entry, reception by the community etc.) attested by various sources⁵⁸ and exerting considerable ritual influence. In that case, as W. Connor has explained, the populace entered the ritual drama playfully, ‘participating in a cultural pattern they all share’.⁵⁹ At the end of the fifth century, however, with the war still raging, things were perhaps more complicated. Alcibiades himself made all necessary preparations to make an impressive return to Athens in 407, accompanied by twenty ships and reassured of favourable reception (Xen. Hell. 1.4; cf. Plut. ⁵⁶ Plutarch’s treatment of Lysander (in his Life) is indicative of developments in this direction. ⁵⁷ Stupidly taken to be true according to Hdt. 1.60. Cf. Arist., Ath. Pol. 14.1. Illuminating analysis of the episode: Connor 1987. ⁵⁸ E.g. Sappho 44 Voigt; Aristophanes’ Birds (exodus), on which see A. Bowie 1994; Kavoulaki 1999. ⁵⁹ Connor 1987: 49: ‘The on-lookers are not deluded by the similarity between Athena’s dress and the conventions for representing Artemis. They know perfectly well this girl is a human but they delight in her beauty and express that delight by their responses. The populace joins in a shared drama, not foolishly, duped by some manipulator, but playfully, participating in a cultural pattern they all share’. Connor’s analysis has been fruitfully applied to the Lives of Demetrius and Antony by Pelling 2020.

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Alc. 32). Contrary, however, to the Pisistratean device organized by those returning, in 407 the ritual manipulation may have been attempted by those receiving, and more particularly by Alcibiades’ opponents. Ancient sources remark that his arrival coincided with the celebration of the Plynteria, a dies nefastus (‘as on that day no Athenian would venture to engage in any serious business’, Xen. Hell. 1.4.13), and interpret the event as an ill omen (Xen. Hell. 1.4.13, Plut. Alc. 34.1). Modern historians, however, distrust arbitrary signs especially when they perceive apparent contradictions in the sources. In this case the contradictory evidence concerns the calendar-date of the Plynteria, attested differently in various sources.⁶⁰ Thus, B. Nagy has argued⁶¹ that in 407 Alcibiades’ enemies managed to have the Plynteria re-scheduled so as to coincide with the day of his arrival. No matter what may have caused the coincidence, in the ritual drama surrounding Alcibiades’ return⁶² and reflected in Plutarch’s narrative, the goddess ‘did not seem to receive Alcibiades kindly, but veiled herself from him and rejected him’ (Alc. 34.1–2). Thus, Alcibiades’ re-integration seemed to have been rather qualified or undermined. Alcibiades took his ‘revenge’ in a way by undertaking and succeeding in restoring the Eleusinian procession. He managed to make manifest that his command met with approval from the gods and respect (or even fear) from the enemies, exerting an enormous attraction to attendants and participants. Mixed feelings however still survived. Alcibiades’ opponents did not set themselves openly against him; they rather stuck to the prevalent cultural pattern of general positive response. Nonetheless, by supporting Alcibiades and voting in whatever way he desired,⁶³ they managed to remove him from Athens, facilitating the preparations of the great naval expedition he was engaged in.

Concluding Remarks In Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades the section dedicated to the restoration of the Eleusinian procession depicts the last impressive scene of Alcibiades’ public ⁶⁰ Plut. Alc. 34: 25 Thargelion; Photius s.vv. Kallynteria kai Plynteria: 29 Thargelion; Proclus ad Pl. Tim. 27A: 16 Thargelion; see Nagy 1994: 278. ⁶¹ Nagy 1994. ⁶² Vividly narrated by Xen. Hell.1.4.13–20: ‘When he sailed in, the common crowd of Piraeus and of the city gathered to his ships, filled with wonder and desiring to see the famous Alcibiades. Some of them said that he was the best of the citizens . . . Meanwhile, Alcibiades, who had come to anchor close to the shore, did not at once disembark, through fear of his enemies; but mounting upon the deck of his ship, he looked to see whether his friends were present. [19] But when he sighted his cousin Euryptolemus, the son of Peisianax, and his other relatives and with them his friends, then he disembarked and went up to the city, accompanied by a party who were prepared to quell any attack that anyone might make upon him. [20] And after he had spoken in his own defence before the Senate and the Assembly . . . he was proclaimed general-in-chief with absolute authority . . .’ (transl. C. Brownson 1918). ⁶³ Including the colleagues of his choice (Plut. Alc. 35.1).

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activity on Attic soil, a narrative choice which seems to be purposeful and significant. The event is ‘staged’ as a highlight in the political career of this controversial politician who seems to epitomize and emblemize talents and weaknesses of the Athenian civic identity. Athens’ excellence in performances and rituals seems to be reflected in Alcibiades’ skill in orchestrating performances of various kinds and multiple purposes. His conduct of the Eleusinian procession constitutes a climactic demonstration of his performative skills. For the last ‘act’ of the ‘drama’ of his political career (Plutarch’s) Alcibiades reserved for himself a role in a performance context most typically Athenian (according to popular stereotypes at least), viz. that of a public procession. In its monumental expression the processional ritual was included in the Periclean programme to declare to the gods and to eternity the harmonious whole of the classical polis achieved under divine auspices. In the historical reality of 407 the processional context offered Alcibiades the opportunity to promote his commitment and ability to restore impressions, relations, traditions, even the injured soil of his homeland, as well as to inspire a sense of renewed polis unity and success. Alcibiades deployed the structural potential of processional ritual with particular skill. Every historical configuration of a procession, however, synthesizes a multiplicity of agents and elements tied to the historical circumstances or rooted in tradition. The process proves open and dynamic, a fact which perhaps explains why Greek or rather Athenian politics availed itself of processional dynamics. Consistent with Athens’ popular image, other Athenian politicians seem to have promoted ritual politics. In Plutarch’s Lives Nicias, Alcibiades’ opponent, is also portrayed to promote his political agenda through processional means (Nic. 3). The narrative focuses on his successful arrangement of the procession to Delos (a theoria procession)⁶⁴ which enhances his political influence and attracts supporters. By structuring the procession and setting the polis on orderly display in front of the eyes of the Pan-ionians, Nicias (similarly to Alcibiades) attempts to prove his instrumental role in polis order and unity (even in a broader, ‘international’ context), guaranteed by the favour and supervision of the divine.⁶⁵ Plutarch narrates Nicias’ effort in the first part of his Life, so that the contrast with his failure at the end is brought into relief. Alcibiades, on the

⁶⁴ Plut. Nic. 3.5: ‘But when Nicias conducted the festal embassy, he landed first on the neighbouring island of Rheneia, with his choir, sacrificial victims, and other equipment. Then, with the bridge of boats which he had brought along with him from Athens, where it had been made to measure and signally adorned with gildings and dyed stuffs and garlands and tapestries, he spanned during the night the strait between Rheneia and Delos, which is not wide. At break of day he led his festal procession in honor of the god, and his choir arrayed in lavish splendor and singing as it marched, across the bridge to land’ (transl. B. Perrin 1916a). ⁶⁵ Nicias’ devoutness compensates for his choice of ostentatious politics, judged perhaps negatively by Plutarch; see Titchener 1988. Athanassaki 2021 is important on ritual in the Life of Nicias; her analysis includes Nicias’ Delian architheoria (our perspectives converge).

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other hand, is given a last chance to prove to gods and men alike his potential to work in ritual and in practical ways for the polis restoration and reorganization. In all the above-mentioned cases (mainly Alcibiades’ but also Nicias’, Themistocles’ or even Pericles’) the processional context proves to serve as a fertile ground for the working of forces or even for the depiction of forces conducive to polis identity, operation and historical course. Engaging in or even manipulating such dynamic ritual processes is another facet of Greek reality, which required Greeks to interact and cope with immortals and mortals.⁶⁶ Demanding though it may have been, such a practice may have induced people to join in the interaction and possibly shape developments, while it may have increased awareness of the complexity of human affairs. This benefit of enhanced awareness seems to be valid not only for the historical agents of the events but also for Plutarch’s audience: confronted with the depiction of processional (ritual) action at focal points of the narrative (as in Alcibiades’ case), readers are invited to view better the interrelation between city and individual and to make better sense of the complicated factors that may have contributed to the prominent figure’s failure or success on the moral and political level.⁶⁷

⁶⁶ Such ritual procedures seem to expand the pattern drawn by Versnel 2010. ⁶⁷ On the complicated way of Plutarch’s ‘reading’ of Alcibiades—and of other historical figures and communities—see Pelling 1996; Duff 1999; as well as the chapters by Duff (8), Leão (9), and Pelling (6) in this volume; and Athanassaki 2021.

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8 Alcibiades and the City Timothy E. Duff

Alcibiades provided his contemporaries with a problem.¹ The ethos of the democratic city emphasized equality and the subordination of the individual to the community. Athenian democracy kept alive the folk memory, and fear, of tyranny, and while it harnessed the resources and talents of its wealthy (men like Cimon or Pericles), it policed them carefully, and many of the key democratic institutions were designed to prevent the rise of outstanding individuals. Alcibiades’ career exemplifies this phenomenon; the Peloponnesian War put such pressure on Athens that she needed outstanding leaders, especially those who could perform on the battlefield and in diplomacy, and who could contribute financially; but such leaders could at the same time be seen as a threat to the democratic city. As Aristophanes in the Frogs famously stated, in a line which Plutarch quotes (1431–32 = Alc. 16.3), Alcibiades was both needed and suspected, both loved and hated. In this chapter I will examine how Plutarch constructs this relationship between Alcibiades and the city in the early chapters of the Life of Alcibiades. I will do this through a close reading of the anecdotes in chs. 4–8. As we shall see, through a series of short, apparently self-contained stories, Plutarch combines the portraits of Alcibiades in Thucydides, Plato and Aristophanes with material from the orators and from the anecdotal tradition, to produce a distinctive portrait both of Alcibiades and of the city which produced him—which feared him, loved him, and ultimately rejected him.

Stories of Alcibiades Before we turn to the anecdotes of chs. 4–8 themselves,² it is worth making two points about these anecdotes, and about anecdotes in Plutarch in general. First, many of these stories had their origins in the political struggles which took place in ¹ As Gribble 1999 brings out. ² I largely omit the sections which deal with Alcibiades’ relationship with Socrates (Alc. 4.1–4, 6, 7.3–6). I have written about them, and especially the Platonic allusions in them, in Duff 2009, 2011 and 2021. See also Duff 2008a: 196–201 on Alc. 1, and 2003 on Alc. 2–3, and Duff 1999: 205–40 on the whole Cor.-Alc. book, with further bibliography.

Timothy E. Duff, Alcibiades and the City In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0009

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Alcibiades’ lifetime and in the century after his death. Some indeed are from law-court speeches, where the character or record of Alcibiades was attacked or defended. Others grew up and were elaborated in the context of fourth-century debates about Socrates. The stories, therefore, which Plutarch found in his sources, tended to have built into them already certain ideological positions— but, as we shall see, Plutarch to varying extents modifies these positions, as he reshapes, rewrites and redeploys them.³ Secondly, these stories originally emerged and were circulated because of their potential to characterize Alcibiades, often in a partisan way. For that purpose, questions of chronology—fixing the incident narrated to a particular date or a particular age in Alcibiades’ life—were not important, and such stories might be attached to any or no chronological context.⁴ Plutarch himself deploys anecdotes about Alcibiades for the same characterizing purpose (though, as we shall see, the stories are much richer in signification than this might be taken to imply) and, with regard to the stories which fill the first eight chapters of the Life, and some later ones, tends to give either no indication of chronology or only the vaguest of chronological contexts; in the latter cases, such statements about chronology may be entirely of Plutarch’s own invention.⁵ These anecdotes, then, characterize Alcibiades. As we shall see, two characteristics of Plutarch’s Alcibiades emerge above all from these anecdotes: Alcibiades’ hybris, both in attitude and in his violent domineering behaviour to his fellow citizens, and his tryphe: his luxurious, sensuous, and ostentatious way of living.⁶ But Alcibiades also appears as a more complex character than this: he is both a beautiful beloved, who attracts devotion and gifts, and a dominant bully; he is tyrannical and kind; he robs one person of vast wealth, and gives to another; he throws punches and then offers himself to be beaten. Many anecdotes also end with destabilizing and surprising codas which to some extent make it more difficult to judge their moral import. Furthermore, the picture of Alcibiades which emerges from these passages gains depth through the use of subtle allusions to earlier texts, especially to the Alcibiades portrayed by Plato and Thucydides, but also to figures such as Meidias, the butt of Demosthenes’ speech 21; such allusions

³ Note that this process of reusing and rewriting stories about Alcibiades does not stop with Plutarch: Alcibiades recurs in Athenaeus, in the later rhetorical tradition (e.g. Sopater, Syrian, Apsines, Libanius), and of course in the work of Neoplatonists like Proclus and Olympiodorus. ⁴ Russell 1966: 42–43 (= 1995 repr. 200); Duff 2003: 112–13. On anecdotes in ancient writers frequently becoming detached from their original context: Fairweather 1974: 266–70; 1984: 323–27; Saller 1980: 73–82; Dover 1988, esp. 48–49. ⁵ For example, in 10.1, Alcibiades’ contribution at an epidosis, at some point after 431 , is said to be his first public act in politics (Πρώτην . . . πάροδον εἰς τὸ δημόσιον); in Political Precepts his entrance into public life is said to be his arranging of the alliance with Mantinea in 418  (804f), which is dealt with here in Alc. 15. ⁶ On the way accusations of hybris and tryphe might be combined and the characteristics seen as linked, see e.g. Pl. Grg. 525a and Fisher 1992: 113–17. Accusations of hybris surround Alcibiades in the literary tradition: e.g. Thuc. 6.28; Xen. Mem. 1.2.12; Dem. 21.143–50. See Gribble 1999: chapter 1.

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activate in the reader’s minds a set of assumptions and impressions, which colour the way in which he or she will react to or judge Alcibiades. But these anecdotes do more than just characterize Alcibiades. They characterize the city too. They demonstrate the wild love which Alcibiades inspired in many, and explain the fear and loathing he inspired in others. These stories are thus as much about reactions to Alcibiades as what he himself does. In most of these anecdotes there is an audience; we are exposed to the different ways in which Alcibiades was viewed by different groups of contemporaries, whether expressed in direct speech, or as their thoughts, or through their actions. These anecdotes, in Plutarch’s telling, thus contain multiple focalizations and multiple voices. In one sense this results from the way Plutarch combines and summarizes the preexisting tradition, which included both partisan attacks and defences of Alcibiades. But the notion of Alcibiades as dividing opinion and being difficult to judge was itself built into the tradition during his lifetime, as is shown by the famous passage of the Frogs, which Plutarch will quote (1431–32 ~ 16.3), and which has the Athenians both hating and desiring him; and by Xenophon’s description of the Athenians’ divided attitude to him when he landed at the Piraeus after his first exile (Hell. 1.4.13–17).⁷ It is the Athenians, and the democratic polis, then, that are being characterized here, as much as Alcibiades.⁸ Furthermore, even though the anecdotes in the early part of the Life concern Alcibiades’ ‘personal’ life, and are not yet about his leadership in politics or war, they have explanatory force on the political level too. That is, they explore and explain the mechanisms by which Alcibiades became so politically dominant, and was rejected so decisively.⁹ Thucydides, in a passage which Plutarch cites several times (Thuc. 6.15.4 ~ Alc. 6.3, 16.2) had made that link explicit in the abstract, when he claimed that disgust over Alcibiades’ lifestyle and attitude stoked fears that he might desire to become tyrant, and so led to his rejection. These anecdotes demonstrate this dynamic in practice. Furthermore, details in some of these anecdotes point forward to incidents in Alcibiades’ later life, and show how the personal was to become political and have far-reaching consequences. And this is true even though they take place in ‘private’ settings. As we shall see, one of the points that is implied is that, in Alcibiades’ case, the private was political. In this, Plutarch takes a position that owes much to the analyses of Thucydides and Plato, but also makes a statement of his own which stresses the mutual interdependence of Alcibiades and the city, and the different viewpoints and interest-groups within the city, and which draws heavily on the anecdotal tradition.

⁷ Pelling 1996: xxvii–xxix; Duff 1999: 222; Gribble 1999: passim. ⁹ Cf. Pelling 1992: 18–19; 2000b: 52–53.

⁸ See Pelling 1992: 19–27.

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Alcibiades and Anytus (4.5–6) We start in chapter 4. The first half of the chapter, a passage dense with allusions to Plato, had dealt with Socrates’ love for Alcibiades and his desire to protect him from flatterers attracted by his wealth and beauty, and with Alcibiades’ humility in Socrates’ presence (4.1–4).¹⁰ By contrast, to his ‘other lovers’ (τοῖς δ᾽ ἄλλοις ἐρασταῖς), Plutarch says, in a phrase lifted from the Platonic Alcibiades 1 (103a– 104c, 104e) and bringing the situation envisaged in that text to mind—in which a young Alcibiades, who has rejected many rich suitors, is engaged in conversation by Socrates, his one true admirer—Alcibiades was ‘cruel and difficult to subdue’, and to some he behaved ‘in a totally imperious manner’ (παντάπασι σοβαρῶς).¹¹ It is as an example of such domineering behaviour that the story of Alcibiades’ treatment of Anytus is introduced (4.4). Anytus, Plutarch says, happened to be in love with Alcibiades, and was holding a dinner party to entertain some foreigners (ξένους τινας).¹² He tried to persuade (ἐκάλει) Alcibiades to come. Alcibiades refused but, having got drunk at home with his hetairoi (μεθυσθεὶς οἴκοι μετὰ τῶν ἑταίρων), went on a drunken revel (a komos) to Anytus’ house, and turned up inside the courtyard, at the door of his dining room (andron) (4.5).¹³ The scene is plainly meant to recall Alcibiades’ noisy arrival, drunk and unbidden, in Plato’s Symposium; indeed the phrase ταῖς θύραις ἐπιστάς (‘having taken up a stand at the doors’) is a direct allusion (ἐπιστῆναι ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας, Symp. 212d).¹⁴ But the mention of hetairoi, which is not in Plato, introduces a more disturbing note. They are ‘friends’ but the word suggests the groups of wealthy young men who gathered for drinking and riotous behaviour (e.g. Dem. 21.20). That such associations sometimes had reactionary, anti-democratic political aims might add to the potentially sinister nature of what is envisaged here¹⁵—especially as in Alcibiades’ case it was stories over the drunken escapades of young men which would famously lead to his being accused of involvement in the parody of the Mysteries and of plotting to overthrow the state (Plut. Alc. 18.8–19.1 and 22.4),¹⁶

¹⁰ Duff 2009: 38–41; 2011a: 27–39; 2021, 181–88. ¹¹ On σοβαρῶς (‘haughtily’), cf. Pelling 1988b, on Ant. 7.5. ¹² Readers might be meant to think here of Plato’s Meno, where the wealthy Thessalian Menon, after whom the dialogue is named, is said to be Anytus’s guest-friend, ξένος (90b). ¹³ The setting for private symposia. Literary evidence and evidence from excavated houses at Olynthus suggest that the ἀνδρών was the most highly decorated part of the house; entrance to it was through the main courtyard of the house, not from the street (cf. Symp. 212c–d). See Nevett 1999: 17–19, 37–38 and index s.v. ἀνδρών. ¹⁴ Duff 2009: 41–42. ¹⁵ On Alcibiades’ hetairoi, see Hatzfeld 1940: 110–13; Sartori 1957, 83–98; Aurenche 1974: 101–10 and 124–44. On ἑταιρεῖαι in general see also Calhoun 1913; Connor 1971: 25–29; Pecorella Longo 1971; Gomme, Andrewes and Dover 1981: 128–31; Rhodes 1986: 138–39. Dem. 54.14–17, 39 exploits popular suspicion of such groups of friends and paints their activities in lurid colours. ¹⁶ Plutarch stresses the involvement of Alcibiades’ φίλοι or ἑταῖροι in Alc. 19.1 and 22.4.

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and later of dereliction of duty in war (36.2). So although this scene recalls the Symposium, there is a darker shadow here already, which points forwards to the serious consequences to which his drunken revelling with his friends would lead.¹⁷ Indeed, the presence of metics and slaves in this story and the next might find extra significance in the fact that it is metics and slaves who, according to Plutarch, will make the accusation concerning the Mysteries (19.1, 20.4). The source for the accusations concerning the Mysteries is Thuc. 6.28, which states that they were magnified by Alcibiades’ opponents who claimed that the antics were committed with Alcibiades’ participation and for the purpose of overthrowing the democracy, ‘citing as evidence the general undemocratic lawlessness in his behaviour’ (τὴν ἄλλην αὐτοῦ ἐς τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα οὐ δημοτικὴν παρανομίαν). It is as examples of such transgressiveness, Plutarch implies, that anecdotes such as this one, and the others Plutarch records, should be seen.¹⁸ Not that there need be any political motivation in Alcibiades’ behaviour to Anytus. That is not the point: for Plutarch, fleshing out Thucydides’ diagnosis, it is exactly this sort of behaviour which will have such serious consequences later. Similarly, if this scene recalls Alcibiades’ arrival in the Symposium, his behaviour here is much more disruptive. In the Symposium Alcibiades had asked whether the company would admit him, and his arrival was greeted with indulgence by the other guests and followed by his own speech of praise of Socrates.¹⁹ Here, by contrast, he barges into the house and then refuses to join the party or even enter the room. Rather, standing at the door and seeing the tables laden with gold and silver cups, Alcibiades orders his slaves to seize half of them and take them home. Later, Alcibiades will be accused of using the city’s gold and silver processional vessels for his own private use (Alc. 13.3).²⁰ The surprising detail here that the cups were made of gold and silver,²¹ gains significance as it points forward to, and makes more credible, those later accusations. Once again, Plutarch brings out how Alcibiades’ outrageous personal behaviour would have political repercussions. He ‘did not deign’ or ‘bother’ (oὐκ ἠξίωσεν) to go in, Plutarch continues, ‘but left after doing this’ (4.5). The wording here is the narrator’s but may well also suggest the viewpoint or thoughts of the guests. At any rate, they complain, ¹⁷ The theme of Alcibiades’ drunken processions was a familiar one in the later rhetorical tradition. Several declamations imagine him being prosecuted for hybris after going on a komos to where the Spartan prisoners from Sphacteria are held (e.g. Apsines, Rhet. 1.348.4–7 Spengel [= 242 6 H]; Syrian, RG 4 601 15 Walz), and Libanius has him going on a komos with ‘torches from the mysteries’ (δασί μυστικαῖς) (Decl. fr. 50 = Foerster 11, 641–648). These declamations show how closely linked in the popular imagination Alcibiades’ drunken revels were with the later accusations. The behaviour he shows here, then, prefigures those later accusations, and shows why they were believed. ¹⁸ Cf. Pelling 2000b: 18–22. See my pp. 143, 152 and 163–64 on Plutarch’s quotation of Thuc. 6.15.4 in Alc. 6.3 and 16.2; he also alludes to it in 35.1. ¹⁹ Cf. Heath 1988: 180–81. ²⁰ See Kavoulaki in this volume, Chapter 7, p. 135. ²¹ This is one of the few pieces of evidence that wealthy Athenians of the Classical period may have used gold and silver vessels for entertaining: Vickers and Briggs 2007: 49–50.

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justifiably, that Alcibiades had treated Anytus ‘with hybris and arrogance’ (ὑβριστικῶς καὶ ὑπερηφάνως) (4.6).²² Invading another man’s house was considered a particularly aggressive sort of hybristic act.²³ In Lysias’s Against Teisis, for example, Teisis, claims that, when he was having dinner, the plaintiff had ‘arrived drunk, broke open the door, came in and insulted him and Antimachus and their women’ (οὗτος δὲ μεθύων ἔλθοι, ἐκκόψας δὲ τὴν θύραν καὶ εἰσελθὼν κακῶς λέγοι αὐτὸν καὶ τὸν Ἀντίμαχον καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας αὐτῶν).²⁴ Alcibiades’ action here in Plutarch’s telling is not as outrageous as Lysias claims Teisis was: there is no suggestion of his bothering the women; he had also been invited, though he had refused to come. But most readers will have agreed with the guests’ interpretation of his act as one of hybris. Indeed, this is the first occurrence in the Life of accusations of hybris which will become more frequent later, and be linked to accusations that he wanted to overthrow the state and make himself tyrant. In 16.1–2 it is precisely his private behaviour, including ‘the luxuriousness of his lifestyle (τὴν τρυφὴν τῆς διαίτης) and his acts of hubris (ὑβρίσματα) in drink and love’, which lead the richer citizens—in a phrase which recalls Thuc. 6.15.4 and 6.28.2— to fear ‘his contemptuousness and transgressiveness as tyrannical and monstrous qualities’ (ἐφοβοῦντο τὴν ὀλιγωρίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ παρανομίαν, ὡς τυραννικὰ καὶ ἀλλόκοτα) (also 18.8; 20.5; cf. 39.9). Many of the anecdotes in the early part of the Life will bring out this arrogant and sometimes violent disregard for the dignity of other citizens (e.g. 5.3; 7.1–2; 8.1–5; 12.4; 16.5); here, the insult is worsened by the fact that it is done in front of an audience. Anytus, on the other hand, declares, ‘On the contrary (μὲν οὖν),²⁵ he has behaved in a reasonable and kind way (ἐπιεικῶς . . . καὶ φιλανθρώπως). For he could have taken all of these things, but instead he left us half ’ (4.6). Anytus’ reply, which forms the closing punchline of the story, demonstrates the love that Alcibiades inspired, despite the insulting way he treated his lovers, and also the phenomenon to which Plutarch will return in chapter 16, that the Athenians, as he puts it, ‘always gave his sins the mildest of names, calling them pranks (παιδιάς) and φιλοτιμίας’ (16.4).²⁶ Alcibiades’ ability to inspire passionate love is a central theme of the whole Life. Here that love, and the forbearance that goes with it, are on a personal level; later it will extend to the city as a whole: for example in 10.1–2, ²² ὡς ὑβριστικῶς καὶ ὑπερηφάνως εἴη τῷ Ἀνύτῳ κεχρημένος. The use of the perfect tense again suggests the focalisation (or verbalisation) of the guests: they are imagined as saying, ‘He has treated . . . ’. Cf. Alex. 27.6. ²³ See e.g. Riess 2012: 72–82. Demosthenes was accused by a certain Antiphon of ‘hybris and entering houses without a decree’ (ὑβρίζων καὶ ἐπ᾽ οἰκίας βαδίζων ἄνευ ψηφίσματος) (18.132). ²⁴ Lysias fr. 279 Carey = Dion. Hal. Dem. 11. See also e.g. Lysias 3, Against Simon 6–7: ἐλθὼν ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν ἐμὴν νύκτωρ μεθύων, ἐκκόψας τὰς θύρας εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν, ἔνδον οὐσῶν τῆς τε ἀδελφῆς τῆς ἐμῆς καὶ τῶν ἀδελφιδῶν; Aeschin. 1, Against Timarchos 59: μεθυσθέντες γάρ ποτε καὶ αὐτοὶ καὶ ἄλλοι τινὲς τῶν συγκυβευτῶν . . . εἰσπηδήσαντες νύκτωρ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν; Dem. 21, Against Meidias, 78–79. ²⁵ Cf. Denniston 1966: 475–76; Pelling 1988b, on Ant. 85.7. ²⁶ ἀεὶ τὰ πρᾳότατα τῶν ὀνομάτων τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι τιθεμένους, παιδιὰς καὶ φιλοτιμίας.

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where the demos rapturously applaud him as he makes a voluntary financial contribution and rush to help when he lets a quail escape. In the short run it will give him great power, but will later bring about his downfall (cf. 16.2–4; 34.6–35.1). In most ancient anecdotes, the closing punchline or bon mot, if there is one, is supplied by the subject of a Life. The focus here on reactions is unusual. The story as a whole with its two very contrary reactions to Alcibiades, illustrates not only Alcibiades’ outrageousness but the way he divided opinions. Plutarch will make that theme explicit too in chapter 16, when he quotes the famous lines of Aristophanes’ Frogs: ‘It desires him, but hates him, and wants to have him’ (ποθεῖ μέν, ἐχθαίρει δέ, βούλεται δ’ ἔχειν). Here no overall judgement on Alcibiades’ behaviour is stated by the narrator, and we are given instead two opposing reactions told from the point of view, and in part the direct speech, of participants.²⁷ On the other hand, even Anytus’ exclamation, which puts Alcibiades’ act in as positive a way as possible, takes for granted Alcibiades’ unfettered power, exercised amorally; it is indeed only to a tyrant, or to someone acting like a tyrant, that anyone is grateful that he did not take all their possessions when he invaded their home. Athenaeus tells the story in very similar language and is plainly ultimately dependent on the same source (534e–f).²⁸ But the differences between the accounts reveal that Plutarch has highlighted the hybristic nature of Alcibiades’ behaviour, as well as his inconsistency. First, Athenaeus introduces this story, and others, as illustration not of Alcibiades’ hybris, but his τρυφή (528e; 534b, 534f). Secondly, the guests in Athenaeus’ account say that Alcibiades acted not hybristically, but inconsiderately (ἀγνώμονα). In Athenaeus, furthermore, Alcibiades gives the gold and silver cups which he has taken to a needy friend. If Plutarch had followed this version of the incident, it could have been made to fit nicely with the following anecdote (5.1–5), where Alcibiades helps a metic suitor to win a fortune; the theme could have been ‘generosity to friends’, as well as unorthodox and outrageous behaviour.²⁹ In fact Plutarch makes Alcibiades’ behaviour a good deal more domineering and selfish; the contrast with the next anecdote, as we shall see, is therefore stark: one illustrates insolence (ὕβρις) to lovers, the other kindness.

²⁷ Duff 1999: 217, 232; Verdegem 2010: 136. ²⁸ Shortly before telling this story Athenaeus cites Satyrus as his source for other material on Alcibiades (534b), and this anecdote too may, though need not, go back to Satyrus. It is included as fr. 20 by Schorn, but see Pelling 2000a: 176. ²⁹ Plutarch has not included another anecdote, recorded in Athenaeus 407b–c, where Alcibiades intervenes to help another foreigner, the Thasian parodist and comic poet Hegemon: Athenaeus has him simply enter the Metroon, where the records of the indictments were kept, and rub out with his finger the case against Hegemon.

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Finally, what is the significance of Plutarch’s naming the victim of Alcibiades’ abuse as Anytus son of Anthemion? Anytus was an important political figure,³⁰ general in 409/8, and influential in the restoration of democracy in 403.³¹ He has, in fact, already been mentioned earlier in the Coriolanus–Alcibiades book, as (supposedly) the first person to introduce bribery into Athens (Cor. 14.6)³²— one of the very few examples of the same person or event being mentioned in two paired Lives. But Anytus was also famously one of the prime movers in the prosecution of Socrates in 399, for which he was later vilified by philosophical writers.³³ The fact that Alcibiades’ victim here is Anytus might therefore, to Plutarch’s readers, at first sight have lessened the outrageousness of his behaviour. But both Socrates’ detractors and defenders claimed that Socrates was executed for the behaviour of his pupils, especially Alcibiades and Critias, as much as for anything he himself said or did (e.g. Xen. Mem. 1.2.12–48; Aeschin. 1.173).³⁴ Plutarch does not bring this out here, but for readers who know their Plato or Xenophon, Alcibiades’ behaviour to Anytus, despicable as many may have regarded the latter, will have serious consequences: although Alcibiades respected Socrates, his arrogant treatment of his other lovers would, it is implied here, turn some citizens against him and bring ruin to both his teacher and himself.³⁵ Once again, then, these anecdotes hint at ways in ways in which Alcibiades’ ‘personal’ behaviour was to become political and have far-reaching consequences within the city.

Alcibiades and a Metic Lover (5.1–5) The next anecdote, in which Alcibiades enriches a metic lover, is introduced as an exception to the general rule that he treated his ‘other lovers’ (i.e. apart from

³⁰ Davies 1971, APF: §1324 (Anytus (I)); Traill, PAA: §129650 (though see the reservations of Lenfant 2015). ³¹ Xen. Hell. 2.3.42–44; Lys. 13.78; Diod. Sic. 13.64.6. ³² At his trial for negligence as general for 409/8 (cf. Arist. Ath. Pol. 27.5). See Lenfant 2016. ³³ Prosecution of Socrates: Pl. Ap. e.g. 18b; 29b–c; 31a. Vilification: e.g. Diog. Laert 2.38, 43; Lib., Silence of Socrates, 7, 9, 28; cf. Meno 89e–95a, where he is shown getting angry when questioned by Socrates. There was a tradition that he may have been motivated by anger at Socrates’ personal attacks on his humble background as a tanner (Xen. Ap. 29; cf. Scholia on Plato’s Apology 18b). A later tradition held it (wrongly) that the Athenians themselves soon regretted condemning Socrates and punished Anytus (see Lenfant 2015). On the real, political motives of Anytus and the other prosecutors: Hansen 1996: 141–65; Parker 1996: 206–207. ³⁴ It seems likely that Plato’s Alcibiades 1, and the works titled Alcibiades by the Socratic writers Aeschines and Antisthenes, were aimed in part at combating these charges. Later authors of rhetorical attacks on Socrates, such as Polycrates, certainly made much of this association: cf. Isoc. Bus. 5; Libanius, Defence of Socrates 136 (v, 90–91, 106 Förster). See Gribble 1999: 223–30. ³⁵ Plutarch recounts the same incident in Amatorius 762c, as an example of the civilizing effects of love on lovers. Afterwards, one of the interlocutors exclaims that the story, which showed Anytus so πρᾶος and γενναῖος as a result of love, nearly dissolved his ‘ancestral hostility to Anytus, based on his treatment of Socrates and philosophy’ (762d)—evidence that the mention of Anytus was expected to bring to mind his responsibility for the death of Socrates.

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Socrates) harshly (4.4). Not that Alcibiades submits to the advances of this one either, and his behaviour is even more domineering, involving the threat of physical violence; but whereas he robbed Anytus, he enriches the metic. The contrast suggests Alcibiades’ unpredictability and changeability, which were introduced explicitly in 2.1 (Τὸ δ᾽ ἦθος αὐτοῦ πολλὰς μὲν ὕστερον . . . ἀνομοιότητας πρὸς αὑτὸ καὶ μεταβολὰς ἐπεδείξατο) and which Plutarch will later discuss (23.1–6). Both stories concern wealth, but if the previous anecdote might have suggested that Alcibiades was influenced by love of riches, this one shows that he was not.³⁶ The constant is the outrageousness of Alcibiades’ imperious behaviour and his disregard of convention. Plutarch begins (5.1) by summing up the previous anecdote ‘That is how he used to treat his other lovers too’ (καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐρασταῖς, repeated from 4.4), i.e. in such a high-handed way, and then introduces the next as standing in contrast to it (πλήν, ‘save that . . . ’). The anecdote concerns a single (ἕνα, i.e. in contrast to his other lovers), μετοικικὸν ἄνθρωπον, probably simply ‘metic’, though the phrase is odd and may be corrupt.³⁷ This metic, who is said not to have possessed a great deal, sells everything and gives it all to Alcibiades, ‘to the value of 100 staters’, that is, 200 drachmas (5.1).³⁸ The context is, of course, at least in the eyes of the metic, an erotic one. Lovers were expected to give their love-object gifts, though to reduce the relationship to a financial transaction threatened to transform the beloved, if he consented, into a prostitute who sold his body. The tone here, though, is not so much to stress the implications that the lover attempted to buy Alcibiades’ favours but to bring out the extreme devotion that Alcibiades aroused. Alcibiades’ reaction to the metic’s gift is to laugh in pleasure (γελάσας καὶ ἡσθείς), a common feature of Alcibiades’ behaviour in the Life (8.1; 9.1),³⁹ and to invite his suitor for dinner—an outrageous disregard for convention, as the eromenos was expected to be passive, but just what the reader expects of ³⁶ Indeed, Proclus records a version of the story here to make that very point. He comments: τοῦτό γε μὴν τὸ καταφρονητικὸν τῶν χρημάτων τοῖς εὖ πεφυκόσιν ἔοικεν ὁ Πλάτων μάλιστα μαρτυρεῖν (On Plato’s Alcibiades 1.104a–c, 110 Westerlink). ³⁷ The complete phrase, according to most manuscripts (Υ), is μετοικικὸν ἄνθρωπον ὥς φασιν. μετοικικὸς ἄνθρωπος is unparalleled, and μετοικικός itself is extremely rare and never used of a person. Ziegler saw the problem and prints N’s μετοικικὸν ὥς φασιν ἄνθρωπον, understanding, presumably, ‘a man of “metic”, as they put it, status’. But ὥς φασιν is never used in Plutarch to apologize for an unfamiliar term. ³⁸ We are probably to imagine the metic selling his possessions and bringing the proceeds to Alcibiades in cash. But Plutarch later talks of Alcibiades giving the man back his gold (5.2); this may imply that he gave Alcibiades gold coins or unminted gold, to the value of 100 Attic staters. The version in Proclus has the metic offer 100 drachmas from the sale of a field (or farm: ἀγρόν) and receive a (much bigger) bribe of ten talents (On Plato’s Alcibiades 1.104a–c, 110 Westerlink). ³⁹ Alcibiades’ laughter seems to have been a feature of the later rhetorical tradition and occurs in several of the declamation topics suggested in the rhetorical handbooks; one has him being prosecuted for laughing when Cleon promises to capture the Spartans on Sphacteria (Apsines, Rhet. 1.348.2 [=242 3 H]); see also Scholia ad Hermogenis librum Περὶ στάσεων 4.587.24, 4.588.14, 4.616.4–5 Walz; Sopater, Διαίρεσις ζητημάτων 8.127 Walz.

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Alcibiades after his unashamed description in Symposium 217a–219d of how he invited Socrates to dinner in order to seduce him, ‘just like an erastes plotting to have his way with his favourite’ (217c). This also illustrates Alcibiades’ unpredictability: in 4.5 he had refused an invitation to dinner and treated a lover harshly; now he entertains a different lover.⁴⁰ ‘After treating him kindly’ (φιλοφρονηθείς), Plutarch continues, ‘he gave him back his gold’ and ‘commanded’ him (προσέταξε), i.e. imperiously, ‘to start outbidding those who used to buy [the contract for] the public taxes’⁴¹ (τοὺς ὠνουμένους . . . ὑπερβάλλειν ἀντωνούμενον).⁴² When the man demurs, because of the great sums involved, Alcibiades threatens to whip him. Whipping, a punishment only inflicted on slaves, would be a gross outrage to a free man. A good parallel for what is envisaged and for its shocking nature is found in the fragment of Lysias’ Against Teisis, recorded by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fr. 279 Carey = Dion. Hal. Dem. 11). There the plaintiff claims, in what Dionysius calls ‘a tale of hybris’ (διήγησιν . . . ὑβριστικήν), that, on being invited to dinner by the accused, he was seized, tied to a pillar and whipped; he was then held overnight, tied again to a pillar and whipped by Teisis’ slaves. His injuries were so severe that he had to be carried away on a stretcher by his brother. We are probably to imagine Alcibiades threatening the metic with a similar fate. This is domineering, hybristic behaviour. When the next morning the man goes to the agora and bids a talent for the contract, the tax collectors, gathering into a huddle (συστρεφόμενοι),⁴³ indignantly (ἀγανακτοῦντες) begin ordering him to name a guarantor (ἐγγυητής), i.e. someone to guarantee that the money bid would be paid, assuming that he would not be able to ‘find’ one (ὡς οὐκ ἂν εὑρόντος). In his On the Mysteries, in a passage which provides a good parallel with what is envisaged here, Andocides, who is likewise trying to outbid a cartel for the right to collect taxes, names guarantors (1.134), and earlier in the speech implies that winners in such auctions did not always pay ⁴⁰ As Verdegem 2010: 136 notes, the similarity of phrasing (ἐκάλεσεν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, ἑστιάσας δέ ~ ἑστιῶν ἐκάλει κἀκεῖνον ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον) reinforces the contrast. ⁴¹ Auctions for the right to collect various taxes were held once a year by the poletai in the presence of the Council (Arist. Ath. Pol. 47.2 with Rhodes 1981 ad loc.; cf. other passages collected in Agora 3, §537–40). The successful bidder or bidders would provide guarantees (or guarantors: ἐγγυηταί) that they would pay the money bid, and then after collecting the taxes and paying the agreed amount would be free to keep any profit. Andocides, in his On the Mysteries 133–35, claims that he outbid a ring of tax-farmers, which led to a plot on his life by the outraged losers. The parallel demonstrates tax farming was done by wealthy, influential men, and might be the site of considerable conflict. We do not know what Alcibiades’ private grudge was, but it may have had nothing to do with tax collecting. The parallel also suggests that the outbidding of a tax-collecting cartel could be presented as a public service. Thus there may have been a political motive behind Alcibiades’ action (cf. his contribution during an epidosis in 10.1–2). In addition, assisting a friend in need with financial help, or standing guarantor when a friend undertook a public contract, could also be presented as acts of generosity which might win political influence (Cf. Antiphon Tetr. 1.β. 12). See Hatzfeld 1940: 71–72; Rhodes 1986: 137. ⁴² Cf. Andoc. On the Mysteries 133–34, ἐπεὶ δ᾽ οὐκ ἀντωνεῖτο οὐδείς, παρελθὼν ἐγὼ εἰς τὴν βουλὴν ὑπερέβαλλον. ⁴³ Not ‘clustered about him’ (Perrin).

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up (1.73). Here it is not clear whether the man’s metic status meant that his naming a guarantor was any more urgent.⁴⁴ The metic is ‘distraught’ (θορυβουμένου) and begins to give way, until ‘standing there at a distance’ (ἑστὼς ὁ Αλκιβιάδης ἄπωθεν),⁴⁵ Alcibiades declares to the archons,⁴⁶ ‘Write me down, he’s my friend, I stand surety’ (ἐμὲ γράψατε . . . ἐμὸς φίλος ἐστίν, ἐγγυῶμαι). Alcibiades’ appearance causes a reversal of fortune: the metic was in despair and the tax collectors expected that he would have no guarantor; now they despair, because, Plutarch explains, they were reliant on this year’s taxes to pay what they bid last year.⁴⁷ We now come to another reversal. The metic lover had offered Alcibiades money and implored him to take it (δεόμενον λαβεῖν); now he is himself implored and offered money by the tax collectors (ἐδέοντο . . . ἀργύριον). He was the desperate suitor before, refused by Alcibiades; now they are the suitors, and Alcibiades, who does not allow him to accept less than a talent,⁴⁸ is like his father or guardian. And Alcibiades, who had refused his lover’s gift, has now engineered a bigger financial gain for him, thus helping him—but also demonstrating where power lay. Thus, while, as Plutarch insists, Alcibiades humiliated all his lovers except Socrates (4.4), he also helped some of those he humiliated. The common denominator is Alcibiades’ domineering assertion of power, in private and in public, over his fellow citizens and his subordination of their interests to his own capricious wants.

‘The lawlessness of his physical behaviour’ (6.1–5) The episode of the metic is closed by κἀκεῖνον μὲν οὕτως ὠφέλησεν (‘And this is how he helped that man’), which sums up the anecdote and neatly picks up its beginning (Οὕτω δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐρασταῖς ἐχρῆτο, πλὴν ἕνα (5.1).⁴⁹ In the following chapter (6), a passage shot-through with allusions to Plato, Plutarch ⁴⁴ Metics needed, at least when they were initially enrolled, to have a citizen as sponsor (prostates). Alcibiades may be envisaged as fulfilling this role for this metic here; at any rate some kind of relationship of patronage is envisaged. Cf. Millett 1989: 34–35. On the status of metics, see Harrison 1968–71: i, 187–99; Whitehead 1977; Todd 1993: 194–99. ⁴⁵ Note the perfect (ἑστώς); the stress is on the fact of Alcibiades standing there, rather than on his arrival, a feature of the way he is described elsewhere (e.g. 7.1, 8.2; cf. 4.4). Alcibiades on several other occasions appears unexpectedly, e.g. 27.4. For the sudden appearance or ‘epiphany’ of the hero as a feature of Plutarch’s Lives, see Duff 2015: 143. ⁴⁶ Presumably the poletai mentioned in Ath. Pol. 42.7. ⁴⁷ This was perfectly legal—payment for the purchase of tax contracts was not due immediately; Ath. Pol. 47.2–5 discusses how the poletai recorded the purchaser and price bid for taxes and other public contracts, as well as sales of confiscated property, and compiled lists of when payments were due. ⁴⁸ Cf. Andoc. 1.133–4, where Agyrrhius’s cartel make a profit of three talents. ⁴⁹ Plutarch often closes episodes, or even whole Lives, and marks the transition to what follows, with μέν and a cognate of οὕτως; e.g. Phil. 15.12; Cat. Min. 46.1; Art. 19.10; Cim. 19.5; Lys. 30.8, Lyc. 31.10; cf. Jos. De Bell. Jud. 1.531; cf. Duff 2011b: 246–49.

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deals with, on the one hand, Socrates’ love for Alcibiades, which humbled him and made him realize his faults, and, on the other, the temptations offered by Socrates’ rival-lovers (ἀντερασταῖς), called also ‘flatterers’ (κόλαξι) and ‘corruptors’ (οἱ διαφθείροντες). They play on his ambition (his φιλοτιμία and φιλοδοξία) and encourage him in grandiose thinking (μεγαλοπραγμοσύνη); they convince him that, once he entered public life, not only would he ‘put in the shade’ (ἀμαυρώσοντα) other generals and leaders, but he would ‘surpass the power and glory which even Pericles had amongst the Greeks’—a sentence which draws heavily on, and alludes to, Socrates’ words to Alcibiades in Plato Alcibiades 1, 105a–b.⁵⁰ Not, Plutarch adds, that Alcibiades was impervious to pleasure too (i.e. in addition to ambition). ‘For’, he continues, quoting Thucydides Book 6, ‘what Thucydides calls “the transgressiveness of his physical behaviour” (ἡ γὰρ ὑπὸ Θουκυδίδου λεγομένη παρανομία εἰς τὸ σῶμα τῆς διαίτης) gives rise to such a suspicion’ (6.2–3). In the passage to which Plutarch refers (6.15.3–4), Thucydides links Alcibiades’ dissolute lifestyle and his attitude (τὸ μέγεθος τῆς τε κατὰ τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σῶμα παρανομίας ἐς τὴν δίαιταν καὶ τῆς διανοίας) to fears that he wanted to become tyrant; for Thucydides both of these characteristics of Alcibiades were to lead to his rejection and the consequent ruin of Athens: ‘Although on a public level’, Thucydides claims, ‘he managed the war excellently, on a private level each of them was irritated at his practices’. By alluding to this passage here, Plutarch encourages the reader to see the transgressiveness demonstrated in the anecdotes that we have so far studied, and in the ones that follow, as having serious political consequences, leading ultimately to Alcibiades’ downfall (esp. 36.1–5).⁵¹

Three Anecdotes (7.1–3) There then follow three brief anecdotes (7.1–3), all of which show Alcibiades’ arrogance and self-regard, which his other admirers had encouraged and which Socrates had tried to reduce.⁵² The first anecdote begins with ‘when he was passing beyond childhood’ (Τὴν δὲ παιδικὴν ἡλικίαν παραλλάσσων). Earlier Alcibiades was called a pais (3.1; 4.1); by 7.3 he is a meirakion serving in the army. We have thus the impression of a chronological sequence. But it is an impression only, and a

⁵⁰ Duff 2009: 43–45; 2011a: 39–42; 2021: 188–90. ⁵¹ Plutarch quotes this passage again at 16.2 (see pp. 163–64). For Plutarch’s use of this quotation, see Pelling 1992: 18–19; 1996: xlix–li. On the Thucydides passage itself, see Gribble 1999: 69–71; 182–86; Pelling 2000b: 22; Goldhill 2002: 38–39. ⁵² The first and third anecdotes are told consecutively in Sayings of Kings and Commanders 186e; the relationship between that text and the Alc. is unclear: see Pelling 2002a; Stadter 2014b.

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vague one at that.⁵³ Furthermore, in 5.1–5 he must already be an adult, since he acts as a guarantor on a contract. The arrangement of these anecdotes into this particular sequence is almost certainly Plutarch’s own invention to aid his characterization of Alcibiades and the Athenians, and does not correspond to the order in which he may have thought they occurred.⁵⁴ The anecdote continues with Alcibiades ‘halting’ or ‘taking up a stand’ at a school (ἐπέστη γραμματοδιδασκαλείῳ)⁵⁵ and asking for a scroll of Homer.⁵⁶ When the teacher says he does not have one, Alcibiades hits him and proceeds on his way (κονδύλῳ καθικόμενος αὐτοῦ παρῆλθεν). ἐπέστη once again recalls Alcibiades’ disruptive entry in the Symposium and in the Anytus anecdote.⁵⁷ If we are meant to imagine Alcibiades standing at the door of the school, it may be relevant here that entering a school was a capital offence for an adult⁵⁸—though Plutarch is vague here about Alcibiades’ exact age. Very little is known about the nature of such schools,⁵⁹ but certainly reading and writing (γράμματα) were taught, as well as the memorizing of Homer and Hesiod:⁶⁰ hence Alcibiades’ surprise that the teacher did not possess a copy of Homer. Some readers might think that the story suggests a laudable concern for learning (cf. 2.5–7), an enthusiasm in the defence of Homer which is both praise-worthy in itself and demonstrates an aristocratic sophistication.⁶¹ In a version of this story in Aelian (VH 13.38) the anecdote is introduced with a statement that Alcibiades was a great admirer of Homer (ἰσχυρῶς Ὅμηρον ἐθαύμαζεν) and ends with a statement that Alcibiades’ action demonstrated that the teacher was uneducated and was producing children of a similar kind. Plutarch could easily have added to his anecdote some such statement that would have made Alcibiades’ action seem commendable. As it is, Plutarch leaves such considerations latent: Alcibiades simply punches the teacher, i.e. just as a teacher might hit a pupil, a role reversal which once again has Alcibiades shockingly playing the older or more powerful role. Hitting a fellow-citizen was an egregious act of hybris, an insult the force of which lay in its dishonouring a citizen

⁵³ And ‘passing beyond childhood’ and being a meirakion may mean much the same thing: cf. De Alex. fort. 327d on Alexander as a μειράκιον ἄρτι τὴν παιδικὴν παραλλάττον ἡλικίαν; Cim. 1.3, where a young man is described as ἄρτι τὴν παιδικὴν ἡλικίαν παρηλλαχότος (‘having recently passed’). ⁵⁴ See Russell 1973: 118–19; Frazier 1996a: 77 (²2016, 107). Ap. Reg. 186e and Ael. VH 13.38 have no such statement. ⁵⁵ A γραμματοδιδασκαλεῖον is an elementary school. The word is rare but occurs twice elsewhere in Plutarch in contexts which make clear that a place is intended (Quaest. Rom. 278e; Quaest. conv. 712a). ⁵⁶ βιβλίον . . . Ὁμηρικόν. A ‘book’ in the sense of one of the twenty-four books of the Iliad or Odyssey would be ῥαψωδία, which is what Ap. Reg. 186e has (ῥαψωδίαν Ἰλιάδος); that is anachronistic, as the division into books probably dates only from Hellenistic times. ⁵⁷ Ap. Reg. 186e and Ael. VH 13.38 have the less colourful προσελθών. ⁵⁸ See the law preserved in the mss. at Aeschin. 1.12. ⁵⁹ Cf. Morgan 1998: 18. ⁶⁰ See Lamberton 1997a: 42. ⁶¹ Familiarity with Homer might act as a marker of elite status; we know of several examples where elite Athenians criticize rhapsodists for lack of learning. See Ford 1999: 231–35.

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and treating him as though he were a slave:⁶² the impression here is again of violent, domineering behaviour stemming from an undemocratic sense of superiority. In the second story, a different teacher claims to have a copy of Homer ‘emended by him’ (ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ διωρθωμένον). What exactly is envisaged here is not clear, though we can note Alex. 8.2, where Alexander has a copy of the Iliad, Ἀριστοτέλους διορθώσαντος.⁶³ Alcibiades replies with rhetorical questions: ‘So (εἶτα) you teach grammar when you are able to correct Homer? Shouldn’t you be educating young men?’⁶⁴ It is unclear what the tone of Alcibiades’ words are here. Is it admiring (‘You are so clever, you are wasted teaching γράμματα’) or deflating (‘If you are so clever, why are you only a teacher of γράμματα?’)?⁶⁵ Either way, as in the anecdotes immediately before and after, Alcibiades acts outrageously, challenges authority and reveals his own ambitious nature. But ‘educating young men’ (τοὺς νέους παιδεύεις) is what Socrates did (cf. Pl. Ap. 24e): this anecdote perhaps then suggests Socrates’ influence on him, but also that Alcibiades failed to understand it.⁶⁶ The third story, of Alcibiades’ encounter with Pericles, begins once again with Alcibiades arriving at somebody’s door (ἐπι θύρας). Alcibiades is this time denied entry, as Pericles is busy by himself, ‘considering how to give an account (ὅπως ἀποδώσει λόγον) to the Athenians’.⁶⁷ Alcibiades replies ‘So (εἶτα) wouldn’t it be better (βέλτιον οὐκ ἦν) for him to consider how not to render an account?’ (ὅπως οὐκ ἀποδώσει). Four details of the Pericles story repeat elements from the two previous ones, providing a sense of literary unity and contributing to the impression of a consistent character for Alcibiades. The first is that its beginning recalls ⁶² See e.g. MacDowell 1976: 23–25; Halperin 1990: 95–96. The phrase κονδύλῳ καθικόμενος αὐτοῦ might bring to mind the charge against Meidias in Demosthenes’ speech, Κατὰ Μειδίου περὶ κονδύλου, which is also invoked in 8.1–2 and from which Plutarch will quote in 10.4. See pp. 158–59. If so, the suggestions of hybris are all the clearer. ⁶³ Written versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were produced in Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries for use in the annual Panathenaic festival; there is considerable debate about the level of fluidity or uniformity in the text of Homer at this period (see e.g. West 2001; Nagy 2004). ⁶⁴ εἶτα ‘so’, ‘then’ introduces ‘questions expressing surprise, indignation, irony etc.’; it often signals a ‘contrast between what a person has or has not done and what was or is to be expected of him’: Smyth 1956: 2653; cf. Phoc. 36.3; Demetr. 38.7; LSJ s.v. II. Cf. Ar. Farmers fr. 102 K–A = E20 Olson = Nic. 8.4, ἐθέλω γεωργεῖν. εἶτα τίς σε κωλύει;). ⁶⁵ Alcibiades uses the term ἐπανορθοῦν, ‘correct’. This may be simply variation for διορθοῦν (‘emend’); or Alcibiades may be wilfully misinterpreting the teacher’s claim as being to have improved on Homer’s poems. On the low status of teachers of γράμματα, cf. Dem. 18.258, 265; Booth 1981. ⁶⁶ These two anecdotes may have been suggested by the Platonic Alc. 1, 112b, where Socrates says he knows Alcibiades has heard Homer being read. In the same way, the stories of Alcibiades wrestling (2.2–3) and refusing to play the flute (2. 5–7) were probably inspired by Pl. Alc. 1, 106e, and the story of his playing knucklebones (2.3–4) by 110b. See Duff 2003: 100, 103. ⁶⁷ All Athenian magistrates had to submit to an audit (εὔθυναι), by officials selected by lot and overseen by the Council, which might include scrutiny of their financial accounts (λόγος), by a separate group of annually appointed λογισταί; those suspected of irregularities might be tried before a popular court. See Ath. Pol. 48.4–5, 54.2, with Rhodes 1981 ad loc.; Harrison 1968–71, ii, 28–31, 208–11.

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Alcibiades’ appearance at Symposium 212d, and his various other disruptive entries (4.5, 7.1). Secondly, this story, like the others, shows Alcibiades’ ready wit, his ability to answer with clever quips, as also demonstrated at 2.3; 2.6; 9.2; 15.6; 22.2–3. Thirdly, Alcibiades makes his remark as he leaves (ἀπιών), a detail not in any of the other authors that record it; Alcibiades has a tendency in these anecdotes to hit or, occasionally, as here, to speak and run (4.5, ταῦτα πράξας ἀπῆλθε; 7.1, κονδύλῳ καθικόμενος αὐτοῦ παρῆλθεν; 8.1). The fourth is the form of Alcibiades’ remark, an ironic or indignant question introduced by εἶτα (cf. 7.2). The precise historical situation envisaged here is uncertain, though Pericles was famously deposed from office in 430  (Thuc. 2.65.3), perhaps on a charge of embezzlement (Pl. Grg. 416a). But the accountability of officials was one of the hallmarks of Athenian democracy.⁶⁸ Diodorus records a version of the same story and connects it with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (12.38.3–4): he claims that Pericles was influenced by Alcibiades’ advice and started looking for a way to involve Athens in a war as a means of evading the need to submit to scrutiny concerning his use of public money.⁶⁹ By not linking Alcibiades’ words to the outbreak of the war, the moral of the story is rather different: it is not about a leader taking his city to war in order to cover up his personal wrong-doing, but about Alcibiades’ attitude to his powerful guardian and to the city.⁷⁰ For Plutarch, Alcibiades’ reply, which forms the closing punchline of the story, shows that he thought he could do better than Pericles. This is just what the flatterers in chapter 6 had encouraged him to think, and shows the malign effects of that flattery on him. There, as we have seen, they convinced him that, once he entered public life, he would ‘surpass the power and glory which even Pericles had amongst the Greeks’.⁷¹ The story also shows a tacit acceptance that Pericles had been misusing state funds, and makes more believable the later accusations against Alcibiades for similar misuse (13.3). Finally, this story shows a lack of respect towards authority, a trait well demonstrated in the previous anecdotes, and also a markedly anti-democratic leaning which will become clearer as the Life progresses.⁷² It thus makes more believable the fears, which Plutarch will bring out later (16.2; 16.7; 34.7–35.1), that Alcibiades had tyrannical aspirations: a man who talked like this saw himself as above the law. ⁶⁸ E.g. Hdt. 3.80.6. See Piérart 1971; Roberts 1982: 14–54; Harrison 1968–71, ii: 28–31, 208–11; Sinclair 1988: 77–80; cf. 146–52; Hansen 1991: 218–24; Adeleye 1983: 295–306; Davies 1994. ⁶⁹ Diodorus is probably here dependent on Ephorus (cf. his reference to Ephorus in 12.41.1). Plutarch certainly knew Ephorus and used his account of the outbreak of the war in Per. 29–32 (e.g. Stadter 1989: lxxi–lxxii; 287; Parmeggiani 2014). ⁷⁰ However, even though Plutarch has suppressed the context given to this anecdote in Ephorus, he may have been influenced by the tradition which connected it with the war in his placing of it at this point in the Life: that is, immediately before a story about a battle at Potidaea (7.3–5), which took place in the run-up to the war. ⁷¹ A sentence which draws heavily on, and alludes to, Socrates’ words to Alcibiades in Pl. Alc. 1, 105a–b. ⁷² Cf. Pelling 2005: 123, ‘If that is how he hopes to outdo Pericles, it is not good’.

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However, it is not clear that to Plutarch’s contemporary audience Alcibiades’ undemocratic impatience with popular scrutiny would have seemed entirely negative. Given the status of Pericles amongst writers of Plutarch’s time as the embodiment of classical Athens, and as a wise man plagued by an unruly mob,⁷³ Alcibiades’ remark might well have seemed wise, if immoral. Furthermore, readers who remember the fate of Coriolanus earlier in the Coriolanus–Alcibiades book will know how dangerous submitting to popular judgement can be. Coriolanus willingly agreed to give an account (πρὸς τὸν δῆμον . . . ἀπολογησόμενος) on a charge of aiming at tyranny (Cor. 20.2) and was exiled after a manifestly unfair trial before them. Later, when he agreed to submit an account (εὔθυναν διδόναι καὶ λόγον) to the people of Antium (Cor. 39.3), he was assassinated by his enemies while speaking.⁷⁴ Alcibiades will himself suffer at the hands of an angry demos, stirred up by demagogues, both when he is accused of complicity in the mutilation of the Herms and the parodying of the Mysteries, and when later he is blamed for the defeat at Notion (19–21; 36.1–5). As with the previous anecdotes, therefore, the tone here is ambiguous.⁷⁵ At any rate, this story raises the issue of Alcibiades’ relationship with the demos: he will indeed manipulate and control it, but it will ultimately ruin him.⁷⁶ The final stories in chapter 7 concern Alcibiades and Socrates on campaign and are derived from Alcibiades’ own account in Plato, Symposium 220d–21c, which the reader is plainly meant to have in mind.⁷⁷ These stories show a rather different Alcibiades and form a contrast to the previous ones. In the first, Socrates defends Alcibiades when the latter is wounded in a battle near Potidaea (7.3–5). The generals, influenced by Alcibiades’ rank in society, are anxious that the glory of the reward for bravery should be given to Alcibiades, not to Socrates as it ought to have been, and Socrates goes along with this, ‘since he wanted his ambition in fine deeds to grow’ (βουλόμενος αὔξεσθαι τὸ φιλότιμον ἐν τοῖς καλοῖς αὐτοῦ).⁷⁸ ‘Later’ (eight years later, in fact), Socrates’ wish is in some way fulfilled, when Alcibiades defends Socrates when the latter was wounded at Delium (7.6). If the previous ⁷³ E.g. in Plutarch’s Pericles–Fabius, with Stadter 1975: 80–85. This picture is, of course, drawn from Thucydides. ⁷⁴ Verdegem 2010: 153. ⁷⁵ On the difficulty of drawing moral judgments from these anecdotes, see Pelling 1996: xliii–xliv; Duff 1999: 233; Verdegem 2010: 152. ⁷⁶ Xenophon does not record this incident but another one in which a young Alcibiades (‘before he was twenty years old’) debates with Pericles and proves that laws passed by the democratic majority against the wills of the rich minority are based on force and should not have the status of law (Mem. 1.2.40–46): plainly there was a tradition of a sophistic and anti-democratic Alcibiades, able to use any argument for his own advantage. Plutarch knew of another anecdote concerning Alcibiades’ relationship with Pericles, which has Alcibiades encourage Pericles not to give up on politics after he had been stripped of his office and fined in 430 (Per. 37.1). He has not included that here, presumably because that would have given a picture of a too conciliatory Alcibiades. ⁷⁷ For a detailed treatment of these episodes, and especially of the relationship with the Symposium, see Duff 2009: 45–49. Cf. Russell 1966: 41; Gribble 1999: 273. ⁷⁸ An allusion to Symp. 178d. See Duff 2009: 47–48.

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anecdotes had shown a violent, self-regarding and too-ambitious Alcibiades, who desired to surpass Pericles’ power, these stories show Socrates directing that ambition in a positive direction. These episodes also show that Alcibiades’ ambition, which his flatterers had played on (6.4), was not in itself a negative trait. Finally, they confirm what has been brought out in all the previous episodes, the immense adulation which Alcibiades wins, and the ongoing tussle between the city—in the person of the generals—who flatter Alcibiades by giving him a prize he does not deserve and stoke his overweening arrogance, and Socrates, who tries, but will ultimately fail, to combat that influence.

Alcibiades and Hipponicus (8.1–4) The final incident which we shall examine has Alcibiades punching the rich Hipponicus (ἐνέτριψε κόνδυλον) but ending up marrying his daughter. When she sues for divorce, he prevents her, by force, from leaving.⁷⁹ Hipponicus son of Callias of Alopeke (c. 485–c. 422 ) was from an extremely, and famously, rich family.⁸⁰ He is introduced here as ‘the father of Callias’ (τῷ Καλλίου πατρί), not, as one might expect ‘the son of . . .’. This may be because the younger Callias was better known than either Hipponicus or Hipponicus’ father Callias; but introducing Hipponicus in this way also perhaps suggests the focalization of the youthful Alcibiades and his friends: what counts is that it is Callias’ father that Alcibiades hit. At any rate, this is the sort of casual violence that we have come to expect from Alcibiades, and which will recur later (3.1, ξύλῳ πατάξας; 5.3, ἠπείλησε μαστιγώσειν; 7.1, κονδύλῳ καθικόμενος; 16.5, ῥαπίσαι).⁸¹ Plutarch explains that, in punching Hipponicus, Alcibiades was not motivated by anger or any ‘difference’ (i.e. argument, disagreement) between the two men (ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἢ διαφορᾶς τινος), but did it ‘because he had agreed (or ‘made a bet’, συνθέμενος)⁸² with his hetairoi to do it for a laugh’ (ἐπὶ γέλωτι). We have already mentioned the negative associations of hetairoi in such contexts. The insistence

⁷⁹ Close verbal parallels confirm that this is based on ps.-Andoc. 4.13–15 (pace Verdegem 2010: 160–61). Other texts which deal with this incident include: Isoc. 16.31; Ath. 534e; Schol. ad Luc. Zeus Confused 16 (probably based on Plutarch, or a common source). For discussion, see Hatzfeld 1940: 136–37; Russell 1966: 41–42; Davies 1971, APF: 19; Rosivach 1984: 195–99; Nikolaidis 1987: 60–61; Cohn-Haft 1995: 11–13; Gribble 1999: 266–67; González Almenara 2005; Schmitt Pantel 2010: 32–34; Verdegem 2010: 158–61; Aguilar 2011: 33–37; Tanga 2013: 195–96. In addition, Gazzano 1997: 64–82, on ps.-Andoc. 4.13–15, is full and helpful. ⁸⁰ The ‘richest of the Greeks’ according to And. 1.130. For details on Hipponicus, see MacDowell 1962: 10–11; 1990: 360; Davies 1971, APF: 254–65, esp. 262–63 (Hipponikos (II)); Traill, PAA: §538910. ⁸¹ Cf. Xenophon’s description of Alcibiades as τῶν ἐν τῇ δημοκρατίᾳ πάντων ἀκρατέστατός τε καὶ ὑβριστότατος καὶ βιαιότατος (Mem. 1.2.12). ⁸² συντίθεμαι is ‘agree on’ (cf. 8.3, συνθέμενον) but sometimes, as here, in the sense of ‘make a bet’, cf. Men. Epit. 505, with Martina 2000 ad loc.

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here that Alcibiades did not act out of anger or any personal or political difference— that is, he was not responding to an insult or attack by Hipponicus or his family— has the effect of making his attack seem all the more outrageous: it was motivated simply by a desire to assert superiority and humiliate the other. Anger at a perceived slight, and long standing private feuds, are commonly represented in law-court speeches as commendable motivations for violent or aggressive action.⁸³ Aristotle remarks that an act committed in anger, in correct measure and in the right circumstances, might be a laudable one (e.g. Nic. Ethics 1109a27–30; 1109b15–18); elsewhere he says that acting in anger precludes a desire to demean the other (οὐδεὶς γὰρ ὀργιζόμενος ὀλιγωρεῖ, Rhetoric 1380a).⁸⁴ For the same reason, speakers in legal cases often try to deny that their opponents were motivated by anything else than a desire to demean: Demosthenes, for example, in his prosecution of Meidias, after repeating the point that it is the insulting and demeaning nature of a physical assault that matters more than the assault itself,⁸⁵ emphasizes that Meidias’ assault on him was premeditated, and not influenced by drink or the lateness of the hour; it was in other words, motivated purely by hybris (Dem. 21.72 and 74).⁸⁶ Hence also the point of Plutarch’s denial here.⁸⁷ The detail that Alcibiades’ motivation was laughter or amusement also adds to the outrageous nature of Alcibiades’ assault. Laughter is, as we have noted, a feature of Alcibiades’ behaviour in this Life (5.1, 9.1) and might be seen as an endearing trait. But the laughter here is hardly innocent and would have made the insult and humiliation the greater.⁸⁸ Aristotle, in defining hybris as a subdivision of belittling or slight (ὀλιγωρία), emphasizes that its purpose is pleasure, the pleasure of feeling superior to the other: ‘He who commits hybris belittles the other; for hybris is causing harm and pain whereby the sufferer is disgraced, not to obtain any advantage but for pleasure’ (Rh. 1378b).⁸⁹ Alcibiades’ aselgeia, Plutarch continues, became a subject of talk through the whole city (περιβοήτου δὲ τῆς ἀσελγείας ἐν τῇ πόλει γενομένης) and everybody shared in Hipponicus’ indignation, ‘as one might expect’, or ‘as was reasonable’ (καὶ συναγανακτούντων, ὥσπερ εἰκός, ἁπάντων). Aselgeia is ‘wanton violence’, a near synonym of hybris.⁹⁰ Given especially the use of κόνδυλον in 7.1 and 8.1, the ⁸³ See Allen 2000: 55–62; 148–67; 2003: 80–81; cf. Cohen 1995. ⁸⁴ Similarly Plato remarks that crimes committed in anger are less reprehensible than premeditated crimes (Laws 866d–67c). ⁸⁵ οὐδὲ τὸ τύπτεσθαι τοῖς ἐλευθέροις ἐστὶ δεινόν, καίπερ ὂν δεινόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐφ᾽ ὕβρει. ⁸⁶ ἐγὼ δ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἐχθροῦ, νήφοντος, ἕωθεν, ὕβρει καὶ οὐκ οἴνῳ τοῦτο ποιοῦντος. Cf. Carey and Reid 1985: 74–6 on Dem. 54.1. ⁸⁷ Contrast 23.8, where Plutarch insists, in phrasing which recalls this, that Alcibiades slept with Timaea, the wife of the Spartan King Agis, οὐχ ὕβρει . . . οὐδὲ κρατούμενος ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς, ἀλλ᾽ in order that his sons might rule Sparta. ⁸⁸ Cf. e.g. De garr. 512d: ἐπὶ γέλωτι καὶ ὕβρει. ⁸⁹ Cf. Konstan 2003: 108–14. ⁹⁰ Cf. Carey and Reid 1985 on Dem. 54.13, where Demosthenes claims almost to have died as a result of an assault by Conon and his friends, διὰ τὴν ὕβριν καὶ τὴν ἀσέλγειαν τὴν τούτων, and MacDowell 1990 on Dem. 21.1.

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word here would almost certainly bring to mind the opening words of Demosthenes’ speech Against Meidias concerning the punch (Κατὰ Μειδίου περὶ κονδύλου): ‘Τὴν μὲν ἀσέλγειαν, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, καὶ τὴν ὕβριν . . . (Dem. 21.1), and Demosthenes’ claim, later in the same speech that ‘the whole city learnt of . . . his wanton violence’ (ὅλη γὰρ ἡ πόλις . . . τὴν ἀσέλγειαν ᾔσθετο) (Dem. 21.80). If an allusion to this speech is felt here, it would suggest a parallel between Alcibiades’ behaviour and Meidias’ violent, hybristic assault on Demosthenes, immortalized and painted in lurid colours by the orator. The parallel, indeed, may have been already latent in Demosthenes’ speech itself, as he later brings in Alcibiades as a comparandum for Meidias (Dem. 21.143–150). That the reader is correct to think of this speech here is confirmed by the fact that two chapters further on, Plutarch will quote explicitly from it (ἐν τῷ κατὰ Μειδίου . . . ) for Demosthenes’ views on Alcibiades’ oratory (10.4). At any rate, here we see Alcibiades’ private behaviour— behaviour inside a private house—spilling over into the way the city sees him. If Alcibiades’ assault is shocking, his subsequent behaviour is even more so. At dawn he arrives at Hipponicus’ house, knocks on the door and goes in, a sequence once again reminiscent of Alcibiades’ disruptive arrival in the Symposium, and which forms both a parallel to and a contrast with his arrival in the Anytus anecdote (4.5, cf. 7.1, 7.3 for other arrivals). Readers might be expecting similarly arrogant or humiliating conduct. Instead he takes off his ἱμάτιον and begins (or ‘tries’) to surrender his body to Hipponicus, telling him to start whipping and punishing him (παρεδίδου τὸ σῶμα, μαστιγοῦν καὶ κολάζειν κελεύων). Earlier he has threatened to whip a metic (5.3), now he offers himself for whipping: a striking reversal, and one which raises a question about Alcibiades’ masculinity, which will be pursued later in the Life (2.3;16.1, 23.5–9, 39.7). Hipponicus, however, forgives Alcibiades (συνέγνω καὶ τὴν ὀργὴν ἀφῆκεν),⁹¹ as Anytus had done, and as the Athenians will often do (16.4), and later, Plutarch says, betroths his daughter, Hipparete, to him with a massive dowry. Afterwards, Plutarch continues, according to some reports Alcibiades ‘exacted’ (προσεισπρᾶξαι, a word with a strong peremptory tone) a second huge dowry from her brother Callias, who, ‘fearing a plot’ (ἐπιβουλὴν δεδοικώς), promised his estate to the demos should he die without heirs—in order, that is, to prevent its passing on his death to Alcibiades via Hipparete, and to remove any incentive for Alcibiades to murder him. Hipparete, finally, attempts to divorce Alcibiades, because of his consorting with hetairai. When she leaves the house, Alcibiades ‘paid no attention but continued his contemptuous behaviour’ (ἐντρυφῶντος), a term which combines the ideas both of an excessive enjoyment of pleasures and luxury, and of disregard

⁹¹ Cf. Arist. Rh. 1380a on how men cease to be angry at a wrong done to them when the wrongdoer shows remorse. See Konstan 2010: 23–26; Fulkerson 2013: 31–32.

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for laws or convention, or others’ reaction.⁹² It is worth emphasizing that the issue concerning Alcibiades and his hetairiai is more about squandering his patrimony and his wife’s dowry on luxurious living, than it is about marital fidelity or any such thing.⁹³ This is a sort of wasteful and conspicuous consumption (τρυφή), which at the same time hybristically affronts the honour of Hipparete and her family.⁹⁴ However, Alcibiades puts an end to Hipparete’s attempt to divorce him by seizing her and carrying her off through the agora (i.e. publicly),⁹⁵ the sort of domineering act we have come to expect from him. ‘And no one’, Plutarch adds, ‘dared to intervene’ (μηδενὸς ἐναντιωθῆναι μηδ’ ἀφελέσθαι τολμήσαντος).⁹⁶ As in the Anytus story, the presence here of an audience looking on silently, cowed by Alcibiades’ hybristic behaviour, increases the sense of his transgressive violence. All the same, Plutarch has not gone as far as he might have done. His source is ps.-Andocides’ speech Against Alcibiades 14–15, but, perhaps because he considered this to be overly partisan, he obscures what the latter considered so outrageous in Alcibiades’ behaviour: for ps.-Andocides Alcibiades’ offence, for which he dubs him ὑβριστής, lay not just in his consorting with hetairai but in bringing them home, ἐπὶ τὴν αὐτὴν οἰκίαν,⁹⁷ and ‘compelling’ his wife to leave; when she goes to the archon to sue for divorce, he gathers a group of his hetairoi and carries her off ‘by force’ (βίᾳ), and through this action ‘displayed his own power’. Ps.-Andocides also connects Alcibiades’ behaviour to Hipparete more directly with the dowry, which Alcibiades wasted on fast living and then plotted

⁹² As Gribble 1999: 266 remarks, the word suggests both luxuriousness (τρυφή) and ὕβρις. It is regularly applied to Alcibiades in this Life (23.8; 32.2; 36.2). The word is a favourite in Plutarch: some examples are collected by Holden (1884: ad Them. 18.4). But Υ has τρυφῶντος and that may be what Plutarch wrote. The verb τρυφάω, which has similar connotations (e.g. Gracch. 17.6, τυραννοῦντος καὶ τρυφῶντος; Ant. 9.9, τρυφᾶν τοῖς πολίταις ἐνυβρίζοντας), is common in Plutarch, and is applied to Alcibiades by Socrates in Pl. Alc., 1, 114a (τρυφᾷς). ⁹³ See Davidson 1997: 184–86, 194–208; Gribble 1999: 77–78. For consorting with hetairai as associated with extravagance, see Dem. 36.45, where Apollodorus is accused of greed and of wasteful living: ‘you wear a chlanis, you have set free one hetaira and given another in marriage, and you do this even though you have a wife, and go around with three attendant slaves . . . ’; and Men. Epit. In the pseudo-Plutarchan De lib. educ. 5a–b consorting with prostitutes is condemned on just these grounds, because of the expense involved. Other passages where Plutarch associates relationships with prostitutes with excessive expenditure include De fort. Rom. 97d; De frat. amor. 482c; cf. De aud. poet. 33c–d. Cf. Obradovic 2013: 227–333. ⁹⁴ Cf. Dem. 48.55, where the appearance in public of a man’s mistress decked out in clothes and jewels he has given her is conceived as an act of hybris against other members of the family. ⁹⁵ Cf. Xen. Hell. 2.3.55–6, where Theramenes is dragged from the altar in the Council chamber, while the cowed Councillors look on, and then led away protesting διὰ τῆς ἀγορᾶς; the detail about the agora suggests the very public nature of the violence done. Ps.-Andoc. 4.14 has her seized ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς; Plutarch changes this from a point about where she was when she was seized, to one about Alcibiades’ disdain for public opinion. ⁹⁶ A phrase recalled later when Alcibiades escorted the Eleusinian procession by its traditional route, for the first time since the occupation of Decelea, and ‘no-one of the enemy dared’ to attack (μηδενὸς δὲ τῶν πολεμίων ἐπιθέσθαι τολμήσαντος, 34.7). Alcibiades’ decisiveness there plays out for the good of the city. ⁹⁷ Cf. Dem. 59.22, where Lysias refrains from bringing prostitutes home, αἰσχυνόμενος τήν τε γυναῖκα and his other female relatives.

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against Callias to get more. Plutarch tones this down, avoiding the term hybris here, omitting the mention of his bringing prostitutes home and of Alcibiades’ hetairoi, and not stating explicitly that Alcibiades forced Hipparete to leave or that Alcibiades displayed his power, though both are implied. But in fact the clear-cut message is further undercut by a coda which Plutarch adds to the story, just as the accounts of his theft from Anytus and assault on Hipponicus are undercut by their indulgence and forgiveness of him. Plutarch accepts ps.-Andocides’ characterization of Alcibiades act as violence, but comments that such violence (βία) ‘seemed not wholly illegal or inhumane’. ‘Seemed’ (ἔδοξεν) not ‘seems’: this is about how Alcibiades’ contemporaries evaluated his actions, though there is implied here a strong push to how Plutarch’s reader’s might see it. ‘For in fact’ (καὶ γάρ),⁹⁸ Plutarch explains, speaking now in his own narratorial voice, ‘the law seems’ (δοκεῖ)—i.e. this is a deduction made in Plutarch’s time: a tentative authorial statement—‘to bring forward in person (αὐτήν), the woman who has left her husband’ (ἀπολιποῦσαν), or ‘is trying to leave him’ (ἀπολείπουσαν),⁹⁹ ‘for this reason, that the husband might be allowed’, or ‘it might occur to the husband’ (ἐγγένηται τῷ ἀνδρί), ‘to meet her and stop her’. It is unclear whether Plutarch’s explanation of the reason for the necessity of the wife’s appearance before the archon in person—that it allowed the husband an opportunity to take her back—reflects the real legal situation in the late-fifth century, or is Plutarch’s own speculation. It may have been the case that a wifeinitiated divorce could not be legally registered if the husband, who stood to lose her dowry, disapproved, and that Alcibiades was in fact legally within his rights to oppose the divorce and force Hipparete to return.¹⁰⁰ But even without Plutarch’s explanation, ancient readers may well have had more sympathy with Alcibiades’ actions than many modern ones. Whatever their husbands’ behaviour, wives were expected to obey them; violence against women was tolerated or accepted,¹⁰¹ and sexual fidelity on the husband’s part was not expected.¹⁰² Indeed, in Plutarch’s Marriage advice, he advises wives not to be annoyed when their husbands ‘commit some peccadillo with a hetaira or maidservant’ (ἐξαμάρτῃ τι πρὸς ἑταίραν ἢ θεραπαινίδα) (140b). He does, however, acknowledge that such behaviour usually upsets wives and he advises husbands for that reason to refrain from it when they approach their wives (144d). In the same way Plutarch’s positive description of Hipparete as ‘obedient and loving of her husband’ and the mention that she was ⁹⁸ On καὶ γάρ, cf. Denniston 1966: 108; Stadter 1989 on Per. 7.1. Cf. Alc. 5.3. ⁹⁹ ἀπολιποῦσαν, the reading of N (ms. Madrid 4685/Codex Matritensis 55), is printed by Ziegler (Teubner); ἀπολείπουσαν is the reading of other manuscripts (Υ) and is printed by Flacelière (Budé) and Perrin (Loeb). ¹⁰⁰ On Classical Athenian divorce law, see Harrison 1968–71: i, 38–44; MacDowell 1978: 88; Todd 1993: 214–15; Rosivach 1984; Cox 1998: 71–77; Cohn-Haft 1995. ¹⁰¹ See Fisher 1998: 77 and 94 n. 33. ¹⁰² Unless, e.g. his behaviour involved married or marriageable citizen women, or resulted in male children that the husband might be pressured to adopt.

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‘hurt’ or ‘upset’ by Alcibiades with regard to her marriage (λυπουμένη δ᾽ ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸν γάμον), certainly seems to invite engagement with her point of view.¹⁰³ However that may be, the narratorial comment which closes the section on Alcibiades and Callias and his family, has the effect of turning what for Plutarch’s source, ps.-Andocides, was a clear illustration of hybris and arrogance, into a more complex, less clear-cut story.¹⁰⁴ Later Plutarch talks about the Athenian tendency to forgive Alcibiades, to give his crime the mildest of names (Alc. 16.4); here Plutarch’s narrative itself demonstrates, or enacts, this tendency. Many of the other stories about Alcibiades have such destabilizing codas (e.g. 4.6, 10.2, 16.6).¹⁰⁵

Conclusion When, in chapter 16, Plutarch sums up the character of Alcibiades, he talks both of his political and oratorical skill but also of ‘the great luxuriousness of his lifestyle (τὴν τρυφὴν τῆς διαίτης) and his acts of hubris in drink and love’ (καὶ περὶ πότους καὶ ἔρωτας ὑβρίσματα) (16.1). The stories in Alc. 4–8 which we have examined bring out exactly these characteristics: Alcibiades’ skill, his ability to manipulate and persuade, but also his hybris and tryphe: that is, his domineering and luxuriant behaviour, manifested in his violence, his disregard for the dignity of other citizens, his disdain for them, and his luxurious indulgence of his own wants. They also bring out Alcibiades’ desire for love and fame, his desire to be talked about, to shock, to be the centre of attention. But these stories do not just characterize Alcibiades: they characterize the citizens too, and the dynamics of their interaction with Alcibiades. This is a portrait, in other words, not only of the great individual but also of the city which produced him.¹⁰⁶ Plutarch talks in his Political Advice about how the characteristics of the demos in different cities vary, and how a statesman needs to be able to read the city and respond accordingly (3, 799b–800c). He uses as an example the incident also narrated in the Life (Alc. 10.1-2) of Alcibiades’ letting a ¹⁰³ The situation addressed in that passage (Praec. con. 143f–144a), is similar to the one here, as is Plutarch’s language. Plutarch advises that a wife should not listen to gossip about her husband’s affairs. If other women say to her ‘λυπεῖ σε φιλοῦσαν ὁ ἀνὴρ καὶ σωφρονοῦσαν’ (cf. 8.4: εὔτακτος δ᾽ οὖσα καὶ φίλανδρος ἡ Ἱππαρέτη, λυπουμένη δ᾽ ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸν γάμον), she should reply, τί οὖν, ἂν καὶ μισεῖν αὐτὸν ἄρξωμαι καὶ ἀδικεῖν. He continues, ‘So the woman who is writing a [document of] apoleipsis because of jealousy and is in a bad state should say to herself, “Where would the jealous woman rather see me, and what would she rather have me do, than being upset and arguing with my husband, and abandoning my very house and bedroom?” ’ For Plutarch and marriage and divorce: Goessler 1962; Nikolaidis 1987: esp. 58–63; Patterson 1992; Stadter 1995; the papers in Pomeroy 1999; Tsouvala 2008; Brenk 2011: 303–16; 2012: 94–103; Beneker 2012. Cf. also Schmitt Pantel 2010. ¹⁰⁴ Rosivach 1984: 196–97. ¹⁰⁵ Cf. Duff 1999: 232–35; Gribble 1999: 41–42, 267. On Plutarch’s treatment of Hipparete and other women in the Alcibiades, cf. González Almenara 2005. ¹⁰⁶ Characterization of cities in Plutarch: Pelling 1992, 21–31 (esp. on the Alc.); Duff 2010: 69–70; Kavoulaki in this volume, Chapter 7, p. 122.

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quail escape from his cloak at a public meeting and the Athenians joyfully helping him catch it; the Carthaginians, Plutarch argues, would never have put up with that but would simply have executed him, along with Cleon, for their hybris and tryphe (ὡς ὑβρίζοντας καὶ τρυφῶντας). The same point, that cities, like individuals, have different characters, is implicit in Thucydides’ portrayals of Athens and Sparta, and especially in the way other actors construct those differences.¹⁰⁷ In these chapters of the Alcibiades, then, we get a vivid portrait of the Athenians. In addition, these anecdotes reveal the peculiarly synergistic relationship of Alcibiades to his city, their mutual interdependence: Alcibiades’ desire for fame and adulation, the Athenians’ love for him—both features which will be developed later in the Life.¹⁰⁸ These anecdotes also show the interaction and overlap between the private and the public, the way in which the private and the public come together in Alcibiades’ career. In these early anecdotes, the eros, as well as the loathing, is personal. The early stories, which show both his overweening and violent behaviour and the devotion that he inspired, take place to a large extent within private houses, sometimes at symposia. They concern Alcibiades’ lovers, his relatives, his marriage, his relationship with his wife and his wife’s family. By chapter 8 the lens is widening: his aselgeia becomes infamous ‘in the polis’ and ‘everyone’ is outraged (8.2). But in later anecdotes, the eros is at the level of the city. By chapter 16, it is the demos which desires him, and ‘the Athenians’ as a whole who forgive him his crimes (16.3–4)—and who will later turn on him. Not that the city has only one opinion about Alcibiades. These stories also bring out the way in which Alcibiades provoked varied opinions and reactions. Both these elements—the interaction between public and private and the varied reactions to Alcibiades—will provide the trajectory for the rest of the Life. Thucydides, as we have seen, had himself made that connection between Alcibiades’ private behaviour and the fate of the city, when he linked Alcibiades’ ‘personal transgressiveness and the attitude with which he carried out everything’ with fears that he might want to make himself tyrant, which explained why the Athenians turned against him (Thuc. 6.15.3–4).¹⁰⁹ When Plutarch quotes this passage in chapter 6, it is to stress that Alcibiades was susceptible to the pleasure offered by his lovers; his transgressiveness was, in other words, seen essentially as a point about his character as demonstrated in the private sphere. Indeed, in that chapter, it is Plato’s Alcibiades, which Plutarch also quotes, which supplies the details of Alcibiades’ susceptibility to the attractions of future fame and power. But when he quotes the Thucydidean passage a second time in chapter 16 he injects into it ¹⁰⁷ See Pelling in this volume, Chapter 6. ¹⁰⁸ Pelling 1992: 21–24, 29–30. For the emphasis on reactions to Alcibiades, see Duff 2003: 100–106. ¹⁰⁹ Cf. also Thucydides’ insistence in 2.65.7 and 11 that, after the death of Pericles, it was the pursuit of private interests that ultimately destroyed the state (κατὰ τὰς ἰδίας φιλοτιμίας καὶ ἴδια κέρδη . . . κατὰ τὰς ἰδίας διαβολὰς περὶ τῆς τοῦ δήμου προστασίας).

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the sense of divided opinions; it is now the ‘reputable’ citizens, who ‘feared his contemptuousness and transgressiveness as tyrannical and monstrous qualities’ (ἐφοβοῦντο τὴν ὀλιγωρίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ παρανομίαν, ὡς τυραννικὰ καὶ ἀλλόκοτα). The attitude of the demos, on the other hand, he continues, was rather more complex, and best summed up by Aristophanes’ lines in the Frogs, which he quotes: ‘It desires him, it hates him, it wants to have him’ (16.2–3). Later in that same chapter, he returns to that idea of divided opinions, when he notes how people in general flocked to see a picture of Alcibiades in the arms of a personified Nemea, but the older citizens saw this too as ‘tyrannical and transgressive’ (ὡς τυραννικοῖς καὶ παρανόμοις) (16.7). ‘So undecided’, he concludes, ‘was opinion (οὕτως ἄκριτος ἦν ἡ δόξα) about him because of the unevenness of his nature’.¹¹⁰ All of this—the interaction of private and public, the divided opinions—will bear fruit later, in the accusations about his involvement in the affairs of the Mysteries and the herms which lead to his exile (19–22); and after his return, in the eros of the demos to be tyrannized by him and in the consequent fears of the powerful that he might make himself tyrant (34.7–35.1); and subsequently in the rumours of his carousing on campaign which lead to his final rejection (36.2). The Life ends with a reprise of these themes: with the city ruled by the brutal Thirty, the demos long for him. He is murdered, at the behest of the Thirty, for political reasons: because the city would not be compliant while there was a ‘faint hope’ of his return (38.3). ‘But’, continues Plutarch, ‘some say that the cause of his death was not Pharnabazus nor Lysander nor the Lacedaemonians, but Alcibiades himself. He had corrupted a woman from the family of some notable people and had her with him, and the brothers of the woman, enraged at his hubris, set fire to his house at night’ (40.9).¹¹¹ In his death, as in his life, personal and private motivations merge in a whirl of conflicting opinions, emotions, and uncertainties which finally destroy him. For Plutarch, then, the reaction in the city to Alcibiades was not just one of fear and loathing, of suspicions that the behaviour illustrated in these anecdotes betrayed a tyrannical intent. But also of love, of passionate desire for him, which showed itself in a willingness to tolerate behaviour and attitudes which would not normally be tolerated in a fellow-citizen. The anecdotes in chs. 4–8 have shown, through a series of shifting focalizations and voices, the range of different opinions towards Alcibiades within the city. Fear, hatred, disgust, yes. Attempts to use him or cosy up to him, as the ‘flatterers’ do in chapter 6 or the generals in 7. But Plutarch’s analysis, taking its cue from Aristophanes’ Frogs, also brings out the ¹¹⁰ See Pelling 1992: 23–44 on how, in stressing divisions within the demos, Plutarch was bringing out what was already latent in Thucydides, esp. in the speeches of Nicias and Alcibiades before the Sicilian expedition (6.13.1, 18.6). On Plutarch’s stressing the divided opinions about Alcibiades, see Duff 1999: 231–40; Gribble 1999: 267–69. ¹¹¹ Duff 1999: 239–40; Gribble 1999: 281; Wohl 1999: 369.

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passionate eros he inspired in the city too, even from those whom he insulted, threatened, stole from or hit, the tolerance with which his behaviour was often met, the contradictory attitudes and emotions he produced. This is very much Plutarch’s portrait, but with it he captures in a profound way the peculiar atmosphere of late fifth-century Athens, and relationship of the historical Alcibiades and his city.

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9 Athenian Civic Identities in Plutarch’s Portrayals of Phocion and Demetrius of Phalerum From the polites to the kosmopolites Delfim Leão

Despite the fact that the fourth century  was a period of great literary vitality for Athens, the city no longer exercised the political and military hegemony it had throughout much of the fifth century. Moreover, neither Sparta nor any of the other Greek poleis were able to occupy such a dominant position for an extended period of time, thus leaving space for the rise of Macedonia. This is the historical context behind figures such as Phocion and Demetrius of Phalerum, who tried their best to find a balance between Athens and Macedonia at that turning point, at least in the way Plutarch portrays them. Like the case of Phocion (albeit in a more drastic manner and with a more violent ending), the activity of Demetrius of Phalerum, probably the last great Athenian nomothetes, illustrates the limitations and contradictions of a polis as great as Athens, which had to learn how to reinvent itself within the framework of effective Macedonian rule, despite alleged attempts to ‘restore’ democracy and the true ‘ancestral constitution’. Both men are therefore good examples of the way in which various ‘identities’ could be negotiated and reshaped, paving the way for a broader identity constructed from a synthesis of encounters with ‘otherness’ in a wider kosmopolis that would be progressively integrated into the Roman domain.

Preliminary Remarks: The Polis and the Making of the Polites In the opening of An seni respublica gerenda sit (784b), Plutarch considered it pertinent to recall the famous saying of Simonides, who declared that the ‘polis is a man’s master’.¹ With that sort of declaration, the great poetic voice of Greek ¹ Fr. 90 West²: πόλις ἄνδρα διδάσκει. Unless expressly stated otherwise, the translations presented throughout this study are made by the author. The outline of these introductory remarks is based on Delfim Leão, Athenian Civic Identities in Plutarch’s Portrayals of Phocion and Demetrius of Phalerum: From the polites to the kosmopolites In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0010

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resistance to the Persian invasions was also defining the essential feature of Hellenic existence throughout the Archaic and Classical periods through his renowned ability to construct pithy and elegant sayings. During this period, Greece developed and refined the polis system as the most balanced way of organizing its society, an option which from a Greek point of view was far preferable to the ‘barbaric’ autocracy that only recognized the power of the monarch—which would become all the more absolute and capricious in the smaller space left for his subjects to act freely. Against this backdrop, at least in theoretical terms, the Greek spirit proudly presented the sovereignty of the law, which bound equally the anonymous and indigent citizen and the most zealous magistrate to his duties. Education by the polis and for the polis in the committed and conscious exercise of citizenship requires direct involvement in the interests of the city from each polites, a task that simultaneously represented both a prerogative and an obligation. On the one hand it signified privilege in comparison to all those who were excluded to varying degrees from the full use of that status, namely foreigners, metics, slaves, women, and children, whether such a situation was permanent or temporary, as would be the case, for instance, for a boy who had not yet reached the age of majority and whose parents were citizens. However, the exercise of citizenship was also an obligation from which some might feel tempted to escape.² From ordinary citizens, even if they were not particularly ambitious, the state required involvement in military activities, in the administration of the polis, and in the enforcement of justice. Initially, these domains were strictly reserved for the dominant aristocracy as they were closely linked to nobility of birth and disposable individual wealth. For this reason, broadening the basis of access to these privileges would only result from a long process of intense conflict.³ Also characteristic of the polis system, however, were its particularism and strong determination to maintain autonomy and identity. Hellas represented a common cultural and ideological space for the Greeks which let them cultivate an attitude of moral superiority over those who did not share this same universe of values, but it also suffered from a congenital inability to become a single, great nation.⁴ For that to happen, each city would need to give up the pretence of being Leão 2012a: 15–31. The chapter as a whole has benefited from more recent research related to the topic of the volume, which I have been developing under two projects: ‘Crises (staseis) and Changes (metabolai). The Athenian Democracy in Contemporary Times’, supported by CAPES (Brazil) and FCT (Portugal); and the project ‘Rome Our Home: (Auto)biographical Tradition and the Shaping of Identity(ies)’ (PTDC/LLT-OUT/28431/2017), funded by the FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology. ² For example, in order to avoid putting one’s life at risk on the battlefield or disposing of one’s own assets to perform a costly public service such as a liturgy. ³ For a global approach to these factors and the way they were dealt with throughout the history of Athenian constitution see Leão and Ferreira 2010: 9–145, with extensive discussion of sources. ⁴ Cohen 2000 challenges the prevailing Athenian paradigm by focusing his approach ‘on Athens as an ethnos (a “nation”)—one of its ancient characterizations—rather than as a polis, the dominant

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autonomous and sovereign with its own laws and constitution, capable of promoting an independent internal and external policy—and losing these characteristics was tantamount to denying the very essence of the system. Therefore, apart from occasional alliances with other poleis motivated by needs that were often occasional, city states as a rule preferred to cultivate self-sufficiency and direct participation in government, which in both cases confined the state and its body of citizens within relatively narrow limits. In Athens, the majority of the citizenry had obtained the status of citizen (polites) as part of the inheritance of a legitimate child, someone who had been born (and thus publicly recognized) within a family of citizens. Citizenship rights could sometimes exceptionally be granted, as Plutarch describes during the time of Solon, who is said to have granted citizenship ‘to those in permanent exile from their own land or to those who migrate to Athens with their whole household to ply a craft’.⁵ During the first half of the fifth century when Athenian democracy was strengthening its stability, it would in principle have been sufficient for the father to be a citizen to secure that status for his descendants. Consequently, even if marriage had been enacted with a woman from another polis, that prerogative was maintained. This principle was amended by a law proposed by Pericles in 451/50 which stipulated that both parents should have citizenship status from the outset as a sine qua non for that same status to be passed to their offspring.⁶ The overall scope of Pericles’ law seems clear: to limit the number of citizens through a more restrictive application of the ius sanguinis. In fact, while the democracy of the fifth century had expanded access to participation in popular sovereignty like no other regime, it could not increase the number of citizens indefinitely without questioning the very nature of direct and participatory democracy. Thus, while the concept of the citizen as well as the importance of Attica in Greece was becoming more apparent and thus making the status of an Athenian polites more appealing, obstacles were being increased at the same time. Certain forms of exclusion were therefore intensified, as is symbolically illustrated by the popularity of the autochthony myth in the second half of the fifth century.⁷ The term autochthon is rarely used by Plutarch: only once in the Lives, at the beginning of Theseus’ biography, where he states that ‘Theseus’ paternal ancestry goes back

modern denotation, and on slaves, foreigners, and women within this ethnos (rather than on politai, socalled male citizens)’ (ix). Despite this focus on ethnos rather than on polis, it is still Athens that is considered as a ‘nation’ and not the whole of Greece as a big territorial entity. ⁵ Sol. 24.4: τοῖς φεύγουσιν ἀειφυγίᾳ τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἢ πανεστίοις Ἀθήναζε μετοικιζομένοις ἐπὶ τέχνῃ. For the reasons lying behind this decision, see Leão and Rhodes 2016: 131–32. ⁶ This legislation is mentioned briefly in the Constitution of Athenians (Ath. Pol. 26.4) and has sparked heated debate. For an overview of the most significant secondary literature on the topic see Leão 2012c: 135–52, at n. 3. ⁷ The observations made in this paragraph are based on Leão 2012c: 135–36. On the connection between the evolution of citizenship rights and the traces it left on literary expressions of the myth of autochthony, see among others Rosivach 1987; Bearzot 2007; Blok 2009.

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to Erechtheus and to the first autochthones’.⁸ In fact, this reference suggests that Plutarch was not entirely immune to the idea that the ‘founding father’ of Athens relied on a privileged, innate connection to the very soil on which the polis was based.⁹ As is widely known, the long conflict between the Greeks during the Peloponnesian War had very important political and cultural repercussions, and in literary texts of that period there are recurring echoes of the vicissitudes caused by this struggle. Moreover, the two oligarchic attempts to overthrow radical democracy (in 411 and 404) must be understood as a result of the fatigue and setbacks produced by this long fratricidal conflict. Therefore, in addition to seizing the opportunity created by unsuccessful military campaigns, the perpetrators of these coups also took advantage of a desire to return to the status quo that prevailed before the war—an aspiration shared by many of the Athenians huddled within their city walls. The revolutionaries were also able to associate certain political ideas with this nostalgic feeling, promoting ideological propaganda in favour of the patrios politeia, ‘ancestral constitution’, whose recovery was becoming increasingly urgent in order to reverse the downward spiral into which the democratic regime had fallen. Although patrios politeia is the expression that best embodies this concept, there are variants in the sources about recovering an ‘ancestral’ constitutional model which would mirror the true civic spirit that had shaped the greatness of Athens, e.g. expressions such as patrioi nomoi (‘ancestral laws’) or kata ta patria (‘according to ancestral precepts’). Although this is not the place to analyse in detail this topic which I have discussed at length elsewhere,¹⁰ it is nonetheless useful to highlight the moment when this concept of recovering an ancestral constitution entered the political debate, for we shall detect its influence throughout the political struggles of the fourth century as will be illustrated by the way Plutarch depicts Phocion and Demetrius of Phalerum. In fact, throughout Athens’ troubled history during the Peloponnesian War, patrios politeia appeared in political and even philosophical debates, and its increasing prominence is inseparable from the crisis of the democratic regime, especially after the disaster of the Sicilian expedition in 413. Although at various times this idealization of the past appears to be linked to moderate politicians, this

⁸ Thes. 3.1: Θησέως τὸ μὲν πατρῷον γένος εἰς Ἐρεχθέα καὶ τοὺς πρώτους αὐτόχθονας ἀνήκει. ⁹ In her contribution to this volume, Chapter 7, Kavoulaki argues that in the section devoted to the building programme of the Pericles Plutarch implies that the way this programme shaped the topography of Athens is directly connected to its identity as a polis. ¹⁰ Fuks 1953: 33–83 launched in systematic terms the discussion of this problem; Cecchin 1969 and Witte 1995 provide as well a comprehensive approach. For the most relevant sources and secondary literature regarding this propagandistic ideal, see Leão 2001: 43–72. On the slogan of the city’s soteria during the crises of 411 and 404, and how it was systematically exploited to undermine the bases of popular resistance and of democracy itself, see Bearzot 2013.

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does not mean that the concept is their creation.¹¹ What the sources suggest is that this ideal of a patrios politeia would have been one that circulated in political debates of the time, and even if it was not the sophists who introduced it, one must at least accept that their method of education, which almost all the Athenian public figures of the last quarter of the fifth century had experienced, would have contributed greatly to feeding the discussion. On the other hand, patrios politeia also designated a vague enough reality that it could lend itself to propagandistic use by the three great political viewpoints of the time: extreme conservatives, moderates and radicals. The creation of this ancestral constitution was originally credited to Cleisthenes, but in a reverse of the actual chronology was transferred to Solon and eventually, at the turn of the fourth century, to Draco.¹² Despite differences in some details, references to patrios politeia are a clear symptom of a more pervasive reality: the widespread feeling of decadence in Athens. Nevertheless, the Athenians continued clearly to prefer the democratic regime in which they would live for much of the fourth century, a period of vigorous literary vitality. In any case, Athens would not recover the political and military hegemony that it had held for much of the fifth century. Moreover, neither Sparta nor any of the other Greek poleis were capable of leading Greece indefinitely, thus paving the way for the growing power of Macedonia, first with Philip II and then with his son, Alexander, whose remarkable charisma would bring him enormous military and political success and mark the end of the particularism and vitality characteristic of the polis system. This political ambience pervades the way in which Plutarch perceives the deeds of several Athenian statesmen and the circumstances in which they lived as an increasingly palpable sign of a budding decadence.¹³ It is now time to approach the way this process may be detected in the portraits of Phocion and Demetrius of Phalerum, which present significant similarities, even if they also display important differences in extent and intensity.

Plutarch’s Portrayal of Phocion: Being a Polites in Adverse Circumstances The sense of a budding Athenian decadence towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, as highlighted in the previous section, continued throughout the fourth ¹¹ Their main leader was Theramenes—a rather labile character from a political point of view. On the circumstances regarding the coups of 411 and 404 and especially concerning the political profile of Theramenes, see Harding 1974; Murphy 1989; Lang 1992; Sano 2018; Sebastiani 2018a; Sebastiani 2018b; Sebastiani and Leão 2020. ¹² This period of political uncertainty which essentially lasted from 411 to 404 had the practical advantage of stimulating a process of legislative revision which began in 410 and would continue until after the second democratic restoration in 403. ¹³ From a different angle, this dynamic is pointed also by Kavoulaki and Duff in this volume, Chapters 7 and 8, respectively, particularly in their analyses of Alcibiades.

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century, serving as a backdrop to Plutarch’s Life of Phocion. Here was a figure whose political career took place in the shadows of Athens’ unrealistic expectation of recovering its glorious past and the concrete need to negotiate with a new dominant power. The terms of that effective and humiliating submission reveal the levels of autonomy to which Athens had become accustomed, particularly during the golden years of democracy. Perhaps for this very reason, Plutarch’s biography of this statesman is comparable in certain respects to that which he wrote for Alcibiades.¹⁴ Despite the points of comparison, from the outset the two biographies diverge on a key central point: Alcibiades was a polites in a city whose democratic institutions were still operative, even if he managed to manipulate them to his advantage; by contrast, Phocion was doubly unfortunate because restoration of Athenian power was unattainable and, by then, democratic institutions were merely nominal. Despite this basic difference in their historical settings, Plutarch illustrates in both biographies the way in which the notion of kairos¹⁵ could explain divergent developments in the careers of politicians who seemed from the outset to have exceptionally favourable conditions for success. As was the case with Alcibiades, the kairos would end up being unfavourable to Phocion, but for very different reasons. The former was a victim of the eagerness that marked him out and infected those who crossed his path. This trait was largely responsible for the reckless decisions that marked the beginning of the democratic regime’s decline while diminishing Alcibiades’ chances of becoming a fully worthy successor to Pericles. In Phocion’s case, although he may have been the right person for the job, he could not overcome the fact that he lived in a time that was unfavourable towards him.¹⁶ Moreover, even if Phocion, unlike Alcibiades, was not involved in any crime of asebeia (‘impiety’), it is still particularly significant that, at the end of the biography, Plutarch compares his death to that of Socrates, these being two examples of religious impiety committed by popular collective blindness. On the other hand, although Eleusis does not, in Phocion’s case, have the significance

¹⁴ As has quite often been remarked, there were other treatments of Phocion’s deeds, notably by the Roman Cornelius Nepos, who wrote a Phocion in the first century . Centred on Phocion’s career and political profile, it is very short (less than two Oxford text pages), and he is presented more critically than by Plutarch. Nepos shows, however, that the Romans felt attracted to this statesman, who lived in the twilight of the democratic regime. It is probable that among Nepos’ sources were contemporaries of Phocion, such as Demochares (nephew of the orator Demosthenes) and the politician Demetrius of Phalerum. Nepos presents the latter as belonging to the same political faction as Phocion (Phoc. 3.1: Erant eo tempore Athenis duae factiones, quarum una populi causam agebat, altera optimatium. In hac erat Phocion et Demetrius Phalereus). See Tritle 1992: 4261–66. ¹⁵ The literal meaning is ‘favourable occasion’, but it can also be interpreted somewhat freely in the sense of ‘political timing’. On the way in which Plutarch explores these and other related concepts in Phocion’s biography, see Leão 2010; Leão 2020b. On their use in the biography of Alcibiades in connection with the notion of asebeia, see Leão 2012b. These three previous studies have inspired the core arguments expressed here. For kairos see also Trédé-Boulmer 1992. ¹⁶ The way in which Plutarch opens the biography, comparing the performances of Demades and Phocion, is a clear expression of this (Phoc. 1.1–6).

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which it had for Alcibiades, it is worth pointing out that Plutarch also resorts to imagery drawn from the Mysteries to stress the political timing of some of the most significant moments of Phocion’s political career, thus pointing out the routes of both ascent and descent which metaphorically mirror the decline of the Athenian polis itself.¹⁷ Alcibiades had a relatively short life, albeit one marked by great adventures and transformations. In contrast Phocion not only lived longer (402 to 318), but also can be distinguished from Alcibiades by his remarkable career in the service of Athens, holding the position of strategos an unprecedented forty-five times.¹⁸ Furthermore, although he preferred peace and tranquillity and did not promote military expeditions of his own initiative, he never turned his back on those responsibilities, again marking a profound contrast with Alcibiades, who not only inflamed the long-standing Athenian interest in Sicily, launching Athens into a disastrously megalomaniac campaign, but also changed his national allegiance several times because of his personal ambitions, never truly espousing with any value other than vanity itself.¹⁹ The historical contexts of Alcibiades and Phocion are also quite different. The former was active during the Peloponnesian War and could have reasonably been expected to help prevent Athens from falling into the swamp of decay as a military power; Plutarch’s Phocion in contrast would have been the right person to lead an Athenian recovery if its state of subjection were not already so advanced. But instead he would go on to witness the progressive political and military decline of Athens and the growing influence of Macedonia under Philip and Alexander, as well as the uncertainties and turmoil linked to the early years of the Diadochi’s rule. According to Plutarch, both statesmen had the benefit of a good education— Alcibiades enjoyed the privilege of Socrates’ company (Alc. 1.3; 4.1–4; 6.1–5; 7.4–5; 17.5), while Phocion was a pupil of Plato and Xenocrates (Phoc. 4.2). Both nonetheless ended up failing for different reasons: Alcibiades for having squandered the Socratic paideia and his natural gifts,²⁰ and Phocion for having

¹⁷ The ‘Socratic’ death of Phocion in Plutarch and the idea that it constitutes a crime of asebeia have attracted much scholarly attention. See e.g. Tritle 1992: 4258–97; Mossé 1998; Alcalde Martín 1999; Trapp 1999; Fialho 2010–11; Erskine 2018: 252–56; Leão 2020c. The contributions of Kavoulaki and Duff in this volume (Chapters 7 and 8 respectively) offer interesting insights into the relation between Alcibiades and Eleusis. ¹⁸ Plut. Phoc. 8.1–2. Bearzot 1993a: 124–27 questions its historical accuracy, arguing from the absence of confirmation in other sources—only Aelian refers to it indirectly and vaguely (VH 12.49: πολλάκις στρατηγήσας). As a consequence, Bearzot believes that this information has all the appearance of being an apologetic magnification, aimed at accentuating Phocion’s superiority over other politicians, both his contemporaries and those of earlier periods. In this sense, it is possible that Phoc. 8.2 (ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ φεύγων οὐδ’ ἀποδιδράσκων τῆς πόλεως καλούσης) may constitute an indirect allusion, by contrast, to the irregular conduct of Alcibiades. ¹⁹ Cf. Plut. Alc. 17.1–4. ²⁰ On Plutarch’s Alcibiades as a failed product of Socrates’ paideia see Fialho 2008.

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lived at a time that was no longer conducive to his capacity to counteract the decline of Athens. It is this reality that Plutarch underlines in the initial somewhat ‘programmatic’ part of the biography by introducing the figures of Phocion and his Roman counterpart Cato the Younger. These Lives belong to a cluster of four pairs that do not have formal synkriseis.²¹ The final comparison is not exactly suppressed but rather anticipated at the beginning of the narrative (Phoc. 3.2–5), thus inviting the reader to establish parallels between the two statesmen from the very outset (although the implications of this comparison will only become fully perceptible later).²² Indeed, Plutarch (3.2) begins his comments on Cato with an agricultural metaphor to emphasize the pivotal effect that ‘opportune timing’ has in this pair of biographies. When fruits ripen out of season (μὴ καθ’ ὥραν’ ἐκφανεῖσι καρποῖς) they earn pleasure and approval, but in the end they do not fulfil their intended purpose. And while Cato’s Rome was not equivalent to Phocion’s Athens—the former faced only a storm, while the latter had entered into irretrievable degeneration—Cato like Phocion committed himself to rescuing the state’s sinking ship and engaged in an enormous struggle against unfavourable circumstances (μέγαν ἀγῶνα τῇ τύχῃ). When circumstances are unfavourable, the arete of valiant men cannot flourish and bear fruit as would be expected otherwise: Phocion was defeated ‘in an unequal contest with an adverse timing’ (1.4: ὥσπερ ἀνταγωνιστῇ βαρεῖ καὶ βιαίῳ καιρῷ), while Cato’s virtue ended up being considered ‘oldfashioned behaviour’ (3.3: ἀρχαιοτροπία).²³ Nevertheless, the combination of innate qualities and careful paideia characterizes the first military campaigns of Phocion, who played a decisive role in the victory of Naxos at the behest of Chabrias. This detail is not confirmed by any source other than Plutarch. Additionally, Phocion would only have been 26 years old in 376, too young for the post of strategos. This information thus appears to be historically unreliable and it is not implausible that Phocion’s role in the conflict has been exaggerated, perhaps to compensate for the fact that no other military campaigns of his were known until 349/8.²⁴ Even so, the fact that Plutarch emphasizes Phocion’s youth reveals the way in which the biographer shaped his

²¹ The other pairs without comparisons are Themistocles and Camillus, Pyrrhus and Marius, and Alexander and Caesar. ²² As has been underlined by other scholars: see Trapp 1999: 487–88; Fialho 2010–11: 93. Tritle 1992: 4267 considers Phoc. 3 a kind of informal synkrisis; Alcalde Martín 1999: 160 maintains that the first paragraphs of this biography provide both the comparison and the ethical reason for coupling the two statesmen. ²³ Plutarch deals with a group of relatively contemporary Greek lives that are paired with Roman statesmen from the end of the Republic: Phocion and Cato, Alexander and Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero, and Demetrius Poliorcetes and Mark Antony. Thus Erskine 2018: 248: ‘together they suggest that the late fourth century was the end of an era and one can read the fall of the Republic back on to Greece’. ²⁴ See Bearzot 1993b: 184; Alcalde Martín 2001: 48.

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presentation of the statesman. Aside from the question of what role Phocion played in that battle, there are two other relevant aspects that are not in doubt historically. The victory in Naxos was the first significant Athenian triumph after the Peloponnesian War ended in a defeat which had forced the polis to accept humiliating peace conditions;²⁵ secondly, that victory had been won during the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries was a favourable omen, perhaps indicating that Athens was regaining its past military and consequently political power. By connecting Phocion to these positive occurrences Plutarch successfully highlights the great expectations Athens had for Phocion. However, the end of the biography shows the irony of this subtle suggestion, when after Alexander’s death Athens is forced into agreement with Antipater. It is at that excruciating moment in which the polis is about to lose its identity that Athens once again turns to Phocion, one of its most authoritative representatives, to be sent as ambassador.²⁶ The feeling that it might still be possible for the city to find a way out of the current evils, however, is quickly dashed by the subsequent chain of events. Phocion is accused of high treason not long after negotiating the terms of the agreement and is eventually sentenced to death, a circumstance that Plutarch presents as a clear symptom of identity turbulence: the universe of the polis and the ideals it represents are coming to an end.²⁷ It is worth quoting this passage extensively because it so clearly illustrates what has been argued so far, i.e. that the democratic institutions of Athens were by then functioning only nominally (Phoc. 34.1–8): Τὸν δὲ Φωκίωνα καὶ τοὺς μετ’ αὐτοῦ φυλακῆς περισχούσης, ὅσοι τῶν ἑταίρων ἔτυχον οὐκ ἐγγὺς ἑστῶτες, ὡς τοῦτ’ εἶδον ἐγκαλυψάμενοι καὶ διαφυγόντες ἐσώθησαν. ἐκείνους δὲ Κλεῖτος εἰς Ἀθήνας ἀνῆγε, λόγῳ. μὲν κριθησομένους, ἔργῳ δ’ ἀποθανεῖν κατακεκριμένους. καὶ προσῆν τὸ σχῆμα τῇ κομιδῇ λυπηρόν, ἐφ’ ἁμάξαις κομιζομένων αὐτῶν διὰ τοῦ Κεραμεικοῦ πρὸς τὸ θέατρον· ἐκεῖ γὰρ αὐτοὺς προσαγαγὼν ὁ Κλεῖτος συνεῖχεν, ἄχρι οὗ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἐπλήρωσαν οἱ ἄρχοντες, οὐ δοῦλον, οὐ ξένον, οὐκ ἄτιμον ἀποκρίναντες, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι καὶ πάσαις ἀναπεπταμένον τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὸ θέατρον παρασχόντες. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἥ τ’ ἐπιστολὴ τοῦ βασιλέως ἀνεγνώσθη, λέγοντος αὐτῷ μὲν ἐγνῶσθαι προδότας γεγονέναι τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἐκείνοις δὲ διδόναι τὴν κρίσιν, ἐλευθέροις τε δὴ καὶ αὐτονόμοις οὖσι, καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας ὁ Κλεῖτος εἰσήγαγεν, οἱ μὲν βέλτιστοι τῶν πολιτῶν ὀφθέντος τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἐνεκαλύψαντο καὶ κάτω κύψαντες ἐδάκρυον, εἷς δ’ ἀναστὰς ἐτόλμησεν ²⁵ On the nature of those peace terms see Rhodes 2006: 196. ²⁶ One of the harshest clauses of the agreement was the establishment of a Macedonian garrison in Munychia, a clear sign of dependency on the occupying force. In addition, it guaranteed that the faction favourable to Macedonia (in whose ranks Phocion might fall) could maintain power in Athens, as is argued by Bearzot 1993b: 238–39 n. 174 and n. 178. For Hellenistic Athens see also Habicht 1982. ²⁷ See Poddighe 2019 for an insightful overview of this turbulent historical setting and the way it determined Phocion’s tragic outcome in a political situation marked by the ‘sfondo della Realpolitik fatta da tutte le parti in causa’ (211).

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εἰπεῖν ὅτι, τηλικαύτην κρίσιν ἐγκεχειρικότος τῷ δήμῳ τοῦ βασιλέως, καλῶς ἔχει τοὺς δούλους καὶ τοὺς ξένους ἀπελθεῖν ἐκ τῆς ἐκκλησίας. οὐκ ἀνασχομένων δὲ τῶν πολλῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀνακραγόντων βάλλειν τοὺς ὀλιγαρχικοὺς καὶ μισοδήμους, ἄλλος μὲν οὐδεὶς ὑπὲρ τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἐπεχείρησεν εἰπεῖν, αὐτὸς δὲ χαλεπῶς καὶ μόλις ἐξακουσθείς, ‘πότερον’ εἶπεν ‘ἀδίκως ἢ δικαίως ἀποκτεῖναι βούλεσθ’ ἡμᾶς;’ ἀποκριναμένων δέ τινων ὅτι δικαίως, ‘καὶ τοῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘πῶς γνώσεσθε μὴ ἀκούσαντες;’. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐθὲν μᾶλλον ἤκουον . . . A guard was now placed about Phocion and his associates, and at sight of this all of his friends who were standing at some remove covered up their faces and sought safety in flight. Phocion and his party, however, were taken back to Athens by Cleitus, ostensibly to be tried, but really under sentence of death. And besides, the manner of their return to the city was shameful, for they were carried on wagons through the Ceramicus to the theatre. For thither Cleitus brought them and there he kept them, until the magistrates had made up an assembly, from which they excluded neither slave, foreigner, nor disfranchised person, but allowed all alike, both men and women, free access to theatre and tribunal. After the letter of the king had been read aloud, in which he said that according to his judgement the men were traitors, but that their fellow citizens, who were freemen and self-governing, should pronounce sentence upon them, Cleitus led the men in. Then the best of the citizens, at sight of Phocion, covered their faces, bent their heads, and wept. One of them, however, rose up and had the courage to say that, since the king had put a case of such importance into the hands of the people, it were well that slaves and foreigners should leave the assembly. This the multitude would not tolerate, but cried out to stone the oligarchs and haters of the people. Therefore no one else undertook to speak in behalf of Phocion, but he himself, with great difficulty, at last made himself heard, saying: ‘Do ye wish to put us to death unjustly or justly?’ And when some answered, ‘Justly,’ he said: ‘And how will ye determine this without hearing me?’ But they were not a whit more willing to hear him . . . ²⁸

Plutarch makes it clear from the outset that although Phocion was given the opportunity of a formal trial, in practical terms it was nothing but a democratic charade (λόγῳ μὲν κριθησομένους, ἔργῳ δ’ ἀποθανεῖν κατακεκριμένους) with the blessings of the Macedonian ruler (ἐπεὶ δ’ ἥ τ’ ἐπιστολὴ τοῦ βασιλέως ἀνεγνώσθη, λέγοντος αὐτῷ μὲν ἐγνῶσθαι προδότας γεγονέναι τοὺς ἄνδρας). In fact, this impression is significantly enhanced by the detail that the trial was held in a theatre (πρὸς τὸ θέατρον· ἐκεῖ γὰρ αὐτοὺς προσαγαγὼν ὁ Κλεῖτος συνεῖχεν, ἄχρι οὗ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν

²⁸ The translation is that of Perrin (Loeb, 1919).

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ἐπλήρωσαν οἱ ἄρχοντες).²⁹ Moreover, the composition of the assembly that dictated Phocion’s death sentence lets the reader visualize this emerging reality because everyone was able to take part in this assembly without distinction of status or gender (οὐ δοῦλον, οὐ ξένον, οὐκ ἄτιμον ἀποκρίναντες, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι καὶ πάσαις ἀναπεπταμένον τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὸ θέατρον παρασχόντες). The institutions maintained the appearance of functioning in the customary way (ἐκείνοις δὲ διδόναι τὴν κρίσιν, ἐλευθέροις τε δὴ καὶ αὐτονόμοις οὖσι), but the inner energy that sustained them was already very different. In the eyes of the biographer, just as Phocion—the very last true polites, an indirect disciple of Socrates in life and his parallel in the circumstances of death (Phoc. 38.5)—was sentenced to death, the civic energy that had nourished the most emblematic of the Greek poleis was also fading away. And this is where the reason why the character of Phocion was so appealing to Plutarch becomes clear: just as Phocion had to reconcile his own political role and identity (and that of Athens) with the Macedonian conquerors, Plutarch and his contemporary representatives of the Greek elite stood in a similar relation to the Roman conquerors.³⁰

Plutarch’s Portrayal of Demetrius of Phalerum: A Philosophos in Politics In the light of Phocion’s importance to Plutarch and the way in which he embodied a vivid representation of a fading Athenian democratic identity, it is intriguing that Plutarch did not write a biography of Demetrius of Phalerum, a character that would take this process of negotiating terms of collective identity to a whole new level (although he did write biographies of statesmen closely connected with him, Phocion and Demetrius Poliorcetes).³¹ The fact that Demetrius of Phalerum had been a student of Theophrastus and was representative of Peripatetic intellectuals who had directed criticism towards Socrates may have discouraged the ‘Platonic’ Plutarch from giving him more attention. Be that as it may, Plutarch was well acquainted with the work of Demetrius of Phalerum and with the circumstances surrounding his personal upheavals. This is clear from the way in which Plutarch uses Demetrius as his explicit textual source regarding

²⁹ Dubreuil 2018: 262 underlines pertinently that in this particular biography ‘Plutarch did not idly mention the theatre as a setting for political scenes, but used this space to present his picture of Athens’ gradual decline’. Fialho 2010–11: 94–95 argues that by comparing the Lives of Phocion and Cato ‘Plutarch aimed to appeal to the theatrical culture of the reader’, namely the hypotext of Sophoclean tragedy. Trapp 1999: 498 suggested already that a parallel with the Sophoclean Ajax could as well be detected in the treatment of Cato. ³⁰ Or, to put this in terms used by Erskine 2018: 256, if ‘Phocion was caught between the demos and Macedon, then Plutarch and his peers were caught between the demos and Rome’. ³¹ The outline of this part of the work resumes and expands some arguments presented first in Leão 2018.

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other characters, from his comments on his political choices (a pattern more visible in the Lives), or even from the manner in which Plutarch describes him as a kind of exemplum of rise and fall that could educate others (more noticeably in the Moralia).³² From these direct or indirect references emerges the multifaceted figure of the intellectual, the politician, the legislator and, finally, that of the disgraced exile who nonetheless manages to reinvent himself and recover a remarkable level of influence in the court of the Ptolemies. Admittedly, for Demetrius of Phalerum Plutarch is not as important a source as he is for Phocion. Nevertheless, Plutarch’s biography still provides significant details for the reconstruction of Demetrius’ political career. In this context those details deserve to be briefly outlined as a vivid illustration of the strategic negotiation of identities in times of political turmoil.³³ As a young man, Demetrius increased his public visibility in the context of the Harpalus case (324) during which he may have taken part in the prosecution of Demosthenes, although the details of his involvement are unclear (Diogenes Laertius 5.75 = T 1 SOD). Two years later, after the battle of Crannon (322), the Athenians sent legates to Antipater and Craterus with instructions to negotiate a peace treaty (Plut. Phoc. 26–27; Diod. Sic. 18.17–18). Among the negotiators mentioned by name are Demades, Phocion, and Xenocrates, but Demetrius was also likely to have been part of the group, as can be deduced from a quotation in On Style (Eloc. 289 = T 12 SOD). In this work (falsely attributed to him) it is stated that, in the face of Craterus’ insolence in receiving the Greek ambassadors, Demetrius managed indirectly to censure him using innuendo. The peace terms agreed upon with Antipater were quite demanding, including a change in the constitution and a minimum payment of 2,000 drachmae as a requirement for obtaining full citizenship. Even so, this situation did not last for long, since Antipater died in 319, leaving Polyperchon as his appointed successor. The latter decided to head off rivalry with the other Diadochi by adopting a strategy that favoured a return to the status quo ante in Athens, thus restoring democracy. Although in public Phocion enjoyed a good reputation as shown earlier, he was still deeply involved with the former government and was eventually sentenced to death as a consequence of the new political arrangements and concomitant reconfiguration of forces. Demetrius, who was politically connected to Phocion, was given the same death sentence, but managed to avoid execution because he was not in Athens at the time he was convicted (Plutarch, Phoc. 35.4–5; Nepos, Phoc. 3.1–2 = T 15a–b SOD). ³² The way Plutarch rebuilds on Demetrius’s work and life is the question addressed by Leão 2020a. ³³ Fragments and testimonia regarding the Phalereus were collected, with translation and commentary, by Fortenbaugh and Schütrumpf 2000. SOD is the abbreviation adopted by the editors (p. 10) to refer to the texts pertaining to the works and Life of Demetrius. Throughout this section, the original Greek version and the translation of these texts (abbreviated as T) will be provided according to their edition.

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In the meantime, events had developed in favour of Demetrius. The government formed in Athens by Polyperchon was unable to expel the garrison that Antipater had previously established in Munychia, while his son Cassander regained control of the city and Piraeus. As a result, a new government was installed in Athens under which a payment of 1,000 drachmae was required to qualify for full citizenship. It was also determined that the polis should be run by an epimeletes (‘overseer’) who in the period of democratic Athens was an elected magistrate, but who represented the Macedonian overlord.³⁴ Demetrius was to negotiate the terms of the compromise, having been chosen by Cassander in 317 to head the new government as epimeletes (Diod. Sic. 18.74.1–3; IG II² 1201 = T 16a–b SOD).³⁵ He thus obtained the necessary authority to formulate new laws for the city. Subsequent testimonies have described his government as a return to democracy or alternatively, as a drift towards tyranny, and modern scholars assess his political activity in similarly disparaging terms.³⁶ While this much-debated topic is beyond the scope of detailed analysis here, it is important to discuss briefly what Plutarch’s view may have been.³⁷ In the biography of Demetrius Poliorcetes (Demetr. 10.2 = T 18 SOD) he states that ‘the constitution had been oligarchical in name but monarchical in fact, owing to the power of the Phalerean’ (λόγῳ μὲν ὀλιγαρχικῆς, ἔργῳ δὲ μοναρχικῆς καταστάσεως γενομένης διὰ τὴν τοῦ Φαληρέως δύναμιν). This accords with what Plutarch says about how the Phalerean was thinking after his downfall, stating that he feared his fellow citizens more than his enemies (Demetr. 9.3 = T 29 SOD: τοῦ δὲ Φαληρέως διὰ τὴν μεταβολὴν τῆς πολιτείας μᾶλλον τοὺς πολίτας ἢ τοὺς πολεμίους δεδοικότος). Conversely, in the Pericles Plutarch several times mentions the ‘monarchical’ or ‘aristocratic’ power of Pericles: 9.1. λόγῳ μὲν οὖσαν δημοκρατίαν, ἔργῳ δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου ἀνδρὸς ἀρχήν (here quoting directly from Thuc. 2.65.9, cited also at Prae. ger. reip. 802c).³⁸ However, this does not prevent Plutarch from recognizing at the ³⁴ See Fortenbaugh and Schütrumpf 2000: 49. For more detail on this question see Banfi 2010: 53–63. ³⁵ Gagarin 2000: 348–49 accepts epimeletes as the title given to Demetrius, arguing that ‘[the sources] indicate that he certainly enacted some legislation, but we can only determine the substance of two or three laws, and we have no evidence that the legislation was comprehensive’. Banfi 2010: 53–63 equally favours epimeletes. A different perspective is advocated by Canevaro 2011: 64–65 who, while recognizing that the term epimeletes is in accord with Diodorus’s account, nonetheless argues that the missing word in IG II² 1201, line 11, is most probably nomothetes. ³⁶ As Gottschalk 2000: 370 emphasizes ‘the circumstances of its institution lend some plausibility to either view’. For an analysis of the main points of the debate, see Tracy 2000; Muccioli 2015: 18–38; Faraguna 2016. ³⁷ The line of reasoning here is based on Leão 2020a: 275–76. For other sources, see e.g. Paus. 1.25.6 (= T 17 SOD) who states that Cassander ‘arranged for Demetrius to be made tyrant over the Athenians’ (εἷλε τύραννόν τε Ἀθηναίοις ἔπραξε γενέσθαι Δημήτριον); Strabo in contrast (9.1.20 = T 19 SOD) states that ‘[Demetrius] not only did not put an end to the democracy but even restored its former power’ (οὐ μόνον οὐ κατέλυσε τὴν δημοκρατίαν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπηνώρθωσε). ³⁸ See also Per. 11.1 (in the context of the division of the polis into two political tendencies); 16.1–2 (citing Thuc. and comic poets).

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end of the biography that complaints about Pericles’ monarchical or tyrannical tendencies were in direct proportion to his great responsibilities in defending the politeia.³⁹ Plutarch does not make a similar statement about Demetrius of Phalerum, but in his description of Demetrius’ departure for exile, the suggestion is there (see Concluding Remarks). Demetrius’s political and legislative activity should most probably be understood as both a consequence and reflection of the times in which he lived. It reflects the friction between the end of the polis system of the Archaic and Classical periods, and the preservation of some internal autonomy within the greater framework of Macedonian domination, as was already evident in Phocion’s political activity. That Demetrius was very successful can be inferred from the period of peace and prosperity enjoyed by Athens under his rule—an achievement that even his fiercest critics were forced to acknowledge, albeit by sometimes devaluing it as the simple conquest of a ‘common tax-collector proud of himself ’ (τελώνης σεμνυνθείη βάναυσος) to adopt the expression that his opponent Demochares reportedly used about him (Plb. 12.13.9 = T 89 SOD). Demetrius was able to maintain his government for ten years until another Demetrius, the son of Antigonus later known as Poliorcetes, ‘the Besieger’, unexpectedly entered Piraeus in 307, announcing that he had arrived to restore freedom to Athens. Taken by surprise, he could not resist and eventually accepted safe conduct to Thebes, where he remained until Cassander’s death in 297, an event which for him represented the end of any prospect of being able to regain power in Athens. Plutarch’s description of his departure into voluntary exile has some positive overtones which insinuate that the biographer may have been too harsh in his global analysis of his regime when he depicts Demetrius Poliorcetes as recognizing the merit of his adversary: it was ‘out of respect for both his reputation and his virtue [that he] helped him to get away to Thebes in safety as he wished’.⁴⁰ After that turning point, Demetrius’s activity could be interpreted as a living metaphor for the new emerging reality and the way Greek politai could handle the opportunities arising from it. Following Cassander’s death Demetrius went to Alexandria, where he helped Ptolemy I Soter to draft laws and perhaps even to design the Library of Alexandria, but his real contribution to these projects remains shrouded in doubt and is the subject of much debate. Plutarch maintains that ‘Demetrius of Phalerum advised King Ptolemy to acquire books dealing with kingship and leadership, and to read them: “For the things their friends do not

³⁹ See Per. 39.4. As pointed out by Stadter 1989: 349, ‘in the grandness of the final sentences, monarchy is no longer a charge to be avoided, but a boast’. ⁴⁰ Demetr. 9.3 (= T 29 SOD): καὶ τὴν δόξαν αἰδεσθεὶς καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ ἀνδρός, εἰς Θήβας αὐτὸν ὥσπερ ἐβούλετο μετ’ ἀσφαλείας συνεξέπεμψεν.

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dare to offer to kings as advice, are written in these books” ’.⁴¹ Regardless of the role he may or may not have played in relation to Ptolemy I, Demetrius was unable to maintain the same level of influence over his successor.⁴² When Ptolemy II came to power, he chose to banish Demetrius to Diospolis, where he would end up dying soon after being bitten by a snake. Cicero (Rab. Post. 9.23 = T 42 SOD) states that he was deliberately murdered, but Diogenes Laertius (5.78 = T 1 SOD) implies that it was only an accident and that Demetrius died in his sleep.⁴³ It is thus through this wide-ranging mosaic of experiences and responses that the image of Demetrius is constructed, a living example of both statesman and philosopher who was neither a true democrat (at least by the standards of the Classical period, despite insistent comparisons with Pericles,⁴⁴ though not always in flattering terms), nor an autocratic tyrant, as he was portrayed by certain hostile sources. Indeed, Demochares (quoted by Plb. 12.13.10–12 = T 89 SOD) charges his political opponent Demetrius with a policy of panem et circenses, although Cicero counters (Off. 2.17.60 = T 110 SOD) that Demetrius disapproved of the excessive costs racked up by Pericles in building the Propylaea.⁴⁵ As with Phocion before him (albeit more drastically and with a more violent ending), the political performance of Demetrius of Phalerum mirrors, above all, the limitations and contradictions of a great polis like Athens, which had to learn to reinvent itself within the framework of what was effectively Macedonian domination, despite proclaimed attempts at the ‘restoration’ of democracy and true ‘ancestral constitution’, as conveyed in various ideological and propagandistic expressions of the ideal of the patrios politeia. In fact, Demetrius is also the last really important nomothetes in Athens, in line with great figures like Draco and Solon—as he himself would have liked to be represented.⁴⁶

⁴¹ Reg. et imp. apophth., 189d (= T 38 SOD): Δημήτριος ὁ Φαληρεὺς Πτολεμαίῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ παρῄνει τὰ περὶ βασιλείας καὶ ἡγεμονίας βιβλία κτᾶσθαι καὶ ἀναγινώσκειν· ‘ἃ γὰρ οἱ φίλοι τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν οὐ θαρροῦσι παραινεῖν, ταῦτα ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις γέγραπται’. See T 58a–66 SOD for the other testimonies pertaining to the founding of the Library of Alexandria. ⁴² He had given Ptolemy I the advice to decide on the succession in favour of Ptolemy Keraunos (son of Eurydice) and not Ptolemy II Philadelphos (son of Berenice). ⁴³ Gottschalk 2000: 373 argues that ‘we can give Philadelphos the benefit of doubt’, for he had nothing to fear from an old man like Demetrius. Sollenberger 2000: 325–26 maintains that Demetrius may have simply committed suicide, based on Diogenes’ account of the episode. ⁴⁴ E.g. Prae. ger. reip. (818c–d = T 50 SOD), where Plutarch aligns Demetrius with Pericles and Cimon, whose ‘political acts’ (politeumata) are presented as examples of measures aimed at a collective distribution of benefits. ⁴⁵ On this question, see O’Sullivan 2009: 128; Banfi 2010: 188–89. On Athenian monumental architecture, as perceived by Plutarch in De gloria Atheniensium, see the contribution to this volume, Chapter 18, by Athanassaki, who discusses, among others, the building programmes of Cimon and Pericles. ⁴⁶ Canevaro 2011: 65 pertinently underlines the importance of Demetrius of Phalerum in providing the last example of what he calls the ‘twilight of nomothesia’ in early Hellenistic Athens. Faraguna 2015: 154 believes that the possible institution of nomophylakes by Demetrius may be a consequence of the debate around the patrios politeia.

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Concluding Remarks: From the Polites to the Kosmopolites The introductory Simonides quotation that the ‘polis is a man’s master’ (fr. 90 West²) assumes that the full maturation of an individual has as its ultimate goal the collective exercise of citizenship. Therefore if all politai are called upon to participate in the defence, government, and administration of the polis, this implies that such activities are a natural component of citizen status rather than tasks to be left only to experts. The situation in Hellenistic times is substantially different, with a growing professionalization in these sectors, a fact that on the one hand reveals the need for increasingly specific competence, but also the progressive alienation of the common citizen from the notion of the state. Since the old poleis continued to exist in the Hellenistic period, at least in populated urban spaces, it is important to understand the extent to which they maintained autonomy and effective freedom of action. Since the essence of Hellenistic monarchies rested on the figure of the monarch and the group of officials who worked most closely with him, the structure of the polis ultimately constituted a foreign body within this emerging reality. In any case, it could not simply be eliminated, given the great significance it had held throughout Greek history. The poleis continued to operate using the same constitutional apparatuses they had in the past (popular assembly, courts, and magistrates elected annually), but they were now dependent on the will of the monarch whose orders were to be carried out even if they were only transmitted by letter, regulation (diagramma), or ordinance (prostagma). The appearance of autonomy was formally maintained provided there was an effort to shape the decrees of the polis in accordance with the monarch’s instructions, which were thus transformed into law.⁴⁷ In closing, it is useful to contemplate what Plutarch thought about the Athenians’ actual ability to disobey royal instructions without openly challenging central authority. Sources indicate that there would be no room for manoeuvre, even for cities as powerful as Athens. Plutarch provides two very illuminating examples of this. As previously discussed (pp. 174–176), in 318 Polyperchon, acting as regent of Macedonia, sent Phocion and some other companions to Athens to be tried in their home city, although in reality he had already given instructions that they should be sentenced to death (Plut. Phoc. 33–34). It is possible that Athens would have reached the same verdict independently, but ignoring Polyperchon’s instructions and testing its supposed freedom required questioning his authority and ⁴⁷ In any case, the payment of taxes and integration of royal garrisons, among other charges borne by the polis, were an unmistakable symbol of its dependence on the power of the sovereign. As is pertinently underlined by Ma 2018: 280, ‘the end of hegemony for certain poleis generalized the possibility of autonomy for all poleis’. In his approach (especially 279–87), he further argues that one of the most interesting developments of Hellenistic history is the ‘Great Convergence’ of city-civic practices and institutions during this period.

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then facing to probable retaliation. While both parties therefore observed the formal fiction of an independence in order to avoid future complications, the result should not have been unexpected. Plutarch gives us another even more revealing example concerning the Macedonian king Demetrius Poliorcetes. Disturbed by his interference in their domestic affairs, the Athenians passed a decree (psephisma) that sought to limit his capacity for action. However, the Athenians were not only forced to revoke the decree and condemn the respective proponents to death and exile, but also to approve another decree according to which anything that Demetrius ordered would be considered sacred before the gods and just before men (Demetr. 24.3–4). In short, the Athenians were obliged expressly to integrate into their laws the royal authority that they had initially intended to curtail.⁴⁸

⁴⁸ Even so, in the future, Demetrius showed some sensitivity in not ostentatiously disregarding the Athenian laws, as illustrated by the episode of his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Since he could not be in Athens at the proper time, he asked for a solution to be sought to which the Athenians responded by temporarily changing the name of the months so that the ceremony could take place with respect for ritual formality (Plut. Demetr. 26).

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10 Plutarch and Thebes John Marincola

Look at Thebes. There was a city; there was a great one. What rulers and generals fell to her lot? All the elders present, from whom I have heard the story, would agree with me: when Pelopidas, so they say, used to lead the Sacred Band and Epaminondas used to be general and the others with them, then it was that Thebes won at Leuctra, then did they invade Laconia, though it was considered inviolate; in those days they did many fair deeds, founding Messene after four hundred years, giving Arcadia autonomy. They were glorious in the eyes of all men.¹ So Dinarchus in his speech against Demosthenes, delivered sometime in the mid320s.² In Strabo’s time some three centuries later Thebes ‘did not even preserve the appearance of a worthwhile city’,³ and so it must still have appeared in Plutarch’s day. Its glory had been fleeting and long ago. Nonetheless, it had been a great city in its time, inferior only to Athens and Sparta, and for a brief moment during the time when Epaminondas and Pelopidas ruled it in the fourth century, it had been the leading city of Greece. Throughout the Moralia Plutarch has much to say about Thebes, even if not nearly as much as about Athens and Sparta. Yet in On the Sign of Socrates and On the Malice of Herodotus, Thebes is, so to say, at centre stage. No doubt we would have known even more of his attitude towards Thebes had his Epaminondas survived; as it is, it must surely be significant that, with so many great Greek figures available to him, the very first of the Parallel Lives should feature the Theban hero⁴ and set him against possibly the greatest figure from the Roman

¹ I am grateful to the editors for the invitation to contribute to this volume and for their assistance with this chapter. I am grateful also to the readers for the Press who have offered helpful advice. The translations are mine except for those from De genio Socratis (Russell 2010), the Agesilaus and Pelopidas (Perrin 1917); and the Lysander (Scott-Kilvert 1960). ² Dem. 72–73. ³ Str. 9.2.5, C403 (οὐδὲ κώμης ἀξιολόγου τύπον σώζουσι). ⁴ Two of the Parallel Lives have Thebans as their subject, as against five for Sparta and ten for Athens.

John Marincola, Plutarch and Thebes In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0011

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republic.⁵ In any case, there can be no doubt that Thebes and Boeotia were dear to Plutarch’s heart,⁶ and there is sufficient information in what survives of Plutarch to get some sense of his views on Thebes and its history. As a Boeotian himself, we might expect that Plutarch would be defensive about the Thebans, but his attitude is, in fact, complicated and nuanced. Although aware of the traditional criticism of the Boeotians as boorish (which he recognizes and meets head on: see De genio Socratis 575e), he can also show the Theban leader Epaminondas as devoted to philosophy and learning. In his treatment of Theban history he uses a variety of techniques but has nonetheless two basic approaches. For the fifth century he is engaged largely in a defensive struggle: he cannot deny Theban medism during the great Persian Wars, which was an indelible stain on the city’s reputation, nor the Theban desire for Athens’ destruction at the end of the Peloponnesian War, though he attempts to mitigate the Thebans’ guilt by suggesting that the city was dominated at the time by tyrannical elements, and a small minority, not the people themselves, were responsible for such actions. Very shortly thereafter, however, beginning with Thebes’ behaviour towards the Athenian exiles during the Spartan occupation of Athens, Plutarch begins to fashion a fourth-century Thebes that is devoted to the highest ideals of the Greeks. Now Thebes is presented as the defender of Greek liberty, thanks to the successful invasion of the Peloponnese, the unification of Arcadia, the liberation of the Messenians, the opposition to the Thessalian tyrant Alexander, and the dedicated, if doomed, opposition to the Macedonians.⁷ Even in defeat, Thebes can provide inspiring exempla, such as the behaviour of the Sacred Band at the battle of Chaeronea or the noble fearlessness of Timocleia during Alexander’s assault on the city. Thebes here succeeds to a role that the Athenians once and the Spartans thereafter had claimed, conducting herself with honour and bravery as the last, great hope of Greek freedom is extinguished in the successes of Philip and Alexander. It may be most helpful to divide matters according to the great political events of fifth- and fourth-century history, which in chronological order would be: (1) the Greek wars against Persia; (2) the Peloponnesian War and the period of Spartan hegemony; (3) the liberation of the Cadmea and the ensuing Theban hegemony; and (4) the conflict with Macedon, ending with the destruction of the ⁵ It is unknown whether the Scipio was Africanus or Aemilianus; there are good arguments for both: see Georgiadou 1997: 7–8. If it were Africanus, Plutarch would have been making an incredibly bold statement, since Africanus was the great hero of the Republic, and the one that had ensured Rome’s survival against the greatest of generals. ⁶ Cf. Brenk 1995: 1109: ‘Few writers loved their native land as much as Plutarch, who as a setting for his works continually chose Boiotia’. For more on Plutarch and Chaeronea, see Bowie, Chapter 1, in this volume. ⁷ Perhaps not surprisingly, Plutarch elides certain events, such as Thebes’ complicity in the destruction of Plataea in 427 (Thuc. 3.60–67) and again in 374 or 373 (Paus. 9.1.5–8), or her acceptance of the Persian bribery that brought about Agesilaus’ return to Greece in 395 (Xen. Hell. 3.5.1). Here, as so often with Plutarch, it is uncertain whether he does so with deliberate intent or with the desire to avoid negative (and emphasize positive) actions and to believe the best of his historical actors.

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city by Alexander in 335 . It will be necessary to use the evidence both from the Lives and the Moralia, and while the treatments often have differences of detail, I shall be concentrating in this chapter mostly on the material that they have in common.⁸

The Persian Wars The Persian Wars are a good place to start both because Plutarch thought the victories of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea to be the most glorious in Greek history (Comp. Arist. et Cat. Mai. 5.1), and because Thebes’ actions in the Persian Wars, where they were the only major Greek city-state to take the Persians’ side, determined much of their reception in their own times and in the later tradition. The Thebans could never completely eliminate this stain upon their honour, though it was certainly not for want of trying. Centuries later the Boeotian Plutarch could take pride in the achievement of the Plataeans during the Persian Wars, but he could not overlook the fact that Boeotia’s chief city had not only taken the Persian side but even provided a base for the Persians.⁹ Naturally, he might have passed over Thebes’ actions in those conflicts and concentrated simply on the Greek states who fought against the Persians; that he did not do so says a great deal about Plutarch’s conscientiousness of his role as a preserver and glorifier of the past. He faces the issue squarely in a number of passages even if at times he seeks to mitigate the blame that might fall on the city. Not surprisingly, it is in On the Malice of Herodotus that he takes the fiercest stand against the tradition of Theban medism, at least as far as it was portrayed in Herodotus’ history. He had announced as one of the aims of this treatise ‘to come to the defence both of our ancestors and of the truth’ (Mor. 854f), and the latter portion of the treatise is a full assault on Herodotus’ account of the events of 480. Plutarch sets the tone in this section by citing the Boeotian historian Aristophanes’ claim that Herodotus demanded money from the Thebans and was refused. Although Plutarch can find no other evidence for this story ‘yet Herodotus supports Aristophanes’ account by the charges he himself levels against the Boeotians, narrating some things falsely, in other matters slandering them, and in still others writing as if he hated them or had quarrelled with them’ (864d). His first argument observes that whereas Herodotus mitigated Thessalian medism by claiming that they had medized ‘out of necessity’, ‘he does not give the Thebans, who were under the same necessity, the same indulgence’ (864e). He

⁸ Ewen Bowie’s chapter (1) in this volume on Chaeronea has much that intersects with Theban and Boeotian history. ⁹ Hdt. 9.2, where the Thebans even go so far as to suggest bribery to the Persians so as to undermine the Greek alliance. Bowie notes that Plutarch makes no mention of Chaeronea during the Persian Wars.

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paints an effective picture of an isolated and defenceless Thebes which turned to the Persians only when no other course was open to them: In fact, the Thebans only accepted the King’s terms when they were hemmed in by great necessity: when the barbarian had control of the passes and was on their borders; when the Spartan Demaratus (who was well minded towards Attaginus, the leader of the Theban oligarchy, because of their guest-friendship) had offered to make him a friend and guest-friend of the King, and when the Greeks were on their ships and no land army was coming to their aid. For they did not, like the Athenians, have ships and the sea at their disposal, nor did they dwell far off, like the Spartans, in a remote part of Greece, but the Mede was only a day and a half away when they made their stand at the narrows and fought with only the Spartiates and the Thespians, and met with misfortune. Now the historian says with justice that if the Spartans had been isolated and bereft of their allies they would have come to an agreement with Xerxes, but he has only abuse for the Thebans who suffered that very thing on account of the same necessity. (864e–f)

Some of the details of this portrait may be misleading, of course,¹⁰ but Plutarch’s purpose here is to use a Herodotean technique against Herodotus himself, so as to suggest that the historian was being unfair in denying to one party the indulgence he offered to the other. Plutarch also uses the evidence of Herodotus’ own text to defend the Thebans. Noting that Herodotus himself says that Leonidas on the last day of the battle at Thermopylae kept only the Thespians and the Thebans with him, Plutarch asks why to the former Herodotus ascribes a noble motivation but the latter are said to have served only as hostages (865b). Plutarch here lands some effective blows against Herodotus,¹¹ pointing out that it would have been sheer folly for Leonidas in such a situation to keep around him men whose loyalty was doubtful. And since Leonidas knew they were now surrounded, how could he have been ‘guarding’ these hostages when he knew that he and his men were about to die? Herodotus had been clear that Leonidas wished only Sparta to have the glory, so the retention of the Thebans in the expectation that they too would be killed would have contradicted this aim (865b–e). Plutarch then adduces as evidence of Leonidas’ friendly relations with Thebes a story in which Leonidas was allowed to spend the night in the temple of Heracles; while there, a dream prophesied to the Spartan king the future greatness of Thebes.¹² ¹⁰ See Bowen 1992 passim for comparison of Plutarch’s historical accounts with those of Herodotus. ¹¹ Short but valuable narrative and analysis of this incident in Cartledge 2020: 94–99. It is noteworthy that this is perhaps the only section of the De Herodoti malignitate where scholars are generally agreed that Plutarch makes effective points; see Bowen 1992: 130–32. ¹² Mor. 865f; one wonders whether this ‘prophecy’ of future Theban greatness was mentioned in the Epaminondas.

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Against Herodotus’ claim that the Thebans at the very end broke away from the Spartans and approached the Persians with outstretched hands, Plutarch has nothing but ridicule: Imagine this pleading being heard as everything was going on amidst the barbarian cries and the thorough commotion and the flights and pursuits, and then the examination of witnesses, and the Thessalians, giving evidence among men being slain and tangled underfoot, saying that until recently they were masters of Greece as far as Thespiae but the Thebans defeated us in battle and drove us out and they killed our commander Lattamyas. For that was how things stood with the Boeotians and the Thessalians at that time: there was nothing fair or friendly between them. (866e–f)

Plutarch makes the additional argument that the branding of the Thebans at Thermopylae (a story, he says, that only Herodotus tells) could be seen as a mark of honour since Xerxes had similarly mutilated the body of Leonidas by cutting off his head and placing it on a spike (867a–b). Finally, there is an additional mention of the Thebans at the battle of Plataea where Herodotus’ claim that the Theban cavalry gave strong support to the Persians in their retreat is again met with ridicule: For the Thebans, when the rout occurred, brought their cavalry in front of the barbarians and eagerly aided them in their flight—paying them back, no doubt, for the brands they had received at Thermopylae! (872d)

In this essay, then, Plutarch’s defence of the Thebans makes two major points: first, that the Thebans were isolated and medized only as a result of necessity; and second, that despite this at least 500 Thebans were present with Leonidas at Thermopylae and there fought on behalf of Greece.¹³ An additional defence that he makes for the Thebans, and one which is not original to him, can be found in his narrative of the battle of Plataea in the Aristides.¹⁴ While the Spartans are engaged with the Persians in the climactic battle, the Athenians fall in with the medizing Greeks: . . . as they were crossing the plain towards the noise of the battle, the medizing Greeks advanced towards them. . . . [W]hen he [sc. Aristides] saw that they . . . had already formed up for battle, he turned aside from the attempt to relieve the Spartans and engaged these men, who numbered some fifty thousand. . . . Here the heaviest of the fighting is said to have been with the Thebans, whose leading ¹³ Mor. 864e, with the detail, not in Herodotus, that their commander was Mnamias. ¹⁴ I have given a fuller treatment of this incident in Marincola 2016: 111–13.

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and most influential citizens had at that time enthusiastically taken the Persian side and had carried the people with them, not of their own free will, but because they were ruled by an oligarchy. (Arist. 18.6–7)

Theban medism is here in no way concealed, but Plutarch employs an explanation that must have been well known already in the fifth century, since it is found in Thucydides, where the Theban speech to the Spartans at the fall of Plataea in 427 makes just this argument, namely that the Thebans at the time were ruled by an illegitimate government, and it was this government rather than the Theban people at large who enthusiastically took the side of the Persians.¹⁵ No doubt here the ‘respectable’ precedent of Thucydides’ account helped in constructing such mitigation,¹⁶ but it is perhaps not accidental that the story of Theban behaviour in the Persian Wars receives very little treatment overall in Plutarch’s work.¹⁷ Plutarch is honest enough to face the issue squarely, though in keeping with his usual methods, he tends towards a more charitable interpretation,¹⁸ one that in this case would at least exonerate the vast majority of Thebans at the time of the Persian invasions.

The Late-Fifth Century For most of the latter part of the fifth century, Thebes was mainly in the Spartan camp. Plutarch has virtually nothing to say of Thebes during the Peloponnesian War itself—nothing, for example, on Thebes’ role in the destruction of Plataea in 427—and there were probably only a few occasions for him to treat their actions in that conflict.¹⁹ At the end of the war, however, Thebes notoriously seems to have called for the destruction of Athens. According to Xenophon, ‘the Corinthians and Thebans especially, but also many other Greeks’ called for Athens’ destruction, while Isocrates says, most likely with some degree of exaggeration, that ‘it was the Thebans alone’ who called for Athens’ destruction.²⁰ Presumably this would have been a distasteful subject for Plutarch, but he does treat it (briefly) in the Lysander. When Lysander finds fault with the Athenians for not adhering to the terms of their surrender, he tells them that they must come up with a new proposal for peace. At that time, ‘some say’ that a proposal was made ¹⁵ Thuc. 3.62.3, with Hornblower 1991: 456–57. ¹⁶ Though it is perhaps noteworthy that Plutarch does not try to qualify the term ὀλιγαρχία (as do the Thebans in Thuc.: οὔτε κατ’ ὀλιγαρχίαν ἰσόνομον, a sleight-of-hand that is problematic; see Rhodes 1994: 223–24). ¹⁷ Aside from the discussion in the De Herodoti malignitate, the other references to Thebes in the Moralia all concern earlier (mythical) times or the more glorious events of the fourth century. ¹⁸ As recorded most famously, perhaps, at Cim. 2.3–5. ¹⁹ For Thebes’ role in the Peloponnesian War see, most recently, Cartledge 2020: 132–66. ²⁰ Xen. Hell. 2.2.19 (cf. 3.5.8, 6.5.35); Isoc. 14.31.

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amongst the allies (γνώμην ἐν τοῖς συμμάχοις) to enslave the city, and that this was also when (καὶ ὅτε) Erianthus of Thebes made another proposal that the city should be razed to the ground and the land put out for pasturing (Lys. 15.3). The specificity of the name Erianthus might point to giving the story some credence,²¹ although Plutarch distances himself from the remark by introducing it with the words ‘some say’. Yet it should also be noted that it is ‘the allies’ who make the (presumably more serious) proposal to enslave the city, while Erianthus adds only the second part about razing the city and giving it over to pasturing. Moreover, the fact that Plutarch provides a single name might mean that here he accepts the ‘interpretation’ put forward by the Thebans in Xenophon’s Hellenica when they ask Athens for an alliance against Sparta at the outbreak of the Corinthian War in 395, an interpretation that again exonerates the majority of the Thebans, just as in the Thebans’ remarks at Plataea about the Persian Wars: Men of Athens, you found fault with us when we voted to impose harsh terms on you at the conclusion of the war, but you were not right to blame us all for this. It was not our city that voted thus, but one man only, who happened at that time to be serving on the board of the allies. On the other hand, when the Spartans called on us to march with them against the Piraeus, then our whole city voted to refuse the Spartan demand to march out with them.²² (Xen. Hell. 3.5.8)

Whether or not Plutarch accepted this interpretation, the proposal, at least as it is presented in the Lysander, comes to nothing when the allies hear the opening chorus of Euripides’ Electra sung, and are so moved to pity that they renounce their desire to destroy a city that could produce such great poets (Lys. 15.4). But now things begin to change. For whatever Plutarch thought of Erianthus’ proposal about Athens, it is exceedingly clear that, like the speaker in Xenophon’s Hellenica, he believed that the behaviour of the Thebans towards the Athenian democrats in the aftermath of the war was one of the high points of the city’s actions in history. Whereas modern scholars emphasize that Thebes’ support of Athens at this time was a way of limiting Spartan ambition,²³ Plutarch sees the Thebans’ actions in supporting Thrasybulus and the Athenian democratic exiles as wholly admirable, and worthy indeed of comparison with the greatest heroes of the past: The Spartans . . . decree[d] that all Athenian fugitives should be sent back to Attica in whatever country they were found, and that any state which hindered

²¹ For Erianthus see RE VI (1909) 437. ²² At 6.5.35, however, the Spartans reiterate that had it been up to the Thebans, Athens would have been destroyed. ²³ Cf., e.g., Hornblower 2011: 218; Cartledge 2020: 167.

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their return should be declared an enemy of Sparta. In reply to this the Thebans passed counter-measures which were fitting and akin to the deeds of Heracles and Dionysus. These decrees laid it down that every house and city in Boeotia should be open to Athenians who needed shelter; that whoever refused to help an Athenian refugee against anyone attempting to carry him off by force should be fined a talent; and that if any armed men should march to Athens through Boeotia against the Thirty, no Theban should either see or hear about it. They did not stop at voting such truly Hellenic and humane decrees, but they displayed deeds equal to their words. Thus, when Thrasybulus and his supporters seized Phyle, they set out from Thebes and the Thebans provided them not only with arms and money and a suitable base for operations, but also kept their movements secret. (Lys. 27.5–7)

Plutarch returns to this action on more than one occasion, and he especially highlights the similarities between Theban support for the Athenian exiles who wished to liberate their city and later Athenian support for the Theban exiles who likewise planned to recover their liberty by expelling the Spartans from the Cadmea.²⁴ Moreover, this seems to mark a turning-point in Theban activity and Plutarch’s portrayal of it. For this break with Sparta portends more and greater things to come. Theban conflict with Sparta is again seen in 396 when Agesilaus wishes to sacrifice at Aulis, in imitation of Agamemnon, before setting out for Asia Minor. Xenophon says only that ‘the Boeotarchs learned that he was sacrificing, and sent horsemen to him to declare that he was not to sacrifice there in the future’ (Hell. 3.4.4). Plutarch, however, gives more extenuating circumstances, claiming that Agesilaus was not following the proper procedure, because he used his own seer rather than the one appointed to this office by the Boeotians, and the Boeotian messengers tell Agesilaus specifically that he was not to sacrifice ‘contrary to the laws and ancestral customs of the Boeotians’ (Ages. 6.10).²⁵ Plutarch notes elsewhere (Lys. 27.2–3) that those who wished to see Thebes as responsible for the Corinthian War advanced this action as one of the causes. In speaking of that war, which he calls ‘the Boeotian War’ (Lys. 27.1), Plutarch presents the arguments advanced by both sides on the party that was guilty of starting the war. He notes that some people blame the Thebans for the war, some the Spartans, and some both together. The Theban infractions that would have led to the war included the dispersal of the sacrifice at Aulis, as just mentioned, and also the bribes from the Persian king that were taken by Androcleides and

²⁴ See, pp. 192–195. ²⁵ Cf. Shipley 1997: 127: ‘Plutarch, a Boeotian and a priest of Delphi, would have been sensitive about the violation of the territory and the sanctity of the shrine, and he stresses the Boiotarchs’ concern for local laws and customs’.

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Amphitheus so as to stir up war against Sparta. As for the Spartans, the causes are laid out as the Theban demand for a tenth of the spoils from Decelea, Theban anger that Lysander was sending money that had been taken from Athens back to Sparta, but most of all Lysander’s ‘rage’ (ὀργήν, Lys. 28.1) at Theban support for the Athenian democrats and their hand in destroying the Spartan decarchy which Lysander had set up, and it was from this rage that Lysander ‘goaded’ (παρώξυνε, 28.1) the Spartans into the war.²⁶ Some indication of future Theban greatness is also on display in Plutarch’s two brief narratives that concern the battles of Haliartus and Coronea. In the former Lysander loses his life, and a strong band of Thebans presses the Spartans hard and drives them to flight, losing some 300 of their own men because they pursued the Spartans over difficult ground (Lys. 28.11–12). In the battle of Coronea, despite the Spartan victory there, the Thebans again fight bravely together with the Argives, and although they do not defeat the Spartans, neither do the Spartans defeat them: . . . since it proved too hard a task to break the Theban front, they were forced to do what at the outset they were reluctant to do: they opened their ranks and let the enemy pass through, and then, when these had got clear, and were already marching in looser array, the Spartans followed on the run and struck them on the flanks. They could not, however, put them to rout, but the Thebans withdrew to Mount Helicon, greatly elated over the battle, in which, as they reasoned, their own contingent had been undefeated (ἀήττητοι).²⁷ (Ages. 18.9)

Thus in both victory and defeat, the Thebans show their mettle and already give indications of what is in store for the Spartans. It is noteworthy that in both the Lysander and the Agesilaus Plutarch emphasizes what is almost an irrational hatred of the Spartans towards the Thebans. We noted above Lysander’s anger with the Thebans by which he goaded the Spartans to war, and this theme of Spartan anger is maintained, indeed magnified, in the relations that Agesilaus had with the Thebans. Indeed, it is noteworthy just how often Plutarch highlights Agesilaus’ anger: he was enraged at the behaviour of the Thebans when he tried to sacrifice at Aulis (διωργισμένος, Ages. 6.11) and in this battle of Coronea, Agesilaus is carried away by passion and quarrelsomeness (ὑπὸ θυμοῦ καὶ φιλονικίας, Ages. 18.4) and attacks the Thebans when, as Plutarch notes, ²⁶ In the Sayings of Spartans, Plutarch notes that Timocrates distributed Persian gold to the popular leaders (τοῖς δημαγωγοῖς, 211b) and that in this way the people (οἱ δῆμοι) were stirred to hostilities against Sparta. Whether this is meant to exonerate some portion of the Theban aristocracy is unclear, but there is no defence of Theban action here in any part of what survives of Plutarch. He seems to say nothing of the Theban role in persuading the Locrians to impose a fine on the Phocians, and thus precipitating the war; but it may be that he simply did not see this as a cause of the war but only its beginning. ²⁷ On the portrayal of the Thebans here see Shipley 1997: 233–35.

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he could have won his victory without peril to himself or his army. Further emphasis on his extreme attitude towards the Thebans can be found in his (mis)treatment of the Theban envoys who approach him during his siege of Corinth: Plutarch notes that ‘he had always hated the city’ (μισῶν . . . ἀεὶ τὴν πόλιν, 22.2) and now saw an opportunity ‘to treat them outrageously to his advantage’ (συμφέρειν ἐνυβρίσαι, 22.2). Even in his furtherance of the ‘most shameful and lawless’ (αἴσχιστα καὶ παρανομώτατα, 23.5) Peace of Antalcidas, Agesilaus has in mind how it might harm the Thebans (23.5). Plutarch seems to mark this as an important moment in Agesilaus’ life and career, since he notes that at this point Agesilaus ‘no longer preserved his reputation for justice but was carried away by his love of honour and victory, especially as regards the Thebans’.²⁸ Nor can it be coincidence that Plutarch makes this remark just before the Spartans seize the Theban Cadmea.

The Liberation of the Cadmea For Plutarch, not surprisingly, the liberation of the Cadmea and the subsequent Theban hegemony offer the opportunity to praise the city and celebrate her high point in classical history. It is clear that the liberation of the Cadmea held a special place in his heart: he narrated the events in the Pelopidas and in the De genio Socratis,²⁹ and in both cases with a wealth of loving detail and all his skill as a writer.³⁰ The incident appealed to his imagination because of its daring, its ‘altruism’, and its far-reaching impact. The account in De genio Socratis is fuller, but its dramatic effect is somewhat compartmentalized because the narrative of the actions is several times interrupted (or diverted) by musings of various sorts, including on the nature of Socrates’ daimonion, while the Pelopidas narrative, though briefer, packs a greater dramatic punch. The account of the liberation of the Cadmea in the Pelopidas occupies about a fifth of the entire Life while that in the De genio Socratis takes up nearly half of that dialogue. Each account is full of detailed portraits, twists of fate, close calls, and manifest displays of bravery. ²⁸ Ages. 23.11: ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἔργοις οὐκέτι ταύτην διαφυλάττων τὴν δόξαν, ἀλλὰ τῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ καὶ τῇ φιλονικίᾳ πολλαχοῦ συνεκφερόμενος καὶ μάλιστα τῇ πρὸς Θηβαίους. One cannot help but wonder whether in the Epaminondas such Spartan rage and hatred was contrasted with the philosophical deportment of that hero. ²⁹ He presumably would have done so also in the Epaminondas, though as Georgiadou 1996: 114 n. 3 wisely cautions, the minor role of Epaminondas in that struggle does not suggest a very full treatment in the Life. ³⁰ The bibliography on the De gen. is enormous, and there is little point in citing it here; bibliographical references can be found at Brenk 1996: 30 n. 6 and Georgiadou 1996: 115 n. 11. For an excellent study of the differences between the liberation narratives in the Pel. and the De gen. see Pelling 2010a. For Plutarch’s differences with other sources (Xenophon, Diodorus, etc.) see Pascual González 1990 and Brenk 2002. For the historical importance of the event see Buckler 1980: 15–17, 130–37; Cawkwell 2010.

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The story for Plutarch begins in the aftermath of the battle of Mantinea in 385, where both Pelopidas and Epaminondas fought marvellously alongside the Spartans, Pelopidas receiving seven wounds and Epaminondas wounds in the breast and arm.³¹ As a result, the Spartans, though they continued to treat the Thebans as friends and allies, became suspicious of the ambition and power of the city. They particularly hated (μάλιστα μισούντων, Pel. 5.1: again note the term) the party to which Pelopidas belonged. It was the opposite party, that of Ismenias and Androcleides, that persuaded Phoebidas to seize the Cadmea. After this, Pelopidas fled Thebes, while Epaminondas’ philosophical life-style allowed him to remain and not be considered a threat (Pel. 5.4). Everything hinges on the exiles at Athens, and it is the moment of their return that provides the dramatic framework for each narrative. Here, then, is our mirror-image: as the Thebans had helped the Athenian exiles, the Athenians now help the Theban exiles. The story of the liberation of the Cadmea is told consistently in the language of freedom and slavery. Thebes has lost its patrios politeia and has been ‘enslaved’ by the unjust Spartan garrison (καταδεδουλωμένοις, 6.2; δουλεύουσαν, 7.1), and the Thebans and their leading citizens are called on to ‘free’ (ἐλευθερώσωσι, 7.2) their city. The Boeotarchs Archias and Leontidas, as well as the other Spartan partisans, are consistently referred to as ‘tyrants’ (τυραννίδος, 6.2), while the party of Ismenias and Androcleidas is called φιλελεύθερον and δημοτική. Although help and support come from the Athenians, Pelopidas is insistent that they cannot continue to rely on the Athenians but must themselves be the agent of their liberation. They must, he says, take Thrasybulus for their model, a connection between the restoration of democracy at Athens in 403 and the Theban liberation in 379 that is strongly reinforced by Plutarch in several ways: first, directly here by Pelopidas’ employment of that earlier exploit as an explicit exemplum; second, in the De genio Socratis by the appearance of Lysitheides, the nephew of Thrasybulus, who listens to the story of the liberation (Mor. 575f); finally, at the end of the narrative in the Pelopidas where Plutarch makes a direct comparison between the two events in the bravery of the men, the dangers, and the struggles, and says that the Greeks called the action a ‘sister’ (ἀδελφήν, 13.4) to the liberation of Athens.³² All of this serves to connect closely Athens and Thebes, the latter of whom is allowed for once to take on the mantle of tyrant-hater, something long denied her. It is, as well, a dramatic story, with many close calls and might-have-beens: Hipposthenidas’ failure of nerve when he contemplates the magnitude of the enterprise leads him to summon Chlidon, a particularly skilful rider renowned ³¹ See Georgiadou 1997: 80–81 for the historical circumstances. Their service together at this battle is also mentioned at Paus. 9.13.1. ³² One can include even the detail of the snow that fell on the night the exiles returned and that kept many of the Thebans at home, a possible reference to the snowfall that prevented the Thirty from dislodging Thrasybulus and his men from Phyle (see Georgiadou 1997: 80–81); this was interpreted by Thrasybulus as divine assistance (Xen. Hell. 2.4.2–4, 2.4.14).

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for his speed, to deliver a message to the exiles telling them to abort their invasion, but Chlidon’s inability to find the bridle for his horse and the subsequent quarrel with his wife (who had lent it to a neighbour) keeps him from setting out, and leads Plutarch to comment in his own person, ‘so near can the greatest and finest of deeds miss their opportunity right at the beginning’ (παρὰ τοσοῦτον μὲν ἦλθον αἱ μέγισται καὶ κάλλισται τῶν πράξεων εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ διαφυγεῖν τὸν καιρόν, Pel. 8.9). Then Charon is summoned to meet with Archias and the conspirators fear that they have been exposed, but Charon finds that Archias has only vague information of some exiles infiltrating the city. No sooner does this happen than fortune brings ‘a second storm’ upon the conspirators, when a message arrives for Archias from his namesake in Athens, now with actual and full detail of the conspiracy; when the messenger says that the letter should be read at once, Archias, now well in his cups, puts it under his pillow and does not read it (Pel. 10.8–9; note Mor. 596d with the mention of χείρων τύχη). Even the actual expulsion of the Spartans from the citadel succeeded only by a narrow margin, since those Spartans allowed to escape from Thebes saw that the Spartan forces coming to assist were already at Megara.³³ And the fact that the Thebans waited for daylight to assemble leads the narrator to judge that it was a mistake of the Spartans not to have attacked the previous night (Pel. 12) The level of characterization in the story is remarkably detailed: each of the characters is individually drawn in Plutarch’s best manner. Much revolves around the figure of Charon, identified as ‘most distinguished’ (ἐπιφανέστατος), who puts his house at the disposal of the conspirators. He is constant and loyal and in the De genio Socratis there is even a comparison with Epaminondas that works to Charon’s credit, Theocritus the seer observing that although Charon was no philosopher, he was yet one who obeyed the laws and was willing to court danger on his country’s behalf, while Epaminondas, although a philosopher, was taking no action. When word comes from the archons that Archias is to meet with them, he is thunderstruck and frightened (ἐκπεπληγμένον καὶ περιπαθοῦντα, Pel. 9.9), but his concern seems to be that the conspirators will think that he has betrayed them. In a thoroughly moving scene that reduces the conspirators to tears, he brings in his young and only son and tells the conspirators to do away with the young man if his father has been in any way disloyal. When they demur, he all the more insists, saying that a decorous death is far more honourable than any kind of life or safety (Pel. 9.9–13). Hipposthenidas, by contrast, is a good man and loyal to his country (φιλόπατρις) but lacks the boldness (ἐνδεὴς . . . τόλμης, Pel. 8.5) necessary for the task at hand. Accused of cowardice (μαλακίαν, 586B) by Phyllidas, he defends himself by pointing out that even if they could kill the men in power,

³³ Pel. 13.2; this would mean that the Spartans were approximately two-thirds of the way to Thebes.

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there is still the Spartan garrison to deal with, and claims that the signs from heaven are not favourable (586d–87b). Even the rider Chlidon is well-drawn: found to be standing right at the door while Hipposthenidas and Phyllidas had been arguing, he is given in the De genio Socratis a speech in direct discourse that paints the scene clearly: his anger at his wife, his frustration with her, her cursing him, his striking her, and a crowd of neighbours gathering are all told with wonderful detail, and Chlidon himself at the end of his speech asks them to send someone else out, ‘because I’m quite beside myself for the moment and in a very bad way’ (588a). Throughout the story the bravery, daring, and enterprise of the conspirators is emphasized. Although some of their opponents are dispatched with ease, others put up a staunch fight. Pelopidas and his men face the ‘sober and formidable’ (νήφοντα καὶ δεινόν) Leontidas, who though awakened from his bed, nonetheless shows great mettle, first slaying Cephisodorus, then engaging Pelopidas himself in a difficult match (ἐργωδέστερον . . . τὸ πρᾶγμα, 11.5). The liberation of the Cadmea has both small-scale and large-scale importance: for the Thebans it represents the return of their patrios politeia and the freedom that they had heretofore enjoyed, while for Greece as a whole the victory means the beginning of the end of Spartan domination: For it is not easy to mention other cases where men so few in number and so destitute have overcome enemies so much more numerous and powerful by the exercise of courage and sagacity, and have thereby become the authors of so great blessings for their countries. And yet the subsequent change in the political situation made this exploit the more glorious. For the war which broke down the pretensions of Sparta and put an end to her supremacy by land and sea, began from that night, in which Pelopidas, not by surprising any fort or castle or citadel, but by coming back into a private house with eleven others, loosed and broke in pieces, if the truth may be expressed in a metaphor, the fetters of the Lacedaemonian supremacy, which were thought indissoluble and not to be broken.³⁴ (Pel. 13.5–7)

The Theban Hegemony The liberation of the Cadmea was the first step in Thebes’ rise to hegemony in the Greek world, and for Plutarch it heralded the city’s most glorious era.³⁵ Not

³⁴ Cf. Mor. 1129c: τὴν δ’ Ἑλλάδα δουλεύουσαν ἠλευθέρωσαν. ³⁵ See Mor. 349c where these moments of Theban history are called the ‘fairest and most splendid contests’ (τοῖς καλλίστοις καὶ λαμπροτάτοις ἀγῶσιν). Cf. Alcidamas F 14 Radermacher (= Arist. Rhet. 2.23, 1398b1): καὶ Θήβησιν ἅμα οἱ προστάται φιλόσοφοι ἐγένοντο καὶ εὐδαιμόνησεν ἡ πόλις.

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surprisingly, given Plutarch’s interests, the friendship of Epaminondas and Pelopidas is portrayed as largely responsible for Thebes’ greatness at that time, and he emphasizes that theirs was a special, harmonious relationship. Unlike the competitive struggles of Aristides and Themistocles, or Cimon and Pericles, or Nicias and Alcibiades, which were ‘full of differences, jealousies, and rivalries towards one another’, one would justly call Pelopidas and Epaminondas ‘fellowmagistrates and fellow-commanders’ (τούτους ἂν ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως συνάρχοντας καὶ συστρατήγους, 4.3) who strove to get advantage over the enemy not over each other. A divine desire made both enamoured of seeing their city the most distinguished and greatest of all (ἔρωτα θεῖον ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐρασθέντες, 4.4).³⁶ In the aftermath of Theban liberation Plutarch has Epaminondas and Pelopidas manipulate Sphodrias into making his attempt on Athens as a way of bringing Athens back into the anti-Spartan fold.³⁷ Once done and with the Athenians now again on their side, the Thebans fight a series of small battles with the Spartans in Boeotia, winning them all, with Epaminondas and Pelopidas using them as a way of ‘training’ the Thebans to become skilled at fighting the Spartans.³⁸ At Tegyra Pelopidas won an outright victory, and this was the clearest prelude to the great victory at Leuctra. Once again Plutarch highlights its ‘global’ importance: For in all their wars with Greeks and Barbarians, as it would seem, never before had Lacedaemonians in superior numbers been overpowered by an inferior force, nor, indeed, in a pitched battle where the forces were evenly matched. Hence they were of an irresistible courage, and when they came to close quarters their very reputation sufficed to terrify their opponents, who also, on their part, thought themselves no match for Spartans with an equal force. But this battle first taught the other Greeks also that it was not the Eurotas, nor the region between Babyce and Cnacion, which alone produced warlike fighting men, but that wheresoever young men are prone to be ashamed of baseness and courageous in a noble cause, shunning disgrace more than danger, these are most formidable to their foes.³⁹ (Pel. 17.11–13)

³⁶ For the importance of harmony amongst leaders for Plutarch, see Marincola 2010. It is perhaps worth noting that Plutarch elsewhere often praises Themistocles and Aristides for putting aside their quarrels in times of danger or when they represented Athens abroad (Mor. 809b). But we are no doubt meant to see the Theban pair as superior because they did not quarrel even in domestic politics. On the portrait drawn here see Georgiadou 1992: 4225–26, and 1997: 65–82. ³⁷ On this incident, ‘one of the most curious incidents in the history of fourth-century Greece’ whose ‘details . . . belong more to the realm of romance than history’ (Buckler 2003: 220) see Georgiadou 1997: 135–38 and Buckler 2003: 220–25. At Mor. 808b the failure to punish Sphodrias and Phoebidas is an important reason for the battle at Leuctra (οὗτοι γὰρ οὐχ ἥκιστα τὴν Σπάρτην ἐνέβαλον εἰς τὸν Λευκτρικὸν πόλεμον). ³⁸ Plutarch returns to this idea often: Mor. 89f, 213f, 217e, 227d. ³⁹ At Artax. 21.5, Plutarch notes that Conon’s victory at Cnidus destroyed Spartan sea-power (ἀφείλετο τὴν κατὰ θάλατταν ἀρχὴν Λακεδαιμονίους), and one could make the argument that this was really the beginning of the Spartans’ loss of empire, since in the wake of Cnidus, many of the

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These particular comments lead Plutarch to digress on the Sacred Band. Somewhat chronologically out of place, it fits in well nevertheless with what has gone before, and Plutarch uses the occasion to give a brief history of the Band, and explain their arrangement and, even more importantly, the motivation that led them to be so successful a fighting unit. His take on this military unit is, not surprisingly, highly idealized, and thoroughly Platonic, seeing in their erotic attraction a disposition that ‘did not seek physical expression, but aimed at the good of the beloved object’, the same kind of divine desire that, as we saw above, Plutarch attributed to Epaminondas and Pelopidas in their direction of Theban affairs.⁴⁰ Epaminondas had taken only a secondary role in the liberation of the Cadmea, but the peace conference called in 371 in the aftermath of Thebes’ destruction of Plataea (an incident not treated by Plutarch, at least in his surviving works) and the battles with the Spartans which follow show him now as the leading statesman. Plutarch characterizes Epaminondas throughout the Moralia as poor, incorruptible, brave, and virtuous, extremely intelligent but slow to speak. He nearly always appears in the highest company: he is compared to Socrates⁴¹ and Plato in his devotion to philosophy, and to Pericles, Lycurgus, and Agesilaus as statesmen who benefitted their countries; his actions as leader of Thebes are spoken of in the same breath as those of Miltiades at Marathon, Themistocles at Salamis, and Aristides at Plataea. Although a man of great spirit and pride, who refused to humble himself when brought to trial at Thebes, he nonetheless when entrusted by the Thebans with a menial office, discharged his duties with care and diligence.⁴² At the peace conference he behaves in an impressive and memorable way. With the rest of the Greeks cringing before Agesilaus, Epaminondas gives a speech ‘not on behalf of Thebes, his native city, but on behalf of all Greece in common’, and saying that war was making Sparta great at the expense of the sufferings of other states, and urging peace to be made on terms of equality and justice (Ages. 27.6–7). When Agesilaus sees that Epaminondas has won over the other Greeks, he asks whether the Boeotian cities should be free of Theban influence, and Epaminondas counters by asking whether the cities of Laconia should be free. Agesilaus, in anger (μετ’ ὀργῆς, 28.2), leaps up and asks the same question while Epaminondas gives the same answer. Agesilaus, now enraged (τραχέως ἔσχεν, 28.3, uses this as a pretext to erase the name of the Thebans from the treaty and declare war on them. This is presented in rather a different light from Xenophon’s account (Hell.

Spartan garrisons were driven out (Xen. Hell. 4.8.1; Diod. Sic.14.84.3–5). Yet to be fair, the Spartans were never known for their naval power, nor were they thought to be invincible in that area; but on land they had been virtually unbeatable, so the important moment is here rather than at Cnidus. ⁴⁰ See Georgiadou 1997: 153–60 for discussion of this digression; the quotation is from p. 156. For the ways in which Plutarch can construct sexual relations in positive ways see Stadter 1995: 229–33. ⁴¹ See Georgiadou 1996 for the close parallelism between Socrates and Epaminondas in the De gen. ⁴² See, e.g., Mor. 39b, 85b, 194b, 472d, 527b, 540e, 592f, 799e–f, 811b, 823d–e, 1098a, 1129c.

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6.3.3–20), where there is no mention of Epaminondas, and the Thebans originally sign on to the treaty but next day ask to sign on behalf of all Boeotia and at that point come into conflict with Agesilaus. Plutarch here, not surprisingly, highlights Epaminondas’ ‘panhellenic’ plea, and allows Epaminondas himself to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Spartans and Athenians, neither of whom was willing to relinquish their own subjects.⁴³ The dispute over the peace leads directly to Leuctra, Thebes’ shining moment.⁴⁴ Plutarch says that in his Epaminondas he recorded the ‘many grievous signs’ that preceded the battle of Leuctra (Ages. 28.6), and in the Agesilaus he notes that the Spartan king thought that all Hellas was on his side, but he had misinterpreted their mood because of his own anger (28.6–7). Presumably the ‘grievous signs’ indicated Spartan defeat, and included such events as the eyes falling out of the statue of Hiero the Spartan, the stars dedicated by Lysander after Aegospotami disappearing, and the statue of Lysander himself having its face covered over with overgrown shrubs and grass (Mor. 397e–f). That Life will almost certainly have included the story told in the Pelopidas of the daughters of Scedasus, treacherously ravished by the Spartans, demanding vengeance and warning the Spartans to be on their guard against ‘the Leuctrian wrath’ (τὸ Λευκτρικὸν μήνιμα, Pel. 20.7). These women Pelopidas saw in a dream, and their father Scedasus ordered Pelopidas to sacrifice an auburn-haired virgin to the goddess. Although the order seems harsh and the seers are divided about whether or not to carry it out, the situation is resolved when a filly comes into the camp and is recognized by Theocritus the seer as the ‘maiden’ referred to in the dream.⁴⁵ In the aftermath of the Theban victory Epaminondas and Pelopidas invade the Peloponnese and begin to detach Sparta’s allies from her. In the course of their invasion the Boeotarchs faced the expiration of their term; all the others wished to bring the army home and hand over command to their successors, but Epaminondas and Pelopidas encouraged their fellow-citizens to stay on and complete the task, and so they did. Plutarch tends to gloss over this extraconstitutional action by his heroes,⁴⁶ perhaps because their extended campaign brought about the unification of Arcadia and the liberation of Messenia, thus ⁴³ Good discussion of the antecedents to the conference and its diplomatic wrangling in Buckler 2003: 278–88; and good discussion of the differences between Xenophon’s and Plutarch’s accounts in Shipley 1997: 310–14. ⁴⁴ On this battle see Buckler 1980: 61–66; Cartledge 2020: 196–99. ⁴⁵ One wonders to what extent Plutarch is integrating Leuctra into the tradition of other great Greek battles when he recounts earlier human sacrifices (including Themistocles’ sacrifice of three young men before Salamis) which portended either success or failure: Pel. 21.2–6; for the examples there adduced see Georgiadou 1997: 166–67. At Mor. 774d (the spurious Amatorius) Pelopidas has a similar dream but there Scedasus orders him to sacrifice a white colt. ⁴⁶ This is even more noteworthy because in the Agesilaus Plutarch goes out of his way to praise Agesilaus’ immediate departure from Asia when summoned home by the ephors, even though his task was incomplete and he was on the verge of victory. Plutarch says that Agesilaus never did a nobler deed and that Sparta was blessed by the honour Agesilaus paid her in obeying her commands (Ages. 15.5–6).

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burnishing the Thebans’ reputation as freedom-lovers. He does, to be sure, discuss the trial they underwent for ‘extending’ their term but even this is mitigated by two factors. First, Plutarch claims that Epaminondas and Pelopidas’ opponents were motivated by jealousy, everyone else being admiring of their bravery and fortune (Pel. 25.1). Second, Plutarch paints their main opponent, the orator Menecleidas, in negative terms: he is ‘intemperate and malicious’ (ἀκόλαστος . . . καὶ κακοήθης τὸν τρόπον, Pel. 25.5) and his motivations are clearly disreputable, seeking to diminish the achievements of Epaminondas and Pelopidas by exaggerating the accomplishments of the otherwise undistinguished Charon. Brought to trial by Pelopidas for proposing an unconstitutional decree, Meneclaidas was fined and afterwards tried to stage a coup. Plutarch’s transitioning summation, ‘these matters have a certain bearing on the Life’,⁴⁷ has itself a certain disingenuousness, and artfully moves the focus away from Epaminondas and Pelopidas’ earlier unlawful actions. We may be seeing here that indulgence that Plutarch sometimes grants his heroes either because they have performed great deeds or because they display an abundance of spirit in a noble cause, or perhaps both. The events in the Peloponnese are followed by that series of incidents whereby the Thebans became embroiled in affairs in the north with Thessaly and Macedon. In the Pelopidas, Pelopidas is shown to be incorruptible and a reliable arbiter and judge, though he is unable to change the nature of the brutish Alexander of Pherae. Plutarch continues to emphasize the noble natures of both Epaminondas and Pelopidas in the story of the young Philip’s internment in Thebes: Philip attaches himself to Epaminondas because he recognizes the latter’s great gifts as a general, but Plutarch is quick to point out that this was only a small part of Epaminondas’ aretē, and Philip could not see the ‘restraint, justice, magnanimity, and gentleness, wherein Epaminondas was truly great’ (Pel. 26.8). When Pelopidas is a prisoner in Thessaly, he gradually leads Thebe, Alexander’s wife, to feel great disdain and anger towards her husband (Pel. 28.5–10), a detail which allows Pelopidas to have an indirect but important role in the later noble action of Thebe in liberating her own country from her tyrannical husband (to which Plutarch returns at the end of the Pelopidas). The peace conference called in summer of 367 sees Pelopidas and Ismenias as Theban ambassadors at the Persian court. Plutarch portrays Pelopidas’ proposals to the king—which were ‘more reliable than those of the Athenians and simpler than those of the Lacedaemonians’—as requiring that the Greeks should be free, the city of Messene should be inhabited, and the Thebans should be considered the king’s hereditary friends. Plutarch compares Pelopidas’ behaviour favourably with that of his fellow-ambassador Ismenias (who, when confronted with the need to do obeisance to the king, pretended to drop his ring), and especially Timagoras, ⁴⁷ Pel. 25.15: ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔχει τινὰ καὶ τοῦ βίου ἀποθεώρησιν, though the text is problematic; see Ziegler 1957–1971.

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who received numerous bribes from the king to acquiesce in the proposal and who, upon his return to Athens, was condemned to death (Artax. 22.8–12). In the aftermath of the conference, Plutarch ignores the Thebans’ failure to get the peace ratified and concentrates instead on those actions that will continue to portray the Thebans as liberators.⁴⁸ Chief amongst these, of course, were the liberation of Messenia and the establishment of Messene. Invited by the cities of the north who again were being harassed by Alexander, Pelopidas is only too ready to assist, and Plutarch marks the occasion by a comparison with the actions of the Athenians and Peloponnesians: More than anything else, however, the glory of the achievement invited him on, for he was ardently desirous, at a time when the Lacedaemonians were sending generals and governors to aid Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily, and the Athenians were taking Alexander’s pay and erecting a bronze statue of him as their benefactor, to show the Greeks that the Thebans alone were making expeditions for the relief of those whom tyrants oppressed, and were overthrowing in Greece those ruling houses which rested on violence and were contrary to the laws. (Pel. 31.6)

And even with the death of Pelopidas, Plutarch returns to the theme of freedom, when the Thessalians, in mourning and eager to escort the body, tell the Thebans that while the Thebans have lost a brave commander, ‘we have lost both that and our freedom’ (33.8–9). His funeral rites are contrasted with those of despots, which were ‘enacted under strong compulsion’ (34.3) whereas Pelopidas while ‘performing a deed of high valour which aimed at a tyrant’s life, died in defence of the freedom of Thessaly’ (ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Θεσσαλῶν ἐλευθερίας, 34.7). And it can hardly be coincidence that the Pelopidas ends with the killing of Alexander by Thebe and her brothers (35), the final ‘posthumous’ actions of Pelopidas.⁴⁹ Pelopidas’ death in 364 was quickly followed by the battle of Mantinea in 362. Again the loss of the Epaminondas deprives us of what would have been Plutarch’s fullest treatment of the battle. Nonetheless, we can pick up some clues from the Agesilaus where Plutarch notes that Epaminondas had already routed the Spartan van (τῶν πρώτων, Ages. 35.1) when the Spartan Anticrates ran him through with a spear or a sword; Spartan fear of Epaminondas was so great that Anticrates was given excessive honours and gifts (note ὑπερηγάπησαν, Ages. 35.2), and his descendants were given rights of ateleia, all the way down to Plutarch’s time.

⁴⁸ For Thebes’ failure to enforce the peace see Xen. Hell. 7.1.39–40, with Buckler 2003: 327–33. ⁴⁹ For Plutarch’s tendency to continue a narrative beyond the subject’s death, especially when vengeance is effected, Pelling 1997b; Georgiadou 1997: 222.

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Thebes and Macedon Plutarch’s treatment of the final phase of classical Theban history, which was dominated by Macedon in the persons of both Philip and Alexander, must be reconstructed primarily from the Demosthenes and Alexander, and from occasional remarks in the Moralia. Demosthenes’ close alliance with Thebes is already indicated by the story told early in his Life in which Demosthenes, answering Lamachus of Myrina’s encomium of Philip and Alexander and concomitant criticism of Thebes and Olynthus, ‘came forward and rehearsed with historical proofs all the benefits which the people of Thebes and Chalcidice had conferred upon Greece’ (Dem. 9.1). Demosthenes is keen to win over the Thebans, ‘at that time the most renowned in arms in Greece’,⁵⁰ to Athens’ side against Philip, but this was not easy since the Thebans themselves were frightened because of what they had suffered in the Sacred War. Demosthenes’ oratory, nonetheless, made them enthusiastic ‘toward the honourable’ (πρὸς τὸ καλόν, 18.4). Demosthenes’ mastery was such that he managed the assemblies of the Boeotians no less than those of the Athenians (18.3). In the lead-up to Chaeronea Demosthenes reminds the Thebans of Epaminondas’ bravery and the Athenians of Pericles’—but to no avail, of course (20.1). Alexander, present at the battle, was the first to break the ranks of the Sacred Band (Alex. 9.2).⁵¹ At the death of Philip, the Thebans and Athenians make preparation to go to war (Dem. 23.2), but Alexander quickly extinguished their hopes. Having put down the revolts of the Triballi, he swiftly descended into southern Greece. When Alexander camps before Thebes, he demands the surrender of Phoenix and Prothytes, and proclaims an amnesty for those who would come over to his side. The Thebans make counter-demands for Philotas and Antipater and make a counter-proclamation that ‘those who wished to free Greece should array themselves with them’ (τοὺς τὴν Ἑλλάδα συνελευθεροῦν τάττεσθαι μετ’ αὐτῶν, Alex. 11.8). In the battle itself Plutarch emphasizes that the Thebans, abandoned by their allies, were left to fight alone and did so against a much larger force ‘with a spirit and valour beyond their power’ (ὑπὲρ δύναμιν ἀρετῇ καὶ προθυμίᾳ, Alex. 11.9; cf. Dem. 23.2). In the aftermath, of course, Alexander razed the city and sold all except the priests, xenoi, and descendants of Pindar, into slavery (Alex. 11.12). Alexander did this, Plutarch says, in order to terrify the Greeks and also because he wished to gratify his allies, the Phocians and Plataeans. This was a deed of the most sullen savagery (ὠμοτάτῳ καὶ σκυθρωποτάτῳ, Alex. 13.2) and one wonders if the story told of Alexander’s remorse in the Sayings of Kings and Commanders (Mor. 181b) might contain genuine Plutarch material: there we learn that in his ⁵⁰ Dem. 17.5: τότε τῶν Ἑλλήνων εὐδοκιμοῦντας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις. ⁵¹ The battle of Chaeronea is treated more fully in Bowie’s chapter (1) in this volume.

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subsequent battles Alexander would ransom any Greek mercenaries whom he captured fighting against him, except for the Thebans whom he would dismiss unharmed because it was through his agency, he said, that they had neither city nor territory. In connection with Alexander’s conquest of Thebes, one cannot pass over the story Plutarch tells of Timocleia. She is identified as the sister of one Theagenes who had fought nobly at Chaeronea, and Plutarch tells her story twice, briefly in the Alexander (Alex. 12), and with somewhat more detail in On the Virtues of Women (24, 259d–60d).⁵² In both cases Timocleia gets vengeance on the man who violated her. In the Alexander, the unnamed man, identified only as a Thracian, leans over a well where Timocleia had said she stored her gold and silver, and she pushes him in, casting many stones upon him and killing him. Brought before Alexander, she answers calmly and fearlessly that she is a sister of Theagenes who fell at Chaeronea in defence of Greek liberty, and Alexander, amazed at her actions, bids her depart freely with her children. The longer version adds some particular details (the Thracian is named Alexander) and attributes to Timocleia a deceptive speech and attitude, such that the Thracian climbs down the well, and once he is at the bottom, Timocleia and her maids throw down stones. In this version, she tells Alexander that she has no wish to escape death, and the most sympathetic of Alexander’s men begin to weep. The king, however, felt that she was too great for pity, and not only does he set her and her children free, he orders his men to make sure that no similar insult be made against any noble house. The story is, as has been noted, proof of ‘the mastery of virtue over fortune’, but it also is a story that exalts and preserves the dignity of an entire house.⁵³ As Plutarch portrays it, Thebes, even at the nadir of her fortunes, could produce great figures who embodied virtue and spoke the language of Greek freedom.

⁵² She is also mentioned at Con. Praec. 145f and Non posse 1093c. The story came originally from Aristobulus: see FGrH 139 F 2. ⁵³ See Stadter 1965: 112 for the first observation, Chapman 2011: 126 for the second.

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11 Plutarch’s Northern Greek Cities Katerina Panagopoulou

This chapter offers a different perspective on the debate about Plutarch’s views on the Northern Greeks by focusing on Plutarch’s representations of civic life in their cities.¹ The skilful creation and manipulation of images of traditional city states such as Athens and Rome, as well as Sparta, Delphi, Chaeronea, and Thespiai, was a subject of great interest to L. Mestrius Plutarchus of Chaeronea.² His writings show that Plutarch was obviously fully aware of the code of behaviour of Greek statesmen and of civic developments through time in a number of key cities, such as Athens and, maybe less so, Rome, where he is known to have lectured and taught.³ His civic scope may have expanded to include examples from Egypt and Italy, through trips to the respective areas. But a kaleidoscope of the cities emerging from Plutarch’s opera would indeed be incomplete without reference to city clusters beyond those prominent suspects. Plutarch’s attitude to cities lying in the Greek periphery and diverging from mainstream Greek civic life would presumably shed critical light on his views on the nature of contemporary Greek cities, versus their classical ancestors, in the new political and social environment promoted by Rome; or his attitude to marginal states might highlight any ulterior motives in making such extensive reference to aspects of Greek civic life when his focus is on the major cities. In this context, the cities of northern Greece offer a productive case study. In his article ‘Οι αρχαίοι Μακεδόνες στον Πλούταρχο’, Anastasios Nikolaidis argued that Plutarch was not necessarily anti-Macedonian and that he did not doubt that the Macedonians formed part of the Greek world. According to Nikolaidis, Plutarch’s opinion about the Macedonians’ Greekness should be

¹ The Lives of Plutarch which offer material for this chapter comprise: Demosthenes, Phocio, Alexander, Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Aratos, Cleomenes, Philopoemen, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, Aemilius Paulus, Caesar, Pompey. The Teubner edition has been used for the text (ed. Ziegler and Gärtner); translations have been adapted from the Loeb versions. ² On Plutarch of Chaeronea, see, for instance, Bowie in this volume, Chapter 1; Ziegler 1949; Hauck 1893. ³ On Plutarch’s perception of Athens, see Athanassaki, Pelling, Duff, Kavoulaki, and Leão in this volume (Chapters 18, 6, 8, 7 and 9, respectively); Dryden and Clough 1934; Ferrarese 1974. On Plutarch’s references to Rome, see Desideri in this volume (Chapter 3); Boulogne 1992; Hillard 1987; Swain 1987; Desideri 1986, with earlier bibliography; Dryden 1934. Katerina Panagopoulou, Plutarch’s Northern Greek Cities In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0012

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assessed taking into account both the literary genre of his work (biography, epideictic oratory) and his sources, and their respective aims.⁴ Nikolaidis also attributed the Greeks’ antipathy towards the Macedonians in particular, compared to their views of other Greeks such as the Epirotes and the Thessalians, to Macedonian attempts to conquer the southern Greek cities.⁵ Following Nikolaidis’ approach, I shall focus on Plutarch’s attitude towards the Northern Greek cities in order to investigate any treatment of northern cities different from that of their southern counterparts. For the purposes of this chapter, the phrase ‘Northern Greek cities’ will be more broadly defined, to include city states in the regions north of Boeotia: that is, moving from north to south, Thracian and Macedonian cities, Thessalian cities, cities in Epirus, and cities in Central Greece. Before looking at Plutarch’s references to individual cities, preliminary comments on some distinctive features all these cities share are in order. One common feature is that they joined ethnic/communal political entities, i.e. koina or Leagues; some of them functioned under the auspices of a monarch.⁶ Moreover, as the borders of kingdoms shifted quite frequently from the late Classical period through the Empire, regional definitions were inevitably rather blurred. The ‘land of the Macedones’, i.e. the region which the Macedonian state occupied at the time of Philip II, called ‘Greater Macedonia’, is for practical reasons separated into a) a western part, comprising the so-called Old Kingdom, regarded as Macedonia’s cradle, and upper Macedonia, i.e. the territories to the West of the Axios river, and b) an eastern section, comprising the more recently acquired territories between Axios and the Philippi plain. The Old Kingdom was settled almost exclusively by Macedonians at least since the end of the Archaic period, while the earlier inhabitants of the lands of eastern Macedonia and Thrace which were added to the kingdom under Philip II, the so-called ‘New Lands’, remained in their territories when these were integrated into the Macedonian kingdom.⁷ The Macedonian kings also owned external possessions south of the Peneios, Mt Olympos and the Kambounia mountains, west of Mt Pindos and lake Lychnitis, north of the present Greek frontier and east of the Strymon valley.⁸ Macedonian cities were scattered through the four administrative districts termed merides (μερίδες), which followed the natural vertical borders set by mountains or rivers, and which allegedly dated back to the reign of Philip II: Upper Macedonia (between Mt Pindos and Mt Bermion), Bottia (between ⁴ Nikolaidis 1996. ⁵ Nikolaidis 1996: 826. ⁶ Hatzopoulos 2003a. On the koina and ethne from the early fourth century  onwards, see, for instance, MacKill 2014; Beck 1997: 20–27, 251–44; Beck 2003: 183–87. ⁷ Hatzopoulos and Paschidis 2004: 794–95. ⁸ By the time of Alexander III, for instance, the Macedonian state (‘the land of the Macedones’) ranged from the foothills of the Pierian mountains to the region between Mt. Pindos and the Strymon valley, and between the river Peneios and into what is now part of the modern Greek frontier: Hammond 1989: 111; Hammond and Griffith 1979: 652–55; map 9.

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Mt. Bermion and the Axios river), Amphaxitis (between the Axios river and the modern Mt Bertiskos), Paroreia, and Parastrymonia, also known as the First Meris (between Mt. Bertiskos and the Philippi plain).⁹ The cities in this wider area belong to two categories: the so-called cities ‘of Macedonian type’, were subordinate to the king; one of their officials, the ἐπιστάτης τῆς πόλεως, possibly along with subordinates, served as the king’s representative in these cities. Those of ‘Greek type’ were in the main founded by southern Greek cities and were at some point occupied by the Macedonian king.¹⁰ In the Roman period, a chief magistrate entitled ‘πολιτάρχης’ is identified as a primary official in several poleis.¹¹ Members of Macedonian cities participated in the koinon of the Macedonians, just as members of Thessalian and Epirote cities formed part of the Thessalian and the Epirote koinon, respectively.¹² The Aetolians, on the other hand, pioneered in founding one of the two main Hellenistic confederacies, the socalled Aetolian League.¹³ Cities in Central Greece were also united in smaller entities, termed Kοινά. We now turn to Plutarch to review the information on Northern Greek cities that we find in the Lives. The bulk of information concerning Northern Greek cities derives from the Lives of Theseus, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Phocio, Alexander, Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Aratus, Cleomenes, Philopoemen, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, Aemilius Paulus, Caesar, and Pompey, with only minor and rather scattered references in the rest of Plutarch’s work. This chapter focuses on these works and surveys the evidence with the following questions in mind: 1. Which Northern Greek cities does Plutarch mention? Did these cities become well known in Plutarch’s time or were they renowned in the Classical period? 2. Does Plutarch offer an accurate report of public space in the respective cities? Does his information coincide with the known archaeological evidence? ⁹ On the division of Macedonia into merides, see Liv. 45.18.1–5. Hatzopoulos 1996: 227–60 attributes this administrative innovation and the survival/continued use of earlier regional names in their respective realms to king Philip II. Hatzopoulos 2012 refutes the doubts on the existence of the merides cast by Juhel 2011; the presence of the administrative term meris in the early Hellenistic east, i.e. in the Seleucid satrapy of ‘Syria and Phoenicia’ (Aperghis 2004: 271), might also indicate the prior existence of such an administrative division in Macedonia. The distinction between rural and urban settlements between the Bronze Age and the fourth century  is archaeologically visible: pastoral populations were eventually settled in plains at a time when large-scale urbanisation was also taking place: Hatzopoulos 1996: 77–123. ¹⁰ On cities in Macedonia, see Hatzopoulos 2003b; Hatzopoulos 1996: 220 (αἱ κατὰ Μακεδονίαν πόλεις - αἱ πόλεις Μακεδόνων—civitates Macedoniae), 357–59, 365; Hammond 1989: 9–12, 93–95, 160–65, 386–91; Kanatsoulis 1955–1956; 1961–1963; 1964–1965. ¹¹ On magistrates in Macedonian cities (including the epistatai), see Hatzopoulos 1996: 149–153, 372, 374, 381, n. 3, 387, n. 1, 427–29, 486; on the politarchai, see also Kanatsoulis 1956. ¹² On Macedones, see Hatzopoulos 1996: 114 n. 5, 203, 219, 261 n. 3. ¹³ On the Aetolian League, see (e.g.) Scholten 2000; Grainger 1999.

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3. Are any civic magistrates mentioned? 4. Does Plutarch mention political, social, religious, cultural, and philosophical activities in these cities? If he does, where does he place emphasis? If he is silent about civic life in these cities, can we discern a reason for his silence? As the sporadic references to specific cities do not encourage intertextual readings, I shall review briefly only the key examples in order to address these questions and to offer an outline of Plutarch’s representation of northern cities. In the following discussion, I follow a geographical sequence of the cities lying within the natural boundaries set by the region’s main rivers, Hebros, Nestos, Strymon, Axios, Haliacmon, moving from east to west.

Thrace and Macedonia Between the Hebros and the Nestos Rivers: Byzantium, Perinthos, Samothrace Starting from Thrace, the siege of Byzantium and Perinthos by Philip II in 341–0  are only briefly mentioned in the Life of Demosthenes (Dem. 17.2–3); Plutarch makes it explicit that the two cities were saved thanks to the intervention of Demosthenes, who convinced the Athenian demos to dispatch forces to support them.¹⁴ Also, after Perseus’ defeat at Pydna, Samothrace was the place where Aemilius Paulus’s admiral, Gnaeus Octavius, anchored and prevented Perseus from escaping by sea, though he enjoyed asylum.¹⁵

Between the Nestos and the Strymon Rivers: Amphipolis and Galepsos It is remarkable that Plutarch mentions Amphipolis in the region of Bisaltia, famous in the Classical period, only in relation to Brasidas’s expedition of 424  and to the activities of Perseus and Aemilius Paulus in 168/7 .¹⁶ It is at Amphipolis and at Galepsos, in the region Pieris, where king Perseus tried to get back a gold plate from Cretan mercenaries, promising them money in return.¹⁷ ¹⁴ Dem. 17.2–3. ¹⁵ Aem. 26.1. ¹⁶ On Amphipolis, see Loukopoulou 2012a; Flensted-Jensen 2004, 819–20 (n. 553). On Brasidas’s expedition to Amphipolis, see, for instance, Lyc. 25.5; Apophth. Lac. 208b–42d. ¹⁷ Aem. 23.9–10. It is unclear from the text which of the two cities named ‘Galepsos’ is implied here, the Thasian colony in Thrace, or the one in Sithonia; Perseus’s flight to Samothrace from there renders the former option more probable. Liedmeier 1935:196, identifies this city with that on the Strymon, not mentioning the second homonymous city. On Galepsos in Thrace, see (e.g.) Loukopoulou 2004: 861 (n. 631). On that in Sithonia, see Flensted-Jensen 2004: 827–88 (n. 571).

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He never gave them the money he promised, but took refuge as a suppliant in the temple of the Dioscuri in Samothrace instead.¹⁸ Aemilius Paulus received a most favourable omen during a sacrifice at Amphipolis four days after his defeat of Perseus at Pydna (168 ): a thunderbolt setting the altar on fire and consuming the sacrifice was taken as a sign of divine favour and good fortune for the Roman general (Aem. 24.2–6).¹⁹

Between the Strymon and the Axios Rivers: Cassandreia, Torone, and Stageira Plutarch makes only minor reference to the important city of Cassandreia in the Chalcidice peninsula, newly founded by Cassander: it is there that Demetrius took refuge in 284  and where Phila, his wife, drank poison and died, unable to suffer this new, unfavourable swing of tyche for Demetrius, the most afflicted of kings (τλημονέστατον βασιλέων).²⁰ Torone is mentioned for its harbour.²¹A brief reference is also made to the synoikism of the city of Stageira, the birthplace of Aristotle, in Alex. 7.2–5.²²

Between the Axios and the Haliacmon Rivers: The Old Macedonian Kingdom Dion, Pydna, Methone, Beroia, Mieza, Edessa, and Pella Turning to the old Macedonian kingdom, i.e. the Macedonian lands before Philip’s expansion to Chalcidice and, further east, to Thrace, we find mentions of seven cities in Plutarch’s works: Dion, Pydna, Methone, Beroia, Mieza, Edessa, and Pella.²³ The first three belong to the region known as Pieria, while the last four belong to the region Bottia. Dion in Pieria, the religious centre of Macedonia at least from the fifth century  and probably much earlier (Diod. Sic. 17.16.3), ¹⁸ Aem. 23.9–10; on Perseus’s flight to Samothrace, see Aem. 26.1. ¹⁹ Aem. 24.2–6. ²⁰ Demetr. 45.1. Cassandreia was founded by Cassander, ruler of Macedonia between 316 and 297 , on the site of the Korinthian colony Poteidaia: see, for instance, Lauffer 1989: 307, 563–64. On Poteidaia, see Psoma 2012; Flensted-Jensen 2004: 838–89 (n. 598). ²¹ Παροιμίαι αἷς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς ἐχρῶντο, 1.91.1–2. ²² Alex. 7.2–3. On ancient Stageira, see Loukopoulou 2012c; Flensted-Jensen 2004: 844–45 (n. 613); Lauffer 1989: 636. ²³ On Beroia, see Loukopoulou 2012b; Hatzopoulos and Paschidis 2004: 799–800 (n. 533); BrocasDeflassieux 1999. Edessa: Wood and Heal 2012. Pella: On Pella, see, for instance, Worthington 2012; Lilimbaki-Akamati and Akamatis 2003; Hatzopoulos and Paschidis 2004: 804–5 (n. 543); Siganidou and Lilimbaki-Akamati 2003; Petsas 1978. Mieza: Hatzopoulos and Paschidis 2004: 804–805 (n. 542). Petsas 1976: 577. Dion: Michaleas 2012; Hatzopoulos and Paschidis 2004: 800–801 (n. 534). Pydna: Hatzopoulos and Paschidis 2004: 806 (n. 544).

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was the scene of the meeting between Alexander, Cassander’s youngest heir, and Demetrius Poliorcetes on the eve of the former’s attempt to appropriate the Macedonian throne in 294 ; the last act of this incident took place in the Thessalian city Larissa.²⁴ Plutarch eloquently draws attention to the theatricality of Demetrius’ gesture, when he prompts his bodyguards to massacre Alexander and those of his friends who came to his aid: ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς Λάρισσαν ἧκον, αὖθις ἀλλήλοις ἐπήγγελλον ἑστιάσεις ἀντεπιβουλεύοντες· ὃ δὴ μάλιστα τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ὑποχείριον ἐποίησε τῷ Δημητρίῳ. φυλάττεσθαι γὰρ ὀκνῶν, ὡς μὴ κἀκεῖνον ἀντιφυλάττεσθαι διδάξῃ, παθὼν ἔφθασε, † δρᾶν μέλλοντος αὐτοῦ μὴ διαφυγεῖν ἐκεῖνον †, ὃ ἐμηχανᾶτο. κληθεὶς γὰρ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἦλθε πρὸς τὸν Δημήτριον. ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἐξανέστη μεταξὺ δειπνῶν, φοβηθεὶς ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος συνεξανέστη καὶ κατὰ πόδας αὐτῷ πρὸς τὰς θύρας συνηκολούθει. γενόμενος οὖν ὁ Δημήτριος πρὸς ταῖς θύραις καὶ κατὰ τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ δορυφόρους καὶ τοῦτο μόνον εἰπών· ‘κόπτε τὸν ἑπόμενον’, αὐτὸς μὲν ὑπεξῆλθεν, ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ὑπ’ ἐκείνων κατεκόπη καὶ τῶν φίλων οἱ προσβοηθοῦντες . . . When they arrived at Larissa, they once more exchanged invitations to entertainment, and each plotted against the life of the other; this, more than anything else, put Alexander into the power of Demetrius. For, as he was slow in taking measures of precaution, in order not to teach Demetrius also to take countermeasures, he managed to meet the doom he was himself devising (since he delayed measures to prevent the other from escaping). He was invited to dinner and went to Demetrius’s premises. But when he (i.e. Demetrius) rose from table before supper was over, Alexander, filled with fear, rose up also and followed him close upon his heels towards the door. Demetrius then, on reaching the door where his body guards stood, said only this: ‘Smite the one who follows me’ and quietly went out himself, while Alexander was cut down by those (i.e. the guards), together with those of his friends who had come to his aid . . . . (Demetr. 36.5–6 (Loeb))

The major site of the definitive battle between Perseus and L. Aemilius Paulus, Pydna, is only mentioned as a departure point for Perseus retreating to Pella after that battle (Aem. 23.1–2).²⁵ While a fight between Perseus’ horsemen and footmen was raging, the defeated king is beautifully presented here by our author as turning his horse off the road, holding it in front of him, so that he might not be conspicuous, carrying his diadem in his hands, dismounting from his horse and leading him along, only to be abandoned by his companions, who, Plutarch says, ‘had more fear of Perseus’ cruelty than of the enemy’ (23.5). Two interesting incidents dated to the period of the rivalry between Pyrrhus and Demetrius for the Macedonian throne, i.e. between 294 and 287 , allegedly ²⁴ On Larissa, see West 2012; Decourt, Nielsen and Helly 2004: 695–97 (n. 401). ²⁵ Aem. 23.1–2: see n. 30.

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took place in the cradle of the Antigonid dynasty at Beroia (Bottia). They illustrate respectively the view of the winner, Pyrrhus, prior to his conquest of Beroia and that of the defeated, Demetrius, immediately after that; they appear in two different Lives, Pyrrhus (11.1–6) and Demetrius (44.3–7): in the first passage, from the Life of Pyrrhus, Plutarch reports that on the eve of waging a critical battle against Beroia, Pyrrhus dreamt that he was called by Alexander the Great lying on a bed, and that Alexander himself promised to help him in the battlefield: he underlined that his name alone would help Pyrrhus, and, mounting a Nisaean horse, Alexander led the way: Ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον οἱ βασιλεῖς γράφοντες, ἅμα καὶ δι’ ἑαυτῶν ἔτι μέλλοντα καὶ παρασκευαζόμενον τὸν Δημήτριον ἐκίνουν. Πτολεμαῖος μὲν γὰρ ἐπιπλεύσας μεγάλῳ στόλῳ τὰς Ἑλληνίδας ἀφίστη πόλεις, Λυσίμαχος δὲ τὴν ἄνω Μακεδονίαν ἐκ Θρᾴκης ἐμβαλὼν ἐπόρθει. Πύρρος δὲ τούτοις ἅμα συνεξαναστὰς ἐπὶ Βέροιαν ἤλαυνε, προσδοκῶν, ὅπερ συνέβη, Δημήτριον ὑπαντιάζοντα Λυσιμάχῳ τὴν κάτω χώραν ἀπολείψειν ἔρημον. ἐκείνης δὲ τῆς νυκτὸς ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου καλεῖσθαι τοῦ μεγάλου, καὶ παραγενόμενος κλινήρη μὲν αὐτὸν ἰδεῖν, λόγων δὲ χρηστῶν τυχεῖν καὶ φιλοφροσύνης, ἐπαγγελλομένου προθύμως βοηθήσειν. αὐτοῦ δὲ τολμήσαντος εἰπεῖν ‘καὶ πῶς ἂν ὦ βασιλεῦ νοσῶν δυνατὸς εἴης ἐμοὶ βοηθεῖν;’ ‘αὐτῷ’ φάναι ‘τῷ ὀνόματι’, καὶ περιβάντα Νισαῖον ἵππον ἡγεῖσθαι. ταύτην ἰδὼν τὴν ὄψιν ἐπερρώσθη, τάχει δὲ χρησάμενος καὶ διαδραμὼν τὰ μεταξύ, καταλαμβάνει τὴν Βέροιαν . . . Such letters the kings kept sending to Pyrrhus, and at the same time on their own part they assailed Demetrius while he was still delaying and preparing. Ptolemy, on the one hand, sailed up with a great fleet and tried to bring the Greek cities to revolt, while Lysimachus, having invaded into upper Macedonia from Thrace, besieged it. And Pyrrhus, having revolted at the same time as these, attempted to march against Beroia, hoping, as indeed happened, that Demetrius, who was going to confront Lysimachus, would leave the lower country deserted. That night Pyrrhus thought during his sleep that he was called by Alexander the Great, and that when he arrived he found him (i.e. Alexander) lying on a bed but was met with a kindly speech and friendly treatment from him, promising that he was ready to help. And when he (i.e. Pyrrhus) ventured to ask, ‘And how, O King, being sick are you capable of helping me?’, the king replied ‘(I can help you) through my name itself ’ and mounting a Nisaean horse he led the way. After seeing this vision he took courage, resorted to speed, rapidly covered the intervening territory, and captured Beroea.

In the second passage, Demetr. 44.3–7, the announcement of the conquest of Beroia triggered lamentations and tears in Demetrius’ camp, along with wrath against their leader, and the soldiers wished to go over to Demetrius’ opponent, Lysimachus. Demetrius then, opting to side with Pyrrhus rather than with his fellow-countryman who shared with the Macedonians Alexander’s tradition,

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pitched his camp next to that of Lysimachus; but his soldiers bid Demetrius go away and save himself, arguing that they were tired of waging war in support of his luxurious way of living. Demetrius then went to his tent, and, as if he had been an actor and not a real king, he put on a dark cloak in place of his stage-robes of royalty and stole away unnoticed. Most of the soldiers at once fell to pillaging and tearing down his tent and fought with one another for the spoils; but Pyrrhus took possession of the camp, putting an end to the reign of Demetrius in Macedonia in 287 . This last act of this drama is described by Plutarch as follows: ἀγγέλλεται δ’ αὐτῷ Πύρρος ᾑρηκὼς πόλιν Βέροιαν . . . ὡς γὰρ ἐγγὺς ἐλθὼν τῷ Πύρρῳ παρεστρατοπέδευσεν . . . τέλος δὲ τῷ Δημητρίῳ τολμήσαντές τινες προσελθεῖν, ἐκέλευον ἀπιέναι καὶ σῴζειν αὑτόν· ἀπειρηκέναι γὰρ ἤδη Μακεδόνας ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνου τρυφῆς πολεμοῦντας. οὗτοι μετριώτατοι τῶν λόγων ἐφαίνοντο τῷ Δημητρίῳ πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἄλλων τραχύτητα, καὶ παρελθὼν ἐπὶ σκηνήν, ὥσπερ οὐ βασιλεύς, ἀλλ’ ὑποκριτής, μεταμφιέννυται χλαμύδα φαιὰν ἀντὶ τῆς τραγικῆς ἐκείνης, καὶ διαλαθὼν ὑπεχώρησεν. ὁρμησάντων δὲ τῶν πλείστων εὐθὺς ἐφ’ ἁρπαγὴν καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαμαχομένων καὶ τὴν σκηνὴν διασπώντων, ἐπιφανεὶς ὁ Πύρρος ἐκράτησεν αὐτοβοεὶ καὶ κατέσχε τὸ στρατόπεδον. καὶ γίνεται πρὸς Λυσίμαχον αὐτῷ συμπάσης Μακεδονίας νέμησις, ἑπταετίαν ὑπὸ Δημητρίου βεβαίως ἀρχθείσης. It was announced to him that Pyrrhus had taken Beroia . . . For he came as close as he could to Pyrrhus and pitched his camp by that of Pyrrhus . . . and finally certain soldiers dared go to Demetrius, prompting him to leave and to save himself; for, they argued, the Macedonians were tired of fighting for his luxurious way of living. This language appeared very moderate to Demetrius, compared with the harshness of the rest; so he went to his tent, and, as if he had been an actor rather than a real king, put on a dark cloak in place of that dramatic royal one, and went away unnoticed. Most of the soldiers at once fell to pillaging and tearing down his tent, and fought with one another for the spoils; but Pyrrhus came up, prevailed without a blow, and conquered the camp. Hence the entire Macedonia was divided between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus, after Demetrius had reigned there securely for seven years.²⁶

It is remarkable that, in describing the rivalry between Demetrius and Pyrrhus in conquering Beroia, a city directly connected to the Antigonid dynasty, whose rightful descendant was Demetrius, Plutarch presents Pyrrhus as dreaming of Alexander, who finally showed him the way to victory. On the other hand, Demetrius, in reaction to the unease his army felt at the conquest of Beroia by ²⁶ It is by this very passage, Demetr. 44.3–7, showing Demetrius’s reaction to his soldiers’ reluctance to support him any longer, that Cavafy was reputedly inspired to write a poem entitled ‘King Dimitrios’.

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Pyrrhus, resorts to a tragic gesture: he changes clothes and leaves unnoticed. Events are staged in a tragic way: in fact, Demetrius’ rival, Pyrrhus, is supported in the conquest of Beroia by Alexander III himself, even though Demetrius, being a member of the Antigonid family, claims direct descent from Beroia. It thus appears that, ultimately, Pyrrhus owes the conquest of Beroia to Alexander’s support. Last but not least, there is only a minor reference to the school of Aristotle at the Nymphaion in the area of Mieza in the Life of Alexander.²⁷ Further north, on the borders with the region Almopia, the city of Edessa is mentioned as the strategical site where Pyrrhus had settled his camp, but Lysimachus fell upon and mastered his provision trains, thus leaving Pyrrhus in dire straits (Pyrrh. 12.6–7).²⁸ Plutarch reports that Pyrrhus then upbraided the leader of the Macedonians because they had chosen a foreigner as their master, a man whose ancestors were not Greek, and were throwing Alexander’s friends out of the country. Even though Pyrrhus’s argument was essentially not based on real facts, for Lysimachus was one of Alexander’s close friends, the king of Epirus managed to win over many soldiers; still, he abandoned Macedonia with all his forces.²⁹ Plutarch cogently concludes from that that Hellenistic kings ought not to accuse soldiers of shifting sides, for it is the kings themselves that the soldiers imitated in unfaithfulness and treachery. The departure of Pyrrhus’ army from Edessa is reported slightly differently in Demetr. 43.1–2, where Demetrius himself is credited for driving Pyrrhus away from Macedonia easily, and for making an agreement with him. Plutarch notes that Demetrius was reluctant to continue his conflict with Pyrrhus, which diverted him from his main goal, i.e. the recovery of his father’s entire realm. One might have expected Plutarch to have focused more closely on the capital of the Macedonian kingdom, Pella, which hosted the main royal administrative and military operations of the entire kingdom.³⁰ The prominence of this city over its Macedonian counterparts is archaeologically confirmed: its rectangular, fourth-century wall and late fourth century Hippodamean civic grid plan, a palatial complex occupying the acropolis, the spectacular agora (hosting the city archive) surrounded with stoas, mansions with most impressive frescoes, and a large late fourth century tholos, probably a heroon of Heracles used as bouleuterion, along with sanctuaries and a theatre, corroborate its reputation as μεγίστη τῶν ἐκ Μακεδονίας πόλεων (Xen. Hell. 5.2.13).³¹ We would expect Plutarch to deliver a most skilful presentation of this particular city; but his actual delivery ultimately fails our highest expectations. He seems to be surprised that Poliorcetes fell ill at Pella during his stay in Macedonia in 288  (Demetr. 43.1) or that Perseus retreated from Pydna to this city subsequent to his major defeat in

²⁷ Alex. 7.4. ²⁸ Pyrrh. 12.9–12. ²⁹ Cf. Demetr. 44. ³⁰ On the transfer of Demetrius’s navy to the Pella area, see also Demetr. 43.3–4. On Perseus’s fleet from Pydna to Pella, see Aem. 23.1–2. ³¹ On Pella, see n. 23. On the city’s grid plan, see Siganidou 1987.

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168  (Aem. 23.1–2). In a passage describing the management of the 500-ship fleet by Demetrius Poliorcetes in Demetr. 43.3–4, what did Plutarch mean by mentioning the establishment of keels around Pella (Demetr. 43.3), Piraeus, Corinth, and Chalcis, as Pella was not a site by the seashore at the time? It is since the time of Alexander III that the distance between the city and the land increased, on alluvial deposits of the rivers Haliacmon, Axios, and Gallikos. This suggests that Plutarch had not fully mastered the local topography.³²

Thessaly Demetrias, Crannon, Gomphi-Philippopolis, Pharsalus Turning to the south of Macedonia, five Thessalian cities are mentioned by name in Plutarch’s work: firstly, in the region Magnesia, after the declaration of the freedom of Greek cities by Titus Quinctius Flamininus, the city Demetrias, named after its founder, Poliorcetes, is one of the three cities in which the ten advisers, dispatched from the Senate to Titus, insisted on the Romans maintaining garrisons as a safeguard against Antiochus; the Aetolians prompted Titus to free these cities, i.e. Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, from garrisons; following Philip V, they called these cities ‘shackles of Greece’ (πέδας τῆς Ἑλλάδος: Flam. 10.2).³³ In the region Pelasgiotis, a critical battle in August 322  between the Greeks and the army of Alexander’s general Craterus took place in Crannon (Phoc. 26.1–2).³⁴ But the bulk of information on Thessalian cities, as one would expect, is associated with the conflict between Caesar and Pompey in the mid-first century : Caesar conquered Gomphi-Philippopolis, a city at the region Hestiaiotis, and fed his army there (Caes. 41.3).³⁵ While the two armies had camped at the plain of Pharsalus in 48 , Pompey dreamt that he was at a theatre, applauded by the Romans (Caes. 42.1); at the other camp, during the morning watch, a great light shone out above Caesar’s camp, and darted down upon the camp of Pompey; allegedly Caesar claimed to have seen it himself, as he was visiting those on guardduty. As at daybreak the scouts reported that they saw many shields moving to

³² Girtzy 2011: 39 argues that the deposits of the rivers Haliacmon, Axios, and Gallikos resulted in Pella and Nea Nikomedia being distant from the sea during the first and second centuries . Girtzy 2001:120–21, on the other hand, assumes from this very passage in Dem. 43.3 that Pella was a major port at the time of Demetrius II, either being immediately by the seashore or through the river Loudias, to the south of Phakos, where lay the royal treasury. But the absence of any corroborating evidence apart from Plutarch’s passage, paired with this ancient author’s dubious knowledge of Macedonian topography, weakens this assumption. ³³ Flam. 10.2. Ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ δέκα πρέσβεις οὓς ἡ σύγκλητος ἔπεμψε τῷ Τίτῳ συνεβούλευον, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους Ἕλληνας ἐλευθεροῦν, Κόρινθον δὲ καὶ Χαλκίδα καὶ Δημητριάδα διατηρεῖν ἐμφρούρους ἕνεκα τῆς π ρὸς Ἀντίοχον ἀσφαλείας [ . . . ]. ³⁴ Phoc. 26.1–3: On Crannon, see Decourt, Nielsen, Helly 2004: 694–95 (n. 400). ³⁵ Caes. 41.6–8. On Gomphi—Philippopolis, see Decourt, Nielsen, Helly 2004: 692–93 n. 396.

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and fro in the enemy’s camp, and that there was a noisy movement of men coming out to battle, Caesar ordered the purple tunic to be hung in front of his tent, that being a Roman signal for battle; this gesture prompted his soldiers to hurry to arms and get ready for the decisive battle (Pomp. 68.3–5).³⁶

Western and Central Greece Corcyra, Elateia (Phocis), Herakleia, Ambracia (Acarnania) Finally, there are only scant references about Western and Central Greece, such as, the move of the queen Lanassa, wife of Pyrrhus, to Corcyra and her wedding to Demetrius Poliorcetes (Pyrrh. 10.5); in Central Greece, the attack of Philip on Elateia in Phocis, during the Third Sacred War, i.e. in 357–346  (Demetr. 18.1); the chase of Cassander by Demetrius up to Heracleia and the conquest of Elateia (Demetr. 23.1–2); the reaction of Pyrrhus to the person reviling him in Ambracia, in Acarnania (Pyrrh. 8.5). Be that as it may, the declaration by Titus Quinctius Flamininus in 197  that the Greek poleis were free, addressed itself to all Greek cities. The herald, coming forward in the midst of the spectators, proclaimed that the Roman senate and Titus Quinctius Flamininus as proconsular general, having conquered king Philip and the Macedonians, restored to freedom, without garrisons and without imposts, and to the enjoyment of their ancient laws, the Corinthians, Locrians, Phocians, Euboeans, the Achaeans of Phthiotis, Magnesians, the Thessalians, and the Perrhaebians’.³⁷ The cities’ response was unanimous: at first, then, the proclamation was by no means generally or distinctly heard, but there was a confused and tumultuous movement in the stadium of people who wondered what had been said, and asked one another questions about it, and called out to have the proclamation made again; but when silence had been restored, and the herald in tones that were louder than before and reached the ears of all, had recited the proclamation, a shout of joy arose, so incredibly loud that it reached the sea. The entire audience rose to their feet, and no heed was paid to the contending athletes, but all were eager to spring forward and greet and hail the saviour and champion of Greece. One last reference to Thessalian poleis has to do with mythical figures: Plutarch notes in the Life of Theseus that some of the graves of the Amazons were still shown in the region of Skotoussa and Kynos Kephalai.³⁸

³⁶ Pomp. 68.4–7. On the city Pharsalos, see Decourt, Nielsen, Helly 2004: 702–704 (n. 413). On the battle of Pharsalos, see Scholten 2012. ³⁷ Flam. 10.4–7. ³⁸ Thes. 27.9. On Skotoussa, see Decourt, Nielsen, Helly 2004: 706–707 (n. 415). On the area at Kynos Kephalai, see Lauffer 1989: 360.

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Illyria and Epiros Epidamnos, Apollonia, Buthroton, and Passaron Fewer poleis are mentioned from Illyria and Epirus: the religious, political and cultural centre of the Molossian League and later of the Epirote League is mentioned primarily as a sanctuary. That it occurs at the very beginning of the Prologue in the Life of Pyrrhus is certainly not coincidental, while references to oracles of Zeus Dodonaios are scattered through the Lives and the Moralia.³⁹ Epidamnos, Apollonia, and Buthroton are also mentioned in passing, in the description of the itinerary of Gaius Antonius, Antony’s brother, against Vatinius and Brutus.⁴⁰ Finally, Plutarch’s statement that the Molossian kings and people took oaths at Passaron, located near Gardiki in the nothwest of Ioannina (Pyrrh. 5.5), is confirmed by decrees found in situ and further confirms that this city functioned as the political centre of the Molossians.⁴¹ We may at this point return to the questions we initially asked. In the abovementioned cases, it is true that the most outstanding Northern Greek cities mentioned in Plutarch’s Lives are known from the historical and archaeological record to have been prominent also in the Roman period: Beroia, Edessa, Pella, Dion and Amphipolis, for instance. Some of them had flourished in earlier periods, such as Amphipolis, which was well known since the Classical period, or Pella, the Macedonian capital since the early fourth century , ⁴² and possibly also Hellenistic Cassandreia. That the old capital of Macedonia, Pella, or the Macedonian sanctuary at Dion are not highlighted in any special way might have been due to their new positions under the Empire. Thessalian cities are reported in Plutarch primarily as loci/markers for battles and for the stationing of the armies; the same holds true for Thracian cities, as well as for cities in Western and Central Greece. What is striking from the very beginning is that there is hardly any reference to the function of civic life or to any political institutions: Poleis are rather described as battlefields or as markers of kings’ or significant individuals’ courses rather than as living institutions; any references to public life, to their population, magistrates, religious practices, or, to their relationship with Hellenistic kings, are in effect lacking. One is inevitably puzzled by this remarkably flat, to say the least, representation of civic life in the above-mentioned cities. The prolific archaeological evidence of public monuments attested in Northern Greek poleis contrasts heavily with this complete absence of reports on aspects of ³⁹ Pyrrh. 1.1.4. On Dodona, see, for instance, Funke, Moustakis, Hochschulz 2004: 343–44. On the references to oracles of Zeus Dodonaios, see, for instance, Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat (14d–37b); Παροιμίαι αἷς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς ἐχρῶντο, 1.49.2; Them. 28.3; Apophth. Lac. (208b–42d); cf. Lys. 25.3.2; Phoc. 28.4.2. ⁴⁰ Brut. 25.3–26.8. On Bouthroton, see, for instance, Funke, Moustakis, Hochschultz 2004: 343. ⁴¹ SEG 26, 719; Cabanes 1976: 545–56 n. 13. ⁴² On Pella, see n. 23.

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civic life on Plutarch’s part. This, in addition to his systematic silence on any type of magistrates in these, may betray some indifference on the part of the author to conveying an accurate picture of civic life in Northern Greek cities during the Hellenistic and Roman period. His silence as to their civic profile admittedly comes in stark contrast with the vivid, though not topographically accurate, civic image which Plutarch has been building of some classical Greek poleis, not least Athens and Rome. One is therefore tempted to ask why Plutarch is so uninterested in representing public life and other activities in Northern Greek poleis. Why does he focus so much on Athens and Rome? Are we to assume from his texts only that political life in the Greek poleis had abated in the Roman period? In order to better evaluate these few references to Northern Greek poleis, one should ask if Plutarch had a good knowledge of their topography through autopsy. His minimal references to these regions have led researchers to assume that he has visited central and northern Greece rather infrequently or possibly not at all.⁴³ Those rare (or non-existent) visits to northern Greece might indeed account for his unfamiliarity with, or indifference to, local civic institutions and behaviour in that region and are ultimately not incompatible with his emphasis on literary updates rather than on his in situ observation of sites. A remarkably small portion of the cities in Macedonia, in Epirus and in Thessaly are represented in Plutarch’s work (47 per cent, 4 per cent, and 28 per cent, respectively); the author is more interested in the military events or in the omens taking place in their realms, while those with important sanctuaries, i.e. Dion or Dodona, or philosophical centres, i.e. Mieza, the cradle of Aristotle’s School, are spared references. As this minimal representation of Northern Greek civic institutions comes into stark contrast with the vivid picture of civic life in Carthage, for instance, which this author builds in Praecepta gerendae rei publicae, one may argue that the author’s physical distance from the poleis narrated was not the prominent reason for the underrepresentation of their civic lives. Prima facie Plutarch’s indifference to civic life in northern cities might be associated with his systematic avoidance of sheer physical description of his heroes, unless it is related to the nature of his sources. But does this explanation suffice to get us out of this cage? It is at this point worth revisiting Plutarch’s distinction among Greeks, Romans, and barbarians in light of the questions raised in the Moralia (the Barbarian Questions have been lost) and to attempt to locate his discussion of Macedonian

⁴³ Buckler 1992: 4811 admits that but for some few references to the graves of Amazons displayed at Skotoussa and Kynos Kephalai in Thessaly at the time of Plutarch (Thes. 27.9), ‘no one could conclude that he had visited Macedonia and Thessaly’. Nothing in this passage, however, suggests that Plutarch observed those graves in situ. But while Buckler argues that the Northernmost place in Greece mentioned in Plutarch’s writings was Mieza, hosting the School of Aristotle, other cities further north such as Edessa are also mentioned.

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cities and of the Macedonians somewhere in the canvas composed by these three strands.⁴⁴ Duff has already placed the Romans between the Greeks and the barbarians, and has argued that the presence of the barbaric questions’ strand in the Moralia situates Roman culture somewhere between the Greek and the barbarian strands. Nikolaidis notes that the identification by Plutarch of the Macedonians as Greek (not barbarians) takes place when they are mentioned in the same context as Romans, and associates it each time with the literary genre and with Plutarch’s respective sources and aims. He has difficulty in accepting that the Macedonians were considered barbarians at the time of Aratus and Cleomenes, as they had been identified explicitly as Greek already in the Life of Alexander; he assigns this disparity to the bias of Plutarch’s later sources. It may in fact be argued that Plutarch’s neglect of Northern Greek political life has something to do with the process of the reinvention of the monarchy after Alexander. His vivid, though topographically inaccurate, description of civic life in the Greek cities, not least Athens, and Rome, as opposed to his silence on their northern counterparts might prompt us to examine the peculiarities in the political behaviour of the latter, namely their frequent coalition into koina and, not least, their relationship with the monarchic régime. In regard to the latter, in particular, even though Alexander is treated quite favourably, Philip II and the Macedonian rulers are certainly not among the most prominent figures in the Lives. This observation prompts me to put forward the following proposition: I am inclined to suggest that the ‘big ghost’ lagging behind Plutarch’s silence in regard to civic institutions, monuments and civic life, to religious rituals and philosophical activities in northern Greece, is the memory of the Antigonid monarchy. Epigraphic testimonia have shown that Greek Macedonian poleis, for one thing, were not as fully independent as their classical counterparts. They are known to have been controlled by the Macedonian king through an official, the ἐπιστάτης τῆς πόλεως, who is epigraphically attested in many of these poleis.⁴⁵ Moreover, during the Hellenistic period the Macedonian king’s sovereignty had expanded through cities of northern and central Greece and had deprived them of their independence. Did the Boeotian author believe that the abolition of the monarchy in 167  practically meant the subsequent decline of Macedonian poleis? Alternatively, one might suggest that Plutarch avoided to raise the topic of Macedonian monarchy, possibly because it was unpopular with his audience: one might wonder whether it is by mere coincidence that the only Macedonian king’s life he ever narrated was Alexander’s (Demetrius Poliorcetes being a slightly ⁴⁴ On the distinction among the Greek, the Roman, and the (now lost) barbarian questions, see Duff 1999: 298–300. ⁴⁵ On the ἐπιστάτης τῆς πόλεως, see Hatzopoulos 1996: 391, 372–96, 400, 426–29, 482, 486, 489. In regard to Macedonia, see 157–58, 258, 410–11. For specific cities, see Hatzopoulos 1996: 140, 149 n. 3, 406–407, 411, 417 (Amphipolis).

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Figure 2 Northern Greek Cities in Plutarch’s Lives & Ethica [map based on R.A. Talbert et al. (ed.) 2000, Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton: University Press), map Internum Mare 1].

different case); even in this Life, minimal references are made to Macedonia and his focus is on the Argead king’s eastern campaigns, instead. Essentially, it may be argued that the overall image of northern cities has been built upon the views of the Macedonians’ opponents, rather than through the Macedonians themselves (see Figure 2, above). In fact, after all, one often hits negative nuances in Plutarch’s narrative of the monarchy: not least, in Aem. 24.1, where Plutarch admits that ‘Now, the Macedonians are always said to have been lovers of their kings, but at this time, feeling that their prop was shattered and all had fallen with it, they put themselves into the hands of Aemilius, and in two days made him master of all Macedonia (ἀεὶ μὲν οὖν λέγονται φιλοβασιλεῖς οἱ Μακεδόνες, τότε δ’ ὡς ἐρείσματι κεκλασμένῳ πάντων ἅμα συμπεσόντων, ἐγχειρίζοντες αὑτοὺς τῷ Αἰμιλίῳ δύο ἡμέραις ὅλης κύριον αὐτὸν κατέστησαν Μακεδονίας). If my proposition is correct, it is remarkable that, more than a century after the defeat of the Macedonian monarchy by the Romans, the Chaeronean biographer deliberately opted to keep the monarchy, and Macedonian cities, in the background. At any rate, however, Plutarch cannot be accused of inaccuracy, for he has already prepared his defence: in Alex. 1.2–3, he argues that just as painters convey ethos through facial similarities, not paying attention to detail, his mission is to focus on the signs of the soul in order to shape each life, leaving reports of accurate details

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and actual battles to others; in other words, he focuses on the hero’s character rather on accurate reports of events: οὔτε γὰρ ἱστορίας γράφομεν, ἀλλὰ βίους, οὔτε ταῖς ἐπιφανεστάταις πράξεσι πάντως ἔνεστι δήλωσις ἀρετῆς ἢ κακίας, ἀλλὰ πρᾶγμα βραχὺ πολλάκις καὶ ῥῆμα καὶ παιδιά τις ἔμφασιν ἤθους ἐποίησε μᾶλλον ἢ μάχαι μυριόνεκροι καὶ παρατάξεις αἱ μέγισται καὶ πολιορκίαι πόλεων. ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ ζῳγράφοι τὰς ὁμοιότητας ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου καὶ τῶν περὶ τὴν ὄψιν εἰδῶν οἷς ἐμφαίνεται τὸ ἦθος ἀναλαμβάνουσιν, ἐλάχιστα τῶν λοιπῶν μερῶν φροντίζοντες, οὕτως ἡμῖν δοτέον εἰς τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς σημεῖα μᾶλλον ἐνδύεσθαι, καὶ διὰ τούτων εἰδοποιεῖν τὸν ἑκάστου βίον, ἐάσαντας ἑτέροις τὰ μεγέθη καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας. For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives; and in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles where thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities. Accordingly, just as painters get the likeness in their portraits from the face and the expression of the eyes, wherein the character shows itself, but make very little account of the other parts of the body, so I must be permitted to devote myself rather to the signs of the soul in men, and by means of these to portray the life of each, leaving to others the description of their great contests (Alex. 1.2–3).⁴⁶

It is on these grounds that Plutarch’s treatment of Northern Greek cities is best understood.

⁴⁶ For commentary on this passage, see Duff 1999: 14–15; Duff 2014: 339–40; Hamilton 1969: 1–2.

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12 Plutarch’s Troy Three Approaches Judith Mossman

In Troy, there lies the scene. Troilus and Cressida (1602?), Prologue, 1. By ‘Plutarch’s Troy’ I mean Plutarch’s response to the city itself: its whereabouts and its physical entity.¹ I begin by discussing ancient debate about the site of Troy and the references Plutarch makes to the historical city which claimed to occupy the space where Troy once stood; then I shall turn to some passages where that city is visited by various personages and what they find and do there; and finally, I shall examine a passage where one corner of the Iliadic Troy is brought to life in pictorial form. In moving thus from the historical Troy through to the strictly imaginary one I hope to show that Plutarch, as so often, reflects contemporary preoccupations, but that he produces variations on these themes in his own unique manner.

The Site of Troy Where, then, did Plutarch believe Troy to be? Most people in antiquity believed that the town of Ilion, an Aeolian foundation of the seventh century , stood on the site of Homer’s Troy. This consensus, however, was challenged seriously by Strabo. Plutarch knew Strabo’s historical works (he cites him at Luc. 28.8, Caes. 63.3 and Sull. 26.4):² did he know of his doubts about the site of Troy? If so, it was not a matter he cared to discuss overtly, and that in itself seems noteworthy. Plutarch regularly avoids talking about the sorts of debate which we know to have interested other Greek authors under the Roman Empire: long discussions of Homer’s birthplace and origins, for example, seem to have held no charm for him. ¹ My thanks go to Katharina Lorenz for her helpful advice and to Christopher Pelling for kindly sharing with me the updated version of the late John Moles’s commentary on Brutus (now published as Moles 2017). Part III appeared in a similar but not identical form in Clúa Serena 2020: 265–78, at 27–76. I am grateful to the editor and publisher for permission to reuse the material here. ² See Pelling 2011 on Caesar 63.3. Judith Mossman, Plutarch’s Troy: Three Approaches In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0013

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Perhaps this picture would be altered if we still had the four books of Homeric Meletai; but it is striking that the majority of the surviving quotations from that work are about people, especially philosophers, reading Homer, not about the minutiae of the text or the classic debates. It is even possible that the work On the Life and Poetry of Homer was attributed to him to supply a Plutarchan work where these matters were tackled. In his extant work, Plutarch seems at times in a gentle way to be making fun of Homeric scholarship: in On Affection for Offspring 496d, for example, he quotes Iliad 11.269–71 (which describe the injured Agamemnon as like a woman in labour) and continues: ταῦτ᾽ οὐχ Ὅμηρον αἱ γυναῖκες ἀλλ᾽ Ὁμηρίδα γράψαι λέγουσι τεκοῦσαν ἢ τίκτουσαν ἔτι καὶ τὸ νύγμα τῆς ἀλγηδόνος ὁμοῦ πικρὸν καὶ ὀξὺ γινομένον ἐν τοῖς σπλάγχνοις ἔχουσαν.³

The usual form of Homerid, meaning one of Homer’s successors, is hijacked to provide a feminine bard, as the Loeb editor pointed out; and the picture of the poetess composing while actually in labour (almost Ovidian) gently mocks discussions of Homer’s enargeia. Plutarch’s focus on the reception of Homer is evident even in this jokey passage (‘women tell us’); and this, I would argue, is also striking in his writing about the city of Troy. Lawrence Kim has drawn a nice contrast between the Homer of Strabo (‘the ideal historian’) and the Homer of Dio’s Trojan Oration (‘Homer the liar’).⁴ I would draw a further contrast between Plutarch and these two writers: his focus when discussing the Ilion of historical times is on its inhabitants and visitors and their use of Homer, not on Homer himself as an authority to be interrogated or validated. Strabo also talks about the town’s inhabitants, as we shall see, and Dio’s Oration is (at least partly) addressed to them (Dio 11.4), but in both cases, Homer himself dominates: see Strabo 13.1.1: And my discussion is further prolonged by the number of the peoples who have colonized the country, both Greeks and barbarians, and by the historians, (οἱ συγγραφεῖς) who do not write the same things on the same subjects, nor always clearly either; among the first of these is Homer, who leaves us to guess about most things (εἰκάζειν περὶ τῶν πλείστων παρέχων). And it is necessary for me to arbitrate between his statements and those of the others, after I shall first have described in a summary way the nature of the region in question.⁵

³ Plutarch, On Affection for Offspring 496d (tr. Helmbold): ‘these lines, women tell us, were written, not by Homer, but by a Homerid after childbirth or while she was still in the throes of it and had the pain of labour, alike bitter and sharp, actually present in her entrails’. ⁴ Kim 2010: 47–139. ⁵ Tr. Jones. On Dio’s Trojan Oration see Saïd 2000: 161–86.

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More than once Strabo says that a landmark ‘is pointed out’ or ‘shown’ (δείκνυται: 13.1.5, 11, 17), but generally in this passage he is more impressed with, and more eager to record, authorities than local legends. Where he does so (e.g. at 13.1.25) the Ilians are permanently on the wrong side of the debate, against Homer and an elaborate Platonic theory of the rise of civilizations (from Laws 677–79): But the people of the present Ilium, being fond of glory (φιλοδοξοῦντες) and wishing to show that their Ilium was the ancient city, have offered a troublesome argument to those who base their evidence on the poetry of Homer, for their Ilium does not appear to have been the Homeric city. Other inquirers also find that the city changed its site several times, but at last settled permanently where it now is at about the time of Croesus. I take for granted, then, that such removals into the parts lower down, which took place in those times, indicate different stages in modes of life and civilization; but this must be further investigated at another time.⁶

At 13.1.27 and 40–41 the Ilians’ claim is ruthlessly refuted by close textual analysis of Homer and other authorities. Hellanicus is their only support, and he is just sucking up (42—his sycophancy dismissed with a contemptuous quotation from Homer [Il. 15.94]). Erskine has discussed possible historical contexts for the attack on the tradition which sited Troy at Ilion by Demetrius of Scepsis, whom Strabo cites, and Clarke has commented on the complex way in which Strabo deals with time in this passage; but for my purposes what is important is the way in which the Ilians are subordinated to Homer: if their accounts do not agree, then it is they who are wrong.⁷ There is one small indication that Plutarch was not quite as certain as Strabo that the Ilians were wrong: the case of the Locrian maidens. Strabo says (13.1.40, tr. Jones): The present Ilians further tell us that the city was, in fact, not completely wiped out at its capture by the Achaeans and that it was never even deserted. At any rate the Locrian maidens (αἱ γοῦν Λοκρίδες παρθένοι), beginning a little later (μικρὸν ὕστερον ἀρξάμεναι), were sent every year. But this too is non-Homeric (καὶ ταῦτα δ᾽ οὐχ Ὁμηρικά), for Homer knows not of the violation of Cassandra . . . he does not so much as mention any violation of her or say that the destruction of Ajax in the shipwreck took place because of the wrath of Athena or any such cause . . . but says that he was destroyed by Poseidon because of his boastful speech. But the fact is that the Locrian maidens were first sent when the Persians were already in power.

⁶ Tr. Jones.

⁷ Erskine 2001: 98–112; Clarke 1999: 256–57. See also Cook 1973: 1–2 and 51.

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The story also occurs in Polybius (12.5.7), and certainly Strabo is in no sense Plutarch’s source for the story, nor does his use of it prove that he is responding to Strabo: but when he does mention it, in God’s Slowness to Punish (557d) he agrees with the Ilians, not with Strabo’s rather incoherent debunking: ‘it is not long since the Locrians gave up sending their maidens to Troy . . . all for the akolasia of Ajax’.⁸ Above all, where the Ilians pop up in Plutarch, the context directly implies continuity between Troy and Ilium. At the start of the Sertorius, Plutarch lists some examples of curious coincidences, one of which is the bad luck Trojan people have with horses: ‘that Ilium was taken by Heracles on account of the horses of Laomedon, by Agamemnon by means of what is called the wooden horse, and a third time by Charidemus, because a horse fell in the gateway and prevented the Ilians from closing the gate quickly enough’. The point here clearly depends on Troy being contemporary Ilium.⁹ This may also be an implication of the strange story in the Lucullus (10) which closes the account of the lucky escape of the Cyzicenes from the forces of Mithradates: ἱστορεῖται δὲ τῶν ἐν Ἰλίῳ πολλοῖς καθ᾽ ὕπνον ὀφθῆναι τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν ἱδρῶτι πολλῶι ῥεομένην καὶ ὑποφαίνουσάν τι τοῦ πέπλου παρερρωγός, λέγουσαν, ὡς ἀρτίως ἥκοι βοηθήσασα Κυζικηνοῖς. καὶ στήλην τινὰ δόγματα καὶ γράμματα περὶ τούτων ἔχουσαν ἐδείκνυον Ἰλιεῖς.¹⁰

The temple of Athena and her peplos loom large in Iliad 6, and the disshevelled goddess perhaps recalls the deities fighting at Troy in Homer. Implicitly, then, and without engaging overtly with the debate, Plutarch rejects the revisionist approach to Troy’s location.

Visitors to Troy It seems likely, therefore, that Plutarch would have identified Ilium as Troy. If so, he was in distinguished company, and I would now like to discuss Plutarch’s treatments of two important visitors to Ilium and compare them with the accounts of his predecessors and contemporaries. Famous men had long been in ⁸ On the story of the Locrian maidens see Redfield 2003, esp. 85–150. ⁹ Sert. 1.6–8, tr. Perrin. The final coincidence, incidentally, is Plutarch’s only remark on the birthplace of Homer: ‘There are two cities which have the same name as the most fragrant plants, Ios and Smyrna, in one of which the poet Homer is said to have been born, and in the other to have died’. ¹⁰ Luc. 10.4 (tr. Perrin, adapted): ‘The story is told, too, that the goddess Athena appeared to many of the inhabitants of Ilium in their sleep, dripping with sweat, showing part of her peplos torn away, and saying that she had just come from helping the Cyzicenes. And the people of Ilium used to show a stelé which had on it certain decrees and inscriptions relating to this matter’.

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the habit of sightseeing at Ilium. The earliest example of such a narrative is the visit made by Xerxes to Troy on his way to conquer Greece according to Herodotus (7.43, tr. Rawlinson, adapted): On reaching the Scamander, which was the first river they had crossed since they left Sardis whose water failed to satisfy the thirst of men and cattle, Xerxes went up into the citadel of Priam, since he had a longing (ἵμερον) to behold (θεήσασθαι) the place. When he had seen (θεησάμενος) everything, and inquired into all the details (πυθόμενος ἐκείνων ἕκαστα), he made an offering (ἔθυσε) of a thousand oxen to the Trojan Athena, while the Magi poured libations to the heroes. The night after, a panic (φόβος) fell upon the camp.

Whether this visit ever actually happened, and why, must remain moot, as indeed must the question of whether Alexander’s actual visit was intended as a response to a supposed visit of Xerxes: is the episode historical or imagined by Herodotus, and if the answer is that it is imagined, how well did the historical Alexander (or his advisers) know the text of Herodotus?¹¹ It does, though, seem more than likely that Plutarch’s two accounts of Alexander’s activity at Troy have Herodotus as an intertext (Alex.15.7–9, tr. Perrin, adapted); On the Fortune or Virtue 331d–e, tr. Babbitt, slightly adapted):¹² Then, going up to Ilium, he sacrificed (ἔθυσε) to Athena and poured libations to the heroes and the gravestone of Achilles. Anointing himself with oil, he ran a race by it with his companions, naked, as is the custom, and then crowned it with garlands, pronouncing the hero happy in having, while he lived, a faithful friend, and after death, a great herald of his fame. As he was going about and viewing the sights of the city (θεᾶσθαι τὰ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν), someone asked him if he wished to see the lyre of Paris (Ἀλεξάνδρου). ‘For that lyre’, said Alexander, ‘I care very little; but I would gladly see that of Achilles, to which he used to sing the glorious deeds of brave men’. Accordingly when he had crossed the Hellespont, he went to see (ἐθεᾶτο) Troy, imagining to himself the heroic deeds enacted there; and when one of the natives of the country promised to give him the lyre of Paris (Πάριδος), if he wished it, Alexander said, ‘Of his lyre I have no need; for I already possess Achilles’ lyre to the accompaniment of which, as he rested from his labours, he sang the famed deeds of heroes’.

¹¹ So Zeitlin 2001: 235, but I think it is not clear-cut. The whole essay is relevant: 2001: 195–266, esp. 201–202, 206–207, and 235. See also Jones 1999: 28 and 42. ¹² On these passages in their contexts see Mossman 1988: 83–93, esp. 87 and 2006: 281–303, esp. 287–89. See also Zeitlin 2001: 206 and 235 on Alexander’s visual imagination in 331d.

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But the lyre of Paris gave forth an altogether weak and womanish strain to accompany his love songs’. Thus, it is the mark of a truly philosophic soul to be in love with wisdom and to admire wise men most of all, and this was more characteristic of Alexander than of any other king.

Both use the same verb as Herodotus does of Xerxes, theasthai and etheato. Naturally, as a Greek and a devotee of Homer Alexander does not need to ask questions as Xerxes does, indeed he knows the text of Homer well enough to quote it. He himself pours libations to the heroes (Xerxes leaves this to the Magi) and, like Xerxes, sacrifices to Athena (though not on the same hyperbolic scale as Xerxes, to whose character excess is intrinsic). He also pays homage to Achilles. Immediately before Xerxes goes to Troy we hear that his troops have drunk the river Scamander dry; immediately after Alexander goes to Troy, he fights at the Granicus and plunges into the river with Achillean energy. Both visits happen near the start of great enterprises of conquest but headed in opposite directions. It is no accident that Xerxes’ visit is followed by a mysterious sudden panic, and just after the episode, at Abydos, by Xerxes’ inspection of his troops and his sudden overwhelming realization of the fleeting nature of mortal existence (46), a highly Homeric theme. The narrative in Herodotus seems to imply that Xerxes learns a Homeric lesson subsequent to, if not directly because of, his visit to Troy, whereas in both versions of Alexander’s tour, Alexander is able to draw inspiration and wisdom from the Homeric texts. Where Xerxes’ visit seems to cause his confidence to falter, Alexander’s boosts his. As I argued in 2006, one’s reactions to the sights of Troy are important for the delineation of one’s character. What, then, should one make of the fact that in Plutarch’s Caesar, there is no mention of Caesar’s visit to the site? A likely point for an account of it would have been at Caesar 48.1,¹³ and it would have made a nice linking anecdote between Caesar and Alexander, the two subjects of the pair. Strabo, after all, makes such a connection very explicit (13.1.27, tr. Jones):¹⁴ In my time, however, the deified Caesar was far more thoughtful of them, at the same time also emulating the example of Alexander (ζηλώσας ἅμα καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον); for Alexander set out to provide for them on the basis of a renewal of ancient kinship, and also because at the same time he was fond of Homer (ἅμα

¹³ Pelling 2011 on 48.1: ‘There may also be some historical basis for Lucan’s account of his visiting the site of Troy (9.961–99); if so, it may also have been now that he granted freedom to Ilium (Strabo 13.1.27, cf. Carter on BC 3.106.1 (= Carter 1993))’. Erskine 2001: 248–50 is more sceptical, but prepared to be convinced. Green 1989: 193–209 suggests that the historical Caesar was not interested in selfcomparison with Alexander on the grounds that until the fall of Pompey he would have lost out to him (to unfortunate effect) and after Pompey’s death there was no advantage to be had by it. If this is right, the visit may never have taken place, or if it did, Caesar will have played down comparison with Alexander and played up kinship with Troy. ¹⁴ On this passage see also Jones 1999: 98, Zeitlin 2001: 237–38 and Erskine 2001: 248.

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καὶ φιλόμηρος ὤν) . . . Accordingly, it was due both to his zeal for the poet (τὸν τοῦ ποιητοῦ ζῆλον) and to his descent from the Aeacidae . . . But Caesar, not only being fond of Alexander (καὶ φιλαλέξανδρος ὢν), but also having better known evidences of kinship with the Ilians, felt encouraged to bestow kindness upon them with all the zest of youth: better known evidences, first, because he was a Roman, and because the Romans believe Aeneas to have been their original founder; and secondly, because the name Iulius was derived from that of a certain Iulus who was one of his ancestors, and this Iulus got his appellation from the Iulus who was one of the descendants of Aeneas.

The vocabulary and the chiastic structure of the passage bring out the link between Caesar and Alexander. Caesar’s dual reason for favouring Ilium encloses Alexander’s. Both act from emulation/affection and from kinship. Caesar’s emulation of Alexander is mentioned first, then Alexander’s kinship with the Ilians, then Alexander’s love of Homer is elaborated and summarized with a cognate term to the verb used for Caesar’s emulation of him. Then his kinship with the Ilians is briefly explained before Strabo returns to Caesar. Caesar’s fondness for Alexander is expressed on an adjective formed in imitation of the adjective initially used to describe Alexander as a lover of Homer, and the section ends with a longer and more elaborate account of Caesar’s more obvious kinship relation with the Ilians. Alexander and Caesar are thus inextricably connected, though it is notable that Alexander’s emotional attachment to Homer suggests an idealism which is not equally suggested by Caesar’s admiration for Alexander. That such a visit could have been made heavy with resonance is shown by Lucan, Pharsalia 961–99, which has in common with Plutarch’s accounts of Alexander’s visits the significance of interaction with the present-day inhabitants.¹⁵ Plutarch clearly did want to make connections between Caesar and Alexander—after all, he chose them as parallel subjects—but these connections are far from superficial or straightforward.¹⁶ The most direct (11.5–6) shows Caesar reading about Alexander while in Spain and comparing himself unfavourably with him. The anecdote is a complex one, contributing, to be sure, to the picture Plutarch builds of Caesar’s ambition, but also portraying Caesar as vulnerable and as overcoming huge disadvantages: Caesar has only been able to leave for Spain because he has been bailed out by Crassus, and is very much the underdog in these early chapters.

¹⁵ See esp. Luc. Pharsalia 9.975–79: securus in alto/gramine ponebat gressus: Phryx incola manes/Hectoreos calcare uetat. discussa iacebant/saxa nec ullius faciem seruantia sacri:/‘Herceas’ monstrator ait ‘non respicis aras?’ ‘He was carelessly placing his foot in the long grass: a Phrygian inhabitant told him not to tread upon the spirit of Hector. The stones lay wrenched apart and did not retain the appearance of anything sacred: “Do you not see the altar of Zeus Herkeios?” said the guide’. On this passage see Zeitlin 2001: 237–38 and Erskine 2001: 249–50. ¹⁶ See Pelling 2011: 2–4, 25–35 and on 11.5–6.

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One can therefore suggest some reasons why Plutarch did not include Caesar’s visit to Troy. Assuming it belongs chronologically to the narrative of 48.1, it does not lie at the start of a great campaign of exploration and conquest like Alexander’s, or even Xerxes’,¹⁷ but rather comes at the point in the life when Caesar has defeated Pompey (an internal, not an external, enemy) and is pursuing him. He learns of his death in the very next sentence. Pompey the Great was of course, as Pelling points out, another possible pair for Alexander and a constant comparator with him across a wide variety of texts, including Plutarch’s own Life.¹⁸ To have Caesar replay Alexander’s visit to Troy at this juncture, then, would make a very particular point indeed (perhaps the very point that Caesar himself was making when he went to the place, if he did so): that Caesar, not Pompey, was the true Roman Alexander.¹⁹ Within the narrative texture of Plutarch’s pairing, there would have been a number of problems connected with such an assertion coming at this juncture. Apart from the simple practical difficulty of writing the episode in such a way as to avoid repetition, which I feel sure Plutarch could have managed, such an account would have blurred the connection Plutarch makes between Caesar’s distress over the dead at Pharsalus and his tears over Pompey’s severed head in Alexandria. The stress at this point in the life is all on Caesar’s magnanimity and forgiveness: the insertion of a section where Caesar took up Pompey’s mantle as the new Alexander would be disruptive.²⁰ But ultimately it might also be that Plutarch does not want to suggest that Caesar is a new Alexander, not so much because he regards him as inferior to Alexander (despite Caesar’s own view of his achievements at 11.5–6) as because the trajectories of their lives, as he saw them, were actually somewhat different, just as the trajectory of Pompey’s life, although it looked similar initially, was actually different (as Plutarch explicitly says at Pompey 46.1–2). What is distinctively Plutarchan about the passages where Alexander visits Troy? Other authors, both biographers and historians, certainly use such anecdotes to characterize their subjects; but only Plutarch combines so deftly the experience of visiting a contemporary place with the living significance of Homer. Zeitlin discusses at length Philostratus’ splendid account of Apollonius communing with the ghost of Achilles, placed, as she points out (249), at a ¹⁷ Some more implicit comparisons with Alexander’s journeys showing Caesar as reaching the western Ocean, and thus balancing Alexander’s journey East, follow 11.5–6 and are placed in the narrative of his time in Spain (12.1) and Britain (23.2). ¹⁸ Pelling 2011: 26–27. At Pompey 2.2, where Plutarch compares Pompey’s youthful appearance to Alexander’s, the orator Lucius Philippus calls himself φιλαλέξανδρος, using the same term as Strabo does of Caesar. ¹⁹ On Caesar supplanting Pompey as the Roman Alexander, see Green 1989: 193–209 and Spencer 2002: 170–71. ²⁰ Lucan, as Erskine stresses (2001: 249–50), makes his Caesar ignore the ancient virtues of Troy and her defence. The Lucanic Caesar’s imitation of a ruthless and unimaginative Alexander, whose only merit is his acquisition of power, reveals him as a monster. Plutarch would have wanted to avoid such an implication about either of his subjects entirely.

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significant juncture at the start of his return to Greece from Asia, and the relationship of the vinegrower in the Heroicus with Protesilaus;²¹ but these rather elaborate conversations with dead heroes give a very different feeling from Alexander’s internalization of the heroic values of Achilles in both passages, not least because the heroes are conceived of as beings to a large degree independent from their Homeric portrayals. Homer’s account is in various subtle ways dissected and critiqued in these works, as it is in Dio’s Trojan Oration. Plutarch, though, is not interested in analysing Homer, but through showing what Homer means to Alexander, and indeed what use the Ilians make of their Homeric capital, he reveals not only an internal depth to Alexander but also the potential power of Homer as a moral and cultural force. The application of the Homeric texts to a personal mission, conveyed so economically, seems to me to be Plutarch’s alone.

Picturing Troy The evocation of Homer’s Troy to illuminate personal circumstances brings me to my final section, and to the Brutus.²² At 23.2 Portia is returning to Rome from Elea, as Brutus departs for Greece (tr. Perrin, adapted): As Portia was about to return from there to Rome, she tried to conceal her distress, but a certain painting betrayed her, in spite of her noble spirit thus far. Its subject was Greek,—Hector being bidden adieu (προπεμπόμενος) by Andromache; she was taking from his arms their little son, while her eyes were fixed upon her husband. When Portia saw this, the image of her own sorrow presented by it caused her to burst into tears, and she would visit it many times a day and weep before it. And when Acilius, one of the friends of Brutus, recited the verses containing Andromache’s words to Hector, ‘But, Hector, you to me are father and honoured mother And brother; and you are my tender husband, too,’ Brutus smiled and said: ‘But I, certainly, have no mind to address Portia in the words of Hector, “Ply loom and distaff and give orders to your maids,” for though her body is not strong enough to perform such heroic tasks (ἀνδραγαθημάτων) as men do, still, in spirit she excels (ἀριστεύει) in defence of her country, just as we are.’ This story is told by Portia’s son, Bibulus. (Brut. 23.2–7) ²¹ Zeitlin 2001: 249–60. ²² On this passage see Lorenz: 2008, 46–51, esp. 49–50, and Zanker 1999: 40–48. On Homeric ecphrasis during the imperial period see Zeitlin 2001: 195–266 and Squire 2011: esp. 325–49.

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The reference is clearly to a painting portraying the incident in Iliad 6 where Hector and Andromache meet on the walls of Troy, and the connection to that passage is reinforced by two quotations of it in the reported male reactions to Portia’s viewing of the painting. This is a mini-ecphrasis, in effect. The passage should be read in the context of Portia’s overall characterization in the Life, particularly her actions at 13.5–11.²³ Here Portia subjects herself to a terrible test to establish her worthiness as Brutus’ confidante (tr. Perrin, adapted): She took a little knife, such as barbers use to cut the finger nails, and after banishing all her attendants from her room, made a deep gash in her thigh, so that there was a copious flow of blood, and after a little while violent pains and chills and fever followed from the wound. Seeing that Brutus was disturbed and greatly distressed, in the height of her anguish she spoke to him thus: ‘Brutus, I am Cato’s daughter, and I was brought into your house, not, like a mere concubine, to share your bed and board merely, but to be a partner in your joys, and a partner in your troubles. You, indeed, are faultless as a husband; but how can I show you any grateful service if I am to share neither your secret suffering nor the anxiety which craves a loyal confidant? I know that woman’s nature is thought too weak to endure a secret; but good rearing and excellent companionship go far towards strengthening the character, and it is my happy lot to be both the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus. Before this I put less confidence in these advantages, but now I know that I am superior (ἀήττητον)²⁴ even to pain’. Thus, having spoken, she showed him her wound and explained her test; whereupon Brutus, amazed, and lifting his hands to heaven, prayed that he might succeed in his undertaking and thus show himself a worthy husband of Portia. Then he took his wife into his confidence.

Unusually, Portia’s impassioned plea in direct speech (itself uncommon in Plutarch) comes before her husband embarks on action, let alone comes to grief, and yet this in itself is significant, since there is a strong sense throughout the Brutus that once the conspirators have conceived their plan against Caesar, their destinies are set. Portia is speaking to him at the beginning of the end. At 13.3, just before this passage, Portia is, as women in classical texts often are, defined by her menfolk: she is Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ wife, Bibulus’ mother (and Bibulus is named as the source of both these passages). And in her speech, she defines herself as Cato’s daughter and Brutus’ wife, and draws comfort and strength from that self-definition. But, appropriately in this pair of Lives about translating philosophy

²³ Lorenz 2008: 49–50 makes the very valid point that all ecphrases need to be read in their context, since mythological subjects are never unconnected to the main narrative. ²⁴ Moles 2017: 156 comments on the ‘distinctly Stoic’ character of this part of the speech—Portia has absorbed the philosophy of her male relations.

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into deeds, her words gain in force from being motivated by action: self-harming action, certainly, but an action which tests the soul and gives her confidence, as she explains to Brutus and to the reader. Actions make her words more than a tender enquiry and certainly more than the remarks of a curious wife.²⁵ Actions here transform words and invest them with power; at the end of the passage, remarkably, Brutus defines himself in relation to his wife (‘Brutus, amazed, and lifting his hands to heaven, prayed that he might succeed in his undertaking and thus show himself a worthy husband of Portia’.). His is reported speech: hers is the voice which dominates the scene. She refers to her role as ‘a partner in your joys and a partner in your troubles’ (κοινωνὸς μὲν ἀγαθῶν εἶναι, κοινωνὸς δὲ ἀνιαρῶν), a wife not a concubine. The rest of the Life confirms the truth of her words here: she is the only one who knows what Brutus goes out to the Senate to do, and she is so affected by this crisis in his affairs, and it makes her so ill, that she is believed to be dead (one of her symptoms is speechlessness),²⁶ and when Brutus kills himself in defeat she defies the watchfulness of her friends and kills herself by swallowing hot coals and keeping her mouth fast closed. Closing her mouth links this horrific act with her speech, or lack of it: where women are generally thought incapable of discretion, Portia’s reticence in life is matched by her endurance in death.²⁷ In this context, her reaction to the painting is peculiarly interesting. Viewing it provides her with the only outlet for her emotions. With typical reticence, she does not address it, as Shakespeare’s Lucrece addresses the painting of the Sack of Troy (based, I think, partly on this passage).²⁸ The painting ‘betrays her’, προὔδωκε, as if she had spoken to it and it had blabbed. There are two female gazes here: Portia’s, fixed on the painting, and Andromache’s, fixed on Hector. There are also (implied) male gazes: Acilius at least, we have to assume (though Plutarch leaves it delicately uncertain), must have seen her looking at the picture. His quotation is apposite and recalls not only the Homeric original of the supposed painting but also 13, where both the narrator and Portia herself insisted on the importance of her male relatives to her identity. Andromache’s point was of course that Achilles ²⁵ There is a stark contrast with the wife in On Talkativeness 507b–508a, whom her husband (fortunately) fobs off with a lie when she asks him about senatorial business (the lie ends up all over the forum in no time). Moles 2017: 156 notes that in Dio’s version (44.13.1–14) Portia raises the subject of her pain with Brutus, whereas in Plutarch he clearly perceives it and she responds to his distress. ²⁶ Portia’s supposed death: 15.5–9. Portia can endure physical pain in silence and without complaint, as 13 demonstrates, but the emotional susceptibility which affects her here is harder to bear and overcomes her physically. Her weakness, though, is only physical, not moral; and she suffers it not on her own behalf but on Brutus’. There is no inconsistency between the two passages, but a fine display of psychological realism by Plutarch. Moles 2017: 162 points out that no other source includes this story. ²⁷ Portia’s actual death is narrated at 53.5–7, closing the life. Plutarch uses an alternative version of the timing of her death to emphasize the couple’s mutual devotion: he first narrates the version which has her kill herself after Brutus’ death, but then adds the evidence from a letter of Brutus in which he laments her suicide (caused by illness). Thus, it is Brutus’ voice which lays her to rest, so to speak, not Nicolaus of Damascus or Valerius Maximus. ²⁸ William Shakespeare, Lucrece 1366–1582; see Mossman 2016.

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had left her with no family apart from Hector; Acilius’ commentary thus casts Caesar as Achilles. Brutus’ reply picks up on his earlier admiration and praise for her and produces an implicit and favourable comparison with the Homeric Andromache, who puts Hector’s safety above Troy’s and is a little too free with her tactical advice (or so Hector mildly suggests at Iliad 6.492–93). Brutus perhaps makes a play on Andromache’s name when he says that Portia is not strong enough to perform ἀνδραγαθημάτα (‘heroic tasks’). The word is a rare one,²⁹ whose somewhat bombastic tone may gently chide Andromache in the spirit of Hector’s instruction to go home; Brutus very probably makes a reference to Homeric aristeiai in choosing ἀριστεύει (‘excels’) to express her excellence in spirit (Glaucus was told by his father ‘always to excel and be head and shoulders above the rest’, αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν καὶ ὑπείροχον ἔμμεναι ἄλλων).³⁰ This vocabulary, and his direct acknowledgment that Portia is like himself and Acilius in their love of country, assimilates her to the masculine and supports her claim in 13 to more than feminine virtue. But this assimilation to the masculine is qualified by the fact that Portia’s reaction to the painting is non-verbal, and it is the men who put into words the significance of the mythological scene: in this the scene reverses the contrast between Portia’s direct speech and Brutus’ indirect speech in 13.³¹ But to return to the element of ecphrasis in this passage, what makes this visual trigger different from all the other ecphrases which we find studding classical texts from all periods?³² One obvious feature is that the painting is barely described: the subject is given very briefly and none of the usual stress on its life-like qualities is included.³³ All we are told is a) it is a Greek subject (the point being that Brutus is about to set sail for Greece); b) it is the farewell of Hector and Andromache. There is little information about the location of the picture, just that she visits it often (Zanker assumes it is in Brutus’ and Portia’s home, but in the context, this seems unlikely),³⁴ and the only clue as to its composition, significantly, is that the focal point of the picture is Hector (and this is stressed by the fact that he is the subject of the sentence in Greek). Andromache’s gaze secures him in that position. Hector is handing Astyanax over to her, and that is all we are told. It is most unusual that the reader should have to imagine so much, and yet the quotations from Homer ensure that the educated reader can supply a location for the painting—the Scaean gate—and a precise point in the epic narrative—Iliad 6—and some visual details

²⁹ See also Sert. 10.4. ³⁰ Homer Il. 6.208. ³¹ It could, however, be seen as fitting with the contrast between Portia’s indifference to her own pain and her struggle to bear Brutus’ danger in 15.5–9. ³² By ‘ecphrases’ here I mean specifically ecphrases of works of art: see Webb 2009: 108–11 on this sub-group of a broader strand of rhetorical theory and practice. Webb does not discuss this passage. ³³ Similarly, at On the Obsolescence of Oracles 436b, the barest reference is made to the ‘likenesses and images’, μιμήματα καὶ εἰδώλα, in Polygnotus’ famous painting of the Sack of Troy in the Lesche of the Cnidians where the conversation is taking place: the stress is on the philosophical implications of the process of production. ³⁴ Zanker 1999: 40–48.

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which Plutarch does not need to mention—Hector’s helmet, we know, will be at his feet, not on his head. During this period, it is often, and rightly, said that Homer is seen as an intensely visual poet—even as a teacher of painting.³⁵ Here the reader creates the painting in imagination from fragments of Homer, from a hypotext, rather than from the descriptive virtuosity of the text itself. Finally, the rarity of the female viewer and the explicitness with which she sees her own troubles in a mythological picture should not be underestimated: ‘the image of her own sorrow’, ἡ τοῦ πάθους εἰκών, almost as if she were looking in a mirror.³⁶ Female viewers are definitely rare in ecphrastic descriptions. Herodas Mime 4 was the only one which leapt to my mind, where realism and not selfidentification is the focus of the women’s responses to the statues they see: Leucippe and Cleitophon both view the paintings in Achilles Tatius 3, but she is not the narrator and we do not hear her reactions. In art, Thetis is pictured looking at her reflection in Achilles’ shield, held up for her inspection by Hephaestus in a painting from the House of the Triclinium in Pompeii, and five other examples. Her pose in these paintings suggests foreboding.³⁷ Aeneas weeps when he sees pictures of the Trojan War in Aeneid I, but he is actually looking at pictures of events in which he was personally involved; Portia is carrying out an interpretive exercise, seeing herself in the story of another and vice versa.³⁸ Also hard to parallel is the structure of the scene: Portia is not only the viewer and the silent interpreter of the picture (her interpretation slipped in through the narrator’s voice), but also the viewed and the interpreted. In short, this is a remarkably dense, unique passage. It implies, indeed relies wholly for its effect, on a shared familiarity with Troy as a country of the mind where all could meet: Portia, Acilius, Brutus, Plutarch, and his readers. It is a strange irony that Troy, perhaps more than any Greek city, and perhaps even more than Rome, bulked so large and in so many ways in the Greek imagination under the Roman Empire.³⁹ So vivid was Homer’s description of it,

³⁵ See Zeitlin 2001: 218–33; Squire 2011: 337–49, esp. 339, where he aptly quotes the pseudoPlutarchan Life and Poetry of Homer on Homer as a teacher of painting in relation to the Shield of Achilles. ³⁶ For this usage see Eur. Med. 1162 and Plato Rpb. 402b5. Plutarch subtly prepares for the link between Portia and Andromache in his account of her supposed death in 15, where she is likened to ‘women gripped by Bacchic passions’, ὥσπερ αἱ κατάσχετοι τοῖς βακχικοῖς πάθεσιν; in Iliad 6 (389) Andromache has rushed out to the Scaean gate ‘like a madwoman’, μαινομένηι εἰκυῖα; and in 22.460 she is ‘like a maenad’, μαινάδι ἴση, when she rushes out to the walls because she fears (rightly) that Hector is dead. See Moles 2017: 162–63 on the language of 15.5–9, noting some Homeric usages. ³⁷ For discussion of the significance of mirrors in Roman art and contemporary thought (including Plutarch), see Taylor 2008, especially 152–58 on these paintings of Thetis, and Squire 2011: 341–42. ³⁸ Her response to the picture has more in common with tragic exemplarity than with Plutarch’s more paideutic version at the start of Aem.–Tim. (1.1–2, tr. Perrin): ‘using history as a mirror and endeavouring in a manner to fashion and adorn my life in conformity with the virtues therein depicted’. Nonetheless, both Portia and Plutarch interpret exemplary stories and apply them to their own situation. On Aem.–Tim. 1, see Duff 1999: 30–34. ³⁹ See now on the city as icon in antiquity and after MacSweeney 2018.

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that its correspondence to reality took central stage in the scholarly debates surrounding the poet. As Homer was uniquely important in Greek culture, these debates were of profound significance. For the inhabitants of the cities in the region, identification as Homer’s Ilium was of genuine practical importance, a means of garnering economic and political benefit as well as civic pride. For writers, critique of Homer on such a key issue offered a focal point for the display of scholarly prowess. For kings and generals, the city and its legend offered propaganda opportunities—or so those who wrote about them could suggest, and themselves use to present their own portrait of the great. In both his glancing references to the location of Ilium and his more extended accounts of visits to it, Plutarch’s writings reflect a relationship between his contemporary world (including the world of letters) and the world of Homer’s epic. But in his account of Portia’s response to the image of Troy in a painting—an interpretation (Plutarch’s— mediated through Acilius and Brutus) of an interpretation (Portia’s) of an interpretation (the painter’s) of Homer, there is a strangely direct line to the Iliad, unencumbered by the contemporary. This imaginary city, created by multiple readers, but no less authentic for that, rather than the scholarly battleground of Strabo and Dio, was Plutarch’s Troy, as it is ours.

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PART III

CITIES TO THINK WITH

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13 The City and the Self in Plutarch Alexei V. Zadorojnyi

There can be no mistake that Plutarch is preoccupied with ethics as a factor of politics throughout the Lives and often in the Moralia too. His programmatic comments on the polity mesh with discussions of the moral outlook or emotions. The city state itself in Plutarch is much textualized as a psychological agent and morally sentient (yet not necessarily virtuous) being; conversely, the polis translates into a rich metaphor for the human soul. This two-way mirroring of the polis and the soul in Plutarch’s writing has not been, to date, systematically explored. Furthermore, Plutarch’s rhetorical experiments in homology between the city state and the human self¹ need to be seen in the light of his philosophical orientation towards Plato. The Plutarchan macrotext² contains plenty of sophisticated intertextuality that is underwritten by one of Plato’s hallmark argumentative moves in the Republic. Through his explicit and implicit deployment of the Platonic city/soul analogy Plutarch achieves a kind of synergism of philosophical contents with literary language.³

The Polis Between Ethical Calibration and Personification A shoe must fit the individual and his foot, and be trimmed down if it seems too big. Yet one must never curtail (κολούειν) the city and reduce it to one’s own size (κατάγειν πρὸς αὑτὸν) and measure it against one’s own soul—if one happens to have a small and slavish (ἀνελεύθερον) soul . . . (trans. H. Crosby)

So Dio of Prusa, in a speech (40.11) urging his fellow citizens not to persist in their quarrel with the neighbouring township of Apameia. Dio’s passage illustrates how seamlessly political rhetoric merges with reflection on character in the educated Greek discourse under the Roman empire. The polis and the psyche are played off against each other along a dynamic ethico-political continuum. Plutarch ¹ Throughout this chapter I use ‘the self ’ more or less interchangeably with ‘character’, ‘soul’, or ‘psyche’, as the locus of psychological processes as well as an ethical texture. Translations are my own unless noted otherwise. ² See D’Ippolito 1991. ³ Such synergism Plutarch deems to be difficult but highly desirable: Zadorojnyi 2014. Alexei V. Zadorojnyi, The City and the Self in Plutarch In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0014

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contributes a great deal to this discourse, from different angles. In the essay Old Men in Politics he advocates active engagement with the affairs of the city state,⁴ under the premise of ethical excellence: for it is not only our hands or feet, or the strength of our body that is property and part (κτῆμα καὶ μέρος) of the city, but, first of all, the soul and the soul’s assets (τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς κάλλη)—justice, self-discipline, wisdom. (797e; transl. H. N. Fowler, modified)

But Plutarch can also query the relationship between the virtuous soul and the city. In a fragment (fr. 143 Sandbach) of a lost work Περὶ ἡσυχίας, there is praise of solitude equated with rejection of the polis as a space where ‘the souls are shut in’ (αἱ ταῖς πόλεσιν ἐναπειλημμέναι ψυχαί).⁵ The last, textually somewhat unsound sentence of the fragment argues that the better forms of culture have been divinely segregated (θεοὶ διακρίναντες . . . τὰς παιδείας) from ‘the certain dreadful and foul things in the cities’ (τῶν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι δεινῶν τε καὶ μιαρῶν τινῶν).⁶ Probably the most famous text where Plutarch ruminates on character vis-à-vis the polis is the opening of the Demosthenes–Cicero. In this programmatic proem Plutarch insists that the success of the moral self is not contingent upon a premium location. Virtue, like a hardy plant, can grow in any place (Dem. 1.3 ἐν ἅπαντι ῥιζοῦσθαι τόπῳ), therefore οὐδ’ ἡμεῖς, εἴ τι τοῦ φρονεῖν ὡς δεῖ καὶ βιοῦν ἐλλείπομεν, τοῦτο τῇ μικρότητι τῆς πατρίδος, ἀλλ’ αὑτοῖς δικαίως ἀναθήσομεν. (Dem. 1.4) we should not blame the puniness of our fatherland but rather ourselves, if we somehow fall short of thinking and living in the normative way.

True happiness exists mostly in the moral character (1.1 τὴν ἀληθινὴν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἧς ἐν ἤθει καὶ διαθέσει τὸ πλεῖστόν ἐστιν) and does not require a grand metropolitan environment. As I have argued elsewhere,⁷ in the prologue of the Demosthenes–Cicero Plutarch asserts the priority of a philosophical attitude, which he gently but firmly claims for his writerly persona too, over the external political and cultural space that is centred on the notion of the city: a great city is not a pre-requisite for the goods and achievements that really matter. Whereas in ⁴ There is no shortage of scholarship on Plutarch’s writings on contemporary Greek politics: see e.g. Halfmann 2002; Trapp 2004; Lo Cascio 2007; Desideri 2011; Roskam, in this volume, Chapter 15. ⁵ Unlike the souls in the countryside which are ‘not twisted by bumping into numerous petty protocols’ (οὐδὲ πρὸς πολλὰ καὶ μικρὰ νόμιμα προσπταίουσαι κάμπτονται). ⁶ Pessimistic anti-urbanism is regularly given voice by the ancient moralists: e.g. Val. Max. 7.2 ext. 2 ‘he [scil. Solon] showed that cities are piteous enclosures of human woe’ (demonstrauit urbes esse humanarum cladium consaepta miseranda); Philostr. VA 7.26.5 ‘cities . . . and city-walls seem to be public prisons’ (πόλεις . . . καὶ τείχη δοκεῖ ταῦτα δεσμωτήρια εἶναι κοινά). ⁷ Zadorojnyi 2006a: 108–109, 120–21.

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Dio’s passage quoted above the polis and the individual soul are polarized by way of reproach to the ethically and politically short-sighted audience, in the Demosthenes–Cicero the self, informed by the normative values of virtue, is the winner against the polis. Moreover, according to Plutarch, the city is beholden to the philosopher’s enlightened self for taking good care of the everyday needs of the community and, ultimately, for its survival. The latter idea transpires in Plutarch’s much-cited statement in the second chapter of the Demosthenes, ‘I live in a small city, and stay there fondly, lest it becomes even smaller’ (2.2 ἡμεῖς δὲ μικρὰν μὲν οἰκοῦντες πόλιν, καὶ ἵνα μὴ μικροτέρα γένηται φιλοχωροῦντες). Routine on-the-ground management of the city ties in with the same imperative; in the Advice on Statesmanship Plutarch offers, again, himself as the paradigm of responsible involvement even with the more prosaic aspects of running his hometown (Prae. ger. reip. 811b–c esp. οὐκ ἐμαυτῷ . . . ταῦτ’ οἰκονομεῖν ἀλλὰ τῇ πατρίδι).⁸ It would be fair to say that the Plutarchan rationale for local patriotism and ‘microidentity’⁹ rests on moral and behavioural benchmarks which are, almost paradoxically, above localism. For Plutarch, the (broadly) philosophical self is integrated into yet not fused with the city state—the values of the self, in the final analysis, trump the polis¹⁰ but are programmed to serve and support the polis nonetheless. Plutarch’s tendency to prioritize the selfhood over the city is, however, counterpointed by his frequent use of assimilation between the polis and the individual self in the functional (rather than normative) sense of somatic or psychological entity. Thus, the existence of a generic city is explained from the principle of organic, body-like continuity: ἓν γάρ τι πρᾶγμα καὶ συνεχὲς ἡ πόλις ὥσπερ ζῷον¹¹ (De sera 559a) A city, like an animal, is a single and continuous thing

Envisioned as a body, the city state may be attributed anatomical features such as sinews (νεῦρα)¹² or ears;¹³ it is prone to fall ill politically (e.g. Arat. 2.1; Cor. 12.5; Dion 41.3; Mar. 35.1; Dem. 27.5; De frat. amor. 484c; Prae. ger. reip. 809e) and require healing (e.g. Cat. Min. 44.3).¹⁴ The historical profile of a polis may be ⁸ Further, Aalders 1982: 26. ⁹ After Woolf 2010: 194–98. ¹⁰ Cf. also De exil. 601f: ‘any city becomes homeland right away for a man who has learned to cope with [it]’ (πατρὶς δὲ γίνεται πᾶσα πόλις εὐθὺς ἀνθρώπῳ χρῆσθαι μεμαθηκότι). On Plutarch’s philosophically coloured cosmopolitanism in On Exile, see Opsomer 2002; Van Hoof 2010: 125–38. ¹¹ Cf. Arat. 24.6, where the city states of the (Achaean) alliance are compared to parts of a living body (καθάπερ τὰ μέρη τοῦ σώματος). ¹² Phil. 16.9, referring to the Lycurgan system of training the young; cf. Amat. 755c for an outcry, in a gendered context, about the city’s loss of sinews (παντάπασιν ἡ πόλις ἐκνενεύρισται). ¹³ Prae. ger. reip. 802d: ‘the people and the city ought to be led primarily by the ears’ (δῆμον δὲ καὶ πόλιν ἐκ τῶν ὤτων ἄγειν δεῖ μάλιστα). ¹⁴ For medicine as a political metaphor in Plutarch, see further Martín del Pozo 1996: 186–88 and Duff 1999: 93.

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kitted out with traditional costume and other paraphernalia (Lyc. 30.2).¹⁵ Like a person, a city has its horoscope (Rom. 12.6). Plutarch is equally fond of inscribing cities with psychological and moral qualities and, through language that borders on personification, making these cities into ethical agents. Every so often in the Lives it is, literally, the polis that experiences emotions—for example, joy and grief, excitement, pride, or various degrees of fear;¹⁶ takes political preferences;¹⁷ has ‘a feel for valour’ (Comp. Nic. et Crass. 3.1 πόλει . . . ἀρετῆς αἰσθανομένῃ); acts with exemplary gentleness;¹⁸ amuses itself;¹⁹ undergoes education²⁰ or educates others about good government and respectable living,²¹ and so forth. Even from this incomplete sample of what the Plutarchan macrotext can offer, it is clear that Plutarch operates with essentially the same set of criteria for ethico-political evaluation of city states and individuals. This very approach is inculcated into children who study classical literature: ὁ ποιητὴς . . . τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων ἀνάγκην ὀρθῶς ὑποδείκνυσιν, ὅτι καὶ πόλεσι καὶ στρατοπέδοις καὶ ἡγεμόσιν, ἂν μὲν σωφρονῶσιν, εὖ πράττειν πέπρωται καὶ κρατεῖν τῶν πολεμίων, ἂν δ’ εἰς πάθη καὶ ἁμαρτίας ἐμπεσόντες . . . ἀσχημονεῖν καὶ ταράττεσθαι καὶ κακῶς ἀπαλλάττειν. (De aud. poet. 23d–e) the poet . . . correctly shows the inevitable course of things, that cities, armies, and leaders are destined to flourish and overcome the enemy if they behave with

¹⁵ Cf. the rhetoric of Pericles’ critics (Per. 12.2): ‘we gild and adorn the city like a brassy woman, to wear expensive marbles and statues . . . ’ (ἡμᾶς τὴν πόλιν καταχρυσοῦντας καὶ καλλωπίζοντας ὥσπερ ἀλαζόνα γυναῖκα, περιαπτομένην λίθους πολυτελεῖς καὶ ἀγάλματα). ¹⁶ E.g. Alc. 32.4 (of Athens) ‘the city’s joy was mixed with many tears’ (πολὺ δὲ καὶ δακρῦον τῷ χαίροντι τῆς πόλεως ἀνεκέκρατο); Pel. 12.3 (of Thebes) ‘the whole city was running amok’ (ἡ δὲ πόλις ἤδη μὲν ἀνεπτόητο πᾶσα); Ages. 30.7 (of Sparta) ‘he made the city more hopeful and pleased’ (ἐλαφροτέραν ἐποίησε ταῖς ἐλπίσι καὶ ἡδίω τὴν πόλιν); Cim. 10.7 (of Athens) ‘those [men] the city is rightly proud of ’ (ἐφ’ οἷς ἡ πόλις μέγα φρονεῖ δικαίως); Cat. Min. 59.1 (of Utica) ‘the city . . . went just short of crazy’ (ἡ μὲν πόλις . . . μικροῦ δεῖν ἔκφρων γενομένη); cf. Ant. 75.4 (of Alexandria) ‘when the city was quiet and downcast due to fright and apprehension about the future’ (ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καὶ κατηφείᾳ τῆς πόλεως διὰ φόβον καὶ προσδοκίαν τοῦ μέλλοντος οὔσης); Phoc. 2.4 ‘and a city that finds itself in unwished-for circumstances becomes easily startled and too sensitive—because of its frailty—to allow frank speech’ (καὶ πόλις ἐν τύχαις ἀβουλήτοις γενομένη ψοφοδεὲς καὶ τρυφερόν ἐστι δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀνέχεσθαι παρρησίας). ¹⁷ Lys. 3.3 (of Ephesus) ‘he [Lysander] found the city well disposed towards himself and eagerly embracing the Spartan cause’ (τὴν πόλιν εὑρὼν εὔνουν μὲν αὑτῷ καὶ λακωνίζουσαν προθυμότατα); Tim. 2.2 (of Corinth) ‘that the city was generally pro-freedom and a permanent loather of tyranny’ (καθόλου τὴν πόλιν . . . φιλελεύθερον καὶ μισοτύραννον οὖσαν ἀεί. ¹⁸ Arist. 27.7 (of Athens) ‘the humanity and kindness, which the city is still amply demonstrating in our time’ (ἧς φιλανθρωπίας καὶ χρηστότητος ἔτι πολλὰ καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἡ πόλις ἐκφέρουσα δείγματα); Fab. 18.4 (of Rome) ‘the aplomb and mildness of the city’ (τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν πρᾳότητα τῆς πόλεως). ¹⁹ Quaest. conv. 710f ‘the city having fun with such earnestness was not in its right mind’ (οὐκ . . . σωφρονεῖν τὴν πόλιν μετὰ τοσαύτης σπουδῆς παίζουσαν (a Spartan’s comment on Athens). ²⁰ Num. 15.1 (of Rome) ‘after such tutoring in religion, the city has become so docile’ (ἐκ δὲ τῆς τοιαύτης παιδαγωγίας πρὸς τὸ θεῖον οὕτως ἡ πόλις ἐγεγόνει χειροήθης). ²¹ Lyc. 30.5 ‘looking up to the Spartiates’ city in its entirety as a mentor or teacher of respectable life and orderly constitution’ (πρὸς δὲ σύμπασαν τὴν τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν πόλιν ὥσπερ παιδαγωγὸν ἢ διδάσκαλον εὐσχήμονος βίου καὶ τεταγμένης πολιτείας ἀποβλέποντες).

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self-discipline, but if they fall into passions and errors . . . they [are destined] to disgrace themselves, be thrown into confusion, and end badly.

Plutarch’s diagnosis of Sparta’s corruption through the influx of wealth is shored up by the argument that private and public morality are related to each other as parts to the whole: ἀλλὰ καὶ πολλῷ τάχιον ἀπὸ τῶν κοινῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἐπιρρέουσιν οἱ ἐθισμοὶ τοῖς ἰδιωτικοῖς βίοις ἢ τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον ὀλισθήματα καὶ πάθη τὰς πόλεις ἀναπίμπλησι πραγμάτων πονηρῶν. τῷ γὰρ ὅλῳ συνδιαστρέφεσθαι τὰ μέρη μᾶλλον, ὅταν ἐνδῷ πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον εἰκός, αἱ δὲ ἀπὸ μέρους εἰς ὅλον ἁμαρτίαι πολλὰς ἐνστάσεις καὶ βοηθείας ἀπὸ τῶν ὑγιαινόντων ἔχουσιν. (Lys. 17.8–9) Indeed, it takes far less time for public practices to spill over into the ways of private life, than it does for individual lapses and failings to fill entire cities with bad situations. For it is natural that the parts are perverted along with the whole, when that deteriorates; but the follies coming from a part into the whole find many correctives and aids in the parts which remain healthy. (trans. B. Perrin 1916b, modified)

On this principle, psychologizing cities suits Plutarch in a strategic fashion. But the trope can be reversed just as well, when an individual soul is compared to a polis. A neat example is the tension between irrational desire (τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν) and reason (τῷ φρονοῦντι) in the soul of the self-controlled person, visualized by means of a quotation from Sophocles: ‘πόλις δ’ ὁμοῦ μὲν θυμιαμάτων γέμει ὁμοῦ δὲ παιάνων τε καὶ στεναγμάτων’, ἡ τοῦ ἐγκρατοῦς ψυχὴ διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν καὶ τὴν διαφοράν.²² (De virt. mor. 445d, with Soph. OT 4–5) ‘The city is filled with incense but also with prayers for health and groans’– the soul of the self-controlled man, because of inconsistency and conflict.

Further symbolism can be generated via references to the institutions in a polis; for example, the archive (γραμματοφυλακεῖον) is a simile for an individual’s memory (De cur. 520b),²³ and the treasury (ταμιεῖον) helps to depict the human self as a ²² Plutarch recycles the same Sophoclean quotation in four further contexts, three of which describe the self under emotional or psychological pressure: Quaest. conv. 623c–d; De amic. mult. 95c; De superst. 169d. Only in Ant. 24.3 is the quotation used about the mood in an actual city. ²³ Van Hoof 2010: 198 n. 63 wants to preserve the metaphor of the soul as a house (cf. De cur. 515b) and so understands γραμματοφυλακεῖον as a ‘room’ where records are kept; Hendrickson 2014: 399 n. 119 narrows the meaning further to ‘book chest’. Yet in Arist. 21.4 (which both Van Hoof and Hendrickson refer to) the word certainly means the city archive, as it does in the epigraphic evidence (IG xii supp. 364, lines 12–16; IG v.1 20.a lines 2–4); the understood political function of the space, whether a room or a building (although there is a case for believing in the latter), is crucial. It is thus

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repository of affects or, again, memories (De tranq. anim. 473b; Anim. an. corp. 500d; Quaest. conv. 672e; Mar. 46.2).²⁴

On the Shoulders of Plato In the polyphony of traditions behind Plutarch’s ethico-political thinking²⁵ pride of place belongs to Plato. Plutarch is a Platonist thinker and an expert reader of the Platonic oeuvre (Quaest. conv. 718c). He endorses the theory of the composite soul, but also brings it into play when talking about character and political action.²⁶ The tropes he employs to describe politics are often loaded with Platonic intertextuality, as Suzanne Saïd demonstrates in her brilliant article ‘Plutarch and the People in the Parallel Lives’.²⁷ For the purposes of this chapter, one Platonic text has particular resonance—I am referring of course to the Republic, where Plato develops the analogy between the soul and the city state. I am not going to delve into the debate about the philosophical value of this analogy,²⁸ but shall limit myself to two propositions about how the Republic frames this analogy and is, in turn, framed through it. a) The thrust of the soul/politeia analogy in Plato is to establish parallelism between the structure of the tripartite psyche (comprised of the rational element and two irrational elements,²⁹ the spirit and the appetites) and the types of citizenry in the polis (441c4–7, 580d3–5). Plato pursues this line of reasoning in Book 4 of the dialogue (434dff) and amplifies it in Books 8 and 9.

more likely that the soul of the curious person in 520b is a polis, rather than a house. This is not to deny that for Plutarch the household is a proportionable unit of the polis: cf. Lyc. 19.7; Comp. Arist. et Cat. Mai. 3.1. ²⁴ With one exception (Chlidon’s storeroom: De gen. 587f), ταμιεῖον in Plutarch refers invariably to the state treasury—of a generic Greek city (Prae. ger. reip. 820c) or of Rome (Publ. 12.3; Luc. 29.10, 37.6; Pomp. 25.6, 45.4; Cat. Min. 18.3; Caes. 28.8; Cic. 12.2; De frat. amor. 484a, etc). This preponderance is the proof that the Plutarchan image of ταμιεῖον within the human self emanates from conceptualizing the self as a miniature city. ²⁵ See Brock 2013. One relevant strand here is the classical idea that ‘city is the men’, which is ready grist for the moralist’s mill. Consider the verdicts passed on the collective behaviour of particular city populations by the Plutarchan narrator (Agis–Cleom. 23.1) or by an observer within the narrative, such as the Younger Cato (Cat. Min. 13.5; Pomp. 40.5). See also Pérez Jiménez, in this volume, Chapter 14. ²⁶ See, respectively, Opsomer 2008; Gill 2006: 229–38 and Duff 1999: 72–98; Beneker 2012: passim. On Plutarch’s theory of the soul, see generally Baltes 2000; Volpe Cacciatore 2016. ²⁷ Saïd 2005: 19–20, 22–24. ²⁸ See e.g. T. Anderson 1971; Williams 1999; Annas 1981: 124–51; Lear 1992; Pender 2000: 196–99; Höffe 2011: esp. 62–69; Leroux 2005; Thein 2005: 254–563; Ferrari 2005: esp. 37–104, 109–16; Blössner 2007; Bilski 2009; Brock 2013: 152–54. ²⁹ Or, rather, ‘drives’: Blössner 2007: 362.

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b) When Plato refers simply to πολιτεία ‘within’ the individual (Resp. 591e1, 608b1, cf. 579c5, 590e3–4), this is shorthand for the argument about the tripartite structure. Plutarch certainly knows Plato’s Republic well. Plutarch’s overall views on human nature and the role of education and virtue in politics and specifically his ideas on ‘great natures’ are indebted to the Republic,³⁰ even though he acknowledges the political impracticality of Plato’s project (Phoc. 3.2; De Alex. fort. 328d–e).³¹ He quotes passages from the dialogue to prop up his own political analysis (e.g. Resp. 552c–d = Prae. ger. reip. 818c; Resp. 473c–d = Num. 20.8–9, Comp. Dem. et Cic. 3.4), but also converts Plato’s words into maxims applicable to the ethics of ‘private’ relationships and situations (e.g. Resp. 462c: Con. praec. 140d, De frat. amor. 484b, Amat. 767d; Resp. 422e–423d = Quaest. conv. 678d).³² Hence it is perfectly legitimate to suppose that the Platonic analogy between the soul and the city state is present on Plutarch’s conceptual and stylistic horizon, too. This is one conclusion that scholars sometimes forget to draw from the Plutarchan appraisal of Lycurgus’ understanding of the nature of community and morality, which was a forerunner of the later philosophical utopias scripted by Plato and others: He thought that happiness in the life of a whole city was due to the same factors as in the life of a single individual, namely virtue and internal unanimity (ὥσπερ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς βίῳ καὶ πόλεως ὅλης νομίζων εὐδαιμονίαν ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς ἐγγίνεσθαι καὶ ὁμονοίας τῆς πρὸς αὑτήν) . . . . Plato took this as basis of his constitution (ταύτην καὶ Πλάτων ἔλαβε τῆς πολιτείας ὑπόθεσιν), and Diogenes and Zeno . . . . (Lyc. 31.1–2, trans. R. Waterfield)

In fact, the majority of Plutarch’s references to the city as an ethical agent might be implicitly nodding in the direction of the Republic—working around the shorter version of Plato’s city/soul analogy, as it were. Given the overarching importance of Plato for Plutarch, such ‘deep’ intertextual contract with the Republic looks both plausible and valid. In other words, the reversible correspondence between the city

³⁰ See generally Aalders 1982: 41–42; Hershbell 1995. For ‘great natures’, see Duff 1999: 47–49, 60–65, 224–72. ³¹ It is worth remembering that not all Platonists under the Roman empire have given up on Plato’s ideal constitution(s): cf. Porph. Plot. 12. ³² Imperial Greco-Roman literature in general thrives on Platonic intertextuality; see e.g. Hunter 2012. Interestingly, Dio’s passage cited at the beginning of this chapter (40.11) could be alluding to the Republic, 495b5–6: a small nature will never ‘do anything great’ for an individual or for a city (σμικρὰ δὲ φύσις οὐδὲν μέγα οὐδέποτε οὐδένα οὔτε ἰδιώτην οὔτε πόλιν δρᾷ). On Dio’s use of Plato, see Trapp 2000.

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and the self ³³ is in itself a Platonic echo, even when Plato is not remotely cited. Consider the anecdote about Philip of Macedon’s City of the Wicked: ὥσπερ ἡ πόλις, ἣν ἐκ τῶν κακίστων καὶ ἀναγωγοτάτων κτίσας ὁ Φίλιππος Πονηρόπολιν προσηγόρευσεν. (De cur. 520b) . . . like the city where Philip settled the vilest and most boorish men, dubbing it Poneropolis.

Plutarch appears to have no qualms about presenting the king’s joke as a fact of political history; his immediate source is probably Theopompus (FGrH fr. 110). Still, the correlation, which here is sarcastic and dystopian, between the community and the ethical status of its members is poised to evoke Plato’s Callipolis. Plutarch puts the Platonic city/soul analogy to work in ways that are indicative of his own socio-cultural and intellectual agenda.³⁴ Thus, it is well known that Plutarch views the reality of his lifeworld as fundamentally peaceful:³⁵ πολλὴ γὰρ εἰρήνη καὶ ἡσυχία, πέπαυται δὲ πόλεμος

(Theon in De Pyth. or. 408b)

For there is total peace and quietude, war has ceased . . . πέφευγε γὰρ ἐξ ἡμῶν καὶ ἠφάνισται πᾶς μὲν ῞Ελλην πᾶς δὲ βάρβαρος πόλεμος (Prae. ger. reip. 824c) All war, Greek or foreign, has fled and disappeared from amongst us.

In the socio-political habitat shared by Plutarch and his readership (‘amongst us’)³⁶ warfare is no longer a concern. For the internal, that is psycho-ethical, identity of the contemporary consumers of the Plutarchan macrotext the situation could not be more different.³⁷ In the similes of Plutarch’s essays the cities may be at war with each other or become victims of a quasi-encore of the Persian aggression:

³³ Although it is debatable whether this reversibility is quite true for Plato’s Republic. See Ferrari 2005: 85–7 contra e.g. T. Anderson 1971: 16, 22–24, 173–75. ³⁴ Cf. Liebert 2016: 35–36: ‘Plutarch needs Socrates’s assertion that city and soul correspond—but he does so with a twist. Whereas the form of political science that emerged from Socrates’ founding insight tended to treat the city and its regime as windows to the citizen’s soul, Plutarch thinks in the opposite direction and treats the citizen’s soul as a window onto the city’. The last comment, however, is severely one-sided. ³⁵ See, generally, Dillon 1997. ³⁶ Plutarch’s use of first-person pronouns as a device for negotiating solidarity with the readers is now well understood: Pelling 2002b: 269, 272–73, 276, 278 = 2004a 405–406, 411–13, 420–21; Zadorojnyi 2006a: 107; Van Hoof 2010: 53–54, 93, 130, 143–44, 162, 167, 196–97. ³⁷ Russell 1983: 23–26 rightly highlights the recurrence of war in Greek rhetorical scenarios under the empire: ‘Sophistopolis is usually at war with her neighbours . . . War . . . was essential to the declaimers’ world . . . . So war is perpetual. Sometimes the army marches out and there is room for heroism—always in defence, for Sophistopolis is never the aggressor—and at other times the city is under siege. This too sets problems’.

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For just as city-states chastened (σωφρονιζόμεναι) by wars with neighbours and continuous campaigning would prize orderly government and healthy constitution (εὐνομίαν καὶ πολιτείαν ὑγιαίνουσαν ἠγάπησαν), so men who are forced, because of certain enmities, to behave soberly in their lives . . . . (De cap. ex inim. 87d–e, trans. D. Russell, modified) Darius sent Datis and Artaphernes to Athens with chains and bonds for the prisoners; likewise, these men bring boxes full of contracts and bills, as fetters, against Greece and march and drive through the cities (τὰς πόλεις ἐπιπορεύονται καὶ διελαύνουσι) . . . . (De vit. aere 829a, trans. D. Russell, modified)

Saliently, in the domain of the self there is no let-up in the conflict between the recommended norms and the destabilizing forces of, typically, πάθος and pleasure. This conflict can be metaphorized³⁸ as inter-city warfare of classical Greece: My own experience with anger (ὀργήν), having confronted it twice or thrice, was that of the Thebans (ἐμοὶ γοῦν συνέβη . . . τὸ τῶν Θηβαίων παθεῖν). When they for the first time beat off the allegedly invincible Spartans, they were never defeated by them thereafter.³⁹ (Fundanus in De coh. ira 454c; trans. W. C. Helmbold, modified)

The parallel between the city and the self intensifies, however, when the soul’s resistance to a particular kind of πάθος is imaged as a siege (πολιορκία)⁴⁰ that the soul must weather relying on the resources of philosophy: ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ πολιορκίαν προσδεχόμενοι συνάγουσι καὶ παρατίθενται τὰ χρήσιμα τὰς ἔξωθεν ἐλπίδας ἀπεγνωκότες, οὕτω μάλιστα δεῖ τὰ πρὸς τὸν θυμὸν βοηθήματα πόρρωθεν λαμβάνοντας ἐκ φιλοσοφίας κατακομίζειν εἰς τὴν ψυχήν. (Fundanus in De coh. ira 454a) Just as people who anticipate a siege and have no hope of help from outside, collect and amass all the useful things, so we must acquire in advance from philosophy the reinforcements against temper and import them into the soul.

The pleasures of culture can also jeopardize our moral self. In Book 10 of the Republic Plato’s Socrates warns that the person who listens to poetry should be alert and anxious about the ‘state within himself ’ (608a7–b1 εὐλαβητέον αὐτὴν ὂν τῷ ἀκροωμένῳ, περὶ τῆς ἐν αὑτῷ πολιτείας δεδιότι). Plutarch replicates the ³⁸ See also Fuhrmann 1964: 157–58. ³⁹ Cf. 457d ‘setting up a monument in the soul to victory over anger’ (ἐν ψυχῇ στῆσαι κατὰ θυμοῦ τρόπαιον). ⁴⁰ Cf. Max. Tyr. 35.7. Plutarch is visibly fond of the image of siege in inter-school philosophical polemics: Adv. Col. 1120d; Comm. not. 1059b; Non posse 1095a. It also describes the plight of a debtor: De vit. aere 828b.

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message of the Platonic caveat, but instead of πολιτεία he uses the more concrete image of a fortified city which is, again, invested by enemies. The ethical risks entailed in the soul’s exposure to the pleasures of literature and theatre are compared to enemy infiltration through a single unprotected gate: οὔτε γὰρ πόλιν αἱ κεκλειμέναι πύλαι τηροῦσιν ἀνάλωτον, ἂν διὰ μιᾶς παραδέξηται τοὺς πολεμίους, οὔτε νέον αἱ περὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἡδονὰς ἐγκράτειαι σῴζουσιν, ἂν τῇ δι’ ἀκοῆς λάθῃ προέμενος αὑτόν (De aud. poet. 14f) For neither closed gates make a city unconquerable if it admits the enemies through one gate, nor does self-control in the other pleasures save a young man if he abandons himself to the auditory one . . . . . . καὶ μήτε πόλιν ἀνάλωτον νομίζειν τὴν τὰς ἄλλας πύλας βαλανάγραις καὶ μοχλοῖς καὶ καταρράκταις ὀχυρὰς ἔχουσαν, εἰ διὰ μιᾶς οἱ πολέμιοι παρελθόντες ἔνδον εἰσίν, μήθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀήττητον ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς, εἰ μὴ κατὰ τὸ Ἀφροδίσιον ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸ Μουσεῖον ἑάλωκεν ἢ τὸ θέατρον· ὁμοίως γὰρ ἐγκέκλικε καὶ παραδέδωκε ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ἄγειν καὶ φέρειν τὴν ψυχήν. (Lamprias in Quaest. conv. 705e) . . . neither should the city be considered impregnable because it secures its other gates with hooks, bars, and portcullises—if the enemies have entered through a single one and are inside; nor should a man think himself invulnerable to pleasure if he is captured in the area of the mouseion or that of theatre,⁴¹ rather than in the precinct of Aphrodite. For he has given ground anyhow and surrendered his soul to the marauding pleasures.

The soul in both passages is construed defensively, as a space that could be invaded and corrupted from the outside. It may not be accidental that when Plutarch talks about the possibility of the soul’s truce and parley with ‘certain pleasures, relaxations or pastimes’ (De prof. virt. 76e), he does not explicitly conjure up the image of a siege—the setting there is a more abstract, albeit relentless war between the self and vice, κακία.⁴² The besieged city is perhaps a trope more akin to the concept of vigilant (and hence insecure) integrity of the self that needs to check, rather than manage, its contact with temptation which is, for Plutarch,⁴³ the enemy at the gates. ⁴¹ The distinction between μουσεῖον and theatre implies different formats of cultural experience; see Zadorojnyi 2013: 381. ⁴² ‘Thus if you are conscious of having combated vice day and night without stopping, or at least of having only infrequently suspended your guard and having admitted (but not regularly) some pleasures, relaxations, or pastimes—envoys from vice, as it were, under ceasefire—then you are likely to proceed towards the future boldly and eagerly’ (οὕτω συνειδῇς σεαυτὸν ἡμέρας τε καὶ νύκτωρ ἀεὶ τῇ κακίᾳ διαμεμαχημένον, ἢ μὴ πολλάκις γε τὴν φρουρὰν ἀνεικότα μηδὲ συνεχῶς παρ’ αὐτῆς οἱονεὶ κήρυκας ἡδονάς τινας ἢ ῥᾳστώνας ἢ ἀσχολίας ἐπὶ σπονδαῖς προσδεδεγμένον, εἰκότως ἂν εὐθαρσὴς καὶ πρόθυμος βαδίζοις ἐπὶ τὸ λειπόμενον). ⁴³ As well as for other ancient philosophical writers. Cf. Sen. De ira 1.8.2 ‘I say, the enemy must be withstood at the very first frontier; if he has invaded and approached the city-gates, he will not accept

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Guarding the Inner Space While the analogy between the soul and the city is undoubtedly a Platonic feature, there are also several suggestive differences between Plutarch’s texts cited above and Plato’s extended metaphor in the Republic which the commentators on Study of Poetry, 14f–15a rightly identify as the closest parallel:⁴⁴ Τελευτῶσαι δὴ οἶμαι κατέλαβον τὴν τοῦ νέου τῆς ψυχῆς ἀκρόπολιν, αἰσθόμεναι κενὴν μαθημάτων τε καὶ ἐπιτηδευμάτων καλῶν καὶ λόγων ἀληθῶν, οἳ δὴ ἄριστοι φρουροί τε καὶ φύλακες ἐν ἀνδρῶν θεοφιλῶν εἰσι διανοίαις. . . . Ψευδεῖς δὴ καὶ ἀλαζόνες οἶμαι λόγοι τε καὶ δόξαι ἀντ’ ἐκείνων ἀναδραμόντες κατέσχον τὸν αὐτὸν τόπον τοῦ τοιούτου . . . . καὶ ἐὰν παρ’ οἰκείων τις βοήθεια τῷ φειδωλῷ αὐτοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀφικνῆται, κλῄσαντες οἱ ἀλαζόνες λόγοι ἐκεῖνοι τὰς τοῦ βασιλικοῦ τείχους ἐν αὐτῷ πύλας οὔτε αὐτὴν τὴν συμμαχίαν παριᾶσιν, οὔτε πρέσβεις πρεσβυτέρων λόγους ἰδιωτῶν εἰσδέχονται, αὐτοί τε κρατοῦσι μαχόμενοι. (Resp. 560b7–d1) And finally, seeing the citadel of the young man’s soul empty of knowledge, fine ways of living, and words of truth (which are the best watchmen and guardians of the thoughts of those men whom the gods love), they finally occupy it themselves . . . . And in the absence of these guardians, false and boastful words and opinions rush up and occupy this part of him . . . . won’t these boastful words close the gates of the royal wall within him to prevent these allies from entering and refuse even to receive the words of older private individuals as ambassadors? Doing battle and controlling things themselves . . . . (trans. G. Grube, modified).

In Plato, the conflict centres on the acropolis; in Plutarch, the polis as a whole is at stake. Yet this slippage is not especially problematic—after all, in the Life of Pelopidas Plutarch notes in passing that in the old days the word ‘polis’ was normally applied to the acropolis (Pel. 18.1 τὰς γὰρ ἀκροπόλεις ἐπιεικῶς οἱ τότε πόλεις ὠνόμαζον). It is Plutarch’s emphasis on guarding the gates of the psyche that makes for a more interesting departure from Plato’s metaphor. In Plato, the gates are shut after the soul’s citadel (τῆς ψυχῆς ἀκρόπολιν) has been taken over by the ‘false and boastful’ λόγοι and δόξαι, so that true discourse is kept out and denied parley (560b7–d1). On the level of imagery, then, Plato does not expect the gates to protect the good regime in the soul.⁴⁵ Plutarch, by contrast, dwells

any terms from the prisoners (in primis, inquam, finibus hostis arcendus est; nam cum intravit et portis se intulit, modum a captivis non accipit). For the mind . . . itself transforms into the affect (animus . . . in adfectum ipse mutatur)’. ⁴⁴ Hunter and Russell 2011: 74. ⁴⁵ Note the more literal snub at the notion of fortification in the Laws 778e6–779a5 (trans. T. J. Saunders, modified): ‘A wall never contributes anything to the health of towns, and in any case is apt to encourage a certain softness in the souls of the inhabitants. It invites them to take refuge behind it instead of tackling the enemy and ensuring their own safety by mounting guard night and

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precisely on the defensive potential of the gates,⁴⁶ provided they are given the necessary attention.⁴⁷ Let me stress the significance of this. The gates with which the city of the soul is furnished by Plutarch are not merely an embellishing detail (although they are that too), but a spin-off from the model of the soul wherein perception is the indispensable checkpoint and flashpoint of psychological and moral response. A useful comparandum is the description of love’s conquest of the soul in Philostratus’ Love Letters (12 Kayser): Πόθεν μου τὴν ψυχὴν κατέλαβες; ἢ δῆλον ὅτι ἀπὸ τῶν ὀμμάτων, ἀφ’ ὧν μόνων κάλλος ἐσέρχεται; ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰς ἀκροπόλεις οἱ τύραννοι καὶ τὰ ἐρυμνὰ οἱ βασιλεῖς καὶ τὰ ὑψηλὰ οἱ θεοὶ⁴⁸ καταλαμβάνουσιν, οὕτω καὶ ὁ ἔρως τὴν τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ἀκρόπολιν, ἣν οὐ ξύλοις, οὐδὲ πλίνθοις, ἀλλὰ μόνοις βλεφάροις τειχίσας ἡσυχῆ καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ἐς τὴν ψυχὴν ἐσδύεται From what vantage point did you seize upon my soul? Is it not plain that it was from the eyes, by which alone beauty finds entrance? For even as tyrants seize on

day; it tempts them to suppose that a foolproof way of protecting themselves is to barricade themselves behind their walls and gates, and then drop off to sleep, as if they were brought into this world for a toil-free life . . .’ (τεῖχος . . . ὃ πρῶτον μὲν πρὸς ὑγίειαν ταῖς πόλεσιν οὐδαμῶς συμφέρει, πρὸς δέ τινα μαλθακὴν ἕξιν ταῖς ψυχαῖς τῶν ἐνοικούντων εἴωθε ποιεῖν, προκαλούμενον εἰς αὐτὸ καταφεύγοντας μὴ ἀμύνεσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους, μηδὲ τῷ φρουρεῖν ἀεί τινας ἐν αὐτῇ νύκτωρ καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν, τούτῳ τῆς σωτηρίας τυγχάνειν, τείχεσι δὲ καὶ πύλαις διανοεῖσθαι φραχθέντας τε καὶ καθεύδοντας σωτηρίας ὄντως ἕξειν μηχανάς, ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ μὴ πονεῖν γεγονότας). Further negativity about the wall(s) is found in Grg. 519a3 and Tht. 174d3–e2; somewhat more neutrally, city walls (τείχη) are prominent in the protection-centred category of ‘possessions in the polis’ (τῶν ἐν πόλει κτημάτων): Pol. 288b1–6, with 287e1. For the historical background of Plato’s misgivings about city walls, see Ober 1985: 52–6, 82–4. Plutarch in his political pronouncements is just as ready to rate the city walls below the mettle of the city’s army: Quaest. conv. 639e ‘a polis that has men who can fight and conquer has no great need of walls’ (οὐ μέγα πόλει τειχῶν ὄφελος ἄνδρας ἐχούσῃ μάχεσθαι δυναμένους καὶ νικᾶν), cf. De laud. ips. 543b (with Dem. 18.299). Predictably, it is the Spartans who vindicate the irrelevance of city walls for men of true valour: Lyc. 19.12; Apophth. Lac. 228e, 210e, 212e, 217e, 240a. In Lys. 14.10 Sparta’s wall-less power is poignantly invoked by the Athenian statesman Theramenes who also maintains that city walls can be sacrificed—the date is 404 !—for the sake of the citizens (τῶν πολιτῶν . . . ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ καταβαλοῦμεν). ⁴⁶ There is similar fixation with the doors of the self ’s metaphorical house threatened by intrusion of πάθος or pleasure: Cons. ux. 609f: sorrow (πένθος) ‘must be fought off at the doors’ (δεῖ μάχεσθαι περὶ θύρας αὐτῷ); Ammonius in Quaest. conv. 645e: ‘he shuts out the luxurious indulgence that comes through the ears, but ushers into the soul, as if by other doors, the one that comes through the eyes and the nose’ (τὴν διὰ τῶν ὤτων ἀποκλείει τρυφὴν καὶ ἡδυπάθειαν, ταύτην τὴν κατὰ τὰ ὄμματα καὶ κατὰ τὰς ῥῖνας ὥσπερ καθ’ ἑτέρας θύρας ἐπεισάγων τῇ ψυχῇ). ⁴⁷ Hunter and Russell 2011: 75 read a latent reference to betrayal ‘from within’ into De aud. poet. 14f–15a. While Plutarch is certainly familiar with such scenarios (e.g. Pyrrh. 32.1), I believe that Plutarch’s image serves rather to bring out the core idea of insufficient vigilance by the defenders, which he knew could prove fatal in a real siege, e.g. Marc. 18.3 ‘one tower . . . which was sloppily guarded . . . the wall there was climbable’ (πύργον τινὰ . . . φυλαττόμενον μὲν ἀμελῶς . . . τοῦ τείχους ἐπιβατοῦ παρ᾿ αὐτὸν ὄντος), Sull. 14.1–2 ‘not guarding the approaches to the wall at the Heptachalcum . . . the spot that could be seized’ (μὴ φυλάττοντα τοῦ τείχους τὴν περὶ τὸ Ἑπτάχαλκον ἔφοδον καὶ προσβολήν . . . τὸν τόπον ἁλώσιμον), Cam. 35.4 ‘and took control of the walls, for nobody was keeping guard’ (καὶ τὰ τείχη καταλαβών· ἐφύλαττε γὰρ οὐδείς). The fall of the anonymous polis sketched out in Quaest. conv. 705e is certainly closer to the latter narratives. ⁴⁸ As variant to the manuscript reading οἱ ἀετοὶ, ‘eagles’.

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citadels, kings on strongholds, and gods on high places, so Love seizes on the citadel of the eyes. This he fortifies, not with palisaded rampart nor with walls of brick, but with eyelids alone and then quietly and step by step he invades the soul . . . (trans. A. Benner and F. Fobes)

Philostratus’ imagery includes no gates per se, yet the equation of the sensory organ (the eye) with the soul’s acropolis is key; having entered through the eyes,⁴⁹ erotic beauty occupies the commanding position over the soul.⁵⁰ The gates of soul’s polis in Plutarch are an allegory that stems from the same conceptual scheme: the soul (and by extension the person) is defined and judged by how it deals with incoming data⁵¹ which can be visual, aural, olfactory, and so on, as well as with more advanced and hazardous psychological configurations fuelled by the sensory data—such as desire or pleasure.⁵² The focus can be on the mechanics of perception, as in the doctor Trypho’s comment on the usefulness of garlands at drinking parties (Quaest. conv. 647c): the smell of flowers protects the head against drunkenness, ‘walling it like a citadel’.⁵³ When the moralizing spectacles are on, the soul of a hero sans reproche (this happens to be Alexander the Great) is celebrated for being unassailable to pleasure and desire: οὔτ’ ἀνάλωτον ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἡ Τύχη καὶ ἄτρωτον ἐπιθυμίαις κατακλείσασα τὴν ψυχὴν ἐφρούρει (De Alex. fort. 339a) it was not luck that locked Alexander’s soul and kept it impregnable to pleasure and invulnerable to desire . . . (trans. F. C. Babbitt, modified)

The idea of a strong-walled city is surely not far away. Going back to the comparison between the Republic, 560b–d and the two Plutarchan passages on the gates of the soul (De aud. poet. 14f; Quaest. conv. 705e), another revealing difference is observable. In Plato, the soul’s citadel is seized in the context of civil strife (Resp. 560a1–d3)⁵⁴—it is a coup d’état, rather

⁴⁹ On erotic visuality in Philostratus’ Love Letters, see Walker 1992. ⁵⁰ The comparison of eros with a tyrant is mobilized in Plato’s Republic, 572e4–573b8, 573d4–5, 575a1–3. See e.g. Larivée 2005; Scott 2007a. ⁵¹ In Plato, perception is certainly relevant for the tug-of-war in the composite soul and the ethical outcomes thereof (the Leontius anecdote, Resp. 439e7–440a3)—but, crucially, the desires and pleasures are immanently inside the city (431c9–d5). ⁵² Hunter and Russell 2011: 74–75 adduce several relevant passages. It should be emphasized that in Apuleius’ Met. 5.19.5 the image of ‘gates thrown open’ (portis patentibus) refers to collapse of convictions, followed by assault on the person’s ‘thoughts’ (cogitationes)—the topos is thus given a markedly cognitive twist. ⁵³ αἱ δὲ τῶν ἀνθῶν ἀπόρροιαι πρὸς τοῦτο θαυμασίως βοηθοῦσι καὶ ἀποτειχίζουσι τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπὸ τῆς μέθης ὡς ἀκρόπολιν. ⁵⁴ Pender 2000: 206–13; Brock 2013: 153 and 176. Cf. Resp. 605b3–c1: ‘it [mimetic poetry] arouses, nourishes, and strengthens this part of the soul and so destroys the rational one, in just the way that

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than foreign invasion, which is what Plutarch apparently has in mind (Quaest. conv. 705e ἄγειν καὶ φέρειν). For Plutarch, the trope of ‘polis under siege’ means, first and foremost, a test of resilience against foreign aggression. An illustrative case study of this tropological formula is the story about Demosthenes yielding to Harpalus’ bribery: οὐ γὰρ ἀντέσχεν ὁ Δημοσθένης, ἀλλὰ πληγεὶς ὑπὸ τῆς δωροδοκίας ὥσπερ παραδεδεγμένος φρουρὰν προσκεχωρήκει τῷ Ἁρπάλῳ (Dem. 25.5) Demosthenes did not hold his ground, but was smitten by the bribe—having let the garrison in, as it were—and sided with Harpalus.

Harpalus arrives into Demosthenes’ Life, literally, ‘from Asia’ (25.1 ἧκεν ἐξ Ἀσίας), and the expensive cup that broke down Demosthenes’ resistance (25.5 οὐ γὰρ ἀντέσχεν) is emphatically called ‘barbarian’ (25.3 βαρβαρικῇ κύλικι); the failure on behalf of the Athenian orator to safeguard his ethico-political integrity is aligned with the idea of a Greek polis capitulating before troops that have come from the east. Needless to say, the lapse of Demosthenes confirms the general tenor of the trope—namely, that it is desirable to protect the self/polis as a locus of probity, paideia, and Hellenism. To put it bluntly, the inside of the besieged city is the good space while the outside teems with manifold badness. As far as I am aware, it is only once in the extant Plutarchan corpus that the siege-trope is loosely attached to folly: in De tuend. san. 127E, people who strain their health through overindulgence in bathing, partying, and eating are said to behave as if they are ‘stocking up food as if for a siege’ (ὥσπερ εἰς πολιορκίαν ἐπισιτιζόμενοι). And even here it does not really follow that those notional townsmen of the simile are foolish in quite the same way as the gluttons and compulsive partygoers. Having said that, Plutarch does not bypass the allegory of civil conflict and usurpation in the psyche either. In Control of Anger, the temper (θυμός) is likened to ‘entrenched tyranny’ (454b ὀχυρὰ τυραννίς).⁵⁵ Tyrants proverbially aim for the acropolis (cf. Cat. Min. 33.5). So, the tyranny of θυμός willy-nilly presupposes the Platonic acropolis of the soul; likewise, its irrationality harks back to the Republic’s structural opposition between the irrational forces and reason, which looms large someone destroys the better sort of citizens when he strengthens the vicious ones and surrenders the city to them. Similarly, we’ll say that an imitative poet puts a bad constitution in the soul of each individual by gratifying its irrational part . . . ’ (τοῦτο ἐγείρει τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τρέφει καὶ ἰσχυρὸν ποιῶν ἀπόλλυσι τὸ λογιστικόν, ὥσπερ ἐν πόλει ὅταν τις μοχθηροὺς ἐγκρατεῖς ποιῶν παραδιδῷ τὴν πόλιν, τοὺς δὲ χαριεστέρους φθείρῃ· ταὐτὸν καὶ τὸν μιμητικὸν ποιητὴν φήσομεν κακὴν πολιτείαν ἰδίᾳ ἑκάστου τῇ ψυχῇ ἐμποιεῖν, τῷ ἀνοήτῳ αὐτῆς χαριζόμενον). ⁵⁵ Just like war, tyranny is a menace that is absent from the political landscape of Plutarch’s day: De Pyth. or. 408b: ‘seditions and tyrannies do not exist’ (καὶ στάσεις οὐκ εἰσὶν οὐδὲ τυραννίδες); Prae. ger. reip. 805a: ‘today . . . the affairs of city-states are not about leadership in wars or deposition of tyrants’ (νῦν . . . τὰ πράγματα τῶν πόλεων οὐκ ἔχει πολέμων ἡγεμονίας οὐδὲ τυραννίδων καταλύσεις).

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behind the polis/soul analogy. Again, something passably Platonic is crystallizing across the Plutarchan macrotext—that is, ‘Platonic’ according to the sectarian idiolect of Platonism. For a clearer view of the soul’s acropolis and tyranny as part of the Platonist repertoire of tropes illustrating the composite soul, it is instructive to look at the Stoic accentuation of the same imagery. To Marcus Aurelius the mind (διάνοια) is the self ’s citadel: διὰ τοῦτο ἀκρόπολίς ἐστιν ἡ ἐλευθέρα παθῶν διάνοια· οὐδὲν γὰρ ὀχυρώτερον ἔχει ἄνθρωπος, ἐφ᾿ ὃ καταφυγὼν ἀνάλωτος λοιπὸν ἂν εἴη (8.48) Because of this the mind, free of affects, is a citadel, for man has nothing more impregnable wherein to retreat and to remain untaken ever since. (trans. C. R. Haines, modified)

More apposite and relevant (chronologically, too) is Epictetus’ prolonged metaphor of removing tyranny from the internal citadel of the self: πῶς οὖν ἀκρόπολις καταλύεται; οὐ σιδήρῳ οὐδὲ πυρί, ἀλλὰ δόγμασιν. ἂν γὰρ τὴν οὖσαν ἐν τῇ πόλει καθέλωμεν, μή τι καὶ τὴν τοῦ πυρετοῦ, μή τι καὶ τὴν τῶν καλῶν γυναικαρίων, μή τι ἁπλῶς τὴν ἐν ἡμῖν ἀκρόπολιν καὶ τοὺς ἐν ἡμῖν τυράννους ἀποβεβλήκαμεν, οὓς ἐφ’ ἑκάστοις καθ’ ἡμέραν ἔχομεν, ποτὲ μὲν τοὺς αὐτούς, ποτὲ δ’ ἄλλους; ἀλλ’ ἔνθεν ἄρξασθαι δεῖ καὶ ἔνθεν καθελεῖν τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, ἐκβάλλειν τοὺς τυράννους· τὸ σωμάτιον ἀφεῖναι, τὰ μέρη αὐτοῦ, τὰς δυνάμεις, τὴν κτῆσιν, τὴν φήμην, ἀρχάς, τιμάς, τέκνα, ἀδελφούς, φίλους, πάντα ταῦτα ἡγήσασθαι ἀλλότρια. κἂν ἔνθεν ἐκβληθῶσιν οἱ τύραννοι, τί ἔτι ἀποτειχίζω τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ἐμοῦ γε ἕνεκα; ἑστῶσα γὰρ τί μοι ποιεῖ; τί ἔτι ἐκβάλλω τοὺς δορυφόρους; (Diss. 4.1.86–88) How, then, is the citadel destroyed? Not by iron, nor by fire, but by judgements. For if we capture the citadel in the city, have we captured the citadel of fever also, that of pretty wenches also—in a word, the acropolis within us? Have we cast out the tyrants within us, whom we have lording it over each of us every day, sometimes the same ones and sometimes different? But here is where we must begin, and it is from this side that we must seize the acropolis and cast out the tyrants; we must give up on the paltry body, its members, the faculties, property, reputation, offices, honours, children, brothers, friends—count all these things as alien to us. And if the tyrants be thrown out from there, why should I any longer raze the fortifications of the citadel, on my own account, at least? For what harm does it do me by standing? Why should I go on and throw out the [tyrant’s] bodyguards? (trans. W. A. Oldfather)

In Epictetus, the tyrants ‘within’ are opinions that mistakenly assign value to the various phenomena extraneous to our moral self (body, property, family . . . ); a

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Stoic must not tolerate such opinions but dislodge and expel them;⁵⁶ the right judgements should rule instead. So, to Epictetus the acropolis of the psyche is a metaphorical site of the dominant value-judgements (δόγματα) that govern the self. By contrast, in the Platonist model which Plutarch subscribes to, the fight for the acropolis of the soul is between reason and the irrational energy of, notably, θυμός. Ironically, it is the Stoic rather that the Platonist schema that is closer to the scenario in the Republic, 560c–d, where the struggle for the soul’s acropolis is between two sets of λόγοι, not between λόγος and outright irrationality.⁵⁷

Political History Through the Lens of City/Soul Analogy Plutarch’s reading of Plato on the soul is biased in favour of the composite model of the psyche. Plutarch is well informed about the Platonic tripartition of the soul (De virt. mor. 442a; Quaest. Plat. IX, esp. 1007e, 1008b–e), even if he commits more fully and systematically to the bipartite model, foregrounded in the basic division between reason and irrationality.⁵⁸ But what about the correlation between the tripartite soul and the three classes in the πολιτεία? Although the short treatise On Monarchy, which overtly engages with Plato’s parallel between the types of individuals and those of government (826c = cf. Resp. 544d–e), is not genuinely Plutarchan, it is undeniable that Plato’s taxonomy of political soul-types was a big influence on Plutarch. His construal of collective or individual character often fleshes out the Platonic framework. Thus, in the Life of Pericles the Athenian demos is profiled in terms of τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, the irrational appetite;⁵⁹ the spirited and honour-loving types of the Republic are acted out by protagonists across several Lives.⁶⁰ At other times Plutarch’s pedagogical and/or political argumentation visibly falls back on the Platonic analogy between the make-up of the soul and political roles in the city. As before, the analogy works both ways—from the polis to the self, and vice versa. Good ‘words’ (τῶν λόγων . . . χρηστοὺς) are ‘fostered in character, like guardians, by philosophy’ (De aud. poet. 38b ὥσπερ φύλακας ἐντραφέντας ὑπὸ φιλοσοφίας τῷ ἤθει)—effectively, they are the guardian-class within the soul.⁶¹ Real-life soldiers, in turn, can be a political liability. Plutarch would have this problem addressed at the level of soul and education. In the

⁵⁶ Note that in Epictetus the philosophically informed values are assaulting, not defending the citadel of the self; cf. Marcus Aurelius’ image (7.7) of the soldier storming the walls (ἐν τειχομαχίᾳ). In Plato, capturing a fortified city is a simile for tenacious intellectual enquiry (Soph. 261b5–c4). ⁵⁷ Cf. Gill 2006: 304–322, esp. 315–17; Kalimtzis 2012: 45–47, 118–20. ⁵⁸ See n. 26. ⁵⁹ Saïd 2005: 13–15. ⁶⁰ See e.g. Pelling 2002b: 344–46 on Coriolanus; Stadter 1999: 482–86 and Duff 2008b: 14, 21–22 on Lysander; Zadorojnyi 2006b: 282–85 on Themistocles. See generally Nikolaidis 2012. ⁶¹ For fuller analysis of the intertextual relationship between On Listening and the Republic, see Jażdżewska 2013. On the connection between ‘guardianship’ and philosophy in the Republic, see Long 2013: 28–31.

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opening of the Life of Galba, which is a clever case study in στάσις and the difficulties of containing violent military paroxysms,⁶² Plutarch claims that the solution is education of the soul—as Plato understood, martial discipline has to grow from ethics: ὁ δὲ Πλάτων οὐδὲν ἔργον ὁρῶν ἄρχοντος ἀγαθοῦ καὶ στρατηγοῦ στρατιᾶς μὴ σωφρονούσης μηδὲ ὁμοπαθούσης, ἀλλὰ τὴν πειθαρχικὴν ἀρετὴν ὁμοίως τῇ βασιλικῇ νομίζων φύσεως γενναίας καὶ τροφῆς φιλοσόφου δεῖσθαι, μάλιστα τῷ πρᾴῳ καὶ φιλανθρώπῳ τὸ θυμοειδὲς καὶ δραστήριον ἐμμελῶς ἀνακεραννυμένης (Galb. 1.3). But Plato saw that a good commander or general can do nothing unless his army is amenable and of the same disposition. He thinks that the virtue of obedience, like that of a king, requires a noble nature and a philosophical training, which, above all things, blends harmoniously gentleness and humanity with spiritedness and enterprise.

It is not easy to pin down the exact Platonic passage Plutarch alludes to here, but the overall drift seems to be unmistakably towards the Republic. The main fascination as well as the problem of the city/soul analogy in Plutarch is, however, that it is subject to ‘deep’ intertextual diffusion. One might say that it is the key to a sort of Platonic code for the reader to unlock from contexts which are, at first sight, not at all a commentary on Plato. For example, in the Life of Dion, 41.3 the commander of the tyrant’s mercenaries, looking down from the citadel, notices that the liberated Syracusan populace are utterly disorganized: ‘no part of the city is healthy’ (οὐδὲν ὑγιαῖνον ἐν τῇ πόλει μέρος); so he launches an attack from the acropolis. Dion is a narrative suffused with Platonic themes, and Plato himself is a character in the story.⁶³ Therefore, it is feasible that the combination of the concept of ethico-political health with the idiom of ‘part’ (μέρος) triggers an allusion to the Republic. Plutarch could not have failed to remember that in the Republic supreme orderliness of the polis is likened to a healthy individual (372e6–7 ὥσπερ ὑγιής τις), while μέρος is used both about constituents of the tripartite soul (e.g. 444b3, 577d2–4, 583a1–3)⁶⁴ and about classes in the city state (e.g. 429b1–3, 552a8–10).⁶⁵ The added poignancy of Plutarch’s intertextual game in Dion 41.3 is that the Platonic correspondence between the Syracusans’ character and their lack of military and political ⁶² Ash 1997. ⁶³ Zadorojnyi 2011; Opsomer 2011: 159–68; Nerdahl 2011; Beneker 2012: 87–101. ⁶⁴ Plutarch’s usage too: De virt. mor. 447a ψυχῆς μέρος. ⁶⁵ Again, broadly comparable usage can be found in Plutarch, e.g. Cat. Min. 41.3 ‘and the argument was spreading through the still sensible part of the city . . .’ (καὶ μέντοι καὶ λόγος ἐχώρει διὰ τοῦ σωφρονοῦντος ἔτι τῆς πόλεως μέρους). Of course μέρος dovetails particularly well with the idea of city as body.

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coordination is discerned and taken advantage of by a mercenary soldier who serves the tyranny—the regime defined in the Republic as the city’s ‘ultimate disease’ (544c6–7 ἔσχατον πόλεως νόσημα). But Plutarch can afford to respond to the Republic with almost provocative subtlety because its insights and phraseology are so integral to the fabric of his own writing, in the Life of Dion and beyond.

Conclusion To sum up: I have attempted to show that a more nuanced understanding of Plutarch’s intellectual and ethico-political programme is gained by studying his use of the city/soul analogy and the tropes used to express or hint at it. Thus, it is noteworthy that the tropes for the soul in Plutarch are not dominated by contemporary references to the empire; more often than not he seems to think of a timeless (but also—palpably—classical) polis fighting off the enemies from its gates. The imagery of external military threat is, in effect, depoliticized—invasion and siege, in Plutarch’s Moralia, are happening to the human self. Such ostensibly inward turn of the city/soul analogy does not, however, make it any less valuable to Plutarch as a Platonically bent interpreter of the past and of the imperial present. The city/soul analogy helps to triangulate the three major ideological circuits of the Plutarchan macrotext: his sustained interest in the human soul and character, his scrutiny of city-state politics from a perspective which is simultaneously pragmatic and idealistic,⁶⁶ and his choice to explore both character and the polis with, and through, Plato.

⁶⁶ See Pelling 2004a; Van Raalte 2005; Opsomer 2011; Zadorojnyi 2011: 147–49; Liebert 2016.

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14 The City and the Ship Reception and the Use of a Metaphor in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives Aurelio Pérez Jiménez

The Uses and Sources of a Metaphor in Plutarch Among the literary features of Plutarch’s works, and particularly of the Parallel Lives, images, comparisons, metaphors, and allegories are especially prevalent.¹ Some Plutarch knew because of his familiarity with the earlier tradition, and in other cases he was guided by his own experience. We will focus on the image identifying the State with a ship, an image backed up by Platonic authority,² so appreciated by Plutarch. The allegory of the ship and its natural environment (the sea, fair weather, swell and storms, the attitude of its crew at the different difficulties of a journey) was perfectly adapted to the baroque aesthetic of an author such as Plutarch. Moreover, it is a literary image that has a long tradition in Greek culture from Homer on and had already been employed in the context of political quarrels between cities by the time of Archilochus and Alcaeus, appearing frequently in classical poetry, especially in tragedy, and in the works of philosophers, historians, and Greek and Roman poets.³ It is not surprising, then, that our moralist and biographer turns more than once to that image in order to increase the descriptive realism of particularly emotional situations or, like the Platonic Socrates, in order better to illustrate with metaphors drawn from every-day situations the psychological behaviour of human beings and the ethical principles that must govern their lives, both as individuals and as members of a collective. Thus the image of the ship in Plutarch, just as in Plato or Aristotle, sometimes appears in association with other fields of everyday life, such as medicine in De genio Socratis,⁴ doctors and weavers in De Iside et Osiride,⁵ or horsemanship and

¹ Fuhrmann 1964: 49–50 and 234–37. ² See Brock 2013: 58. ³ On the topic in Greek literature until Aristotle, see Brock 2013: 53–67. ⁴ De gen. 11 581f–82a: see Appendix §1, p. 266. For Plutarch’s political use of medical imagery, see Martín del Pozo 1996: 186–88 and Zadorojnyi’s chapter (13) in this volume. ⁵ De Is. et Os. 64.37e: see Appendix §2, p. 266. Aurelio Pérez Jiménez, The City and the Ship: Reception and the Use of a Metaphor in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0015

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construction in Praecepta gerendae reipublicae.⁶ The last passage is especially relevant to our topic: καὶ γὰρ ὁ τρόπος καὶ ὁ λόγος· εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία φήσει τις, ὡς τὸν κυβερνήτην ἄγειν τὸ πλοῖον οὐ τὸ πηδάλιον, καὶ τὸν ἱππέα στρέφειν τὸν ἵππον οὐ τὸν χαλινόν, οὕτω πόλιν πείθειν οὐ λόγῳ, ἀλλὰ τρόπῳ χρωμένην ὥσπερ οἴακι καὶ χαλινῷ τὴν πολιτικὴν ἀρετήν, ᾗπερ εὐστροφώτατον ζῷον, ὥς φησι Πλάτων (Crit. 109c), οἷον ἐκ πρύμνης ἁπτομένην καὶ κατευθύνουσαν. (Prae. ger. reip. 5.801c–d) for both his nature and speech do so; unless, indeed, one is to affirm that just as the helmsman, not the tiller, steers the ship, and the rider, not the rein, turns the horse, so political virtue, employing, not speech, but the speaker’s character as tiller of rein, sways a State, laying hold of it and directing it, as it were, from the stern, which is, in fact, as Plato says, the easiest way of turning an animal about.

Here Plutarch claims that a leader should deploy exemplary moral behaviour as a more effective and correct way of educating and guiding his city than verbal persuasion, and he includes an explicit reference to his Platonic source. Plato is an inevitable candidate when we look for Plutarch’s possible sources for this image. But the source could also be, though he does not mention it, Aristotle and poetry, especially Attic drama. Of course we should add to Plutarch’s sources historiography, which also used this metaphor, mostly in its imitation of Alexandrian and Roman rhetoric.⁷ Of all these sources, Plutarch cites Plato, Aeschylus,⁸ and Theopompus,⁹ and presents different testimonies from Sophocles,¹⁰ anonymous poets,¹¹ and some orators.¹² Even though we may criticize ⁶ Concerning architecture, cf. 807b, Appendix §5b, p. 267, Appendix §5a and §5b (p. 267, where in particular Plutarch associates the idea of a good choice to be made by the ship captain with his pilot, with divine providence as regards the ruler of the city. For a more detailed comment on 807b and §5b of my Appendix, p. 267, cf. Van der Stockt’s chapter (16) in this volume. ⁷ For example, Num. 2.5 is anticipated in Dion. Hal. II 62.4: ἐν τοιούτῳ δὴ κλύδωνι τὰ πράγματα τῆς πόλεως σαλεύοντα ὁ Νόμας καταλαβών/‘So Numa, having found the affairs of the State in such a raging sea of confusion’. Cf. De fort. Rom. 9.321C: ἀλλὰ Νομᾶς ἔοικε τὴν ἀγαθὴν Τύχην ἔχειν ὡς ἀληθῶς σύνοικον καὶ σύνεδρον καὶ συνάρχουσαν· ἣ καθάπερ ἐν κλύδωνι θολερῷ καὶ τεταραγμένῳ πελάγει τῇ τῶν π ροσοίκων καὶ γειτόνων ἔχθρᾳ καὶ χαλεπότητι τὴν πόλιν φερομένη καὶ φλεγμαίνουσαν ὑπὸ μυρίων πόνων αὶ διχοστασιῶν παραλαβοῦσα τοὺς μὲν ἀντιτεταγμένους θυμοὺς καὶ φθόνους ὥσπερ πνεύματα κατέσβεσεν/ ‘On the contrary, it appears likely that Numa had Good Fortune as his true wife, counsellor, and colleague; and she took the city in charge when it was being carried hither and yon amid the enmity and fierceness of bordering tribes and neighbours, as in the midst of turbulent billows of a troubled sea and was inflamed by countless struggles and dissensions; and she calmed these opposing passions and jealousies as though they had been but gusts of wind’. ⁸ Non posse 5.1090A: see Appendix §3, pp. 266–267. ⁹ Ages. 31.3: see Appendix §4, p. 267. ¹⁰ From whom he cites (Fab. 27.1) in this context a verse (163: πολλῷ σάλῳ σεισθεῖσαν ὤρθωσεν πάλιν/‘shaken in a heavy surge’ from Antigone in which the term σάλῳ has something to do with the marine metaphor. ¹¹ De garr. 2.502f–503a: see Appendix §5a and §5b, p. 267. ¹² For instance, Demades (cf. Brock 2013: 57 with notes 35–36). On another hand, the expression we read in Arat. 41.2 ἐν τοσούτῳ σάλῳ καὶ κινδύνῳ διαφερόμενος (‘drifting about in great surge and peril’) looks like an echo of Lys., in Andoc. 49, καὶ ἐπιστάμενος ἐν πολλῷ σάλῳ καὶ κινδύνῳ . . . /‘Knowing that the State was tossed in storm and danger . . ,’.

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Plutarch for a lack of originality in the use of this metaphor (for example, in the previously mentioned passage of Praecepta), its presence now and then in Moralia and Parallel Lives indicates his literary taste for this image for statesmen’s behaviour. Support lies in De fortuna Romanorum 321d–e, a passage in which Plutarch deploys all his rhetorical tricks (pleonasms, chiasmus, parallelisms, polyptotons, paronomasias, responsio between the compared elements and, above all, metaphorical language) to describe the founding and the early days of Rome with images drawn from the stages of a ship’s construction: νεοσταθεῖ δήμῳ καὶ κραδαινομένῳ παρέσχε ῥιζῶσαι καὶ καταστῆσαι τὴν πόλιν αὐξανομένην ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ βεβαίως καὶ ἀνεμποδίστως. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁλκὰς ἢ τριήρης ναυπηγεῖται μὲν ὑπὸ πληγῶν καὶ βίας πολλῆς, σφύραις καὶ ἥλοις ἀρασσομένη καὶ γομφώμασι καὶ πρίοσι καὶ πελέκεσι, γενομένην δὲ στῆναι δεῖ καὶ παγῆναι σύμμετρον χρόνον, ἕως οἵ τε δεσμοὶ κάτοχοι γένωνται καὶ συνήθειαν οἱ γόμφοι λάβωσιν: ἐὰν δὲ ὑγροῖς ἔτι καὶ περιολισθάνουσι τοῖς ἁρμοῖς κατασπασθῇ, πάντα χαλάσει διατιναχθέντα καὶ δέξεται τὴν θάλατταν: οὕτω τὴν Ῥώμην ὁ μὲν πρῶτος ἄρχων καὶ δημιουργὸς ἐξ ἀγρίων καὶ βοτήρων ὥσπερ ἐκ δρυόχων κραταιῶν συνιστάμενος, οὐκ ὀλίγους πόνους ἔσχεν οὐδὲ μικροῖς ἀντήρεισε πολέμοις καὶ κινδύνοις, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς ἀνθισταμένους πρὸς τὴν γένεσιν καὶ ἵδρυσιν αὐτῆς.ὁ δὲ δεύτερος παραλαβὼν χρόνον ἔσχε πῆξαι καὶ βεβαιῶσαι τὴν αὔξησιν τῇ εὐτυχίᾳ, ἐπιλαβόμενος πολλῆς μὲν εἰρήνης πολλῆς δ᾽ ἡσυχίας. (De fort. Rom. 321d-e)

This city, either a merchant ship or a war ship (ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁλκὰς ἢ τριήρης), is initially constructed by blows and violence (ναυπηγεῖται μὲν ὑπὸ πληγῶν καὶ βίας πολλῆς), an idea in which Plutarch insists by the reiteration of the effects of hammers and nails, bolts, saws and axes. All of this is organized as a chiasmus: σφύραις καὶ ἥλοις ἀρασσομένη καὶ γομφώμασι καὶ πρίοσι καὶ πελέκεσι (321d) which . . . is buffeted by hammers and nails, bolts and saws and axes

The corresponding phase in Roman history would be the city’s founding by Romulus, whose nature as ἄρχων καὶ δημιουργός unites reality (sovereign) and metaphor (craftsman). This phase responds to the verb ναυπηγεῖται in the comparison with a syntagma in which the socio-political elements are merged with the naval elements thanks to a second comparison:

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ἐξ ἀγρίων καὶ βοτήρων ὥσπερ ἐκ δρυόχων κραταιῶν συνιστάμενος

(321e)

from rustics and shepherds, as though building up from a stout keel

Finally, a last chiasmus parallels the terms referring to the violent blows needed for the construction of a ship with those which describe the hardships, wars and danger that threatened the birth of Rome: οὐκ ὀλίγους πόνους ἔσχεν οὐδὲ μικροῖς ἀντήρεισε πολέμοις καὶ κινδύνοις, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς ἀνθισταμένους πρὸς τὴν γένεσιν καὶ ἵδρυσιν αὐτῆς. (321e) took upon himself no small number of labours, nor of slight moment were the wars and dangers that he withstood in warding off, out of necessity, those who opposed the creation and foundation of Rome.

Once the ship is constructed, a period of tranquillity and fixation is needed γενομένην δὲ στῆναι δεῖ καὶ παγῆναι σύμμετρον χρόνον. (321d) and when it is completed, it must remain at rest and grow firm for a suitable period of time ἕως οἵ τε δεσμοὶ κάτοχοι γένωνται καὶ συνάφειαν οἱ γόμφοι λάβωσιν. (321d) until the knots can acquire strength and the attachments firmness.

This period in Roman history belongs to Numa’s reign: after he accepted rule over the city, he needed time to repair her and ensure her development, ὁ δὲ δεύτερος παραλαβὼν χρόνον παρέσχε πῆξαι καὶ βεβαιῶσαι τὴν αὔξησιν (321e) But he who was the second to take over the State gained time by good fortune to consolidate and made assured the enlargement of Rome

It is worth noting the correspondence between χρόνον and πῆξαι. Plutarch delivers a pleonastic amplificatio: τῇ εὐτυχίᾳ ἐπιλαβόμενος πολλῆς μὲν εἰρήνης πολλῆς δ’ ἡσυχίας. (321e) by good fortune . . . for much peace did he secure for her and much quiet.

(c)

The third stage of this comparison suggests what could happen if this crucial rest period is not observed and the ship gets launched when the joints are still wet and slippery. ἐὰν δὲ ὑγροῖς ἔτι καὶ περιολισθάνουσι τοῖς ἁρμοῖς κατασπασθῇ (321e) but if it be launched while its joints are still damp and slippery.

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In that case all those joints will be loosened because of the shocks (πάντα χαλάσει διατιναχθέντα) and the ship will let the water come in (καὶ δέξεται τὴν θάλασσαν). This coincides with the possibility that in her early days, Rome may have had to face the attack of Porsenna (the expression τείχεσιν ὑγροῖς ἔτι καὶ κραδαινομένοις corresponds to the ὑγροῖς ἔτι καὶ περιολισθάνουσι τοῖς ἁρμοῖς in the comparison), Marsi, Lucani, and other hostile people that later endangered Rome. The conclusion now does not fit the corresponding stage of the ship’s construction but emphasizes and incorporates the metaphor by insisting on the difficulties that the city had in resisting so much agitation and swell: οὐκ ἂν ἀντέσχον αἱ πρῶται τῆς πόλεως ἀρχαὶ πρὸς σάλον καὶ κλύδωνα. (321f) the early beginnings of the City would not have been able to hold out against such a mighty surge and billow.

Examples like this one or that in the Praecepta, which leave no doubt about Plutarch’s skills in developing the image, invite investigation into this metaphor’s use in the Parallel Lives and an analysis of the compositional elements used to characterize the heroes.¹³ This use is not accidental; Plutarch is mindful of the value of rhetoric just as he is mindful of the figures of image, comparison, metaphor, and allegory with which he introduces a rhetorical element into his works.¹⁴

The Physical City as a Ship. Parts of the Ship in the City Let us now examine how Plutarch envisions a whole city, in terms of physical space and human collective, as a ship; and as Plutarch said in the opening of the Theseus–Romulus pair,¹⁵ let us also begin with Delphi. In a work such as the Parallel Lives, in which he prioritizes over any other consideration public activity and the effects that different dangers can produce on the citizen body, the identification of the city’s physical space with a ship merits attention. In our case it is limited to the pair Themistocles–Camillus. In the Themistocles we find a metaphorical interpretation whereby, according to a tradition that existed at least as far back as Herodotus,¹⁶ Themistocles identified the ‘wooden walls’ with which the Pythia had ordered the city to be enclosed to protect it from the Persian attack: he maintained that by this expression the god meant ‘ships’. Of course, the association between ships and the state proposed by Themistocles already had a ¹³ This is precisely the most important literary function of the metaphor in Pyrrhus–Marius, as Duff 1999: 122–23 points out. Regarding Marius, cf. Carney 1960: 24–25. ¹⁴ See the detailed analysis of Hirsch-Luipold 2002: 25–39 and 119–44. As concerns the metaphor of the ship, the interests of the author point in a different direction. ¹⁵ Thes. 24.4, Sol. 14.6. ¹⁶ Hdt. VII 141–43.

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wide cultural tradition in Greece that started, as we have already said, with Archilochus and Alcaeus, and afterwards would be well established on the Athenian stage—the metaphor appears more than once in Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles and is widely used in Aristophanes. It would not have been too difficult for Themistocles to establish a relation between these two entities shortly before those performances. Admittedly Plutarch is not being original here, since he is just gathering data from the previous tradition, as he does in other passages. However, he is being original in Camillus, when he describes the circumstances under which Romans had to live after the sack of Rome by the Gauls: when the citizens were forced to reconstruct Rome, they complained and asked to move to Veii, which was empty and available. Plutarch compares this situation with a shipwreck: ὥσπερ ἐκ ναυαγίου γυμνοὺς καὶ ἀπόρους σωθέντας

(Cam. 31.5)

now that they had been saved alive as it were from a shipwreck, in nakedness and destitution

creating the metaphor by transforming the physical city into a wrecked ship that needs to be reconstructed: τὰ λείψανα τῆς διεφθαρμένης συμπηγνύναι πόλεως. Now, apart from these two examples and a brief allusion to Pyrrhus, said to have tried to escape from Sicily as from a storm-tossed ship (ἀλλ’> ὥσπερ νεὼς ταραχθείσης [ἀλλ’] ἔκβασιν ζητῶν) ‘but like a storm-tossed ship, he desired to get out of her’, Pyrrh. 23.7), there are no further passages in which the city as a physical space is identified with a ship, nor, as happens in the Themistocles, in which elements of a city’s structure are identified with ships. This is due to the fact that the metaphor or the comparison, as we see it in Plutarch, is not a comparandum for the physical city, but for its social composition and political organization. It is from this point of view that certain parts of the ship may metaphorically be identified with the State. The most obvious example lies in the comparison between Phocion and Cato at the beginning of Phocion’s biography (Phoc. 3.4). The metaphor picks out Cato’s secondary role in the conflict between Caesar and Pompeius: it identifies the tasks he carried out with the ‘riggings’ (κάλων) and ‘sails’ (ἱστίων) of the ship (the city), the tasks of subordinate sailors, whereas he was kept from the helm (οἰάκων) and from handling it (κυβερνήσεως), a task which is the pilot’s or captain’s. In this passage, the reference that links metaphor and city is made clear by the beginning (οὐ κεκλιμένης μὲν ἤδη τῆς πατρίδος/for his native city was not already prostrate) where, even though the term πατρίς relates to the political world, the graphic verb κλίνω is clearly metaphorical) and by the end, where we find the public sphere to which the figure is connected (καὶ παραστῆναι τοῖς πλέον δυναμένοις πολιτευσάμενος/and by supporting men of greater influence).

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We encounter ‘riggings’ and ‘sails’ in this passage, but another major component of a ship is its anchor. In the Life of Solon, by ‘anchor’ Plutarch means the two councils, the Areopagus and the Boule: τὴν δ’ ἄνω βουλὴν ἐπίσκοπον πάντων καὶ φύλακα τῶν νόμων ἐκάθισεν, οἰόμενος ἐπὶ δυσὶ βουλαῖς ὥσπερ ἀγκύραις ὁρμοῦσαν, ἧττον ἐν σάλῳ τὴν πόλιν ἔσεσθαι καὶ μᾶλλον ἀτρεμοῦντα τὸν δῆμον παρέξειν. (Sol. 19.2) Then he made the upper council a general overseer in the state, and guardian of the laws, thinking that the city with its two councils, riding as it were at double anchor, would be less tossed by the surges, and would keep its populace less volatile.

The legislator’s intention, as Plutarch says, was for the city to be stabilized by its ‘anchors’ so as to be less exposed to the swell. It has been suggested that Plutarch lacks originality here, since he might be paraphrasing a few lines of Solon. It is true that, ex silentio, we cannot disprove this; but if we keep in mind Plutarch’s habitual use of the image of the city as a ship, it cannot be denied that the metaphor could be the product of his own literary genius, not Solon’s. I personally believe, and I am not alone,¹⁷ that, if he had taken it directly from Solon, he would have used a verb denoting expression (such as λεγόμενος, ποιούμενος, etc.) instead of a verb denoting thought (οἰόμενος). By using a verb of thought Plutarch seems to be interpreting Solon’s intentions rather than merely transmitting his words. Plutarch’s creativity in this example finds support from other cases where his terminology is comparable,¹⁸ from the oracle in which Delphi (Delphi, again) encourages Solon to place himself in the middle of the ship and to take control of the helm,¹⁹ and from his knowledge of this metaphor’s appearance in other authors (Demosthenes, for example) who likewise use the two anchors in a political context.²⁰

¹⁷ See, for example, Hignett 1970: 93 who does not accept the hypothesis that Plutarch takes this metaphor from Solon. ¹⁸ So it is in De exilio 7.601e–f: μόνον ἔχειν δεῖ πρὸς τούτοις νοῦν καὶ λογισμὸν ὥσπερ ἄγκυραν κυβερνήτην, ἵνα παντὶ χρῆσθαι λιμένι προσορμισθεὶς δύνηται (‘Only be must also have good sense and reason, as a skipper needs an anchor that he may moor in any haven and make use of it’). Although the image is not related to the city but to the exiled person and so is not properly a city metaphor, nevertheless the pair of terms compared with the anchor (νοῦν καὶ λογισμόν) and the use of the past participle προσορμισθείς allow us to suppose that the metaphor is part of Plutarch’s wider literary thinking. ¹⁹ Sol. 14.6: ἔνιοι δέ φασι καὶ μαντείαν γενέσθαι τῷ Σόλωνι Πυθοῖ τοιαύτην ἧσο μέσην κατὰ νῆα, κυβερνητήριον ἔργον/εὐθύνων· πολλοί τοι Ἀθηναίων ἐπίκουροι. (‘Furthermore, some say that Solon got an oracle at Pytho which run as follows: Take thy seat amidships, the pilot’s task is thine;/Perform it; many in Athens are thine allies’). For comment on this topic and Plutarch’s interpretation of it, see Brock 2013: 55. ²⁰ Dem. In Dionysod. 44: μηδ’ ἐπὶ δυοῖν ἀγκύραιν ὁρμεῖν αὐτοὺς ἐᾶτε, ὡς, ἐὰν μὲν κατορθώσωσι, τἀλλότρια ἕξοντας, ἐὰν δὲ μὴ δύνωνται ἐξαπατῆσαι ὑμᾶς, αὐτὰ τὰ ὀφειλόμεν’ ἀποδώσοντας· (‘nor allow

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The detail of the number two—not one, not three—is not serendipitous in an author who well knows that ever since the Argo ships had a second anchor, the socalled ἱερά, besides the main one, to drop as a last resort in extreme conditions. In this connection, Plutarch in the aforementioned text of Praecepta²¹ advises that one should participate in city politics and not hold oneself apart (ἀποκεῖσθαι) as a sacred anchor (ὥσπερ ἐν πλοίῳ σκεῦος ἱερὸν), waiting for critical situations. And one of those situations (to return to the Parallel Lives!) takes place in Coriolanus 32.1, when after the first ambassadors’ failure the Senate decides that the only salvation is to send priests: Ἐπανελθόντων δὲ τῶν πρέσβεων ἀκούσασα ἡ βουλή, καθάπερ ἐν χειμῶνι πολλῷ καὶ κλύδωνι τῆς πόλεως ἄρασα τὴν ἱερὰν ἀφῆκεν. When the embassy had returned and the senate had heard its report, it felt that the city was tossing on the billows of a great tempest, and therefore let down the sacred anchor.

In this passage it is only the image of the storm that allows us to interpret τὴν ἱεράν as ‘sacred anchor’, an image used by the author not only to stress the Romans’ desperate situation but also to allude to the nature of the second, priestly embassy to Coriolanus. Nevertheless, having established the metaphor with that simple word ἱεράν, he uses both the past participle ἄρασα and the aorist ἀφῆκεν to point in the same direction. The first verb is also employed in De exilio (ἀράμενοι) for the action of throwing the anchor (τὸ ἀγκύριον)²² and, in Praecepta gerendae reipublicae 815c we again read ἀράμενος metaphorically as the action of a statesman who must avoid endangering his city but rather offer his help in crucial situations (still in the context of a marine comparison), providing his own frankness as ‘sacred anchor’.²³ The concluding verb ἀφῆκεν, in this context may begin to lose its figurative sense as the meaning ‘despatched’ takes over. In addition to the anchor, another essential part of the ship is the helm, attached to the stern. In Praecepta 15.812c,²⁴ Plutarch associates the helm with the place from where the statesman persuades the citizens (the ship) to adopt his proposals: he says that just as the pilot sometimes calls other members of the crew to come to the stern and tend the helm, so the politician should invite others to join him on the βῆμα so as not to assume all the responsibility for policy himself. The term ὀργάνοις, here used to refer to the sailors and the bow man, clearly recalls Aristotle’s classification of the ἄψυχα and ἔμψυχα ὄργανα that are in the them to ride on two anchors, with the hope that, if they are successful, they will retain what belongs to others, and if they are not able to hoodwink you, they will merely pay the bare amount which they owe’). ²¹ Prae. ger. reip. 15.812b: see Appendix §6, p. 267. ²² See Appendix §7, p. 267. ²³ See Appendix §8, p. 268. ²⁴ For the text see Appendix §9, pp. 267–268.

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service of the commander: among the ἔμψυχα, indeed, the philosopher includes the πρῳρεύς.²⁵ But let us return to the Parallel Lives. The stateman as helmsman also appears at Caesar 28.5, where the sentence αἵματι δὲ καὶ νεκροῖς πολλάκις αἰσχύναντες τὸ βῆμα διεκρίθησαν (‘and they would defile the rostra with blood and corpses before they separated’) is followed by the comparison: ἐν ἀναρχίᾳ τὴν πόλιν ὥσπερ ἀκυβέρνητον ὑποφερομένην ἀπολιπόντες (‘leaving the city in anarchy like a ship drifting without a steersman’). In this case, monarchy (here we are dealing with a metaphor, not simply a comparison) is seen as the way to escape the squall: ὥστε τοὺς νοῦν ἔχοντας ἀγαπᾶν, εἰ πρὸς μηδὲν αὐτοῖς χεῖρον, ἀλλ’ μοναρχίαν ἐκ τοσαύτης παραφροσύνης καὶ τοσούτου κλύδωνος ἐκπεσεῖται τὰ πράγματα. so that men of understanding were content if the outcome of such madness and so great a tempest was nothing worse for them than monarchy.

Very different is Pericles 15.2, where the ship stands for the entire citizen body and the helm (ὥσπερ οἴαξι), for the people’s hopes and fears, which are exploited by the pilot-statesman to steer them: μάλιστα δ’ ἐλπίσι καὶ φόβοις ὥσπερ οἴαξι συστέλλων τὸ θρασυνόμενον αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ δύσθυμον ἀνιεὶς καὶ παραμυθούμενος. and more than anything else he used the people’s hopes and fears, like rudders, checking their arrogance, and allaying and comforting their despair.

The image is now endowed with an extraordinary literary quality: a simple ὥσπερ οἴαξιν and the chiastic disposition of the seemingly unconnected nouns and participles used to depict the real world acquire a metaphorical value: οἴαξ is strictly the helm; φόβοι are the way in which the pilot checks (συστέλλων) the increasing speed of the body politic/ship (τὸ θρασυνόμενον αὐτῶν); on the other hand, ἐλπίδες is the way in which, holding the sails looser (ἀνιείς acquires here a literal sense as well as a figurative one), he compensates for their negativity (τὸ δύσθυμον) and the ship recovers speed, this time under his rational control, as expressed by the verb of speaking, παραμυθούμενος. The metaphor even penetrates the rhythm of the clause, formed by a choriamb (καὶ παραμυ-), which replicates the movement initiated by ἀνιείς, and by a cretic (-θούμενος), which echoes that movement with its long-short alternation. Moreover the extension of the choriamb to the hemiepes (-νιεὶς καὶ παραμυ-) or to the colon ending with the ²⁵ Pol. 1253b: τῶν δ’ ὀργάνων τὰ μὲν ἄψυχα τὰ δὲ ἔμψυχα (οἷον τῷ κυβερνήτῃ ὁ μὲν οἴαξ ἄψυχον ὁ δὲ πρῳρεὺς ἔμψυχον· ὁ γὰρ ὑπηρέτης ἐν ὀργάνου εἴδει ταῖς τέχναις ἐστίν)/‘and of tools some are lifeless and others living (for example, for a helmsman the rudder is a lifeless tool and the look-out man a live tool)—for in the arts an assistant belongs to the class of tools’.

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hepthemimeral caesura (-θυμον ἀνιεὶς καὶ παραμυ-) could be imitating with the speed of its dactyls the rhythm that the author seeks in a good statesman’s action.²⁶

Nature of the Political Ship: Pilots and Storms Let us turn to the political ramifications of the image, that is, the nature of this political ship and the roles assigned to its leaders, as well as external circumstances (fair weather or foul) that affect its journey. We have shown earlier that in the context of the Parallel Lives the political ship, that is the crew, is often the citizen body as a whole;²⁷ but it can also be (as in Alcaeus) a part, for instance a social class, a political party, an institution that governs the city itself, or a supranational entity for which the protagonist is responsible. This in another comparison in De fortuna Romanorum 9.321c, the cargo protected by Fortune from the pounding of winds and waves is the glory of Rome herself, that is to say, her citizens. Here we deal with a double image in which the comparison of city to ship is only implicit. The first image, καθάπερ ἐν κλύδωνι θολερῷ καὶ τεταραγμένῳ πελάγει (‘as in the middle of turbulent billows of a troubled sea’), refers to the hostility which Rome routinely had to confront from her neighbours (τῇ τῶν προσοίκων καὶ γειτόνων ἔχθρᾳ καὶ χαλεπότητι/‘the enmity and fierceness of bordering tribes and neighbours’), hostility in which the city (the real element in the comparison) was carried along out of control (τὴν πόλιν φερομένην καὶ φλεγμαίνουσαν ὑπὸ μυρίων πόνων καὶ διχοστασιῶν ‘[and she took] the city into her care when it was carried hither . . . and was inflamed by countless struggles and dissensions’). In the second image Fortune calms down the enemies’ rages and grudges as if they were winds. But Fortune seems less attentive in the passage of Life of Caesar (Caes. 28.5) where we have identified τὸ βῆμα with the helm: nor does Plutarch mean by the city (τὴν πόλιν) a physical space, but rather its citizens, when he says τὴν πόλιν ὥσπερ ἀκυβέρνητον and describes how the conflicts preceding the civil war between Caesar and Pompeius had left her ἐν ἀναρχίᾳ.

²⁶ For prose-rhythm in Plutarch see Hutchinson 2018. ²⁷ The opposite (the citizens being pilots and the politicians being the crew) is an exceptional use, although Plutarch knows how to make the most of it in Agis 1.4. In this passage the comparison does not have as its referent the pilot’s behaviour, but his subordinates’ (καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ πρωρεῖς, τὰ ἔμπροσθεν προορώμενοι τῶν κυβερνητῶν, ἀφορῶσι πρὸς ἐκείνους καὶ τὸ προστασσόμενον ὑπ’ ἐκείνων ποιοῦσιν: ‘For just as a ship’s lookout, who sees what lies ahead before the ship’s captain does, nevertheless turns to him for orders and does what he ordains’); so the idea of being in the service of someone and not in control of the situation, applied to the politician, subordinates them to the citizens, who are the city’s κυβερνήτης (‘οὕτως οἱ πολιτευόμενοι καὶ πρὸς δόξαν ὁρῶντες ὑπηρέται μὲν τῶν πολλῶν εἰσιν, ὄνομα δ’ ἀρχόντων ἔχουσιν/‘so the public man whose eyes are fixed on glory is a servant of the multitude, although he has the name of ruler’).

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On the other hand, in the Life of Dion the terms σαλεύουσαν (8.5) and ἀσάλευτον (13.5), applied to the tyranny, transform it into a ship; thus, in the first passage (οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τότε πλείστου δοκῶν ἄξιος ὑπάρχειν διὰ τὰ πράγματα, καὶ μόνος ἢ μάλιστα τὴν τυραννίδα σαλεύουσαν ἂν ὀρθοῦν καὶ διαφυλάττειν/‘however, at this time, circumstances led men to think him of more value than anyone else, and that he would be the only or the chief supporter and guardian of the storm-tossed tyranny’) the infinitive ὀρθοῦν also acquires a metaphorical sense. In other cases the ship metaphor exceeds the specific limits of the city in order to represent greater structures. In Aratus 38.5, it refers to the Achaean League, whose helm Aratus abandons when he was most needed, an act criticized by Plutarch: Aratus did not follow the precept that Plutarch established as political doctrine, namely that a good governor should not lead the city towards storms, but rather, when it is endangered, must help it²⁸ using his frankness as a sacred anchor. In Pelopidas 24.5 the ship represents the coalition against Sparta: the Thebans and Argives are the pilots, and the Eleans and Arcadians are the crew that turn to them looking for help when facing danger. This passage is interesting because Plutarch uses this image to illustrate the different behaviour of the crew towards their commander when there is fair weather or the ship is docked (they despise him and even look at him with insolence) as opposed to when a storm appears at open sea (then, they see him as their only hope of salvation).²⁹ If we return to the narrower sphere of the city and its institutions, we encounter a similar comparison in Cato Maior 19.7: the Senate, in dangerous situations, turns its gaze to Cato (ἀφορᾶν δὲ τὴν βουλὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς ἐπισφαλεστάτοις καιροῖς/‘also that the Senate looked to him in the most dangerous crises’) in the same way one stares at the ship’s pilot confronting a storm (ὥσπερ ἐν πλῷ πρὸς κυβερνήτην). The term ἀφορᾶν, reminiscent of the passage of the Pelopidas previously mentioned (ἀποβλέπουσι), is part of Plutarch’s literary stock-in-trade, and he uses it again (ἀφορῶσι) at Agis 1.4.³⁰ But if that is how the crew reacts towards their pilot, we find the model of the pilot’s attitude towards the crew in the Pericles. In 33.6 comparison with a ship’s pilot is used to justify Pericles’ decision to lock the Athenians inside the city in the face of a Spartan invasion, without consulting the Assembly. He does it to stop the citizens from ruining his plans, fearing they might be overcome by fear, just as a ship’s crew might in the

²⁸ Prae. ger. reip. 19.815c–d (Appendix §8, p. 268). ²⁹ Pel. 24.6: ὁ γὰρ πρῶτος ὡς ἔοικε καὶ κυριώτατος νόμος τῷ σῴζεσθαι δεομένῳ τὸν σῴζειν δυνάμενον ἄρχοντα κατὰ φύσιν ἀποδίδωσι· κἂν ὥσπερ οἱ πλέοντες εὐδίας οὔσης ἢ παρ’ ἀκτὴν ὁρμοῦντες ἀσελγῶς προ ενεχθῶσι τοῖς κυβερνήταις καὶ θρασέως, ἅμα τῷ χειμῶνα καὶ κίνδυνον καταλαμβάνειν πρὸς ἐκείνους ἀπο λέπουσι καὶ τὰς ἐλπίδας ἐν ἐκείνοις ἔχουσι (‘For the first and paramount law, as it would seem, namely, that of nature, subjects him who desires to be saved to the command of the man who can save him; just as sailors, when the weather is fair or they are lying off shore at anchor, treat their captains with bold insolence, but as soon as a storm arises and danger threatens, look to them for guidance and place their hopes in them’.) ³⁰ See n. 27.

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middle of a storm (τὸν δὲ δῆμον εἰς ἐκκλησίαν οὐ συνῆγε, δεδιὼς βιασθῆναι παρὰ γνώμην/and he would not call the people together into an assembly, fearing that he would be constrained against his better judgement). Once again, in elaborating this image Plutarch draws on his literary resources, picking out a parallel between the comparison and the political situation: the pilot (ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ . . . κυβερνήτης) is Pericles (οὕτως ἐκεῖνος), and the ship (ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ νεώς) is the city (τό τ’ ἄστυ). The pilot’s job is to make the right decisions and apply the right tension to the rigging (θέμενος εὖ πάντα καὶ κατατείνας τὰ ὅπλα), and Pericles’ job is to close the city and secure everything with guards (τό τ’ ἄστυ συγκλείσας καὶ καταλαβὼν πάντα φυλακαῖς πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν/so he shut the city up tight, putting all of it under guard for its safety); in this colon a chiasmus responds to a parallel structure, but the relation between reality and image is reinforced by the doublet of past participles and the neuter πάντα). The art of the pilot (χρῆται τῇ τέχνῃ) is the politician’s personal judgement (ἐχρῆτο τοῖς αὑτοῦ λογισμοῖς, with a repetition of the finite verb in polyptoton), and the condition of the crew, which justifies the pilot’s indifferent attitude toward their complaints (δάκρυα καὶ δεήσεις ἐπιβατῶν ναυτιώντων καὶ φοβουμένων ἐάσας/‘disregarding the tears and entreaties of the sea-sick and timorous passengers’), replicates Pericles’ attitude, minimally responsive to the yells and grumbles of the citizens (βραχέα φροντίζων τῶν καταβοώντων καὶ δυσχεραινόντων: now the past participles qualifying ‘them’ and ‘him’ are connected in reverse order with the sailors and the pilot, thus creating a chiasmus). The genitive absolute that supports the comparison (ἀνέμου κατιόντος ἐν πελάγει) is left out of those nexuses, possibly because it applies as a real circumstance to the image and only metaphorically to the political situation. The power of expressions like this can be such that a simple reference to a storm is sometimes enough to reveal Plutarch’s metaphorical use of the city/ship comparison. Indeed, the rough and stormy sea, already represented in the comparison of the De fortuna Romanorum by the terms σάλον καὶ κλύδωνα, is routinely employed by the biographer when he wants to take us straight into the metaphor, as happens in Caesar 33.2. Here he describes the unstable situation of the cities of Italy and of Rome herself when Caesar took Rimini after crossing the Rubicon. On first inspection, the text seems to be unconnected to the image of a ship, but we are directed to the opposite conclusion by the way in which the description ends: ἐν πολλῷ κλύδωνι καὶ σάλῳ μικρὸν ἀπολιπεῖν αὐτὴν ὑφ’ αὑτῆς ἀνατετράφθαι/‘in the surges of a mighty sea narrowly escaped being overturned by her own internal agitations’. The verb ἀνατρέπω often has acquired the sense ‘destroy’, but here it has recovered its original sense ‘overturn’. As a result of this final metaphor, the description of the refugees’ entrance into Rome also gets a more precise marine sense from the term ‘streams’ (ὑπὸ ῥευμάτων) with which the city is filled up: the past participle πιμπλαμένην then acquires the meaning ‘flooded’. Thus the city is conceived as a ship (τὴν δὲ Ῥώμην ὥσπερ ὑπὸ ῥευμάτων πιμπλαμένην φυγαῖς τῶν πέριξ δήμων καὶ μεταστάσεσιν ‘while Rome, deluged as it were by the inhabitants

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of the surrounding towns who were fleeing from their homes’). It is a ship that does not obey its pilot and cannot be guided by reason (οὔτ’ ἄρχοντι πεῖσαι ῥᾳδίαν οὖσαν οὔτε λόγῳ καθεκτήν/’ neither readily obeying a magistrate nor suscepible to the voice of reason’). In Pompey 61.2, the city’s situation is once again compared directly to a storm (ἐν χειμῶνι καὶ ταράχῳ τοσούτῳ), without any description of the political reality to which these terms correspond, even though the most common use of this figure stands halfway between metaphor and comparison, as happens in Aratus 38.5: ἐν σάλῳ μεγάλῳ καὶ χειμῶνι τῶν πραγμάτων,³¹ Pompey 53.5: εὐθὺς γὰρ ἐκύμαινεν ἡ πόλις, καὶ πάντα τὰ πράγματα σάλον εἶχε,³² Marius 11.1: διαφεύξεται κλύδωνα πολέμου τοσοῦτον³³ and Pericles 29.1, where this war has a name: Μετὰ ταῦτα κυμαίνοντος ἤδη τοῦ Πελοποννησιακοῦ πολέμου.³⁴ Nor does Plutarch discard the real component of this image in Caesar 28.5, when he says ἐκ τοσαύτης παραφροσύνης καὶ τοσούτου κλύδωνος (‘after such madness and so great tempest’); but actually uses it again at 34.3. Since the real political situation is not entirely absent and gains a certain degree of poignancy, revealed as it is to be the pitiable spectacle the city the city presents (οἰκτρότατον δὲ τὸ θέαμα τῆς πόλεως ἦν),³⁵ the circumstances that have led to this situation are described by the metaphorical application of the storm anew (ἐπιφερομένου τοσούτου χειμῶνος);³⁶ this metaphor is reinforced when, a bit later, the comparison appears: ὥσπερ νεὼς ὑπὸ κυβερνητῶν ἀπαγορευόντων πρὸς τὸ συντυχὸν ἐκπεσεῖν κομιζομένης. In summary, although Plutarch may have found inspiration for the image of the city as a ship in the previous philosophical, historiographical, and poetical tradition, the way he exploits it in Parallel Lives does not lack originality. The moralist brings into play not only his wide literary culture, but also his own political experience and his considerable talent as a writer. Influenced as he was by the views of Plato and other philosophers on the nature of the good statesman’s role, that of one who needs to control the fears and passions of his fellow-citizens, Plutarch makes that message more convincing by using the metaphor or the image of the ship. Thanks to that image, the politician of the Parallel Lives is transformed into a pilot, the city confronts the swelling dangers that await her from the outside and from within, and sometimes bad news in times of good fortune is like a cloud that hangs over the city ὥσπερ ἐν εὐδίᾳ καὶ γαλήνῃ (Mar. ³¹ ‘[when the ship of state] was driving in a great surge and storm’. In Fab. 16.6 marine imagery is used to describe the drama of the defeat at Cannae: τῶν δ’ ὑπάτων ὁ μὲν Βάρρων ὀλιγοστὸς ἀφίππευσεν εἰς Οὐενουσίαν πόλιν, ὁ δὲ Παῦλος ἐν τῷ βυθῷ καὶ κλύδωνι τῆς φυγῆς ἐκείνης (‘As for the consuls, Varro galloped off with a few others to the city of Venusia, but Paulus, caught in the deep surges of that panicked flight’). ³² ‘For the city became at once a tossing sea, and everywhere surging tumult’. ³³ ‘to save her from so great deluge of war’. ³⁴ ‘After this, when the billows of the Peloponnesian War were already rising and swelling’. ³⁵ ‘But most pitiful was the sight of the city’. ³⁶ ‘now that so great a tempest was bearing down upon her’.

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23.1).³⁷ All the nautical elements pass before us: the rigging, sails, helm, anchor, crew, subordinate commanders, and a pilot who either makes the right decisions for which he is praised, or suffers criticism for shifting the responsibility of his command onto another person when a storm is coming. This beautiful metaphor is infused with the nuances and the ethical and political values to which we are accustomed in Plutarch’s works. But these values also pass by wrapped in their formal expression, with selected terms, with their rhetorical layout and, naturally, with a careful selection of the rhythms that close his sentences, letting us feel, once in a while, the presence of the real world and the baroque hints of Plutarch’s literary representation of that world.

Appendix I gather in this Appendix some important passages for my argument, which I refer to in the footnotes but do not comment on in the main body of the text (references to the notes are indicated in parentheses). §1. De gen.581f–582a (see n. 4): ὡς γὰρ ἐν ἰατρικῇ σφυγμὸς ἢ φλύκταινα μικρὸν οὐ μικροῦ δὲ σημεῖόν ἐστι, καὶ κυβερνήτῃ πελαγίου φθόγγος ὄρνιθος ἢ διαδρομὴ κνηκίδος ἀραιᾶς | πνεῦμα σημαίνει καὶ κίνησιν τραχυτέραν θαλάσσης, οὕτω μαντικῇ ψυχῇ πταρμὸς ἢ κληδὼν οὐ μέγα καθ’ αὑτὸ συμπτώματος· οὐδεμιᾶς γὰρ τέχνης καταφρονεῖται τὸ μικροῖς μεγάλα καὶ δι’ ὀλίγων πολλὰ προμηνύειν. For as in medicine a rapid pulse or a blister, trifling in itself, is a sign of something by no means trifling, and as for a skipper the cry of a marine bird or the passing of a wisp of yellow cloud betokens wind and a rising sea, so for a mind expert in divination a sneeze or random utterance, in itself no great matter, may yet be a sign of some great event; for in no aert is the prediction of great things from small, or of many things from few, neglected. §2. De Is. et Os. 377e (see n. 5): οὐδὲν γὰρ οὗτοι διαφέρουσι τῶν ἱστία καὶ κάλους καὶ ἄγκυραν ἡγουμένων κυβερνήτην καὶ νήματα καὶ κρόκας ὑφάντην καὶ σπονδεῖον ἢ μελίκρατον ἢ πτισάνην ἰατρόν The fact is that these persons do not differ at all from those who regard sails and ropes and anchor as a pilot, warp and woof as a weaver, a cup or an honey mixture or barley gruel as a physician. §3. Non posse 1090a (see n. 8): κατάστημα μὲν γὰρ εὐσταθὲς σαρκὸς γίνεται πολλάκις, ἔλπισμα δὲ πιστὸν ὑπὲρ σαρκὸς καὶ βέβαιον οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ψυχῇ νοῦν ἐχούσῃ γενέσθαι· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν θαλάσσῃ κατ’ Αἰσχύλον (Suppl. 770) ‘ὠδῖνα τίκτει νὺξ κυβερνήτῃ σοφῷ’ καὶ γαληνή (τὸ γὰρ μέλλον ἄδηλον), οὕτως ἐν σώματι ψυχὴν εὐσταθοῦντι καὶ ταῖς περὶ σώματος ἐλπίσι τἀγαθὸν θεμένην οὐκ ἔστιν ἄφοβον καὶ ἀκύμονα διεξαγαγεῖν. For whereas a ‘stable condition of the flesh’ occurs frequently enough, no certain and firm expectation where the flesh is concerned can arise in a reasonable mind, but as at sea, to quote Aeschylus, Night brings forth travail for a practised skipper— and so too does a calm, the future being uncertain—so the mind that has stowed the

³⁷ ‘like a cloud in a calm and serene sky’.

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§4.

§5.

§6.

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ultimate good in a body that is in a stable condition and in expectations for the body cannot continue to the end without fear and the prospect of high weather. Ages. 31.3 (see n. 9): ὁ γὰρ Ἀγησίλαος οὐκ εἴα πρὸς τοσοῦτον, ὥς φησι Θεόπομπος, ‘ῥεῦμα καὶ κλύδωνα πολέμου’ μάχεσθαι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους. For Agesilaus would not suffer the Lacedaemonians to fight against such a ‘billow torrent of war’, to use the words of Theopompus. Cf. Apophth. Lac. 214c which Plutarch does not cite deliberately, but is obviously a paraphrase of Ages. 31.3: Τὸν δ’ Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἐπελθόντα μετὰ τοσούτου ῥεύματος καὶ κλύδωνος, τῶν Θηβαίων καὶ συμμάχων μεγαλαυχουμένων ἐπὶ τῇ νίκῃ, ὅμως εἶρξε τῆς πόλεως καὶ ἀναστρέψαι ἐποίησεν, ὀλίγων ὄντων τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει. Although Epaminondas came on with such an overwhelming tide, and the Thebans and their allies were boasting mightily over the victory, nevertheless Agesilaus kept him out of the city and made him turn back, although the number of persons in the city was very small. (a) De garr. 502f–503a (see n. 6 and n.11): καὶ καθάπερ ὅταν ἐν συλλόγῳ τινὶ σιωπὴ γένηται, τὸν Ἑρμῆν ἐπεισεληλυθέναι λέγουσιν, οὕτως ὅταν εἰς συμπόσιον ἢ συνέδριον γνωρίμων λάλος εἰσέλθῃ, | πάντες ἀποσιωπῶσι μὴ βουλόμενοι λαβὴν παρασχεῖν· ἂν δ’ αὐτὸς ἄρξηται διαίρειν τὸ στόμα, ‘πρὸ χείματος ὥστ’ ἀνὰ ποντίαν ἄκραν βορρᾶ ζαέντος’ (Lyr. adesp. 100 II p. 163d) ὑφορώμενοι σάλον καὶ ναυτίαν ἐξανέστησαν. And just as when silence occurs in an assemblage they say that Hermes has joined the company, so when a chatterbox comes into a dinner-party or social gathering, every one grows silent, not wishing to furnish him a hold; and if he begins of his own accord to open his mouth, As when the North-wind blows along/A sea-beaten headland before the storm, suspecting that they will be tossed about and sea-sick, they rise up and go out. (b) Prae. ger. reip. 807b–c (see n. 6 and n. 11): δεινὸν γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ σχέτλιον, εἰ ναύτας μὲν ἐκλέγεται κυβερνήτης καὶ κυβερνήτην ναύκληρος εὖ μὲν ἐνὶ πρύμνῃ οἰήιον, εὖ δὲ κεραίην εἰδότας ἐντείνασθαι ἐπορνυμένου ἀνέμοιο· (Fragmenta Adespota (SH), fr. 1150) καί τις ἀρχιτέκτων ὑπουργοὺς καὶ χειροτέχνας, οἳ μὴ διαφθεροῦσιν αὐτοῦ τοὔργον ἀλλ’ ἄριστα συνεκπονήσουσιν· ὁ δὲ πολιτικός, ἀριστοτέχνας τις, ὢν κατὰ Πίνδαρον καὶ δημιουργὸς εὐνομίας καὶ δίκης, οὐκ εὐθὺς αἱρήσεται φίλους ὁμοιοπαθεῖς καὶ ὑπηρέτας καὶ συνενθουσιῶντας αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸ καλόν, ἀλλ’ ἄλλους πρὸς ἄλλην ἀεὶ χρείαν D κάμπτοντας αὐτὸν ἀδίκως καὶ βιαίως· For truly it is an outrageous and abominable thing if a pilot selects sailors and a ship-captain selects a pilot/Well knowing how at the stern to hold steady the tiller and also/How to stretch taut the yard ropes when rises the onrushing tempest, and an architect chooses subordinates and handicraftsmen who will not spoil his work but will cooperate to perfect it, whereas the statesman, who is, as Pindar says, the best of craftsmen and the maker of lawfulness and justice, does not immediately choose friends whose convictions are like his own, who will aid him and share his enthusiasm for what is noble, but rather those who are always wrongfully and by violent means trying to divert him to various other uses. Prae. ger. reip. 812b (see n. 11): τῇ μὲν γὰρ εὐνοίᾳ καὶ κηδεμονίᾳ δεῖ μηδενὸς ἀφεστάναι τῶν κοινῶν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι προσέχειν καὶ γιγνώσκειν ἕκαστα, μηδ’ ὥσπερ ἐν πλοίῳ σκεῦος ἱερὸν ἀποκεῖσθαι τὰς ἐσχάτας περιμένοντα χρείας τῆς πόλεως καὶ τύχας· For so far as goodwill and solicitude for the common weal are concerned, a statesman should not pay attention to them all and inform himself about all details; nor should he, as the ship’s gear called sacred is stowed apart, hold himself aloof, waiting for the extreme necessities and fortunes of the State. De exil. 604c (see n. 27): Διὰ τοῦτο τῶν φρονιμωτάτων καὶ σοφωτάτων ὀλίγους ἂν εὕροις ἐν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν πατρίσι κεκηδευμένους, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι μηδενὸς ἀναγκάζοντος αὐτοὶ τὸ ἀγκύριον ἀράμενοι μεθωρμίσαντο τοὺς βίους καὶ μετέστησαν οἱ μὲν εἰς Ἀθήνας οἱ δ’ ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν.

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On this account you will find that few men buried in their own country, and that most of them, under compulsion from no one, weighed anchor of their own accord and found a new haven for their lives, removing some to Athens, some from Athens. §8. Prae. ger. reip. 815c–d (see n. 23 and n. 28): δεῖ γὰρ οὐ ποιεῖν χειμῶνας αὐτὸν ἀλλὰ μὴ προλείπειν ἐπιπεσόντων, οὐδὲ κινεῖν τὴν πόλιν ἐπισφαλῶς, σφαλλομένῃ δὲ καὶ κινδυνευούσῃ βοηθεῖν, ὥσπερ ἄγκυραν ἱερὰν ἀράμενον ἐξ αὐτοῦ τὴν παρρησίαν ἐπὶ τοῖς μεγίστοις· For he must not create storms himself, and yet he must not desert the State when storms fall upon it; he must not stir up the State and make it reel perilously, but when it is reeling and in danger, he must come in assistance and employ his frankness of speech as a sacred anchor heaved over in the greatest perils. §9. Prae. ger. reip. 812c (see n. 24): ἀλλ’ ὡς οἱ κυβερνῆται τὰ μὲν ταῖς χερσὶ δι’ αὑτῶν πράττουσι, τὰ δ’ ὀργάνοις ἑτέροις δι’ ἑτέρων ἄπωθεν καθήμενοι περιάγουσι καὶ στρέφουσι, χρῶνται δὲ καὶ ναύταις καὶ πρῳρεῦσι καὶ κελευσταῖς, καὶ τούτων ἐνίους ἀνακαλούμενοι πολλάκις εἰς πρύμναν ἐγχειρίζουσι τὸ πηδάλιον· οὕτω τῷ πολιτικῷ προσήκει παραχωρεῖν μὲν ἑτέροις ἄρχειν καὶ προσκαλεῖσθαι πρὸς τὸ βῆμα μετ’ εὐμενείας καὶ φιλανθρωπίας, κινεῖν δὲ μὴ πάντα τὰ τῆς πόλεως τοῖς αὑτοῦ λόγοις καὶ ψηφίσμασιν ἢ πράξεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔχοντα πιστοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας ἕκαστον ἑκάστῃ χρείᾳ κατὰ τὸ οἰκεῖον προσαρμόττειν. But just as pilots do some things with their own hands but perform other duties by means of different instruments operated by different agents, thus giving a turn or a twist to the instruments while they sit apart, and they made use of sailors, look-out men, and boatswains, some of whom they often call to the stern and entrust with the tiller, just so it is fitting that the statesman should yield office to others and should invite them to the orators’ platform in a gracious and kingly manner, and he should not try to administer all the affairs of the State by his own speeches, decrees, and actions, but should have good, trustworthy men and employ each of them for each particular service according to his fitness.

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15 The Place of the Polis in Plutarch’s Political Thinking Geert Roskam

Some Questions on a Common View The topic which I propose to discuss here concerns the place of the polis in Plutarch’s political thinking. And I take my point of departure from a view that quite often returns in contemporary scholarly literature, that is, the polis is central to Plutarch’s political philosophy.¹ This current view is supported by several good arguments, yet to my mind, it is in need of some qualification, as appears from the following three observations: First, the view is based on a careful reading of two political treatises, the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae and the An seni respublica gerenda sit. In these two works, the general perspective is indeed that of the polis. And because they are the most extensive and detailed among Plutarch’s extant political writings, and are in fact carefully written, they have received most attention. Yet a comprehensive discussion of Plutarch’s political thinking cannot be confined to these two works. There is so much more relevant material. In the brief works Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum and Ad principem ineruditum, Plutarch develops a more general philosophical perspective which contains some interesting additional information about his political views. Much crucial information can also be derived from the Parallel Lives, although Plutarch’s general approach there ¹ See e.g. Halfmann 2002: 85: ‘Bei Plutarch steht die Polis seiner Zeit im Mittelpunkt der Analyse’; and 92: ‘Sein Horizont endete an den Grenzen der einzelnen Stadtgemeinde und der römischen Provinzialverwaltung’; Sirinelli 2000: 396: ‘Plutarque se propose de définir le gouvernement limité d’une cité dépendante: c’est donc, dans une large mesure, l’exposé d’une morale politique municipale qui se garde bien de s’élever jusqu’à des conseils relatifs à la politique impériale. On mesure ici assez clairement la dissonance qui sépare Plutarque de Dion de Pruse. Ce dernier définit à plusieurs reprises le rôle du roi, Plutarque ne définit que l’attitude à avoir dans le gouvernement d’une cité’; Pavis d’Escurac 1981: 300: ‘Restaurer la dignité des poleis et amener les Romains à la respecter: n’était-ce pas, nous l’avons vu, le véritable enseignement politique de Plutarque?’; cf. Aalders and de Blois 1992: 3385 and Volkmann 1869: II, 227 (‘Wir sehen daraus, dass Plutarch ein Kleinstädter war mit Leib und Seele. Für die politischen Verhältnisse von Chäronea und ähnlicher kleiner, auch wohl grösserer Städte mit einer gewissen municipalen Selbständigkeit hatte er einen klaren, richtigen Blick [ . . . ]. Aber eine höhere Auffassung grosser geschichtlicher Verhältnisse ging ihm ab. Man kann sagen, er betrachtete alle Erscheinungen der Griechischen und Römischen Geschichte nach dem beschränkten, kleinlichen Maßstabe der ihm wohlbekannten Verhältnisse seiner Vaterstadt’.). Geert Roskam, The Place of the Polis in Plutarch’s Political Thinking In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0016

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often makes this information fairly difficult to evaluate. All the anti-Epicurean polemics deal at least partly with Epicurus’ advice to withdraw from public life.² The Apophthegmata collections are politically relevant as well, as appears from the introductory dedication letter to Trajan (if, at least, this is genuine³). Even antiquarian works such as the Quaestiones Romanae,⁴ or rhetorical pieces such as De fortuna Romanorum throw some light on different aspects of Plutarch’s political thinking. In principle, all this information should be taken into account (although this, unfortunately, goes far beyond the scope of this chapter), and the connections and interplay between all these different works raise interesting questions about the fundamental unity of Plutarch’s work—the subject of a splendid book.⁵ If every Plutarchan work obviously has its own focus and goal, this is also true for the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae and the An seni respublica gerenda sit. In that sense, studies that only focus on the latter two cannot avoid the tautological conclusion that the polis is central to the political treatises that place the polis in the centre. Second, both the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae and the An seni respublica gerenda sit are dedicated to individual persons (Menemachus and Euphanes) who find themselves in a specific political situation (respectively at the beginning and the end of their political career) that yields its own opportunities and causes its own problems. And it is this specific situation that constitutes the context of Plutarch’s argument. Other addressees might have been interested in different topics and their peculiar situation might have entailed different accents. This need not imply of course that even Plutarch’s most fundamental political convictions would then change as well, but this precisely raises the interesting question of what these most fundamental convictions are and of whether the polis (either as a concept or as a reality) is actually part and parcel of them. And this fundamental question introduces a third reason for caution. It is well known that Plutarch looks at political life as a Platonist philosopher. He is not blind to the demands of the concrete political circumstances, to be sure, and as we shall see, he often shows a remarkably pragmatic attitude in rebus politicis. Nevertheless, he usually develops a philosophical point of view, with philosophical concerns and interests. And this once again raises the question of how important the framework of the polis actually is for Plutarch’s political philosophy. Should it be regarded as the very conditio sine qua non of appropriate political conduct? We may here recall the famous prologue to the Life of Demosthenes, where Plutarch argues that we can be virtuous everywhere. The greatness or smallness of a polis does not matter at all, for ‘virtue, like a strong and hardly plant, takes root in any

² A brief overview can be found in Roskam 2005a. ³ The authenticity has recently been defended by Beck 2002. An additional argument in favour of the authenticity is developed in Roskam 2014: 190–91. ⁴ See esp. Boulogne 1994. ⁵ Nikolaidis 2008.

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place, if she finds there a generous nature and a spirit that shuns no labour’.⁶ Now we should not take Plutarch’s carefully constructed and multi-layered argument at face value, for it in fact belongs to a clever piece of image building.⁷ Yet with due caution, we may derive an important insight from this passage. Given the fact that Plutarch regards political virtue as the supreme virtue,⁸ we may well infer that τὴν ἀρετήν also includes τὴν πολιτικὴν ἀρετήν and thus that we may everywhere follow a virtuous political course. This seems obvious and is in all likelihood indeed Plutarch’s conviction. Now although the prologue to the Life of Demosthenes is clearly about the level of the polis, pointing to the contrast between big and small city (rather than between any city and no city at all), we may well wonder whether we may not further generalize this conclusion. If yes, the consequence is that the polis is less central to Plutarch’s political thinking than is often assumed. In this contribution, I would like to argue that the place of the polis in Plutarch’s political thinking is quite complicated. This is directly connected with his general outlook, which subtly combines high-minded philosophical ideals with soberminded pragmatism. Accordingly, throughout Plutarch’s political works, a tension can be found between the ideal polis and the real polis. From a philosophical point of view, the place or level where the correct political project is accomplished has only a secondary importance. It may be the polis, or an association of several poleis (such as the Delphic Amphictyony, in which Plutarch was actively involved; see SIG 2.829a), or even the higher levels of the province and the Roman Empire. Sometimes, these different levels are even merged in one and the same argument, which yields a sophisticated and dynamic κρᾶσις of perspectives.⁹

A Few Core Ideas of Plutarch’s Political Thinking In Plutarch’s view, politics is an end in itself, to be chosen for its own sake, for political life is the proper life of a social and political animal.¹⁰ Therefore, Epicurus committed no small mistake in urging his followers on to an unnoticed life. He advocated an infra-human ideal fitting for tree trunks or oysters (De tuend. san. 135b) and failed to see that political engagement is of paramount importance for human self-realization.¹¹ The Stoics, by the way, were hardly better. They argued that the sage should as a rule engage in politics, to be sure, but in fact, none of their coryphaei practiced what he preached (De Stoic. rep. 1033bc), and later Stoics who ⁶ Dem. 1.3; all translations are borrowed from the Loeb Classical Library. ⁷ See the discussions of Mossman 1999 and Zadorojnyi 2005. ⁸ Comp. Arist. et Cat. Mai. 3.1; cf. Roskam 2009: 21 n. 27 for further literature. ⁹ For the importance of the concept of κρᾶσις in Plutarch’s philosophical thinking, see Boulogne 2006/7. ¹⁰ See e.g. De am. prol. 495c and An seni 791c; cf. also Prae. ger. reip. 798e on politics as a task that is most fitting (μάλιστα προσῆκον) for a man. ¹¹ On Plutarch’s anti-Epicurean attack, see Boulogne 2003: 183–97 and Roskam 2007.

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did engage in politics were no less inconsistent (1033f). Only Plutarch’s own Platonist perspective qualifies as a sound basis for political engagement.¹² The direct implication of this view is that the public level of the polis necessarily completes that of the private oikos. The latter is not unimportant of course. The philosopher should first of all take care that he has a virtuous disposition and that his private life is well-ordered. No dissolute behaviour or heavy drinking for him, nor ‘minor foibles’, but he should show a decent conduct and maintain a harmonious marriage—there is no need to labour this point, since all these issues have been discussed very well.¹³ Such virtuous behaviour at the level of the oikos should then be completed by excellent behaviour at the level of the polis. Throughout An seni, and especially at the beginning of this treatise, Plutarch develops this idea in the most radical way: the political career should only stop at the moment of death (783F), for withdrawal from public life amounts to giving up the good life. A bad example in this respect is Lucullus, who ‘became a wasted skeleton like sponges in calm seas’ (792b; cf. also 785f–86a; Comp. Cim. et Luc. 1.3), and whose luxurious life style after his political retirement was for Plutarch a travesty of Greek culture.¹⁴ The conclusion is obvious: anyone who persuades distinguished politicians to return to matters of domestic management, urges them to do what is wrong and unseemly (789c: ἄδικα πείθει καὶ ἀχάριστα πράττειν). The goal of the politician should rest on a philosophically justifiable project. He should not enter political life because of wrong motivations such as love of money, anger, or excessive ambition. Especially the latter is a much-discussed issue in Plutarch’s works, and its ambivalence has more than once been examined.¹⁵ In several of his political writings, Plutarch warns against the dangers of an improper φιλοτιμία (e.g. Maxime cum principibus 777d–78a; Prae. ger. reip. 819f–20f), and this recurrent concern suggests that he regarded it as a constant threat for correct political behaviour. The only correct political ideal is τὸ καλόν, the ‘honourable’ course. This concept is as traditional (cf. Aristotle EE 1, 1216a23–27) as it is vague, and unfortunately Plutarch never clearly defines what he understands by it. This lack of clarity is quite embarrassing, since this ‘honourable’ ideal is often used as a justification of morally questionable conduct and measures. A famous specialist of Plutarch from Rethymnon once argued, correctly to my mind, that Plutarch was sometimes willing to ‘admit, if reluctantly, that a noble cause is often better served through not strictly adhering to, but occasionally bypassing the path of justice’.¹⁶ Under the flag of τὸ καλόν, the politician can break the law or overrule an office

¹² Roskam 2009: 63–65. ¹³ For Plutarch’s attitude towards wine see Nikolaidis 1999a; for his therapy of ‘minor foibles’, see Nikolaidis 2011; for his ideal of marriage, see Nikolaidis 1997: 51–75. ¹⁴ Nikolaidis 1986: 237–38. ¹⁵ See Wardman 1974: 115–24; Frazier 1988; Pelling 2002b passim; Nikolaidis 2012. ¹⁶ Nikolaidis 1995: 312.

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holder (Prae. ger. reip. 817e–f), and more than one scholar has discovered a Machiavellian touch in Plutarch’s political thinking.¹⁷ This lends a certain urgency to the question of how ‘honourable’ this ideal of τὸ καλόν is. A close analysis of the connotations of the term in a political context shows that it contains both an aspect of social usefulness and humane behaviour (crystallized in the virtue of φιλανθρωπία).¹⁸ The political ideal of τὸ καλόν is thus closely connected with philosophical ideals (which does not exclude, however, that it also reflects the political ideology of one social class), and politics becomes tantamount to moral education. The statesman should as a helmsman steer the ship of the state¹⁹ and guide his fellow citizens on their path to moral improvement. This has some important implications for both the politician and the polis. As to the former: the true politician can only be the philosopher, so that πολιτικός and φιλόσοφος are, in a political context, exchangeable terms.²⁰ The close link between both also appears from a beautiful passage from An seni, where Plutarch argues that politics is not just a matter of holding office, going on embassy or making laws (796c): the true statesman is always busy with ‘urging those on who have power, guiding those who need guidance, assisting those who are deliberating, reforming those who act wrongly, and encouraging those who are rightminded’ (796ef). This is quite an interesting philosophical redefinition of politics as collective spiritual healing (Seelenheilung). And this redefinition also implies a redefinition of the polis. In such a moral perspective, it is no longer the political structures and customs that matter but the character of the citizens.²¹ It is not by coincidence that Plutarch turns to this issue at the beginning of his Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, immediately after his discussion of the politician’s honourable motivation (799b).

Ideal versus Real Polis This is especially illustrated in treatises such as the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae and the An seni respublica gerenda sit. In these two works, the above discussed core ideas frequently and quite prominently return. They help in establishing a general philosophical perspective and often lead to redefinitions of political customs. To give but a few examples: true honour is not to be derived from statues but is ‘founded upon the goodwill and disposition of those who remember’

¹⁷ See e.g. Carrière 1977: 239–40; Desideri 1995b; see also Caiazza 1993: 22; Massaro 1995: 242. ¹⁸ Roskam 2009: 73–76. ¹⁹ See Pérez Jiménez in this volume, Chapter 14. ²⁰ See Roskam 2009: 89 and 156 on Maxime cum principibus 776d. And cf. An seni 796d: ὅμοιον δ᾿ ἐστὶ τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν τὸ πολιτεύεσθαι. ²¹ Cf. in this respect also the Platonic analogy between the soul and the city, which repeatedly occurs in Plutarch’s works; see Zadorojnyi in this volume, Chapter 13.

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(820f),²² true democracy is not the rule by the people but for the people,²³ and euergetic practices should go beyond the customary panem et circenses and always serve justifiable ends (822a-c). This is the ideal pole of Plutarch’s political thinking. Yet these ideals were often diametrically opposed to current political practices,²⁴ and Plutarch realized this very well. Accordingly, he tries to avoid an over-rigid course, looks for feasible alternatives and is prepared to give in to the people’s alleged base desires, though only in less important matters (e.g. Prae. ger. reip. 813bc; 818a-e; 822c). Many pages from the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae illustrate how he tries to respect the institutions of the polis as much as possible and at the same time does not hesitate to reorient them subtly towards his own ‘honourable’ purpose. Briefly, they show how the real polis is for Plutarch no less important than the ideal one. And thus, he even quotes with approval Simonides’ saying that ‘the polis teaches a man’ (An seni 784b: πόλις ἄνδρα διδάσκει). This is quite remarkable, for in the general context of Plutarch’s political philosophy, we might expect exactly the opposite. We saw that it is in fact the individual, virtuous politician who has to teach his fellow citizens and educate them towards moral virtue. Is this perhaps one of the contradictions that can be found in Plutarch’s œuvre and that have been examined so thoroughly by a former president of the International Plutarch Society?²⁵ Not necessarily. It rather illustrates Plutarch’s sound political insight. Plutarch indeed knew that it was simply impossible to turn his city directly into a πόλις φιλοσοφοῦσα. Lycurgus may have accomplished that (Lyc. 31.3) and no doubt this may be a source of inspiration for the present politician too, but the latter should realize that he does not live in the Sparta of Lycurgus but in a city of the Roman Empire, adapt his political project to this situation, and avoid a too rigid philosophical course. He has to reach compromises and take roundabout routes, seeing that the people is a suspicious and capricious beast that cannot easily be controlled (Prae. ger. reip. 800c)²⁶ and that the majority of the politicians are led by base passions and often give in to mutual rivalry (815a–16a and 823f– 25f). This complex world of real political life requires a cautious and prudent approach, based on rich experience, and this experience can only be gained in the polis itself. Therefore, the politician who wishes to teach his polis, should also be taught by his polis. This balanced view, which no doubt reflects the rich political experience of Plutarch himself, is an important addendum to the philosophical core ideas that were discussed in the previous section of this chapter. From a philosophical point of view, the actual polis may be of secondary importance and the full emphasis is on moral ideals, but as soon as political feasibility comes into play, the framework of the real polis gains considerable importance.

²² Cf. Roskam 2004/5. ²³ See Plácido 1995: 389; Teixeira 1995: 144; Roskam 2005b: 408. ²⁴ See e.g. Trapp 2004 on Plutarch’s view of euergetism. ²⁵ See Nikolaidis 1991. ²⁶ On Plutarch’s negative view of the people, see Saïd 2005.

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Yet one may object here that this is insufficient to conclude that, after all, the polis is therefore central to Plutarch’s political thinking. It only shows that a philosopher who engages in politics at the municipal level should take this level seriously. This philosopher should be taught by his polis and work within its political structures, but what about the philosopher who directly associates with provincial governors or even with the emperor himself? Should the polis teach him too? Or can he ignore this level and, for instance, endorse a cosmopolitan view? One may recall here the famous passage from De Alexandri fortuna aut virtute, where Plutarch enthusiastically argues how Alexander in a way realized the Stoic ideal of a cosmopolitan philosophical city in which all people were united by the same Greek culture and virtue (329a-d). One should, of course, not exaggerate the importance of this rhetorical passage, and in general, the idea of cosmopolitism plays a rather limited role in Plutarch’s philosophical thinking, although he does not hesitate to take advantage of it when it suits his argument (as, for instance, in De exilio).²⁷ There is no need to elaborate on this. What is important here is that the occasional occurrence of such cosmopolitan ideas points to another tension that is relevant in our context: next to the tension between the real and the ideal polis, we find a tension between the level of the polis and higher levels.

Kings in the Polis? At this point, we may have a quick look at the negative and positive examples of politicians that are used in the political treatises. In all of these works, Plutarch refers to successful politicians in democratic poleis and to tyrants or kings (of both poleis such as Sparta and great empires). In Ad principem ineruditum, the illustrative examples of kings and tyrants are remarkably frequent, which may suggest that Plutarch is in this work primarily thinking of the higher political level. Yet examples of statesmen such as Epaminondas (781c-d) and Cato the Younger (781d) can also be found. Conversely, the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae and the An seni respublica gerenda sit contain a great many examples of legislators and politicians from democratic poleis, although Plutarch also repeatedly refers to kings and tyrants. Strikingly enough, of the four statesmen who are mentioned most frequently in the latter two works (Pericles, Epaminondas, Phocion, and Cato the Younger), three also return in Ad principem ineruditum and Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum (only Phocion is absent). All this illustrates that the two levels are often inextricably intertwined and that each level can provide interesting examples for the other one. Kings are inspiring examples for local statesmen, even for a novice politician such as Menemachus. But the career

²⁷ See on this Opsomer 2002.

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and conduct of famous local politicians can provide no less interesting examples for powerful kings. Furthermore, this interlacement of the two levels also appears from Plutarch’s arguments. A particularly illustrative example can be found in An seni 789f, where Plutarch argues that older politicians hold royal rank in the states in accordance with their prudence (βασιλικὴν ἐχόντων τάξιν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι κατὰ τὴν φρόνησιν). This is quite a remarkable argument. Probably Plutarch’s use of the term βασιλικήν should be understood metaphorically, yet even a metaphor like this remains striking in this context of a democratic polis. And Plutarch felt this himself. For at the beginning of the next chapter, he goes on discussing kingship, which is now characterized as the most perfect and greatest of all political offices (790a), but also as a very demanding and laborious task, especially for an old man. The latter may be inclined to use this observation as an argument in favour of political retirement, yet, so Plutarch continues, ‘if it is not fitting to say this about an Agesilaus or a Numa or a Darius, let us neither remove a Solon from the Council of the Areopagus nor a Cato from the Senate on account of old age, and let us not advise a Pericles to leave the democracy in the lurch’ (790b-c). This is a subtle and beautiful a fortiori argument. It underlines the correctness of the analogy between kings and old politicians. Yet at the same time, it is also a kind of palinody: for Plutarch’s old friend Euphanes is no king of course, and rather falls in the class of distinguished politicians such as Solon, Cato, and Pericles. Yet it makes sense to compare the two levels with each other. The same intertwinement of these levels returns in the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, where several parallels are drawn between the politician’s situation and that of a king (800a; 801d; 823c-d) and where the politician is even compared to the king of the universe (811d).²⁸ No less illustrative is the fact that Plutarch connects Plato’s ideal of the philosopher-king not only with a king such as Numa (Num. 20.8–9) but also with statesmen like Cicero (Comp. Dem. et Cic. 3.4), Dion, and Brutus (Dion 1.2–3). Now this interaction and intertwinement between the levels of monarchy and the polis can be explained, I think, by Plutarch’s view of the politician as a ruler by nature (φύσει ἄρχων) who has to keep public matters in his hands (Prae. ger. reip. 813c). As such, he is even compared with the ‘leader’ of the bees (ὥσπερ ἡγεμὼν ἐν μελίτταις, Prae. ger. reip. 813c).²⁹ The first duty of such a natural ruler is simply to maintain his own power (Comp. Thes. et Rom. 2.2) and keep control of the affairs, and this holds true for both politicians in democratic

²⁸ See, on this passage, which belongs to a cluster of recurrent topics and may be traced back to one of Plutarch’s hypomnemata, Van der Stockt 2002 and in this volume (Chapter 16); cf. also Frazier 2012: 237–40. ²⁹ Plutarch, as many other ancient Greeks (cf. e.g. Arist. Hist. an. 5, 553a25–b7 and 553b14–19; 9, 624a26–26a30; Gen. an. 3, 759a8–60b27; Ael. NA 1.10 and 60; 5.10 and 11; 15.8; Dio of Prusa, 4.62), thought that the principal bee of the hive was male; cf. also Lyc. 30.2. For the bee imagery see also Xenophontos 2013.

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poleis and for kings. Plutarch explicitly blames Theseus and Romulus for having failed to do so (2.1), and this perspective also helps to explain the popularity of Pericles in Plutarch’s political treatises, who proves particularly successful on this point. For Pericles is indeed the example par excellence of a politician who succeeds in acquiring and maintaining great political power in a democratic polis, and it is not for nothing that Plutarch recalls Thucydides’ famous saying that Pericles’ government was only in name a democracy but in fact the rule of the foremost man (Prae. ger. reip. 802bc and Per. 9.1, with reference to Thucydides 2.65.9).³⁰ Kings and democratic politicians both need significant power if they really want to change the character of their people. Of course both work on different levels, but from a philosophical point of view, their honourable goals and the means to reach these goals are not so different after all. All this once again shows that the real polis is not a strictly circumscribed framework that fully conditions Plutarch’s political thinking. This real polis always interacts with an ideal one and with a higher political level, and this results in a complex amalgam that yields a well-considered dynamic to Plutarch’s political project.

Possible Objections There remain some final questions, though. Several passages seem to suggest that Plutarch still grants a central place to the polis and that he actually prefers the level of the polis to that of provincial politics and/or the Roman Empire. In what follows, I turn to this evidence and have a critical look at three different elements that may point in that direction. First, Plutarch repeatedly attacks the careerism of some Greek politicians who eagerly pursue high offices in the Roman administration. Plutarch’s sharp criticism of this attitude may suggest that ‘he wanted to keep Greek politicians in Greek cities’. To my mind, this quotation is not beyond criticism.³¹ A close study of the three passages where Plutarch rejects such careerism reveals that Swain’s general conclusion should be qualified. In De tranquillitate animi 470c, Plutarch blames those people who are never satisfied with what they have. They are famous or powerful among their fellow citizens, but ‘weep because they do not wear the ³⁰ Strikingly enough, Plutarch replaces Thucydides’ ἐγίγνετο, which points to the gradual growth of Pericles’ power, with a straightforward οὖσαν (Per. 9.1). The passage from Prae. ger. reip. 802bc is less clear in this regard, as it does not contain any verb. Bernardakis adds ἦν, which is quite possible indeed, in view of the parallel from the Life of Pericles, but the imperfect ἐγίγνετο would not be impossible either. ³¹ Swain 1996: 171; cf. Swain 1996: 171: ‘His own advice is to stay at home and, in brief, not to integrate’. The same view is defended by Pavis d’Escurac 1981: 298 (‘Plutarque réaffirme la valeur de la cité comme cadre politique’). See also Jones 1971: 116–17, who argues that Plutarch’s position fits in with the interests of the Romans.

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patrician shoe; yet if they do wear it, they weep because they are not yet Roman praetors; if they are praetors, because they are not consuls, and if consuls, because they were proclaimed, not first, but later’. Plutarch’s criticism is clear enough, but the precise relevance of his argument is no less clear. Plutarch quite explicitly (cf. τοῦτο δ᾿ ἐστὶ τί ἄλλο ἤ) explains that this blameful attitude shows ingratitude to Fortune. The whole context is about tranquility of mind, and strictly speaking, the careerist conduct of the politicians is wrong because it interferes with their happiness. This, in other terms, is just one possible example that has to illustrate a moral point—just before, another similar series occurs (470b)—and it is rather unlikely that this also contains a direct political message. For such a message would in Plutarch’s days be of limited relevance anyhow: the Greek politicians who stood a good chance of becoming praetor or consul were few and far between. Moreover, in the hypothetical case that they would indeed succeed in gaining such a praetorship or consulship, their high position might enable them to benefit their local communities, and we shall soon see that Plutarch would not oppose this idea. This passage, then, is not so much about the correct political course and its implications as about the correct moral attitude and the appropriate way to reach one’s own happiness. The second passage is De exilio 605b-c, where Plutarch briefly refers to influential persons who flee from the laborious business of their native country. In this case, Plutarch’s reference need not even imply severe criticism, for the context shows that it actually functions as an illustrative example that can comfort the exile. Indeed, the latter can do as these influential people and enjoy his carefree situation abroad. Of course, this is a traditional commonplace and we may doubt how much importance Plutarch would really ascribe to it, but to my mind, the context of his general argument does in any case not allow us to regard this passage as a veiled appeal to stay at the level of the polis. The last passage is Prae. ger. reip. 814d. Plutarch there points out how a politician can greatly benefit his polis through powerful Roman friends, and concludes with a rhetorical question: ‘Is there any comparison between such a favour and the procuratorships and governorships of provinces from which many talents may be gained and in pursuit of which most public men grow old haunting the doors of other men’s houses and leaving their own affairs uncared for (τὰ οἴκοι προλιπόντες)?’ This at last is a clear example of Plutarch’s critical attack against careerism in a political context. Yet here too, what Plutarch primarily rejects is the selfish attitude of these politicians, who are interested in these high offices for their own sake (that is, to gain money), not because of their country. One may insist, however, that the phrase τὰ οἴκοι προλιπόντες seems to suggest that these politicians should better take care of their own polis. That is true, but it does not mean that they should also confine themselves to their city or that Plutarch ‘wanted to keep Greek politicians in Greek cities’. The context rather shows that they should also look beyond the borders of their polis and establish international relations

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with powerful Romans. And thus, even this passage in the end illustrates the above discussed intertwinement of the different political levels. Yet we may at this point introduce a broader perspective. In his Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, Plutarch enters at length into the issue of the politician’s relation with Rome. This aspect of his political thinking has received much attention and I do not have anything new to add here. The essence of Plutarch’s position is that he wants to solve possible problems in the polis itself and safeguard internal order and rest, so that Roman interventions can be avoided. This general policy does not only illustrate Plutarch’s keen political insight but is also interesting from a moral point of view. For this focus on the polis makes the ‘honourable’ political project much more surveyable and controllable. Moreover, Plutarch himself argues that the good politician is always ‘affable and generally accessible and approachable for all, keeping his house always unlocked as a harbour of refuge for those in need, and showing his solicitude and friendliness (τὸ κηδεμονικὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον), not only by acts of service, but also by sharing the griefs of those who fail and the joys of those who succeed’ (Prae. ger. reip. 823a-b). This ideal is perhaps not beyond kings and provincial governors,³² but it seems more feasible for a local politician who acts in a city. Yet this need not imply that the polis indeed occupied a privileged position in Plutarch’s political thinking. For first, we should not ignore the importance of the treatise’s particular perspective. In this work, the politician’s attitude towards Rome is discussed from the perspective of the polis: what does the Imperium Romanum mean for the polis? Which limits does it impose on the local politician and which opportunities does it still grant? This is a completely different point of view from that of De fortuna Romanorum. Second, we already saw that Plutarch, even in the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, strongly favours international friendships and thus goes beyond the borders of the city. Third, we may briefly recall the central argument of Plutarch’s little work Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum, that is, the philosopher should try to maximize his usefulness by benefitting many through one (πολλοὺς δι᾿ ἑνός).³³ Now there can be no doubt that along these lines, he can confer the greatest benefits at the highest level of the Empire, by associating with the emperor himself. Of course, the maximization argument can also be applied to other levels, including that of the polis, but it seems to preclude an exclusive focus on the latter. Finally, the above arguments from surveyability and sociability are not compelling either. For when the politician is loved by his fellow citizens, he ‘sees with many eyes, hears with many ears, and so perceives betimes what is going on’ (Arat. 25.7). And qualities such as affability and approachability are not bad, but ‘especially in the context of politics, ³² See e.g. Galba 20.5 (on Otho); Art. 4.4; Pyrrh. 3.8. The best example is perhaps the Spartan king Cleomenes (Cleom. 13.2–3), but he ruled over a polis. ³³ See Roskam 2009: 71–138.

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sociability is usually a façade behind which may lurk crude political ambition and a carefully studied design for winning popularity and establishing one’s influence and power’.³⁴ The last element is one of common sense. The philosopher-politician should know where he stands. He should not imitate Cato the Younger, who ‘acted as if he lived in Plato’s Republic and not among the dregs of Romulus’ (Phoc. 3.2). He should not deceive himself into thinking that he can rule as a philosopher-king and easily fashion the political situation after his high-minded philosophical ideals. He can cherish great and honourable ambitions, no doubt, but if he really wishes to effect a significant change, he should turn to his own level, to the world to which he belongs, and that is the polis. This observation is basically correct, and it explains the great relevance of treatises such like the Praecepta gerendae reipublicae and the An seni respublica gerenda sit. Plutarch was much more pragmatic than Plato on this point. He was himself involved in municipal politics and there fulfilled both the lowest and the highest offices (Prae. ger. reip. 811c-d versus Quaest. conv. 642f and 693f). This familiarity with political praxis helps a great deal in explaining why the ideal and real polis time and again interact in his political philosophy. But narrowly confining this philosophy to the level of the polis means ignoring important aspects of Plutarch’s political thinking. After all, Plutarch’s distinguished friend Sosius Senecio was not a fellow Chaeronean.

Conclusion This contribution set out to examine the place of the polis in Plutarch’s political thinking. We have seen that Plutarch advocated a philosophical ‘honourable’ ideal that equated politics with collective moral Seelenheilung or spiritual healing. From such a philosophical perspective, the level at which this ideal is reached is fundamentally only of secondary importance. The public-spirited philosopher can pursue his honourable ideals in the polis but also on a higher level. As soon as he enters political life, however, he should take into account the demands and constraints of the concrete political situation which he faces. The philosopher who engages in politics at the polis level will thus have to take into account the political institutions and customs of the polis. As a result, Plutarch’s political thinking shows a constant dynamic interaction between the real and the ideal polis, both of which are moreover often connected with higher political levels. And this intertwinement of different levels in a general perspective that combines high-minded philosophical reflections with sober political pragmatism is a telling illustration of the sophisticated subtlety of Plutarch’s political thinking. ³⁴ Nikolaidis 2009a: 285.

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16 Plutarch’s Civitas Dei Luc Van der Stockt

The title of this contribution is taken from St Augustine’s apologetic work De civitate Dei. The sack of Rome by the Visigoth Alaric in 410 was a tremendous shock: anxious doubt was created as to whether Rome and its dominion were really eternal, and many blamed Christianity for the neglect of the cult of the ancient gods, and for thus bringing about the catastrophe of Rome’s downfall. In his reply to this critique St Augustine developed a ‘philosophy of history’ (Smith 1987: 525), in which he contrasted the heavenly ‘city of God’ with the ‘city on earth’, i.e. Jerusalem with Babylon—Rome being a second Babylon (Capelle 1950: 991). The contrast is that ‘between the city where injustice and violence reign [ . . . ] and the city of justice and peace’ (Walsh 2005: 5). Philosophical-historical reflection on the relation between god(s) and cities, on the status of Rome and its dominion, on the importance of ‘justice in the city’: these themes naturally invite one to explore Plutarch’s concept of the ‘ideal city’. Indeed, as a Greek under Roman dominion, as a Platonist with deep religious concerns and especially with a firm belief in divine Providence, and as an historian and biographer, Plutarch was almost predestined to reflect on the relation of god(s) with ‘the city’. My aim in this contribution is not to sketch Plutarch’s representations of historical cities, even if historical cities like Rome and Sparta are stepping stones or paradigms for the philosophical concept he works out: I am rather interested in that very philosophical construct and its particular Plutarchan articulation. To my mind, such a particular Plutarchan articulation does indeed exist. The times when Plutarch as ‘vor allem Sammler, Exzerptor, Bearbeiter’ (especially collector, extractor, editor; Almquist 1946: 3) was denied the status of a coherent literary personality are long over. My reconstruction of Plutarch’s construct will partly be based on several Plutarchan writings that show a particular form of coherence: they are traces of preparatory notes and drafts (hypomnemata); as such they are not simply parallels lumped together, but formats of his personal reflection on themes that were dear to him.

Luc Van der Stockt, Plutarch’s Civitas Dei In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0017

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Gods as (Mere) Traditional Cult Objects in the City Before engaging in the pursuit of Plutarch’s civitas dei, and in order to bring out its specific scope, we will first have a quick look at some Greek reflections on ‘gods and the city’, in which those gods are (only casually) mentioned as cult objects. To be sure, in the historical Greek cities the gods as objects of worship were always there, as Plutarch observes: In your travels you may come upon cities without walls, writing, king, houses or property, doing without currency, having no notion of a theatre or gymnasium; but a city without holy places and gods, without any observance of prayers, oaths, oracles, sacrifices for blessings received or rites to avert evils, no traveler has ever seen or will ever see.¹ (Adv. Col. 1125e)

But, as we will see, in the reflections on the gods in the city, gods do not always play a vital role. The first text that comes to mind is Isocrates, Nicocles. The orator himself would certainly have regarded this passage as a ‘philosophy of history’. In his praise of the logos (5–9), the rational word, he claims that speech was responsible for the rise of civilization: because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other and to make clear to each other whatever we desire, not only we have escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts. For this it is which has laid down laws concerning things just and unjust, and things base and honourable; and if it were not for these ordinances we should not be able to live with one another. It is by this also that we confute the bad and extol the good. Through this we educate the ignorant and appraise the wise; for the power to speak well is taken as the surest index of a sound understanding, and discourse which is true and lawful and just is the outward image of a good and faithful soul. With this faculty we both contend against others on matters which are open to dispute and seek light for ourselves on things which are unknown; for the same arguments which we use in persuading others when we speak in public, we employ also when we deliberate in our own thoughts; and, while we call eloquent those who are able to speak before a crowd, we regard as sage those who most skillfully debate their problems in their own minds. And, if there is need to speak in brief summary of this power, we shall find that none of the things which are done with intelligence take place without the help of speech, but that in all our actions as well as in all our thoughts speech is our guide, and is most employed by those who have the most wisdom.

¹ All translations are from the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise indicated.

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Therefore, those who dare to speak with disrespect of educators and teachers of philosophy deserve our opprobrium no less than those who profane the sanctuaries of the gods.²

Speech made the rise of the city and of communal life possible: it provided for material survival through the invention of the arts, for the legal and ethical conditions, for ‘the capacity to carry out a sustained inquiry’ (Poulakos 1997: 20) and democratic deliberation, for public praise or blame, for education. Speech truly creates and organizes the city. The gods turn up only in the conclusion of the ‘praise of the word’, in Nicocles 9. There Isocrates deems those who blame philosophers and educators equally worthy of hatred as those who do wrong to the gods (τοὺς εἰς τὰ τῶν θεῶν ἐξαμαρτάνοντας). On the one hand, this reference to ‘the sanctuaries of the gods’ (or simply: the gods) seems to be but a (somewhat clumsy) passionate rhetorical outburst that is at odds with the foregoing well balanced sentences. On the other hand, the reference is not at odds with Isocrates’ agnostic, but still pious attitude towards religion: ‘Alles sichtbare, was mit der Gottheit zusammenhängt (τὰ τῶν θεῶν), erhält in seinem Denken erstrangige Bedeutung’ (Everything visible, which is connected with the deity (τὰ τῶν θεῶν), receives first importance in his thinking) (Mikkola 1954: 129). A second instance of a merely casual mention of the cult of gods when dealing with ‘the city’ is Pseudo-Aristotle’s Oeconomicus. The first book of this text is inspired by Xenophon’s Oeconomicus and Aristotle’s Politica (Armstrong 1962: 323); but maybe the Ps. Aristotle’s Oeconomicus and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus have a common source (Victor 1983: 9). Be that as it may, the (unknown) author defines a city as follows: Now a city is an aggregate made up of households and land and property, selfsufficient with regard to a good life (1343a10–11; translation Forster 1984: 2130).

No mention is made of gods, but that is easily explained by the somewhat down to earth subject of the Oeconomicus I: the author deals with the definition of politics versus economics, with the components of the household (man and property), and their functions. It is even surprising that in such a context, religion is brought up anyway, albeit in an equally down to earth vein. When dealing with the obligation to treat the slaves in a humane way, the author states: One ought to provide sacrifices (τὰς θυσίας) and pleasures more for the sake of slaves than for freemen; for in the case of the former there are present more of the reasons why such things have been instituted (1344b9b19–21; translation Forster 1984: 2133). ² Isocrates vol. 2. Norlin 1966 [= 1928]: 79–81, Loeb Classical Library.

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Sacrifices (or perhaps rather ‘religious festivals’) are mentioned only casually, but apparently also as an obvious phenomenon in the city, and one that is apparently more necessary for slaves (in order to keep them going), than it is for freemen. A final example of the conception of cities in which the gods play only a cultic role is the Epicurean doctrine. The Epicureans believe that the gods do not intervene in natural phenomena nor in human affairs (Lemke 1973: 100; Mansfeld 1999: 463); consequently, divine Providence is a myth (Mansfeld 1999: 464), and it would be pointless to pray to the gods or making offerings to them in order to obtain some benefit or other. Yet Epicurus holds that an Epicurean should take part in the traditional cult of the city, but that in doing so he should focus on the nature of the gods as actualizations of the eudaimonia he is pursuing (Lemke 1973: 101): the city cult, just like natural history, is at the service of the ethics, of the ‘Sorge um das eigene Selbst’ (concern for one’s self) (Flashar 1994: 167). Of course, the foregoing pronouncements about the relation between gods and the city have different contexts, and consequently, different weight. Isocrates’ praise of the logos is part of a defence of his own rhetorical/philosophical activity. It is thus quite logical that the logos plays a prominent role in his ‘philosophy of history’. Nonetheless, the fact that Isocrates repeated this eulogy verbatim in his Antidosis §253–57, but with the omission of the last sentence about τὰ τῶν θεῶν, is telling: he cherished the idea expressed in those passages, but in his ‘philosophy of history’ itself the gods are of minor importance. The Oeconomicus intends to describe the proper functioning of the household as part of the city. In that context it is not surprising that gods are brought up only as instruments to the optimal functioning of the slaves. But the statement according to which religious festivals ‘have been instituted for that reason’ sounds like a very secular explanation of the origin of the cult of the city. And the theme of economic prosperity coming from crops, and thus from enough timely rain, could easily have provoked the mention of Zeus (Mikalson 2005: 164). Lastly, the Epicureans indeed developed a theology, but one that allowed the gods to be no more than objects of a merely formal cult, instruments for the pursuit of the wise man’s ethical purity.

Divine Origin and Guidance of the City: Sparta and Rome Apparently great and good cities like Sparta and Rome are readily associated by Plutarch with divine origin and guidance. In the case of Sparta, he was probably strongly influenced by the long tradition of idealization of Sparta (Flacelière and Chambry 1964: 117); in the case of Rome, he could fall back on an equally long tradition of reflections on the opposition ἀρετή - τύχη (Frazier and Froidefond 1990: 21).

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The Life of Lycurgus provides an instance of divine intervention in creating the constitution of a city, namely the city of Sparta: Full of this determination (sc. to change the civil polity), Lycurgus first made a journey to Delphi, and after sacrificing to the god and consulting the oracle, he returned with that famous response in which the Pythian priestess addressed him as ‘beloved of the gods, and rather god than man,’ and said that the god had granted his prayer for good laws (εὐνομία), and promised him a constitution (πολιτεία) which should be the best in the world. (Lyc. 5.3)

Plutarch is summarizing the oracle given to him at Delphi, of which Diodorus VII, 12, 1 quotes the full text, and Herodotus I, 65 only the first 4 verses (Flacelière 1948: 396–97; Manfredini and Piccirilli 1980: 228; Pérez Jiménez 1985: 284 n. 24). Even if not all Herodotus’ contemporaries were convinced that the Pythia actually communicated to Lycurgus the specific institutions, Plutarch leaves no doubt as to the divine origin of Lycurgus’ constitution (Kessler 1910: 25–26). The Comparison between Lycurgus and Numa repeats that conviction: Now that we have recounted the lives of Numa and Lycurgus, and both lie clearly before us, we must attempt, even though the task be difficult, to assemble and put together their points of difference. For their points of likeness are obvious from their careers: their wise moderation, their piety, their talent for governing and educating, and their both deriving their laws from a divine source. (Comp. Lyc. et Num. 1)

The divine origin of Roman laws is not questioned here. But when it comes to the problem of how precisely those laws were communicated to Numa, the story about Numa’s sexual intercourse with Egeria makes Plutarch somewhat painfully embroider on the credibility of that story in the Life of Numa 4. Plutarch first rejects the possibility that an immortal god should have carnal commerce with mortals (Num. 4.3). As Wardman (1974: 163–65) made clear, the biographer then develops two hypotheses. The first hypothesis, according to which the gods have affection for good men, and mix with them in order to improve their character and virtue, and ‘in order to teach them and exhort them to the best’ is a kind of ‘justifying rationalism’, whereas the second one, according to which Lycurgus and Numa only pretended to have gotten a sanction of the god, is more sceptical. Concerning the first hypothesis, Plutarch wonders if disbelief in the contacts of the divine with inter alios Lycurgus and Numa is justified (ἄξιον) if we concede that the god had frequent contacts even with poets. And secondly he wonders if it is not likely (εἰκός ἐστι) that the gods had serious conversations with them, and that they had contacts with poets only for their own diversion. Only then does Plutarch envisage another opinion, namely the second hypothesis, and he admits

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that that opinion holds ‘nothing bad’ (οὐδε . . . τι φαῦλον)—a phrasing that does not imply any preference for this judgement. To sum up: in my own opinion and unlike the majority of scholars,³ Plutarch’s usual caution (see also De fort. Rom. 321b: the tale about Egeria is ἴσως μυθωδέστερον) in matters where truth is hard to discover and probability is all one can get, makes him inclined, at this point in the Life of Numa—other passages such as Numa 15.1 may suggest otherwise—to accept the first hypothesis, even if he admits that the second hypothesis is not thoughtless. The Synkrisis of Lycurgus and Numa 1, moreover, repeats without any doubt that the origin of Sparta and Rome was divine (τὸ μίαν ἀρχὴν παρὰ τῶν θεῶν . . . λαβεῖν τῆς νομοθεσίας), and so does The Life of Romulus concerning Rome (Rom. 8.9: θείαν τιν᾿ ἀρχήν; Barigazzi 1994: 310). b) We are not sure how many times and for how long Plutarch stayed in Rome, but he must have been there several times and long enough to become very familiar with the city: as Scheid (2012b) demonstrated, Plutarch’s Quaestiones Romanae is structured as a guided tour through the heart of Rome. But Plutarch’s perception and description of the historical city of Rome is also inspired or tinged by what he regards as ‘civitas dei’. In this respect, perhaps the most telling passage is from the declamation De fortuna Romanorum: I believe myself to be right in suspecting that, even if Fortune (Τύχη) and Virtue are engaged in a direct and continual strife and discord with each other, yet, at least for such a welding together of dominion and power, it is likely that they suspended hostilities and joined forces; and by joining forces they co-operated in completing this most beautiful of human works. Even as Plato (Ti. 32b) asserts that the entire universe arose from fire and earth as the first and necessary elements, that it might become visible and tangible, earth contributing to it weight and stability, and fire contributing colour, form, and movement; but the medial elements, water and air, by softening and quenching the dissimilarity of both extremes, united them and brought about the composite nature of Matter through them; in this way then, in my opinion, did Time lay the foundation for the Roman State and, with the help of God (μετὰ θεοῦ), so combine and join together Fortune and Virtue that, by taking the peculiar qualities of each, he might construct for all mankind a Hearth, in truth both holy and beneficent, a steadfast cable, a principle abiding for ever, ‘an anchorage from the swell and drift’, as Democritus says, amid the shifting conditions of human affairs. (316e–317a⁴)

³ Flacelière, Chambry, and Juneaux 1964: 175–76; Babut 1969: 467–69; Manfredini and Piccirilli 1980: 298–89; Duff 1999: 131 n. 3; Rodrigues 2012: 69–70. ⁴ I discussed this passage also in Van der Stockt 2013: 28–30.

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In spite of the epideictic character of the oration De fortuna Romanorum, and of its unstable, non-technical terminology (Swain 1989a: 272, 299–302) we can be confident that the text voices Plutarch’s sincere conviction about Roman rule and the everlasting Pax Romana.⁵ In this context it is important to remember that, according to Plutarch (Quaest. Plat. 1007c), Time and the Universe were created by providence at the same time. This is why Plutarch in his comparison of the creation of the Universe with the creation of the Roman State refers to god (i.e. ‘providence’ in the Quaest. Plat.) and Time. The eulogy celebrates Rome as a ‘civitas dei’, in that the god was instrumental in the creation of the Roman State and its lasting dominion. ‘Indeed Plutarch parallels the progressive growth of Rome amidst the chaotic turmoil of colliding (Hellenistic: Desideri 2005: 8–10) powers and dominions, until it succeeds in bringing the whole world under its lasting dominance (317c), with the way in which the orderly cosmos originated from chaotically colliding elements which finally were brought to order by the Demiurge. This is ‘naturalizing’ Roman world dominion in the truest, also Platonic sense of the word!’ (Van der Stockt 2013: 29–30).

Divine Justice in the City The idea of divine intervention in the origin of cities should not surprise us when we recall that Plutarch, as a Platonist, believes in divine providence and is open to all kinds of manifestations of the divine and its intrusion into human affairs (Valgiglio 1988: 35–48; Opsomer 1997: 347–51). And this belief could not but bring him into open conflict with the Epicureans, their denial of the intervention of any divine providence in human affairs, and their ‘religious conformism’ (Boulogne 2003: 187). This becomes very clear in the anti-Epicurean essay Adversus Coloten. The last section of this essay (§30–34) is a critique of the Epicurean ethics (Kechagia 2011: 159) or, somewhat broader, a reflection on the usefulness of philosophy for civic life (Corti 2014: 50; cf. Westman 1955: 86). Because Colotes seems to deny the operation of an inner conscience driven by reason and religion, Plutarch attacks Colotes’ thesis that the men who appointed laws and usages and established the government of cities by kings and magistrates brought human life into a state of great security and peace and delivered it from turmoil. But if anyone takes all this away, we shall live a life of brutes. (Adv. Col. 1124d)

⁵ See Swain 1989b: 508; Frazier and Froidefond 1990: 26; Sirinelli 2000: 76; cf. Jones 1971: 69–70; contra: Ziegler 1949: 83; Lamberton 2001: 97.

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Right after the reference to the providence of the gods (1124e: πρόνοια . . . θεῶν) Plutarch brings up a quote from Plato, Laws 4, 715e–16a (represented by the letter A in Table 1) about the justice of Zeus: God who, as old tradition tells, holdeth the beginning, the end, and the centre of all things that exist, completeth his circuit by nature’s ordinance in straight, unswerving course. With followeth Justice always, as avenger of them that fall short of the divine law; and she, again, is followed by every man who would fain be happy, cleaving to her with lowly and orderly behaviour; but whoso is uplifted by vainglory, or prideth himself on his riches . . . , and through his pride joined to youth and folly, is inflamed in soul with insolence, dreaming that he has no need of ruler or guide. (1124f)

In fact this Platonic quotation is part of a Plutarchan hypomnema, a personal reflection of Plutarch on the theme of the divinity of rulers and laws. And as can Table 1 Divinity of Rulers and Laws Adv. Col.

De exil.

Ad princ. ineru. De Is. et Os.

§ 3: F Euripides [§ 3: G] § 3: H thunderbolt § 3: I god’s happiness [§ 4: E] § 4: C Hesiod § 4: D Epaminondas § 30: B gods - rulers § 5: F § 5: A § 30: C Hesiod Euripides § 5: G god’s gift § 30: providence of § 5: B Zeus is § 5: J beard/ the gods ruler wallet § 30: A § 5: A § 5: M justice’s light

§7: E vessels § 33: D Epaminondas

De prof. virt.

§ 1: G god’s gift § 1: H thunderbolt § 1: I god’s happiness § 3: J beard/ gown § 3: K Mysteries

§10: E vessels §10: J beard/ gown §10: L title ‘philosopher’ §10: K mysteries §10 M great light §10: A

§7: E vessels §24: A §24: L title of god § 24: H thunderbolt

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be expected from a rhetorically trained person, this personal reflection is shaped by means of references to historical persons, of quotes from literature, of comparisons and the like: they form a ‘cluster of parallels’ (see Table 1: ‘Divinity of rulers and laws’; the parallel passages are marked by a letter in bold) that are recycled in more or less complete form in several Plutarchan writings.⁶ Plutarch’s own position in Adv. Col. is that, if we take away positive law, we shall fear all that is shameful and shall honour justice for its intrinsic worth, holding that in the gods we have good governors (B; Plato, Phaedo 63a) and in the daemons watchers (C; Hesiod, Works and Days 253) of our lives, accounting all ‘the gold on earth and under it a poor exchange for virtue’. (Plato, Laws 728a) (1124e)

To Plutarch’s mind, if we do away with laws, we still have reason and religion as the basis of civilized society. Adversus Colotem thus expresses the belief in divine Providence, divine justice (1125a: δίκην θεῶν), divine government, and law as ‘the underpinning and base that holds all society and legislation together’ (1125e). The Justice of Zeus inspires the justice among men. But Plutarch takes it even a step further and develops an analogy between the organization of human society and the one in heaven. To start with, he associates, even parallels, Lycurgus with the Platonic deity: When his principal institutions were at last firmly fixed in the customs of the people, and his civil polity had sufficient growth and strength to support and preserve itself, just as Plato says that Deity was rejoiced to see His universe come into being and make its first motion, so Lycurgus was filled with joyful satisfaction in the magnitude and beauty of his system of laws, now that it was in operation and moving along its pathway. (Lyc. 29.1)

The very same parallel between the politician in general and the deity occurs also in Praecepta gerendae reipublicae: For truly it is an outrageous and abominable thing if a pilot selects sailors and a ship-captain selects a pilot [W]ell knowing how at the stern to hold steady the tiller and also How to stretch taut the yard ropes when rises the onrushing tempest, and an architect chooses subordinates and handicraftsmen who will not spoil his work but will cooperate to perfect it, whereas the statesman, who is, as Pindar says, the best of craftsmen and the maker of lawfulness and justice (ἀριστοτέχνας ⁶ I made a philological analysis of this cluster in Van der Stockt 2004; Table 1 was first published in that volume, 140.

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’  

τις ὢν κατὰ Πίνδαρον καὶ δημιουργὸς εὐνομίας καὶ δίκης), does not immediately choose friends whose convictions are like his own, who will aid him and share his enthusiasm for what is noble, but rather those who are always wrongfully and by violent means trying to divert him to various other uses. (807b–d)

The quote from Pindar (fr. 48 Bowra) runs as follows: Δωδωναῖε μεγασθενές ἀριστότεχνα πάτερ δαμιουργὸς εὐνομίας καὶ δίκας

Let there be no doubt: Plutarch is comparing the politician to Zeus! The term δημιουργός as well as the Pindaric quotation stem from a Platonically inspired cluster of parallels (see Table 2: Pindaric cluster: the politician as ‘artist par excellence’) that involves also important terms such as τέχνη, ἀρετή and πρόνοια. Its ‘Quelle’ is a Plutarchan hypomnema⁷ and its proper biotope is most probably the cosmological discussion in De facie in orbe lunae.⁸ In De facie Plutarch’s brother Lamprias modifies the Stoic doctrine of the local separation and stratification of the elements according to which the moon as an earthy substance could not be above us; Lamprias will argue that the seemingly ‘unnatural’ position of the moon serves a higher purpose. If not a single one of the parts of the cosmos ever got in an ‘unnatural’ condition, . . . , I cannot make out what use there is of providence (τῆς προνοίας) [A] or of what Zeus, ‘the master-craftsman’ is maker and father and creator (τίνος γέγονε ποιητὴς καὶ πατὴρ δημιουργὸς ὁ Ζεὺς ὁ ἀριστοτέχνας: 927ab).

The Stoic doctrine, appealing to natural causes permeated by Providence, will not be able to explain the existence and function of the cosmos, and particularly of the teleological function of the moon (Görgemanns 1970: 79, 85) without the intervention of the Platonic δημιουργός (as Cherniss and Helmbold 1995 [=1957]: 87 n. b proposed). In the anti-Stoic dialogue De communibus notitiis § 13–15 Diadumenus, who is Plutarch’s mouthpiece (Casevitz and Babut 2002: 12) criticizes Chrysippus’ position on the genesis of vice. He quotes Chrysippus who said:

⁷ Cf. Cherniss 1997 [=1976]: 398–99, 622–23. ⁸ I made a philological analysis of this cluster in Van der Stockt 2002; Table 2 was first published in that volume, 118.

Table 2 Pindar-Cluster: The Politician as ‘Artist Par Excellence’ Comm. not. §13–15

De sera §4

Quaest. conv. II, 1

Prae. ger. reip. §13

D 927a: paradox

F 1065c: Cleon (ἀναγωγία)

A 549d: κατὰ πρόνοιαν?

F 806f: Cleon (φιλοπλουτία, φιλονεικία, φθόνος, κακοήθεια)

B containing the Pindar quote (927b)

A 1065d:vice κατὰ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ πρόνοιαν !?

A and dealing with divine πρόνοια (927ab) C 927b: comparison with other artists: tacticians (Epaminondas?), gardeners and builders E 927f: Empedocles,fr. B76

B 1065e: Pindar quote

C 549ef: comparison with arts: music, military art, medicine D phrased as a paradox B 550a:Pindar quote

C 618ab: comparison with other arts: builder, painter, shipwright D phrased as paradoxes B 618b: Pindar quote

D phrased as a paradox

E 618b: Empedocles, fr. B76

B 807c: Pindar-quote [C builder, carpenter] ὄργανα ζῶντα (followed, in 807d, by ‘Solon and Seisachtheia’)

A 618c:προϊδέσθαι

§ 32: G 823f: Solon and stasis

C 618c: tacticians: Epaminondas ἔμψυχος δεσμός

§32: A 824bc: προνοεῖν

C 1066c: comparison with other artists: farmer, pilot, charioteer D 1066cd: paradox

G 550c: Solon and stasis: παραλογώτατον

C 807b: comparison with artists: pilot, ship-captain, architect

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De facie §12–15

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’  

For just as comedies contain funny lines, which, while vulgar in themselves, add a certain charm to the piece as a whole, so vice all by itself you should censure, but for the universe as a whole it is not useless (οὐκ ἄχρηστος). (1065d)

Diadumenus cannot agree with the implication that divine providence would be responsible for the genesis of vice. Moreover, the vulgar line embellishes the comedy and contributes to its goal, the aim of comedy being what is funny or pleasing to the spectators; but Zeus the paternal and supreme and righteous and, as Pindar calls him, master craftsman (ὁ δὲ πατρῷος καὶ ὕπατος καὶ θεμίστιος Ζεὺς καὶ ἀριστοτέχνας, κατὰ Πίνδαρον) fashioned the universe (δημιουργῶν τὸν κόσμον) not . . . as a . . . drama but as a town common to gods and men who should live as lawful partners in right and virtue concordantly and blissfully (ἀλλὰ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἄστυ κοινὸν συννομησομένων μετὰ δίκης καὶ ἀρετῆς ὁμολογουμένως καὶ μακαρίως) and for the attainment of this most fair and most majestic goal what need had he of pirates and murderers and parricides and tyrants? (1065e–f)

Thus the parallelism between the two anti-Stoic discourses reveals the complex theme of the god-δημιουργός, who has a specific τέλος, namely to assign the ‘natural’ place to the elements in De facie, and to give precedence to ἀρετή in De communibus. notitiis. For our purpose it is important to notice that we have finally found Plutarch’s civitas dei. It is the cosmos as a city of justice, where Zeus is ruler and where we humans live ‘concordantly and blissfully’ with the gods. But let there be no misunderstanding: this ideal city is not situated on earth, but in heaven. As a Platonist, Plutarch reminds us of our heavenly origin (Opsomer 2002: 288): For man, as Plato (Tim. 90a) says, is ‘no earthly’ or immovable ‘plant’, but a ‘celestial’ one—the head, like a root, keeping the body erect—inverted to point to heaven. (De exil. 600f)

It is to that heavenly origin that we will return; and there we will live the blessed life of the righteous.

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17 Plutarch on Superstition, Atheism, and the City Tim Whitmarsh

Was Plutarch an active commentator on the religious life of the Greek city in his era? His religious thought and status as a Delphic priest have of course been well studied,¹ but primarily in the abstract, as the background to his ‘doctrine’. In this chapter, however, I consider the evidence for our author’s deliberate and decisive attempts to intervene into current religious debates within mainstream civic politics. Was Plutarch practically concerned with how his fellow citizens practiced religion? Did he seek to influence them directly? My discussion will focus on On Superstition, a curious and intriguing little text, which has excited comment primarily for its allegedly anomalous nature.² ‘It is usually considered to be a work of his youth’, notes Peter Van Nuffelen, ‘but the evidence for it is not very strong’.³ As with other texts attributed (largely by hunch) to the immature Plutarch,⁴ the reasons for this dating are rooted in adverse judgements of the quality of the argumentation, an apparently ‘rhetorical’ nature, and its supposedly atypical tenor (although it goes without saying that definitions of what is ‘characteristically Plutarchan’ are always vulnerable to the charge of arbitrariness). In addition, as Inger Kuin has recently argued, there are strong positive reasons (its length, its position in the Lamprias Catalogue, its coherent philosophical position) for grouping it with Plutarch’s ‘philosophical’ rather than ‘rhetorical’ works.⁵ It is, however, a much more interesting work than many assessments have suggested, if we evaluate it less as the work of a great mind and more as a witness to public discussions of the role of religion at the time.

¹ Betz 1975; Brenk 1977, 1987; Gallo 1996. ² The most important discussions are Erbse 1952; Moellering 1962; Smith 1975; Brenk 1977: 9–27; Brenk 1987: 260–62; Lozza 1989, 1996; Baldassarri 1996; Bowden 2008; Titchener 2008; Van Nuffelen 2011: 68–71. ³ Van Nuffelen 2011: 68 n. 120. Early daters include Erbse 1952; Brenk 1977: 9–27; and Baldassarri 1996: 373; see now contra Kuin 2021: 40. ⁴ E.g. On the Fame of the Athenians, the two speeches On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander and On the Fortune of the Romans. Jones 1971: 135–37 sagely declines to date On Superstition (but nevertheless clings to the thesis of the ‘rhetorical period’). ⁵ Kuin 2021: 40–41. Tim Whitmarsh, Plutarch on Superstition, Atheism, and the City In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0018

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The fundamental claim of On Superstition is that true piety (eusebeia) represents a golden mean between atheism⁶ and superstition (deisidaimonia), and that in fact of the two extremes atheism (atheotēs) is preferable; after all, atheism merely neglects the positive benefits one might take from religion, whereas superstition actually promotes and embeds a dangerous misprision about both the nature of the gods (that they are malicious and unpredictable) and their relationship with humanity (that the best way to appease them is through outlandish and irrational displays). The comparison thus works, at first sight, to the detriment of the superstitious: some conclude that ‘it would be better that there should be no gods at all than gods who accept such forms of worship, and are so insolent, petty and easily offended’.⁷ Both atheism and superstition thus depend on the same misguided assessment of the divine; but it is more rational to disbelieve in gods of this sort, like the atheist, than to believe in them, like the superstitious person. The reason why On Superstition has been treated with a certain amount of scholarly suspicion is that the position he adopts in this text is firstly, in the eyes of some, problematically pro-atheist; and second, it might be taken to stand in tension with the claims made by a speaker in one of Plutarch’s explicitly antiEpicurean dialogues, A Pleasant Life Is Impossible Following Epicurus. Epicureanism, Aristodemus claims in the latter text, can offer certain benefits: ‘where their theory works successfully and is right, it does remove a certain superstition (deisidaimonia) and fear’; but ultimately it is a depressing way of living one’s life since ‘it allows no joy and delight to come to us from the gods’.⁸ His conclusion, then, is that ‘we should, I grant you, remove superstition from our belief in the gods like a rheum from the eye; but if this proves impossible, we should not cut away both together and kill the faith that most men have in the gods’.⁹ The underlying reasoning is the same as in On Superstition, i.e. that both atheism and superstition misunderstand the gods, but Aristodemus’ conclusion is the opposite one: it is better to err on the side of superstition than of atheism. As Nikolaidis notes in an important discussion,¹⁰ the apparent disjunction between the two texts is in fact a matter not of disagreement but of difference of emphasis. Both texts extol what is fundamentally a Platonic position on the gods, namely that both the hyperintellectual rejection of their existence and the histrionics of popular piety are misguided.¹¹ In fact, the idea—shared between the two Plutarchan texts—that correct ‘piety is a worshipful attitude towards the gods and deities that stands mid-way between atheism and superstition’ is already found in

⁶ On the wider context of atheism in the Greco-Roman world see Whitmarsh 2015a. ⁷ De superst. 171b. Here and elsewhere I use the Loeb translation of Babbitt (in this instance slightly adapted). ⁸ Non suav. 1100f. ⁹ Non suav. 1101c. ¹⁰ Nikolaidis 1991: 164–67; cf. Erbse 1952. ¹¹ Bowden 2008: 64–65, helpfully comparing in particular Laws 885b4.

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an anonymous Peripatetic tract from the Hellenistic era.¹² Plutarch’s overall position in the two texts is not, then, philosophically radical, even if his preference for atheism in On Superstition may be unconventional. One suspects that scholars troubled by the position Plutarch adopts in On Superstition are flustered more by a modern, monotheistic anxiety that sees atheism as constitutively opposed to and necessarily corrosive of true religion. As Hugh Bowden notes, On Superstition ‘is an essay that seems particularly to have bothered scholars who are concerned with discovering the nature of Plutarch’s “religious faith” ’.¹³ The juxtaposition of On Superstition and A Pleasant Life, however, does help to highlight two important facets of the former text, facets that may otherwise go unremarked. The first is the pivotal importance of Epicureanism, with which Plutarch sparred throughout his philosophical career.¹⁴ The title for our tract given in the Lamprias Catalogue,¹⁵ where it figures as no. 155, is ‘On Superstition against Epicurus’. The second phrase has been disputed since Wyttenbach’s edition of the Moralia in the early nineteenth century: Wyttenbach thought it not unlikely that Plutarch did write such an essay, defending religion from the Epicurean descriptor ‘superstition’; but ‘the one which we now possess is not written against Epicurus’.¹⁶ In his introduction to the Loeb edition of the text, Babbitt speculates that the title does indeed refer to our text, but that ‘Against Epicurus’ has been introduced erroneously by an overhasty reader of the first page, where we find a sentence beginning ‘A man thinks that in the beginning the universe was created out of atoms and void’—an obvious reference to Epicurus, but (so Babbitt thinks) the only one in the whole work.¹⁷ In what follows, however, I shall argue that the essay is indeed designed to target Epicureans (the most recurrent objects of Plutarch’s scorn in religious matters), albeit obliquely. The second point brought out by the comparison with A Pleasant Life is the dialogic nature of the text. A Pleasant Life is a dialogue in the literal sense. A companion piece to Against Colotes, which recalls a reading of a text¹⁸ by the Epicurean Colotes after which Plutarch was called upon to make a philosophical response, it dramatizes a second stage in that discussion between the individuals present at the time: Plutarch, Aristodemus, Theon, and Zeuxippus. Interestingly, the passage that has been identified as ‘contradicting’ On Superstition is spoken not by Plutarch himself but by the professed Platonist Aristodemus of Aegium. Aristodemus is otherwise unknown—but it may not be a coincidence that he ¹² Preserved by Stobaeus (see 2.7.25 Wachsmuth), who perhaps found the excerpt in Arius Didymus (Mullach 1867: 99, col. 1.9–11). ¹³ Bowden 2008: 61. ¹⁴ Boulogne 2003. ¹⁵ The ancient or perhaps mediaeval list of Plutarch’s Lives that is attributed to Plutarch’s son in the Byzantine lexicon The Suda (Λ 96) and no doubt earlier (Irigoin 1986: 323–24, arguing that it probably came to light in Italy in the twelfth century). ¹⁶ Wyttenbach 1828: 2. ¹⁷ Babbitt 1928: 452. ¹⁸ The text, That It Is Impossible to Live in Accordance with the Doctrines of Other [i.e. nonEpicurean] Philosophers, is otherwise unattested. Colotes was a younger coeval of Epicurus’.

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shares a name with a celebrated Platonic character, Aristodemus of Cydathenaeum, who is the ultimate source for the narrative (relayed, in our version, by Apollodorus of Phalerum) of Plato’s Symposium. The Symposium is the most polyvocal of Plato’s dialogues, built as it is from multiple narrative plies; a Platonically attuned reader, then, might well think twice before taking Plutarch’s Aristodemus as a straightforward mouthpiece for the author’s own views (as modern scholars do when they speak of a contradiction with On Superstition). What is more, Plutarch himself introduces the dialogue of A Pleasant Life—in which he himself plays no part (having been the dominant voice in Against Colotes)—with what could be taken as a deliberate act of distancing from the perspectives subsequently offered. He has preserved the dialogue, he says, if for no other reason, at least to show persons who undertake to set others right that they must each study with care the arguments and books of the men they impugn, and must not mislead the inexperienced by detaching expressions from different contexts and attacking mere words apart from the things to which they refer.¹⁹

In what ways does the ensuing dialogue fulfil this aim, i.e. of showing would-be philosophers the difference between wilful misreading and careful, attentive explication de texte? One answer might be that it is the Epicureans themselves who are guilty of the former, since the conversation takes its cue from an apparently vituperative response to Plutarch’s discourse in On Colotes by ‘Heraclides and his associates’,²⁰ clearly defenders of Epicurus. Plutarch might be saying that it is the notorious tendency of Epicureans to speak dismissively and aggressively of other philosophers that exemplifies the casual misreading that he decries, and that the sensitive exposition put forward by his friends offers in contrast a positive paradigm. Indeed, at one level he surely is saying this. But it is open to a resistant reader to forge another path through the text, and to take Plutarch’s friends as similarly inattentive—while Plutarch himself, the authoritative philosophical voice in the text, removes himself (‘I shall participate by listening’, he says).²¹ I offer this reading not as a final or ‘correct’ interpretation, but as a possibility that is raised within this text, and in particular stimulated by the dialogic frame, which characteristically encourages the reader to participate in the argumentative mise-en-scène by questioning and resisting dominant perspectives.

¹⁹ Non suav. 1086d. ²⁰ οἱ περὶ Ἡρακλείδην (Non suav. 1086e)—which could also, according to imperial Greek idiom, simply mean (as Babbitt translates) ‘Heraclides’. ²¹ χρήσομαι . . . ἀκροώμενος, Non suav. 1087c.

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A Pleasant Life, then, is not a straightforwardly anti-Epicurean rant on Plutarch’s part, but a staged dialogue between multiple partners on the topic of Epicurean ethics, a dialogue from which the author specifically absents himself. How does this help us with On Superstition? The latter is not itself a dialogue, formally speaking, but an essay in the author’s voice. Nevertheless it does, I suggest, constitute one half of an implicit dialogue; it seeks to intervene selfconsciously within a public and ongoing debate over the relationship between religion and the city in Plutarch’s time. Luc van der Stockt argues in Chapter 16 of this volume that Plutarch developed a philosophical conception of an ideal city founded in the acknowledgement of divine justice; On Superstition, I argue, represented one attempt to put that ideal into practice, by engaging in robust (albeit oblique) debate with different sacro-political ideals. Plutarch was well aware of operating within a philosophically contested milieu when it came to attitudes towards the gods. A Pleasant Life does not simply reinforce the anti-Epicurean message of Against Colotes; it dramatizes, as well as his friends’ counterarguments, the existence and indeed vitality of the alternative, Epicurean perspective. Plutarch did not kill off his opponents’ position in Against Colotes; nor, we must assume, did he in A Pleasant Life. The very fact that he had to write a response piece shows that his aim in Against Colotes was not simply to enshrine his own philosophical position, but to intervene in a living debate. This tactic of following up with a second text on the same topic is similarly adopted by Lucian is in such texts as Defence of Portraits or The Fisherman, which present themselves as responses to the negative reactions occasioned by previous dialogues of his. In Lucian the pendant text, rather than reinforcing the position of the first text, seems to deconstruct it satirically by acknowledging Lucian’s own inconsistency.²² The reader is left with a sense that there is no moral truth or personal integrity, only an infinitely multiplying plurality of possible positions. Plutarch’s aim is no doubt very different: he genuinely does want to create a philosophical coherent position, expressed in a literary voice that is identifiably and consistently Platonic (and anti-Epicurean). But crucially he acknowledges— just like Lucian—the multiple perspectives that continue to exist, and the ongoing existence of an irresoluble debate. The Plutarch I describe, then, is not the ‘theological’, proto-Christian pietist of some readings, but an engaged and aware participant in and indeed dramatizer of wider discussions about the role and nature of religion within the Greek city. In particular, I follow the recent scholarly trend that has reappraised the Moralia, and specifically what were once known as the ‘popular-philosophical’ works, as public explorations of central issues in civic discourse.²³

²² Whitmarsh 2001: 259–65.

²³ See esp. Van Hoof 2010.

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Before discussing the text in earnest, let us consider what a civic debate on religion in the second century might actually look like. Plutarch’s own ‘Delphic dialogues’ might be thought to offer one model: here, a series of like-minded friends offer refined discussion of oracular topics in the course of gentle strolls. This kind of walking philosophy, embodying the capacity of the mind to free itself from the confines of civic duty through perambulation—which is also enacted in Against Colotes and A Pleasant Life—is a distinctive feature of elite Roman intellectual culture (although based in Greek ideas).²⁴ But this kind of detached reflection is in fact not what I have in mind. The Delphic dialogues are removed from the civic mainstream. In The E at Delphi, the discussion takes place ‘seated in the environs of the temple’ (385b); The Pythia No Longer Prophesies in Verse is set in the midst of a tour around the antiquities of Delphi; there is no specific location specified in On the Obsolescence of Oracles. Delphi itself is presented as busy but non-urban, and indeed an appropriately serene place for refined philosophical chat. I take it as programmatic that in The Pythia No Longer Prophesies in Verse, the interlocutors break off from the company of the guides, who are going through ‘their prearranged spiel’ (395a), in order to have a more sophisticated discussion about the manufacture of artworks. These discourses are intended to mark a rupture with the banalities of everyday existence, to fix the mind on higher things. A closer parallel for the kind of the scenario I envision is Lucian’s Zeus the Tragedian. Here Zeus’ paratragic lamentation is initiated by a conversation he claims to have heard at the Athenian Stoa between two ‘philosophers of the disputatious type’, the Epicurean Damis and the Stoic Timocles, who have been ‘contesting most vigorously’.²⁵ This is a rowdy, aggressively agonistic display right at the heart of the Athenian polis, with a large audience (Zeus refers to a ‘huge mass of people gathered around’).²⁶ So, the king of the gods proceeds: Their whole discussion was about us. That confounded Damis asserted that we do not exercise any providence in behalf of men and we do not oversee what goes on among them, saying nothing less than that we do not exist at all (for that is of course what his argument implied), and there were some who applauded him. The other, however, I mean Timocles, was on our side and fought for us and got angry and took our part in every way (ὑπερεμάχει καὶ ἠγανάκτει καὶ πάντα τρόπον συνηγωνίζετο), praising our management and telling how we govern and direct everything in the appropriate order and system; and he too had some who applauded him. But finally he grew tired and began to speak badly and the crowd began to turn admiring eyes on Damis; so, seeing the danger,

²⁴ O’Sullivan 2011: 77–115. ²⁵ τῶν ἐριστικῶν . . . ἐκθύμως πάνυ ἐρἱζοντας, Iupp. trag. 16. ²⁶ πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων πάμπολυ συνεστηκός, Iupp. trag. 16.

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I ordered night to close in and break up the conference. They went away, therefore, after agreeing to carry the dispute to a conclusion the next day . . . ²⁷

Lucian’s dialogue dramatizes a boisterous debate, conducted in front of a keen public audience (apparently consisting of assembled passers-by), on the role of the gods in public affairs. Stoicism and Epicureanism are set up as polar opposites, rival philosophical systems whose views of the gods conflict in the same way that Damis and Timocles, their proponents, do. We have no way of knowing how realistic Lucian’s depiction is, and if so how common this kind of scenario was. What is more, the premise of Zeus the Tragedian is, of course, a joke: the scenario turns on the idea that the gods fear being starved out of heaven if humans, convinced of their non-existence (or their insignificance), cease to sacrifice to them. This joke is in turn indebted to the classical model of Aristophanes’ Birds. Nevertheless, the debate itself rings true to the animated, argumentative contemporary world described by Lucian in other texts: the world of Hermotimus, for example, or the Symposium. It is even more likely to be true-to-life if Graham Anderson’s arguments for the existence of a historical Damis (also appearing, refracted through a prism, in Philostratus’ Apollonius) are accepted.²⁸ Epicureanism loomed large on the intellectual landscape of the early Roman empire. The most substantial archive of ancient texts to survive from antiquity is a primarily Epicurean library, carbonized within Plutarch’s own lifetime by the eruption of Vesuvius.²⁹ The largest inscription to survive from classical antiquity is the extraordinary composition of Diogenes in Oenoanda, which dates to perhaps two generations after Plutarch.³⁰ Diogenes Laertius, writing in the early third century , wrote of the friends of Epicurus as ‘so many in number that they could hardly be counted by whole cities’.³¹ It is not an unreasonable assumption that this substantial movement, which (as the speakers in Plutarch’s A Pleasant Life observe) itself often spoke about others in acerbic tones, and which adopted a dismissive stance towards conventional civic theology and cult (except as a mechanism for engendering collective harmony), should have stoked debate.³² So, we turn to the text. Plutarch’s On Superstition may well have been composed for oral performance on the occasion of a public debate about the role of religion. It is a short work, slightly ragged: there are a number of loose ends and sudden leaps in the argument, suggesting a spontaneity, whether calculated or not. The text as a whole has the visceral feel of a harangue against the superstitious; it certainly has little in common with the more measured tone of the Delphic

²⁷ Lucian Iupp. trag. 17, trans. Harmon 1936. ²⁸ Anderson 1986: 166–69. ²⁹ The villa of the papyri at Herculaneum has of course been well treated; on its library, see esp. Gigante 1995: 15–48. ³⁰ Gordon 1996: 3 (‘possibly at the end of the second century C.E.’). ³¹ Diog. Laert. 10.9. ³² Generally on the hostility provoked by Epicurus throughout antiquity see Gordon 2012.

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Dialogues.³³ Another reason to think of it as a text designed to appeal to a broad audience is its intertextual repertoire. Although there are a number of hits at Stoics and (particularly) Epicureans, the explicit reference points are primarily poetic (it is a rich source of otherwise unattested dramatic fragments) and historical exempla, drawn from the Classical Greek past and Roman domestic and foreign affairs of the first century . This suggests that it is designed for people who are not specialist philosophers, as interlocutors of Against Colotes, A Pleasant Life and the ‘Delphic Dialogues’ were. What of the argument itself? Plutarch’s claim is, as I have mentioned, that correct theism occupies the mid-point between superstition (deisidaimonia) and atheism (atheotēs). Religion, he argues, fundamentally involves a krisis, a judgement, about the nature of the gods. Atheists, of course, judge that the gods do not exist.³⁴ The superstitious, by contrast, judge that they are pernicious, malevolent beings, who pursue us everywhere and wreak vengeance upon us. Correct piety (eusebeia—the final word of the treatise) is, however, the ideal, and this consists in an accurate apperception of the divine order as benevolent and beneficent. Such judgements, Plutarch argues, have direct consequences for the state of mind (diathesis) with which we approach events. The atheist and the pious theist are similarly untroubled by irrational emotions, but the superstitious are plagued by anxiety, and in particular by the fear that lies at the root of deisidaimonia. Superstition thus manifests itself ultimately as a pathos, a form of psychic turbulence. If we are agreed that this claim is likely to stake out a competitive position within a debate, then the next question to ask is what kind of position Plutarch is attempting to counter. Prima facie, this question is not hard to answer: like Xenophanes and Plato before him,³⁵ and like his approximate contemporary Heraclitus the allegorist,³⁶ he is attacking, under the banner of ‘superstition’, the popular view of gods as capable of capricious malignity, a view embodied in epic and tragedy: the gods are, rather (he claims), providentially benevolent. The contemporary salience of this argument can be seen in the Greek romances, which similarly tend to present wailing protagonists inveighing against the cruelty of unspecified daimones, while the plot is in fact working out for the best.³⁷ Plutarch’s fundamental claim is that conventional mythology, with its stories of ³³ ‘Its somewhat impassioned tone savours more of the emotional sermon than of the carefully reasoned discourse, and suggests that it was originally prepared for public presentation’ (Babbitt 1928: 452). Some of the argumentative leaps are explored below. (There is a very strange passage indeed at 165a, which may however be corrupt.) ³⁴ Kuin 2021: 43–49 draws out Plutarch’s insistence that this judgement is based ultimately in faulty sense perception and the absence of emotions. ³⁵ Convenient summary of moralizing (and other) critiques of popular religion in Feeney 1991: 5–56. ³⁶ ‘If he [Homer] meant nothing allegorically he was impious through and through, and sacrilegious fables, loaded with blasphemous folly, run through both epics’ (Heraclitus All. 1.2). ³⁷ Whitmarsh 2011: 204–208, 223–28.

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vengeance and punishment, is a deeply misleading guide to true theology. Those who spread such stories are themselves guilty of a kind of impiety: And yet what did Niobe say regarding Leto that was so irreverent as is the belief which superstition has fixed in the minds of the unthinking regarding the goddess, that, because she was derided, she required that the unhappy woman’s ‘Daughters six that she bore and six sons in the prime of young manhood’ be shot dead? So insatiable was she in doing harm to others, and so implacable! For if it were really true that the goddess cherishes anger, and hates wickedness, and is hurt at being ill spoken of, and does not laugh at man’s ignorance and blindness, but feels indignation thereat, she ought to require the death of those who falsely impute to her such savagery and bitterness, and tell and write such stories.³⁸

Interestingly, this argument that conventional theology is a form of impiety is itself Epicurean. Lucretius famously attacks the myth of Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter to appease Artemis, as an example of the corrosive ethics embedded in mythology.³⁹ In Lucian’s Zeus the Tragedian, the Epicurean Damis similarly argues for the immorality of the story of Zeus’ relationship with Thetis (i.e. that because of his obligation to her he was prepared deliberately to harm the Achaeans).⁴⁰ So far, to be sure, there is nothing in the Epicurean critique of myth with which a Platonist would disagree. What is genuinely striking, however, is what looks like a paraphrase, on Plutarch’s part, of Epicurus himself: Hence it occurs to me to wonder at those who say that atheism is impiety (ἀσέβειαν), and do not say the same of superstition . . . What say you? The man who does not believe in the existence of the gods is unholy (ἀνόσιος)? And is not he who believes in such gods as the superstitious believe in a partner to opinions (δόξαις) far more unholy (ἀνοσιωτέραις)?⁴¹

This is remarkably close to the position described by Epicurus himself (which is admittedly phrased in absolute rather than comparative terms): The person who is impious (ἀσεβής) is not the one who does away with the opinions of the many, but the one who attaches to the gods the opinions (δόξας) of the many.⁴²

Epicurus’ redefinition of impiety is part of a general philosophical processing of the Socratic legacy. Socrates had been (according to Plato’s Apology 26b–e) accused of being atheos; Epicurus follows Plato in seeing the true philosopher as ³⁸ De superst. 170c, trans. Babbitt. ⁴¹ De superst. 169f, trans. Babbitt.

³⁹ Lucr. 1.80–101. ⁴⁰ Iupp. trag. 40. ⁴² Ep. Men. 123.6 Heßler.

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someone who rejects false (i.e. popular) views about the gods and embraces true ones instead. It is notable in this connection that Epicurus uses the phrase ‘the one who does away with the opinions of the many’ (ὁ τοὺς τῶν πολλῶν δὸξας ἀναιρῶν), which echoes the Epicurean expression for atheists, ‘those who do away with (ἀναιρεῖν, again) the gods’.⁴³ Epicurus is clearly attempting to deflect criticism on the grounds of impiety (which could have serious judicial consequences, as Socrates discovered), by claiming that it is conventional beliefs about the gods that are more impious. Plutarch’s own claim is no doubt modelled on the Epicurean one in its general structure: the masses, both assert, believe that disbelief in their own theology is a form of impiety when their own beliefs are much more impious. There are, however, important differences too. The position of Epicurus and the Epicureans is primarily defensive, given the accusation of atheism routinely levelled against them: as Diogenes of Oenoanda puts it, ‘it is not we who do away with (ἀναιροῦμεν) the gods, but others’.⁴⁴ Plutarch, however, has adapted the argument, so that it becomes one of degree: atheists are impious, yes, but not as much as the superstitious. This redefinition of the Epicurean position is highly significant as an argumentative strategy. In order to gauge its effect, we have to grasp the point that when in On Superstition Plutarch says ‘atheists’, he means ‘Epicureans’. The most prominent allusion to Epicurean philosophy comes in a very early passage (the one that Babbitt thought an early reader had glimpsed, causing her or him to add against Epicurus to Plutarch’s title): A man thinks that in the beginning the universe was created out of atoms and void. His assumption is false, but it causes no sore, no throbbing, no agitating pain.⁴⁵

Not only would the reference to atoms and void clearly signal Epicureanism (as distinct, e.g., from the atomism of Democritus) for a reader of Plutarch’s day, but also the phrase ‘false assumption’ (ψευδὴς . . . ὑπόληψις) sounds as if it is turning Epicurean language back onto the Epicureans.⁴⁶ Similarly, the word ‘agitating’ (ταράττουσαν) obviously suggests the Epicurean quest after ataraxia.

⁴³ Philodem. De Piet. 474–75, 521–23 Obbink (with Obbink 1996: 349–50 for further references; also my following n.) ⁴⁴ Diog. Oen. fr. 16.5–7 Smith. ⁴⁵ ἀτόμους τις οἴεται καὶ κενὸν ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων ψευδὴς ἡ ὑπόληψις, ἀλλ᾽ ἕλκος οὐ ποιεῖ οὐδὲ σφ υγμὸν οὐδ᾽ ὀδύνην ταράττουσαν. De superst. 164f. ⁴⁶ Cf. Epicur. Ep. Men. 124.1: ‘the pronouncements of the many concerning the gods are not preconceptions (prolēpseis) but false assumptions (hupolēpseis)’ (οὐ γὰρ προλήψεις εἰσὶν ἀλλ’ ὑπολήψεις ψευδεῖς αἱ τῶν πολλῶν ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀποφάσεις). In Epicureanism, a prolēpsis is a mental schema into which a true perception is fitted, whereas a hupolēpsis is merely a culturally determined belief.

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Indeed, there are indications that Plutarch is engaging with Epicurean ideas throughout. For a start, he uses this same verb, ‘agitate’ (ταράττειν), on four occasions in On Superstition to describe the spiritual chaos caused by a belief in false, malevolent deities.⁴⁷ This suggests that Plutarch is conceding to the Epicureans the point that certain forms of religious belief can generate anxiety. Yet atheism too can in Plutarch’s view generate anxiety, particularly because it removes the idea of divine providence. (This was a philosophical flashpoint for Plutarch, as it was for other thinkers of his day: elsewhere in his oeuvre he professes himself troubled specifically by the Epicureans’ lack of belief in providence.)⁴⁸ When faced by circumstances of his choice, we read, the atheist has two routes: if he is moderate (μέτριος), he will accept his position and think first about what he can do to adapt himself to it (this, we might note, is exactly what Epicurus would prescribe); but if he be given to impatience or violent emotion, you will note that he directs all his complaints against Fortune and Chance, and exclaims that nothing comes about according to right or as the result of providence, but that the course of all human affairs is confusion and disorder, and that they are all agitated (ταράττεται).⁴⁹

What is particularly striking about this passage is that the ‘atheist’—by which, I claim, Plutarch means the Epicurean—finds that once again his own language is turned back upon him. A non-providential view of the world means that cosmic order itself becomes ‘agitated’, which can lead to psychic perturbation in the individual who holds that view (if, that is, he is not by nature ‘moderate’). As with the passage we discussed earlier about the impiety of superstition, Plutarch’s strategy seems to be subtle and devious: while acknowledging the force of the Epicurean critique of conventional religion and religious belief, he also covertly demonstrates—to his own satisfaction, at any rate—that Epicurean (‘atheist’) beliefs themselves are liable to the same kind of critique that the Epicureans level at ‘superstition’. That is to say, Epicureanism may not, in Plutarch’s view, be as bad as superstition—it has some philosophical utility—but nor conversely does it offer a full liberation from error and anxiety, in the way that properly pious religious thought does. My claim, then, is that the underlying target of On Superstition is in fact the Epicurean critique of superstition. Epicureanism is built upon the claim that only Epicureanism itself offers a true account of the (material) nature of reality; all other philosophical systems, including any that countenance providential gods who can intervene in our world, are not only wrong and anxiety-generating, but ⁴⁷ De superst. 165f, 166a, 168a, 168f. ⁴⁹ De superst. 167f–68a.

⁴⁸ De Stoic. repugn. 1043b, 1051d, 1052b.

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actually impious (in that they misrepresent the nature of divinity).⁵⁰ Plutarch, demonstrating a mischievous rhetorical flair, concedes the general Epicurean point (i.e. that there are forms of religious belief that are misguided, stressinducing, and impious), but also simultaneously folds Epicureanism into the general category of religious error creates a new space for a theology that is true, pleasure-generating (as Epicureanism would demand) and pious.⁵¹ In other words, the Epicurean, non-providential view of religion is wrong even on its own terms. We might, then, defend the title for the text preserved in the Lamprias Catalogue, but rejected by modern editors: ‘On Superstition, Against Epicurus’. The attack is certainly upon superstition per se (we shall return to this point shortly), but also on superstition insofar as it ‘provided atheism with a reason to come into being in the first place; and once it had come into being, it gave it an excuse for existing’.⁵² In other words, the Epicurean critique of conventional, civic religion is based upon the (false, so Plutarch believes) view that superstition is all there is to it. Plutarch’s positive vision for civic religion is, we should note in passing (though it is not our primary concern here), itself philosophically suspect. The implicit claim, which occasionally surfaces in something close to an explicit form, is that the gods are entirely benevolent, and we should therefore credit all that is good— and nothing that is bad—in our lives to them. Thus they are referred to as ‘gentle saviours . . . from whom we ask wealth, welfare, peace, harmony and success in our best efforts in speech and action’;⁵³ and the atheists, we are told, ‘hold in contempt philosophers and statesmen who try to prove that the majesty of the god is associated with goodness, magnanimity, kindliness and solicitude’.⁵⁴ The superstitious, therefore, have it exactly the wrong way around: contrary to what they think, all that is good in our lives, and nothing that is bad, comes from the gods. This is not only a naively simplistic position to adopt, it is hard to work through in practice. Does everything fall so neatly into ‘good’ and ‘bad’? (What if, for example, a woman is desperately poor and unexpectedly finds herself pregnant?) Can not the same event be good for one person and bad for another? (What if one person is chosen ahead of another to be the city’s candidate in the Olympic Games?) And is it not the case that when bad things happen to you, that is in effect the same thing as the gods refusing to grant you good things? (A functioning limb is a good thing: if you lose it, is that not the same thing as the gods ⁵⁰ What Epicurus and the Epicureans actually thought the gods to be is a very complex question, which we need not address here: for discussion of the two current (opposing) positions see Sedley 2011 and Konstan 2011. ⁵¹ For a similar strategy in de gloria Atheniensium see Athanassaki in this volume, Chapter 5. ⁵² τῆι ἀθεότητι καὶ γένεσθαι παρέσχεν ἀρχὴν καὶ γενομένηι δίδωσιν ἀπολογίαν, De superst. 171a. ⁵³ τοὺς σωτῆρας καὶ τοὺς μειλιχίους . . . παρ᾿ ὧν αἰτούμεθα πλοῦτον εὐπορίαν εἰρήνην ὁμόνοιαν ὄρθωσιν λόγων καὶ ἔργων τῶν ἀρίστων, 166d–e. ⁵⁴ φιλοσόφων δὲ καὶ πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν καταφρονοῦσιν, ἀποδεικνύντων τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ σεμνότητα μετὰ χρηστότητος καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνης καὶ εὐμενείας καὶ κηδεμονίας, 167e.

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withholding it? So the gods can give us bad things too, by denying us good things.) The Plutarch of On Superstition—who is primarily concerned with ethical behaviour in the world—would no doubt retort that the most important thing is the practical consequence of your belief system, i.e. how it encourages you to respond practically to either good or bad fortune: the optimal system will encourage you to be grateful when things are going well (without taking anything for granted), and when they are going badly to do your best to rectify the situation without seeking to blame others. But would not a metaphysically incoherent philosophy of religion be vulnerable to precisely the kind of attack levelled by the Epicureans? That is to say, Plutarch offers no demonstration in the course of On Superstition as to how, epistemologically speaking, he has reached his supposedly true judgement about the nature of the gods; all he can say is that piety offers the better belief system because it leads to better moral practice (a claim that is itself contentious, but this is not the place to pursue that discussion). Perhaps this underlying incoherence offers further evidence that On Superstition is an attempt primarily to intervene assertively in an oral rhetorical debate, rather than to establish a fully workedthrough philosophical position. We should, however, return to Plutarch’s own agenda, for one major question remains: if, as I have argued, the underlying attempt is to undermine the Epicurean position, what are we to do with the deisidaimones, the ‘superstitious’ types against whom the tract is superficially directed? Do they come across as mere stereotypes, introduced simply as straw men? The answer is mixed. There is certainly a strongly satirical element to Plutarch’s depiction, as one might expect: after all, the deisidaimōn is one of Theophrastus’ most colourful Characters,⁵⁵ and appears in other prose skits.⁵⁶ Deisidaimōn is the title of one of Menander’s plays (although the word does not appear elsewhere in comedy: he was not, apparently, a ‘stock character’).⁵⁷ Plutarch’s superstitious types seem not to be one specific group, but an amalgam of all those whose theology treats the gods as malevolent and thus causes anxiety. He speaks at various points of ‘conjurors and impostors’,⁵⁸ phrasing that is reminiscent of Hippocratic attempts to demonize those who do not follow their medical tenets.⁵⁹ He speaks of an ‘old witch’—again an obvious stereotype.⁶⁰ He also refers to various barbarian cults: that of the Syrian goddess who punishes those who eat fish (Atargatis, of course),⁶¹ and of Gallic, Scythian, and Carthaginian rituals demanding human sacrifice;⁶² and of the live burial of twelve people by Amestris, Xerxes’ wife.⁶³ Plutarch’s aim is, apparently,

⁵⁵ Theophr. Char. 16. ⁵⁶ See Hipp. Morb. Sacr. 2 and Pl. Leg. 909a-d, with Diggle 2004: 349 (references slightly amended). On the humorous nature of Plutarch’s portrait of the deisidaimōn see also Kuin 2021: 50. ⁵⁷ Men. frr. 106–109 PCG. ⁵⁸ ἀγύρτας καὶ γόητας, De superst. 166a. ⁵⁹ E.g. Hipp. Morb. Sacr. 1–2, with Lloyd 1979: 15–27. ⁶⁰ τὴν περιμάκτριαν . . . γραῦν, De superst. 166a. ⁶¹ De superst. 170b–c. ⁶² De superst. 171b–c. ⁶³ De superst. 171d–e.

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less to define a specific societal group than to clump together a whole set of irrational, ‘foreign’, female, and low-class practices. He then proceeds to paint these with a colourful language of defilement. Particularly illustrative is the following passage: ‘Oh Greeks from barbarians finding evil ways!’ because of superstition, such as smearing with mud, wallowing in filth, immersions, casting oneself down with face to the ground, disgraceful besieging of the gods, and uncouth prostrations. ‘To sing with the mouth aright’ was the injunction given to the harp-players by those who thought to preserve the good old forms of music; and we hold it to be proper to pray to the gods with the mouth straight and aright, and not to inspect the tongue laid upon the sacrificial offering to see that it be clean and straight, and, at the same time, by distorting and sullying one’s own tongue with strange names and barbarous phrases, to disgrace and transgress the god-given ancestral dignity of our religion.⁶⁴

This does look, at first sight, to be a relatively unproblematic and familiar case of the ‘othering’ of popular and foreign religious practices. Not only is Plutarch’s moral vocabulary forcefully critical (the language of ‘disgrace’ is used twice (αἰσχράς, καταισχύνειν)), not only is there a clear distinction drawn between the ‘strange and barbarous’ (ἀτόποις . . . βαρβαρικοῖς) on the one hand and the ‘ancestral’ (πάτριον) on the other, but also Plutarch explicitly evokes the language of dirt. Superstitious practices, he writes, involve ‘smearing with mud, wallowing in filth, immersions’ (πηλώσεις καταβορβορώσεις βαπτισμούς). In particular, Plutarch focuses on clean and dirty forms of language: he opposes pious prayer, ‘with the mouth straight and aright’ (ὀρθῶι τῶι στόματι καὶ δικαίωι), to the ‘sullying’ (μολύνοντας) of the tongue with barbarous phraseology. This is a classic strategy of those who would deny others a voice: Plutarch not only denies the superstitious any form of articulacy (their language is reduced to incoherent noise), he even suggests that the vile filth in which they coat themselves infects their mouths. Their beliefs and words are—quite literally—shit. So there is certainly an element of crude stereotyping at work here. But I wonder if there is something more. Let us revisit one phrase from the passage cited above: ‘smearing with mud, wallowing in filth, immersions’ (πηλώσεις καταβορβορώσεις βαπτισμούς). ‘Immersion’ is baptismous—which is in fact an emendation by the eighteenth-century English scholar Richard Bentley’s emendation for the transmitted sabbatismous, i.e. ‘holdings of the Sabbath’, an emendation accepted by the Loeb editor Babbitt (but not by Paton, Wegehaupt and Pohlenz in the most recent Teubner edition [1993 (1974)], or Defradas, Hani, and

⁶⁴ De superst. 166a–b. The first quotation is from Eur. Tro. 764; the second is an unspecified proverb.

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Klaerr in the Budé edition [1985]). The emendation is, however, highly tendentious. Bentley proposed it not in a work of classical philology, but in the midst of his lengthy theological attack on Anthony Collins’ (deistic) Discourse of Freethinking (published in 1713; Bentley’s response came in 1743).⁶⁵ Bentley— an ordained Anglican deacon, who had published a ‘confutation of atheism’ some 20 years earlier⁶⁶—was greatly exercised by Collins’ attempt to claim Plutarch as a fellow ‘free-thinker’, a critic and satirist of organized religion. Bentley attempted to show, contrarily, that our philosopher was in fact objecting not to regular devotional activity but to its morbid excesses. The emendation of sabbatismous to baptismous is thus part of a systematic project on Bentley’s part to show that the noble philosopher had no problem with the Jewish holding of the Sabbath (and, one assumes, by extension, that he would have had no problem with the Anglican liturgy either).⁶⁷ In the course of his argument, indeed, Bentley expatiates on Plutarch’s supposedly positive view of Sabbath festivities: ‘the Sabbata was a joyful festival, made up of ease, finery and good cheer’.⁶⁸ We need not enter here into the details of Bentley’s argument and its merits and demerits (although it is worth observing that it is at the very least ironic that the word he chose instead, baptismos [like its synonyms baptisis and baptisma], is minimally attested outside of Christian contexts, and indeed usually denotes a ritual practice associated primarily with Christians).⁶⁹ The more important point is that, contrary to what Bentley implies, Jews are indeed a specific target for Plutarch’s anti-superstitious critique in this text, as a later passage demonstrates: But the Jews, because it was the Sabbath day, sat in their places immovable, while the enemy were planting ladders against the walls and capturing the defences, and they did not get up, but remained there, fast bound in the toils of superstition as in one great net.⁷⁰

It is not clear to what historical event the reference is here, but they are clearly being derided for their over-superstitious behaviour—and in particular their keeping of the Sabbath, which is surely as strong evidence as one could hope for that in this particular text the Jewish Sabbath is indeed, pace Bentley, closely associated in Plutarch’s mind with false religion. Now, clearly, there is for Plutarch

⁶⁵ Bentley’s response came in the same year, which I have consulted in Dyce 1838. ⁶⁶ Bentley 1692. ⁶⁷ Bentley 1713: 426–27. ⁶⁸ Bentley 1713: 426, alluding to Plut. Quaest. conv. 672a (in the modern enumeration). ⁶⁹ BNP s.v. ‘Baptism’ (in the addenda to vol. 3). ⁷⁰ ἀλλ᾿ Ἰουδαῖοι σαββάτων ὄντων ἐν ἀγνάμπτοις καθεζόμενοι, τῶν πολεμίων κλίμακας προστιθέντων καὶ τὰ τείχη καταλαμβανόντων, οὐκ ἀνέστησαν ἀλλ᾿ ἔμειναν ὥσπερ ἐν σαγήνηι μιᾶι τῇ δεισιδαιμονίαι συ νδεδεμένοι, De superst. 169c.

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more to superstition than Judaism alone (we have seen references to the cult of Atargatis and so forth). But given the time at which he was probably writing, in the aftermath of the sack of Jerusalem in 70 —an event that spawned considerable amounts of both Roman self-congratulation and anti-Jewish sentiment. The Temple of Peace at Rome was, of course, a monument to the defeat of the Jews. So these allusions on Plutarch’s part to Jewish superstition are not just arbitrary references to ‘the other’: they are part of a broader network of systematic, ideologically inflected attempts within Greco-Roman culture to associate Judaism with religious, moral and political perversion. Plutarch’s contemporary Tacitus composed a scorching critique of Jews at the start of the fifth book of his Histories: ‘the Jews regard as profane all that we hold sacred; on the other hand they permit all that we abhor . . . the other customs of the Jews are base and abominable, and we owe their persistence to their depravity’.⁷¹ Interestingly, Plutarch also writes of superstitious practices in terms that look suspiciously Judaeo-Christian. The superstitious person is said to ‘confess some of his sins’—a phrase that sounds very un-Greco-Roman, and employs a combination of verb and noun that appears only in the Septuagint, here, and in later Christian texts.⁷² Just as striking is the language that Plutarch himself adopts of religious belief. He certainly reworks the familiar Greco-Roman language of nomizein tous theous or similar,⁷³ but in fact but more commonly uses pistis and derivatives, a lexical cluster that, while not entirely alien to the Greco-Roman world, is particularly characteristic of JudaeoChristian, and especially Christian discourse.⁷⁴ To reiterate: I am not claiming that the superstitious ‘are’, in any reductive sense, Jews and Christians; merely that the large, amorphous and quasi-parodic category of the deisidaimones includes Jews—and perhaps even the odd Christian (although that may not have been a distinction that Plutarch himself would have recognized). This provides further evidence that our author was an acute observer of the world around him. On Superstition is not of course designed to describe the religious landscape of the early empire with pinpoint sociological precision; it is, rather, intended to shore up (what Plutarch saw as) conventional religion. But that did mean identifying and stereotyping the opponents of the religion he promoted, namely the sceptical Epicureans, and those (like the Jews) whose forms of worship

⁷¹ Tac. Hist. 5.4–5 (trans. Moore). ⁷² ἐξαγορεύει τινὰς ἁμαρτίας αὑτοῦ, De superst. 168d; ἐξαγορεύσει τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, LXX Leviticus 5:5 (and commonly in late antiquity). ⁷³ 165b, 169f, 171c; on this familiar language of ‘thinking the gods [exist]’ see Fahr 1969. ⁷⁴ The superstitious man ‘believes’ (πιστεύει, 170f); atheists experience ‘disbelief ’ (ἀπιστία, 165b, 165c, 167e). On Christian and pre-Christian pistis (and Roman fides) see now Morgan 2015, and Kuin 2021: 48 on its application to our text. This Judaeo-Christian language has sometimes led me to wonder whether On Superstition might not in fact be a late-antique forgery (note the suspiciously explicit reference to ‘Plutarch’ as the author at 169f–170a); but if it is a forgery it is in other respects a very good one, which uses characteristically Plutarchan language and themes.

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were alien. It may, therefore, be considered a pointed public intervention into the civic culture of the early empire, and one side of exactly the kind of passionate, rhetorically sophisticated debate that we saw dramatized in Lucian’s Zeus the Tragedian. Only by situating this text (imaginatively, to be sure) within the lively context of civic debates over proper forms of religious practice can we hope to reconstruct Plutarch’s aims in this extraordinary text.

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PART IV

AFTERWORD

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18 Plutarch’s Cities Where To? Lucia Athanassaki

This volume has shifted the focus of Plutarch scholarship from great men to great cities, present and past, real and imaginary, and to the significance of these cities in the Lives and the Moralia. Despite their different subjects and focus the seventeen chapters cross over temporal boundaries and that between historicity and imagination, and they reveal patterns and tendencies that the two corpora share. I note here some of the intersecting areas that can be fruitfully explored further.

Autopsy, Emotions, and Composition Ewen Bowie, Philip Stadter, Paolo Desideri, Joseph Geiger, and Lucia Athanassaki follow Plutarch’s steps in contemporary cities and sanctuaries: Chaeronea, Rome, Athens, Delphi, and other sanctuaries in Greece and Rome. Plutarch’s depiction of contemporary life in Chaeronea is discussed (pp. 33–41) in the section on Plutarch’s sources. The other chapters all shed light on the ramifications of travel and autopsy for the composition of the Lives and the Moralia, while two bring into the picture the importance of the emotions Plutarch experienced during his visits to those cities and sanctuaries. Joseph Geiger remarks that Plutarch’s works are not only full of gods, but they are also full of temples. The sanctuary of Pythian Apollo was to prove by far the most influential. Stadter and to some extent Geiger point up the impact of Delphi’s artistic environment on Plutarch’s conception of the Lives and the Pythian dialogues. I would add that the opening of the De Pythiae oraculis shows how the different artworks one encounters while walking on the sacred way trigger a wealth of thoughts, memories, and stories, and mark the conversational turns. Diogenianus’ close attention to, admiration for, and questions about (ἐθαύμαζε) the colour of the admirals’ statues mirror Plutarch’s own attitude to the artefacts he encountered not only in Delphi, but in Athens, Rome, and elsewhere. Diogenianus’ response to the Delphic artistic environment is also worth noting: except for the colour of bronze, the statues’ artistic merit did not impress him, Philinus reports, apparently because the visitor from Pergamum

Lucia Athanassaki, Plutarch’s Cities: Where To? In: Plutarch’s Cities. Edited by: Lucia Athanassaki and Frances B. Titchener, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192859914.003.0019

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had already seen many fine artworks elsewhere (πολλῶν καὶ καλῶν ἔργων ὡς ἔοικε θεατὴν γεγενημένον, 395b). This is a cosmopolitan touch that easily applies to Plutarch and his friends. Desideri and Athanassaki follow Plutarch’s steps in Rome and Athens and converge in stressing the importance of autopsy and first-hand experience for the accurate and vivid reconstructions of the past of individuals and communities. Desideri shows the importance of autopsy in the Roman Lives both for the documentary research and for the enargeia Plutarch achieves. Athanassaki shows how in De gloria Atheniensium the speaker indicates his coordinates, which locate him at the temple of Ares and probably in full view of Pindar’s statue in the Agora. This mental, if not physical, localization accounts for a number of thematic and stylistic choices Plutarch makes in the competition staged between ghosts of the classical city, the unrealistic agon of men of action against men of letters and the fine arts. In De gloria Plutarch praises Thucydidean enargeia which turns the historian’s auditors and readers into viewers (οἷον θεατὴν ποιῆσαι τὸν ἀκροατήν, 347a7) and allows them to experience the same emotions as the spectators of those events, in this instance astonishment and disturbance. Desideri touches upon the importance of the emotions Plutarch felt looking at Roman sights for the composition of the Roman Lives. Judith Mossman’s discussion of the emotions Portia experienced at the sight of the painting of Hector and Andromache offers further evidence for the close association of viewing with emotions, even if in this instance the painting was imaginary. Joseph Geiger, on the other hand, elaborates on the cognitive as well as the emotional impact of theoria. In addition to the inspiration and occasionally the information Plutarch drew from temples, Geiger brings out the peace and quiet he found in extra-urban sanctuaries, and concludes his discussion with the only surviving fragment of περὶ Ἡσυχίας, which beautifully combines learning and emotions. Here Plutarch notes the importance of the choice of solitary spots for the shrines of the Muses, of Pan and the Nymphs, of Apollo and all gods of music since ancient times, thus associating peace and quiet with paideia (fr. 143, Stob. 4.16.18). If Plutarch praises Thucydidean enargeia in De gloria, in the Demetrius he subtly reserves the credit for his own biographical project (θεαταὶ καὶ μιμηταὶ βίων, 1.6.7). Commenting on Plutarch’s depictions of the various visitors to Delphi Geiger suggests that they are mirror images οf Plutarch. Alexander, whose visit to Troy is discussed by Mossman, is yet another mirror image. In Fortune or Virtue 331d Plutarch states that Alexander went to see Troy imagining to himself the heroic deeds (ἐθεᾶτο τὴν Τροίαν ἀνατυπούμενος τὰς ἡρωικὰς πράξεις), which foreshadowed his own. In the light of Plutarch’s self-referential statement as a θεατὴς βίων in Demetr. 1.6.7, Alexander’s response to the sight of Troy reflects Plutarch’s similar responses on analogous occasions, responses discussed by several contributors to this volume. Interestingly, however, there is

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a crucial difference. Although they both visit cities and try to see the great deeds with their minds’ eyes, Alexander is a man of action, whereas Plutarch is a man of letters. This is yet another indication why we should take Plutarch’s vehement attack on the arts with a grain of salt, an issue to which I shall come back. The visual quality of Plutarch’s descriptions of Athens and Rome both in the Lives and the Moralia stands in sharp contrast to his references to northern Greek Cities, discussed by Katerina Panagopoulou, who shows that even rich and famous Macedonian cities, such as Pella, hold little interest for him. Panagopoulou’s findings invite further investigation into the narrative strategies to which Plutarch resorts in order to balance vivid accounts of events in his favourite cities and descriptions of events in cities in which he had little interest and little, if any, knowledge. To give just one example, in the Life of Demetrius—where, as already mentioned, Plutarch states his ambition to turn his readers into viewers of the lives of great men—he balances his vivid descriptions of Demetrius’ notorious sojourns in Athens with anecdotes about his escapades elsewhere.¹

Ritual and Politics Although Plutarch’s role as priest of Apollo has been well discussed, the impact of his insider’s familiarity with and reflection on ritual in his writings is far less explored.² Plutarch has not handed down to us the kind of information on Delphic ritual we would like to have had, but his reconstructions of rituals of the distant past show an insider’s keen eye for the communicative and political power of ritual.³ As an insider Plutarch knew that ritual offered individuals and communities the opportunity for self-presentation and self-promotion. Kavoulaki’s discussion of the Athenian procession to Eleusis under the leadership of Alcibiades brings into relief Plutarch’s deep awareness of ritual’s political potential and, specifically, the significance of religious processions for space control in a city under siege. Kavoulaki concludes her discussion by looking briefly at Nicias’s earlier architheoria to Delos, another Athenian ambitious attempt at space control, in this instance international. One of Plutarch’s two accounts of Alexander’s visit to Troy, discussed by Mossman, offers yet another good example of the importance of ritual for space control. The Life of Alexander 15.4–5 depicts Alexander sacrificing to Athena and engaging in other customary ritual activities in honour of Achilles. As in the case of Alcibiades and Nicias, as ¹ See for instance the contrast between the descriptions of Demetrius’s scandalous sojourn on the Acropolis (Demetr. 23.4–24.1) and the unanchored anecdotes in Antigonus’s court (19. 5–8). ² Burkert 1996; Casanova 2012. For Apollo in Plutarch’s writings see Nikolaidis 2009b with references to earlier scholarship. ³ Kuhn 2006 discusses the perversion of major rituals and festivals following Demetrius’s occupation of Athens. For women’s rituals see Lyons 2016.

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analysed by Kavoulaki, Alexander’s ritual activities foreshadow his control of the city. The significance of ritual in Plutarch has been further explored at a conference entitled ‘Ritual and Politics, Individual and Community in Plutarch’s Works’, coorganized in 2017 by the editors of this volume. Recently published or forthcoming chapters, stemming from this conference, look at Plutarch’s take on ritual from several perspectives, namely ritual as historical evidence, communication and propaganda, ritual and social dynamics.⁴ In the light of Plutarch’s interest in social etiquette in Sympotic Questions 1.2 (615c–619a) particularly promising, in my view, is the broad definition of ritual which, in addition to religious rites, invites study of secular ceremonies, difficult as this distinction may be for the ancient world.⁵ Another promising path of enquiry is the study of ritual as a means of forging connections with the gods and heroes of the remotest past and masking uncomfortable historical truths. Jas Elsner’s reading of Philostratus’ description of the cult of Palaemon/Melicertes at the Isthmus (Imagines 2.16) has shown Philostratus’s awareness of ritual’s function for the assertion of continuity through cultural memory and of the problems involved in inventing tradition.⁶ Plutarch’s vivid depictions of civic ritual activities, past and contemporary, merit scholarly attention from this perspective as well.

Plutarch and His Sources Plutarch cared a lot about Chaeronea, unlike the cities of the north, but he knew that his native city was no competition for the big players. Bowie’s investigation shows that Plutarch used all his ingenuity in order to elevate Chaeronea as a centre of paideia thanks to learned discussions in symposia organized by himself and others. The relative sparsity of information we get about local cults and festivals may serve a related purpose, namely not to distract attention from the intellectual gatherings which are comparable to those hosted in Athens, Delphi, and other Panhellenic centres in a way that local Chaeronean rites could never be. Whether these symposia are idealized descriptions of gatherings that took place in some form or totally fictional events is impossible to tell. Like some scholars before him, Bowie opts for idealized accounts of actual symposia. Whatever our answer to this question, the Platonic colouring of the sympotic settings is one line for further

⁴ Pelling 2020; Desideri 2021; Mossman 2021 (forthcoming); Athanassaki 2021 with a summary of the agenda of the conference. ⁵ For a broad definition of ritual as a culturally constructed system of symbolic communication Tambiah 1985:128. ⁶ Elsner 2015.

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enquiry, especially in the light of the recent scholarly interest in the frames of Platonic dialogues.⁷ Plutarch’s strategy of elevating Chaeronea through his emphasis on its rich intellectual life in his own time chimes with his effort to exonerate Thebes from her dishonourable initiatives in the fifth century. John Marincola shows that Plutarch casts the history of Thebes in a much better light by the deft use of a variety of sources and of his own ingenuity. Marincola identifies two strategies: (a) the mitigation of Theban medism and the city’s cruel attitude towards Athens, after the latter’s defeat in 404 , by pointing up the dominance of a tyrannical minority in the city; (b) the representation of fourth-century Thebes as a liberator of Greece. Christopher Pelling demonstrates Plutarch’s similarly selective and intelligent use of his major classical sources, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plato, in his representation of Athenians and Spartans. Despite his reverence for Thucydides, Plutarch brings out characteristics that Athenians and Spartans had in common, including the Greek political vice, philotimia/philoneikia. In the case of Athens, Pelling stresses the unique and rich atmosphere Plutarch creates in his representation of the city’s irrepressible energy through his resort to an array of additional sources, for instance Ion of Chios, Stesimbrotus of Thasos, and the comic poets. Timothy Duff ’s and Delfim Leão’s discussions of Alcibiades, Phocion, and Demetrius of Phalerum shed light on two critical phases in Athenian history. Duff shows that Plutarch brings out the likeable side of Alcibiades, despite his adherence to Thucydides’ famous account in Book 6 (15.3–4) and to hostile fourth-century sources. Delfim Leão looks at the different political trajectories of Phocion and Demetrius of Phalerum in a city where democratic institutions were becoming a hollow shell. Phocion was condemned to death by a mob in a parody of a trial at the theatre; Demetrius of Phalerum, on the other hand, exploited the new opportunities offered by the Hellenistic political landscape. Unlike Themistocles and Alcibiades, who took refuge in the courts of Persian satraps, Demetrius of Phalerum fled to the court of Ptolemy I and had a new, if short, career as a cosmopolitan philosopher and scholar. It is not of course accidental that both Alcibiades and, much later, Phocion belonged to Plato’s circle, a fact that must have weighed heavily on Plutarch’s mind, especially in the case of Alcibiades. Judith Mossman argues that, unlike his contemporaries, Plutarch was interested in the timeless cultural significance of Troy and illustrates her point by analysing two episodes: (a) the descriptions of Alexander’s visit in the Alexander ⁷ For the Platonic frames see now the introduction and the essays in Kaklamanou, Pavlou and Tsakmakis 2020. For the Platonic colouring of some of the settings of Sympotic Questions see König 2012: 86–88, who also draws attention to the impact of public banquets on the handling of settings (König 2012: 82–84). For the influence Plato’s Symposium and the rich sympotic literature exercised on Plutarch see the introduction and several essays in Klotz and Oikonomopoulou 2011.

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(15.4–5) and On the Fortune or Virtue (331d) and (b) the painting of Hector and Andromache at the Scaean gate in the Brutus, filtered through multiple male and female gazes. On the basis of these two accounts Mossman shows how Plutarch succeeds in creating an imaginary city the contemplation of which Plutarch shares with his own and successive generations. The highly visual quality of both accounts, emphasized by Mossman, is of course in line with Plutarch’s emulation of Thucydidean enargeia. Mossman’s reading intersects with the readings of the chapters mentioned in the last section. All these contributions bring out the wealth of sources Plutarch used and the profound influence Plato and Thucydides exercised on him, an influence that went far beyond the socio-historical information and the moral lessons he drew from these authors. The Plutarchan tapestry consists of Thucydidean threads and Platonic colours or vice versa, depending on whether we look at the Lives or the Moralia, but the final product has always Plutarch’s own distinctive patterning. His personal touch in the depiction of cities and their socio-political and cultural dynamics will profit from further study.

Civic Art The painting of Hector and Andromache, an emotionally loaded emblem of the famous city, is not only Plutarch’s homage to Homer’s perennial significance, but a good example of the fertilizing influence architecture, sculpture, and painting had on Plutarch, as argued by Stadter, Desideri, Geiger, Athanassaki, and Mossman in this volume. One would think that Plato’s views of the arts would have influenced Plutarch, but as Anastasios Nikolaidis has shown, this is an area where Plutarch parts company with Plato.⁸ The painting that Portia contemplates and identifies with may well be imaginary, as Mossman suggests, but to the extent that it is an emblem of Troy it can be studied alongside actual paintings, such as Euphranor’s painting in De gloria and Protogenes’s painting in the Life of Demetrius. As in the case of Troy, Plutarch elsewhere also chooses civic artefacts depicting emblematic figures and/or events. In De gloria, for instance, the choice of Euphranor’s painting allows him to show how the Athenians saved Mantinea from Epaminondas, thus bringing into the picture the military antagonism between Athens and Thebes, an antagonism that Plutarch modulates through the clever reminder of the harmonious cultural interaction of the two cities, evident in Pindar’s lavish praise of Athens as a pillar of Hellenic freedom and in Plutarch’s encomium several centuries later. His emphasis on the cultural

⁸ Nikolaidis 2013a.

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interaction of Athens with Thebes and his implicit promotion of the latter is further strengthened by the speaker’s localization in full view of Pindar’s statue. I adduce two more artworks, not discussed in this volume, that show the importance of civic emblems for polis studies. In the Life of Demetrius Plutarch reports the drastic altering of the pattern of one of the most emblematic Athenian artefacts, the peplos of Athena. Following Demetrius’s divinization the Athenians passed a decree to weave in the likenesses of Demetrius and Antigonus alongside the images of Zeus and Athena, but a gust of wind tore it apart as it was being carried to the Acropolis (Demetr. 12.3). The doomed peplos symbolized the radical changes in Athenian religious and political life, some of which are discussed by Leão in this volume.⁹ In Demetr. 22.6 Plutarch talks about another famous painting, Protogenes’ depiction of the Rhodians’ ancestor Ialysus, which Demetrius captured during the siege of the city. When the Rhodians asked him not to destroy the magnificent painting he replied that he would rather burn his father’s portraits than destroy it. The story is important both because it points up the city’s renown for magnificent art and Demetrius’s love of art and respect for the Rhodians’ past, thus illustrating an aspect of his ethos. Plutarch’s attitude to the arts has occasionally been discussed,¹⁰ but architectural, sculptural, and graphic emblems of cities, actual or imaginary, is another promising area of investigation for future scholarship.

Making Cities with Words: Overt and Covert Perspectives Alexei Zadorojnyi and Aurelio Pérez Jiménez explore Plutarchan metaphors. Zadorojnyi’s systematic investigation of the city/soul analogy in the Plutarchan corpus leads him to the conclusion that these metaphors show a polis both timeless and depoliticized, bearing clear traces of Plato’s influence on Plutarch. Pérez Jiménez’s examination of another famous metaphor, the ship of state, also points to Plato’s influence on a distinctly Plutarchan tapestry which enables the reader to visualize the rigging, sails, helm, anchor, crew, subordinate commanders, and pilots as the storm is approaching. This enargeia chimes with the highly visual quality of Plutarch’s descriptions of actual cities and civic life and invites further study. The volume concludes with three different takes on Plutarch’s conceptualization of the polis. Geert Roskam challenges the centrality of the polis in Plutarch’s political theory and argues for a constant tension between a real and an ideal polis on the one hand and between local politics and higher levels of administration ⁹ For the association of the pattern of the peplos with Demetrius’s dressing finery see Mossman 2015. ¹⁰ Mossman 1991; Nikolaidis 2013a; several essays in Santana Henríquez 2013.

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such as the provinces and the empire on the other. Roskam attributes these unresolved tensions, which could prompt attention to the issue of consistency in the Plutarchan corpus, to the precarious balance between Plutarch’s philosophical pursuits and engagement in political praxis. From a different perspective the tension Roskam identifies is itself a testimony to the changing texture of the polis since the classical period and accounts for the imaginative leap Plutarch and his contemporaries needed to make in order to reconstruct the classical polis. Luc Van der Stockt, on the other hand, acknowledges the importance of actual cities, but argues for the centrality of the ideal city which is none other than the city of justice. In this city, which is situated in heaven, Zeus is the ruler and humans live ‘concordantly and blissfully’ with the gods. Tim Whitmarsh’s interpretation of On Superstition, on the other hand, as an intervention in civic religious debates, places the emphasis on everyday praxis. Whitmarsh argues that Plutarch was well aware that, when it came to people’s attitudes towards the gods, he was operating within a philosophically contested milieu. On Superstition is Plutarch’s rigorous contribution to an ongoing debate in an attempt to shore up what he saw as conventional religion. The dialogue of these three chapters, mainly but not exclusively implicit, offers yet another indication of the multiplicity of covert perspectives in the Plutarchan corpus, a multiplicity that emerges more clearly when specific questions are asked and Plutarch’s wide-ranging works are considered together as single corpus, although one may find multiple perspectives within one and the same work. I do not mean of course overt perspectives, i.e. divergent views that are explicitly attributed to one or more intra- or extradiegetic speakers, but covert perspectives, i.e. self-contradictory statements expressed by one and the same speaker. Thus in my discussion of De gloria I adduce one perspective from Praecepta rei publicae 814c, where Plutarch states that Marathon, the Eurymedon, Plataea, and all such examples may make people vainly swell with pride, but they are not good topics for public speeches and should therefore be left to the schools of the sophists.¹¹ This statement at first glance undermines Plutarch’s exaggerated praise of military achievements and his vehement attack on the arts in De gloria, but in reality it represents yet another perspective on a complex political issue. I conclude by offering an example of divergent and at first glance contradictory perspectives adopted by one and the same speaker in the same work. I have already touched on Demetrius’ magnanimity towards the Rhodians, when he kept his promise not to destroy Protogenes’ marvellous painting of their ancestor Ialysus. Plutarch goes out of his way to extol the merits of this artwork, both in his narratorial voice and through Apelles’ laudatory verdict (Demetr. 22.2–4). His lavish praise of Protogenes’ painting causes Plutarch’s reader to stop and reflect, ¹¹ For the political significance of this view see most recently Ursin 2019: 92–103 with the references to earlier scholarship.

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for they have just read that Demetrius ‘being naturally clever and having a theoretical mind, he did not apply his love of art to useless pastimes for the sake of pleasure or diversion like other kings who played the aulos, or painted or worked metals (εὐφυὴς γὰρ ὢν καὶ θεωρητικός, οὐκ εἰς παιδιὰς οὐδ’ εἰς διαγωγὰς ἀχρήστους ἔτρεψε τὸ φιλότεχνον, ὥσπερ ἄλλοι βασιλεῖς αὐλοῦντες καὶ ζωγραφοῦντες καὶ τορεύοντες, Demetr. 20.1). Unlike other kings, Demetrius used his love of and natural gift for art to produce useful and beautiful ships with many rows of oarsmen and siege engines that caused the admiration of his enemies (Demetr. 20.5–9). Demetrius’ pursuits combine utility, art, and beauty, but would Plutarch choose utility, were he pressed to make a choice? Although this argument falls outside the scope of this epilogue, I consider highly improbable that Plutarch’s choice would be war machines rather than artworks. Multiple perspectives show that many aspects of the polis and polis life are complicated and can be viewed in more than one way. To give yet another example of the recurrent tension between military achievements and the arts, in De Pythiae oraculis Theon blames the Megarians for being almost the only people to set up Apollo holding a spear after they expelled the Athenians who had occupied their city after the Persian wars. Later, however, they offered Apollo a golden plectrum, thus recognizing him as a god of music (402a). In this case the change in the political situation leads a city to a shift of perspective. On the level of rhetoric, multiple perspectives in themselves can be a stimulus to the sort of engaged and sympathetic exchange of views that is so central to the conversation of the pepaideumenoi and so well exemplified in the Sympotic Questions and other dialogues. The identification of multiple covert perspectives leads not to definitive answers, but to mapping the range of perspectives Plutarch entertained on a given topic without feeling the need to commit himself to any one in particular. Such an identification is undoubtedly an area of investigation much broader than the study of cities, real and ideal, but is a promising path for further investigation within the whole range of issues that this volume has addressed.

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Index Locorum LITERARY TEXTS Aelian, Varia Historia 12.49: 172 13.38: 153 Aeschines 1.12: 153 1.59: 146 1.173: 148 [Aeschines] Epist. 4: 92 Aeschylus, Persae 348–49: 123 Alcaeus fr. 112.10 Voigt: 123 Alcidamas F 14 Radermacher: 195 Andocides 1.133–5: 150 4.13–15: 157 4.14: 160 4.29: 135 Appian Bella civilia 2.88.368: 97 Mithridat. 42–45: 29 Apsines Rhet. i 348.2 Spengel: 149 Rhet. i 348.4–7 Spengel: 145 Apuleius, Metamorphoses 1.2: 20 5.19.5: 248 Aristophanes Clouds 299–310: 5 124 Frogs 312–14: 134 354–7: 88 1425: 12 1431–2: 143 Knights 1114: 112 Farmers fr. 102 K–A: 154 Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1109a27–30: 158 1216a23–27: 272 Politics 1253b: 261 Rhetoric

1378b: 158 1380a: 158 [Aristotle] Ath. Pol. 14: 137 26.4: 168 27.5: 148 47.2: 150 [Aristotle] Oeconomicus 1343a10–11: 283–4 1344b9b19–21: 283–4 Arrian, Dissertationes Epicteti 4.1.86–8: 249–50 Athenaeus 407b–c: 147 528e; 534b, 534e–f: 147 Cassius Dio 44.13.1–14: 229 63.14.2: 53 67.13.3: 70 Cicero De Officiis 2.17.60: 160 Pro Rabirio Postumo: 180 Cornelius Nepos Alcibiades 5.7–8: 129 Phocion 3.1: 171 3.1–2: 177 Demetrius, De elocutione 289: 177 Demosthenes 21.1: 159 21.72: 158 21.80: 159 21.143–50: 142, 159 54.13: 158 56.44: 259–60 Dinarchus, In Demosthenem 72–3: 183 Dio Chrysostom, Orations 11.4: 220 12.4: 1 40.11: 235 Diodorus Siculus 7. 12.1: 285 12.6.1–2: 24

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Diodorus Siculus (cont.) 12.38.3–4: 155 13.64.6: 148 13.68.2–69.3: 129 14.84.3–5: 197 16.39.8: 26 17.16.3: 207 18.17–18: 177 18.74.1–3: 178 Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 16.5–7 Smith: 302 Diogenes Laertius 2.38, 43: 148 5.75: 177 5.78: 180 10.9: 299 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.34: 66 2.62.4: 254 Duris of Samos FGrH 76 F40: 22 Epicurus Ep. Men. 123.6 Hessler: 301–2 Euripides Troades 764: 121, 306 Medea 1162: 231 Troades 764: 306 Heliodorus, Aethiopica 3.1–3.3: 124 Heraclitus, Homeric Allegories 1.2: 300 Herodotus 1.59–68: 109 1.60: 137 1.65: 285 1.69.3: 109 1.71: 111 1.125–26: 111 1.155–56: 111 2.63.2: 112 3.27.2: 112 3.46: 109 4.77.1: 108 5.32: 111 5.49–51: 109, 111 5.78: 110–112 5.91–3: 109 5.97.2: 111 6.109.3: 112 6.124.2: 111 7.43: 223 7.46: 224 7.104.3–4: 110 7.135.3: 110 7.139: 112

7.141–43: 257 8.65: 128 8.143.2, 144.3: 112 9.2: 185 9.11: 109, 112 9.55–57: 110 9.82: 111 9.119–120: 112 9.122: 111 Hesiod fr. 252 M–W: 23 Hippocrates, De morbo sacro 1–2: 305 Homer Iliad 1.70: 57 6.208: 230 6.389: 231 11.269–71: 220 22.460: 231 Odyssey 8.559–61: 4 Isocrates, 2 (Nicocles) 5–9: 282–3 14 (Plataeicus) 31: 188 15 (Antidosis) 166: 90 253–7: 284 Justin 5.9–18: 129 Lamprias Catalogue 51: 73 57: 41 155: 295 195: 73 201: 77 204: 78 227: 78 Libanius, Decl. fr. 50 = 11.641–8 Foerster: 145 Livy 45.18.1–5: 205 47.25–48.5: 52 Lucian, Iuppiter tragoedus 16–17: 298–9 40: 301 Lucretius 1.80–101: 301 Lysias 3.6–7: 146 13.78: 148 fr. 279 Carey: 146, 150 Marcus Antoninus, Ad se ipsum 1.9: 20 7.7: 250 8.48: 249

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  Maximus of Tyre 35.7: 243 Menander frr. 106–109 PCG: 305 Ovid, Fasti 6.669–78: 69 Pausanias Periegeta 1.3.3–4: 83–4 1.8.4: 90–91 1.15: 86 1.25.6: 178 1.27.5: 24 9.1.5–8: 184 9.32.5: 25 9.40.5–6: 23 9.41.11–12: 23 10.7.1: 53 10.19.1: 53 Philodemus, De Pietate 474–75, 521–23 Obbink: 302 Philostratus Apollonius 7.26.5: 236 Epistles 12 Kayser: 246–7 Imagines 2.16: 316 Vitae Sophistarum 2.33.628: 21 Pindar Nemean 7.9–16: 93–4 fr. 29 Snell–Maehler: 88 fr. 57 Snell–Maehler: 290 fr. 75 Snell–Maehler: 4 fr. 76 Snell–Maehler: 4, 89–90 fr. 77 Snell–Maehler: 89–90 fr. 78 Snell–Maehler: 89 Plato Alcibiades I 103a–104c, 104e: 144 105a–b: 152 106e: 154 110b: 154 112b: 154 Alcibiades II 148e: 136 Apology 18b, 29b–c: 148 26b–e: 301 Crito 109c: 254 Euthyphro 14c: 136 Gorgias 519a3: 247 525a: 142 Laws 715e–16a: 288 728a: 289 778e6–779a5: 246–7

805d–6b, 813d–14b: 118 858e3–4: 118 885b4: 294 909a–d: 305 Meno 90b: 144 89e–95a: 148 Phaedrus 258b10–c5: 118 Politicus 288b1–6: 247 Republic 372e6–7: 251 402b5: 231 429b1–3: 251 442e–443d: 251 444b2: 251 431c9–d5: 247 434d ff.: 240 439e7–440a3: 248 441c4–7: 240 459a–b: 118 452a–c: 118 462c: 241 473d: 241 495b5–6: 241 544c6–7: 252 544d–e: 250 552a8–10: 251 552c–d: 241 560a1–d2: 247–8 560b7–d1: 14, 244, 247–50 572e4–573b8: 247 577d2–4: 251 580d3–5: 240 583a1–3: 251 591e1: 241 605b3–c1: 247–8 608a7–b1: 243 608b1: 241 Symposium 212d: 144, 155 217a–219d: 150 220d–21c: 156 Theaetetus 174d3–e2: 247 Timaeus 90a: 292 Pliny, Natural History 35.34: 86 Plutarch

LIVES Aemilius Paulus 1.1–2: 231 23.1–2, 5: 208, 211–2 23.9–10: 206 24.1: 217 24.2–6: 207

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LIVES (cont.) 26.1: 206 28.4: 52 Agesilaus 1–2: 119 6.9–11: 120 6.10: 190 6.11: 191 9.5: 117 15.2–4: 121 16.9: 191 17.2: 26 18.4: 191 18.9: 191 19.2: 24 22.1–8: 120 22.2: 192 23–26: 120 23.5: 192 23.11: 120, 192 26.6: 120 27.6–28.3: 197 28: 120 28.6–7: 198 30.7: 238 31–35: 120 31.3: 254, 267 33.3–4: 116 14.2: 117 19.2–4: 117 30.1: 117 32.5: 120 35.1–2: 200 Comp. Ages. et Pomp. 1.2: 117 Agis–Cleomenes 1.4: 263 11: 117 23.1: 240 28[7].3: 117 30[9]: 117 Cleomenes 13.2–3: 279 Alcibiades 2.1: 149 4.1–4: 144, 149 4.5: 155, 159 4.5–6: 144–8 4.6: 146 5.1–5: 147–151 5.1: 149, 151 6.1–5: 151–2, 172 6.2–3: 152 6.3: 143 6.4: 157 7.1: 151, 155

7.1–3: 152–7 7.3–6: 156 8.1: 149 8.1–4: 157–62 9.1: 149 10.1–2: 113, 142, 146–7, 162 10.4: 159 13.3: 135, 155 16.3: 143 16.4: 146 16.1–2: 146, 155 16.2 & 8: 133, 143 16.2–3: 164 16.3–4: 163 16.4: 159 16.7: 164 17.1–4: 172 18.8–19.1: 144 19.1: 145 19–21: 156, 164 20.4: 145 22.4: 144 23.5–9: 159 23.8: 158, 160 24.3–4: 133 26.3–4: 114 27.4: 151 29–32: 155 32: 138 32.2: 160 33.2: 133 33.3: 129 34: 136 34.1–2: 138 34.3–6: 129–133 34.6–35.1: 147, 164 35.1: 133, 138 35.2: 133 35–40: 133 36.1–5: 156 36.2: 160 36.4: 145 36.1–5: 152 36.2: 164 38.3: 164 40.9: 164 Alexander 1.2–3: 217–8 7.2–5: 207 7.4: 211 9.2–3: 201 11.8–12: 201 12: 27, 202 13.2: 201

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  15.4–5: 315, 317–8 15.7–9: 223 Antony 68.4–5: 32 75.4: 238 Aratus 1.5: 44 2.1: 237 16.1: 28 24.6: 237 25.7: 279 38.5: 263, 265 41.2: 254 Aristides 18.6–7: 187–8 19: 84 21.4: 239 27.7: 238 Comp. Aristidis et Catonis Maioris 3.1: 271 5.1: 185 Artaxerxes 4.4: 279 21.5: 196 22.8–12: 200 Brutus 1.1: 66 13.3, 5–11: 228 15.5–9: 229–230 23.2–7: 227 25.3–26.8: 214 53.5–7: 229 Caesar 28.5: 261–2, 265 28.8: 240 33.2: 264–5 34.3: 265 42.1: 212 41.3, 6–8: 212 48.1: 224 Camillus 5.1: 33 19.3–12: 27–8 31.5: 258 35.4: 246 Cato Maior 19.4: 64 Cato Minor 13.5: 240 18.3: 240 19.7: 253 33.6: 248 41.3: 251–2 44.3: 237 59.1: 238 Cimon 1.1: 23

1.2–2.3: 31–2 2.2: 33 2.3–5: 118, 188 4.5–7: 86–7 10.7: 238 19.3–4: 121 Comp. Cim. et Luc. 1.3: 272 Coriolanus 12.5: 237 14.6: 148 20.2: 156 32.60: 260 39.3: 156 Demetrius 1.6: 314 9.3: 178–9 10.2: 178 12.3: 319 18.1–2: 213 19.5–8: 315 20.1, 5–9: 321 22.2–4: 320 22.6: 319 23.1–2: 213 23.4–24.1: 315 23.5, 25.6: 115 24.3–4: 182 26: 182 36.9–12: 208 43.1–2: 211 43.3–4: 211–2 44.3–7: 209–10 45.1: 207 Demosthenes 1–2: 3, 79 1.1–4: 236 1.3: 271 2.1–2: 19–20, 63–4 2.2: 70 9.1: 201 14.2: 115 17.2–3: 206 17.5: 201 18.3–4: 201 19.1–3: 22, 27 20.1: 201 20.4–5: 115 21: 27 23.2: 201 25: 115 25.1–5: 248 27.5: 237 Comp. Dem. et Ciceronis 3.4: 276

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LIVES (cont.) Dion 1.2–3: 276 8.5, 13.5: 263 41.3: 251 Fabius Maximus 16.6: 265 18.4: 238 22.5–6: 66–7 27.1: 254 Flamininus 1.1: 65 10.2: 212 10.4–7: 213 11.3–7: 121 12.11–12: 51 12.13: 53 Galba 1.3: 251 20.5: 279 Lucullus 3.6: 29 10.4: 222 11.6: 29 29.10: 240 Lycurgus 4.3: 117 5.3: 285 5.4: 117 7: 116 7.5: 117 12.5: 116 14–15: 118 15: 118 19.12: 246 22.5–6: 117 23.3–4: 117 25.2–3: 118 25.5: 206 29.1: 289 29.10–11: 116 30.2: 238, 276 30.5: 238 30.6: 124 31.1–2: 241 31.3: 274 31.4: 119 Comp. Lyc. et Numae 1: 286 2.12: 119 Lysander 2.4: 119 2.6: 116 3.3: 238 8.4–5: 117

11.13: 117 12.1: 117 14.10: 246 15: 96–7 15.3–4: 189 17: 116 17.8–9: 239 19.3: 117 20.6–8: 117 25.3: 214 26–27: 117 27.1–3: 190 27.5–7: 189–90 28.1: 191 28.11–12: 191 28–29: 25 Comp. Lys. et Sull. 3.7–8: 116 Marcellus 18.3: 246 21: 67 Marius 11.1: 265 23.1: 14, 265–6 46.2: 240 Nicias 1.5: 65 3.5: 139 7.7: 113 29: 96 Comp. Nic. et Crassi 3.1: 238 Numa 2.5: 254 4: 285 15.1: 238 15.1: 286 20.8–9: 241, 276 Pelopidas 4.3–4: 196 5–7: 193 8.5: 194 8.9: 194 9.9–13: 194 10.8: 194 11.5: 195 12: 194 12.3: 23813.2: 194 13.4: 193 13.5–7: 195 17.11–13: 196 18.1: 26, 245 18.7: 26 20.7: 198 24.5–6: 263 25.1, 5, 15: 199

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  26.8: 199 28.5–10: 199 31.6: 200 33.8–9: 220 34.3, 7: 200 35: 200 Pericles 6: 126 9.1–2: 114, 178, 277 11.1: 178 11.2–4: 114 12: 136 12–14: 114, 126–7 12.2: 238 13.3: 126 13.4–5: 95 13.11: 126 14.1: 136 15.1–2: 114 15.2: 261–2 16.1–2: 178 17.1: 115 18.3: 24 20.3–21.1: 114 21.1: 115 27.2: 114 29: 114–5 29.1: 115, 265 29.7: 115 31.1: 114 33.3: 114 33.6: 253–4 37.1: 156 39.4: 179 Comp. Per. and Fab. Max. 1.4: 114 3.3: 24 3.5: 61 Philopoemen 16.9: 237 Comp. Phil. et Flam. 1.4: 120 Phocion 1.1: 115 1.4: 173 2: 115 2.4: 238 3.2–5: 173 3.2: 241, 280 3.4: 258 4.2: 172 8.1–2: 172 8.3: 115 16.8: 27 26–7: 177

26.1–2: 212 28.4: 214 33–4: 181–2 34.1–8: 174–6 36.3: 154 35.4–5: 177 Pompey 2.2: 226 25.6: 240 40.5: 240 46.1–2: 226 53.5: 265 61.2: 265 68.3–5: 213 Publicola 12.3: 240 14–15: 61–2 Pyrrhus 1.1: 214 1.2 5.5: 214 3.8: 279 8.5: 213 10.5: 213 11.1–6: 209 12.6–7: 211 12.9–12: 211 23.7: 258 Romulus 8.9: 286 11.1–2: 67 12.6: 238 16.8: 66 Sertorius 1.6–8: 222 Solon 14.6: 259 19.2: 259 24.4: 168 Sulla 12.6–8: 52 14.1–2: 246 14.3: 31 15–21: 28–9 15.5: 29 17.4–19.10: 29 19.5–6: 30 38.4: 66 Themistocles 15: 128 20.3: 51 28.3: 214 Theseus 1.3: 61 3.1: 168–9

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LIVES (cont.) 27.6: 22 27.9: 213, 215 Comp. Thes. et Rom. 2.1–2: 276–7 Timoleon 2.2: 238

MORALIA Ad principem ineruditum 781c–d: 275 Adversus Colotem 1124d–f: 287–8 1125a: 15, 289 1125e: 15, 282, 289 Amatorius 748f: 77 749c: 41, 79 762c–d: 148 767d: 241 774d: 198 An seni 783f: 272 784b: 274 785f–86a: 272 789c: 272 789f–790c: 276 791c: 271 792b: 272 796c–f: 273 797e: 236 799b: 273 Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores 500d: 240 Apophthegmata Laconica 211b: 191 214c: 267 228e: 246 Consolatio ad uxorem 609f: 247 De Alex. fortuna aut virtute 328d–e: 241 329a–d: 275 331d: 314, 317–8 339a: 247 De amore prolis 496d: 220 495c: 271 De audiendis poetis 14f–15a: 14, 244–5, 247–8 23–e: 238–9 38b: 250 De capienda ex inimicis utilitate 87e: 243 De cohibend ira 454a, 454c: 243 454b: 248 457d: 243

De communibus notitiis 1065d: 290–2 De curiositate 515b: 239 520b: 239–40, 242 520c: 69, 80 521d: 79 522d: 70 De defectu oraculorum 410a–b: 50, 76–7 412b–d: 24, 50 419e: 77 431d: 57 432a–b: 56 434d: 77 435b–c: 48 436b: 230 437a: 57 437c: 48 438a–c: 48, 57 De E Delphico 385b: 298 385f–386a: 52 385b–c: 54 387b: 57 387f–391d: 54 391e–394c: 54 392a–393a: 55 392b: 56 De exilio 600f: 292 601e–f: 259 601f: 237 604c: 267 605b–c: 278 607a: 74 De facie in orbe lunae 927ab: 290 De fortuna Romanorum 316e–317a: 286 317c: 287 317c–318c: 88 318d: 30–1 318e: 68 319d: 68 321b: 286 321c: 254, 262 321d–f: 255–7 322e–333a: 68 322f–323a: 75 331d–e: 223–4 De fraterno amore 484b: 241 484d: 237 492d: 33

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  De garrulitate 502f–503a: 254, 267 507b–508a: 229 De genio Socratis 575e: 184 575f: 193 581f–82a: 253, 266 586b: 194 586d–587b: 195 588a: 195 589f–93a: 26 596d: 194 De gloria Atheniensium 345c: 82 345d: 24 345f: 81–2 346b–f: 80, 83 346f–347a: 85 347a7: 314 347c–e: 85–6 348d–e: 93 349b: 93 349c: 89, 195 350a–b: 89–90 De Herodoti malignitate 854f: 185 864e–f: 24 858c–d, 859c: 112 860f, 861d–f, 864b: 112 864d–e: 185 864e–f: 186 865b–e: 186 865d–f: 112 866e–f: 187 867a–b: 187 871e–72b: 112 872d: 18 873c: 51 873f–74a: 112 De Iside et Osiride 377e: 253, 266 De latenter vivendo 1129c: 195 De laude ipsius 543b: 246 De mulierum virtute 244b: 47 259d–60d: 27, 202 De profectu in virtute 76e: 244 De Pythiae oraculis 395a–c: 50–1, 77, 298 395b: 314 396c: 50 397e–f: 51, 198 398a: 48 398c: 51

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399f: 51 400f: 51 401a: 51 401c–d: 51, 121 402a: 321 402c: 51, 55 408b: 55, 242, 248 408c: 48 409a: 54–5 409c: 44, 49 De sera numinis vindicta 557d: 222 558a: 23, 47 559: 14, 237 567f: 54 De sollertia animalium 963c: 61 973b–974a: 69 973e–f: 80 De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1033b–f: 271–2 1043b, 1051d, 1052b: 303 De superstitione 164f: 302 165f: 303 166a–b: 303, 305–6 165b–c: 308 166d–e: 304 167e: 304, 308 167f–68a: 303 168a: 303 168f: 303 169c: 307 169f: 301, 308 169f–170a: 308 170b–c: 301, 305 170f: 308 171a: 304 171b–c: 294, 305, 308 171d–e: 305 De tranquillitate animi 470b–c: 277–8 473b: 240 De tuenda sanitate 127e: 248 131a: 37, 45 135b: 271 De virtute morali 442a: 250 445d: 239 447a: 251 De vitando aera alieno 828b, 829a: 243 Maxime cum principibus 777d–78a: 272–3

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MORALIA (cont.) Non posse suaviter 1086d–e: 296 1087c: 296 1090a: 266 1093c: 202 1095a: 243 1100c, f: 294 1101e: 74 Praecepta coniugalia 140b: 161 140d: 241 143f–144a: 162 144d: 161 145f: 202 Praecepta gerendae reipublicae 784b: 166 798e: 271 799c–e: 113 799b–800c: 162 800a: 276 800c: 274 801c–d: 254, 276 802b–c: 277 802d: 237 804f: 142 805a: 248 807b–d: 254, 267, 289–90 808b: 196 809e: 237 811b–c: 21, 237 811c–d: 280 812b: 260, 267 812c: 268 813b–c: 274, 276 814ac: 98–9 814c: 49 814d: 278–9 815a–16a: 274 815c–d: 260, 263, 268 816c–d: 180 816d: 73 817e–f: 272–3 818a: 241 818a–e: 274 819f–20f: 272 820c: 240 820f: 274 822a–c: 274 823a–b: 279 823c–d: 276 823f–25f: 274 824c: 242

Quaestiones convivales 612c: 35 612e–f: 39 613d: 39 615c–619a: 315–6 615d: 41 622c: 39 628a–29a: 78 629c: 39 632a: 38, 39 635e–638a: 39 638b–640a: 41, 78 639e: 247 642f: 21, 34, 280 645e: 36, 247 645f: 39 647c: 247 657f: 36 659e: 36 660d: 77 664b: 78 666d: 34, 39 667c: 74 671c: 36 672a: 307 672e: 240 673c: 36, 39–40 674d: 41, 78 675e: 78 677c: 41 678c: 35, 73 678d: 241 680c–685f: 38 686a ff.: 36 686a–d: 39 692b: 35 693e–4a: 33 693f: 21, 35, 280 696e: 35 697f ff.: 36 700c: 36 702d: 36 704c: 41 705e: 14, 244, 246–8 706d–713f: 37 708b: 49 710b: 35, 39 710f: 238 716d ff.: 36 716f–717a: 33 718c: 240 723a–24f: 78 725f: 35, 40

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  734c: 37 736c: 35 744f: 36 Quaestiones Graecae 297b: 78 292d: 48 Quaestiones Platonicae 1007e, 1008b: 250 1007c: 287 Quaestiones Romanae 267d: 33 273b: 69 278: 153 281d–e: 75 Regum et imp. apophthegmata. 177e–f: 27 181b: 201–2 186e: 152 189d: 180 Fragments (Sandbach) Fr. 82: 79 Fr. 143 = Stob. 4.16.18: 80, 236, 314 Fr. 195 = Procl. In Ti. 1 p. 415 Diehl: 20 Fr. 194b = Lyd. Mens. 4.86: 20 Ps.–Plutarch De monarchia 826c: 250 De musica 1132c: 70.1 Ancient Customs of the Spartans 42 = Mor. 240a–b: 27 Polybius 12.5.7: 222 12.13.9: 179 12.13.10–12: 180 30.10: 52 Plato’s Alcibiades 1.104a–c, 110 Westerlink: 149 Sappho fr. 44 Voigt: 137 SHA Hadr. 4.2, 7.1: 50 Seneca, De ira 1.8.2: 245 Simonides fr. el. 90 West²: 166, 181, 274 Sophocles Antigone 163: 254 Oedipus tyrannus 4–5: 239 55–7: 123 Strabo 9.1.20: 178 9.2.5: 183 13.1.1: 220 13.1.5, 11, 17, 25, 40–41: 221 13.1.27: 221, 224–5

Suda ε 2004: 41 λ 96: 295 ν 373: 21 π 1793: 50 σ 235: 21 Suetonius Domitian 10.5: 70 Vespasian 15: 71 Syrianus, RG iv 601.15 Walz: 145 Tacitus Agricola 2.1: 70 Histories 4.9: 71 4.53: 71 5.4–5: 308 Theophrastus, Characters 16: 305 Theopompus FGrH 115 F110: 242 Thucydides 1.10.1–2: 5–6 1.18.3: 106 1.19: 106 1.44.1: 106 1.58.1: 106 1.84.4: 106 1.88: 108 1.70: 10, 105–6 1.101–103: 106 1.105–106: 106 1.108.2–3: 106 1.113: 24 1.114.1: 107 1.140.4–5: 114 2.62.3: 188 2.65: 107, 114 2.65.3: 155 2.65.7 and 11: 163 2.65.9: 178, 277 3.37: 1–7 3.60–7: 184 3.118–20: 24 4.28: 114 4.65: 114 4.76.3: 24 4.84.2: 107 5.36.1, 46.4: 108 5.68.2: 108 6.9–14: 107 6.15: 133, 143 6.15.3–4: 145–6, 152, 163, 317 6.28: 142, 145–6

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Thucydides (cont.) 6.61–70: 108 6.75.2: 108 7.48: 114 7.77.3: 123 8.96.5: 107–8 Valerius Maximus 7.2. ext. 2: 236 Xenophon Agesilaus 2.5–15: 25 2.8: 120 10.4: 120 Apologia 29: 148 Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 4.5–6: 120 13: 117 Hellenica 1.4: 137 1.4.13–20: 138, 143 1.4.20: 129 2.2.19: 188 2.2.20: 96 2.3.42–44: 148 2.3.55–6: 160 2.4.2–4, 14: 193 3.4.4: 190 3.5.1: 184 3.5.8: 189 4.8.1: 197 5.2.13: 211 6.3.3–20: 197–8 6.5.35: 189 7.1.39–40: 200 Hipparchicus 3.2: 134 Memorabilia: 1.2.12: 142, 157 1.2.12–48: 148 1.2.40–46: 156 COINS Imhof Blumer 1887, 15: 52 INSCRIPTIONS FdD iii 1 466: 36 3.232: 43 4.111: 39, 43, 45

4.120: 53 4.287: 53 4.34: 53 4.35: 53 FdD iv 47: 43 IG ii² 1201: 178 IG ii² 1990: 46 IG ii² 3112: 44 IG ii² 3563: 43 IG ii² 3814: 21 IG ii² 3945: 37 IG ii³.1 447.28–30: 136 IG v.1 20a.2–4: 239 IG v.1 74, 87, 111, 446: 45 IG vii 2711: 40 IG vii 2713: 53 IG vii 2781: 40 IG vii 3224: 30 IG vii 3422 = SIG³ 843b: 41 IG vii 3425: 21 IG ix.1 61: 22, 43 IG ix.1 192.1–2: 29 IG ix.1 200: 43 IG xii suppl 364.12–16: 239 ILS 308: 50 8905: 53 LSCG 33 B.3–5 = IG ii³.1 447.28–30: 136 SEG 13.310: 41 SEG 26.719: 214 SEG 32.239: 93 SEG 28.455: 30 SEG 36.258: 40 SEG 38.176: 45 SEG 38.179: 40 SEG 38.380: 30, 40 SEG 41.448: 30 SIG³ 652: 52 813c: 49 817: 53 821: 53 823: 43, 49 829A: 47, 271 843b: 41 868c: 49

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Index of Names and Subjects Achilles 223–4, 226–7, 229–30, 315 Achilles Tatius 231 Acilius, friend of Brutus 13, 227, 229–32 Acilius, Manius Acilius Glabrio 52 Acropolis, Athenian 11, 61, 127, 136, 315, 319 acropolis 211, 245, 247–251 actor 88, 93, 210 Aeacidae 94, 225 Aedepsus 36–7, 44, 74 Aegina 4 Aegospotami 51, 117, 198 Aelius Aristides 2, 81, 97 Aemilius Paullus, L. 51, 206–7, 217 Aeschines 91, 148 Aeschylus 254, 258, 266 aesthetic 9, 14, 99, 253 Aetolia, Aetolian 28, 33, 205, 212 Agamemnon 23, 97, 116, 190, 220, 222, 301 Agesilaus 25, 116, 120, 184, 190–2, 197–8, 267, 276 agōn, agōnes, agonistic 40, 78, 126, 298, 314. See also Games agora Athens 9–10, 81–2, 87, 95, 101–2, 314 architecture 5 map 91, 96 statues and monuments 100 stoa, of Zeus Eleutherios 83–4 stoa, royal 92 Chaeronea 31, 33 Pella 211 Roman, in Athens 95 Sparta 118 Agrippa Odeon of 95 Alcaeus 253, 258, 262 Alcamenes 90 Alcibiades 11, 13, 79, 107, 113, 122–40, 141–65, 170–2, 196, 315, 317 Alexander III of Macedon 13, 26–8, 116, 120–1, 153–4, 170, 172–4, 184–5, 199–202, 209–12, 216, 223–7, 247, 275, 314–17 Alexander V 208 Alexandria 12, 20, 35, 40–1, 73, 80, 179–80, 226, 238 allegory 247–8, 254, 257

altar 74, 78, 160, 207, 225 of the Twelve Gods 4 of Zeus at Plataea 84 tragic performance equipment 88 Amazon 19, 22–3, 213, 215 Ammonius 35, 37, 43, 46, 48, 54–7, 246 Amphictyons, amphictyony 44–5, 48–50, 52–3, 271 Amphipolis 13, 206–7, 214 Amphitheus 191 Andocides 150–1 Androcleides 190, 193 anecdote 27, 50, 87–8, 113–4, 141–63, 225–6, 242, 247, 315 Antalcidas, peace of 192 Antipater 12, 28, 174, 177–8, 201 Antonius, Gaius 214 Antonius, Marcus (Mark Antony) 32, 56, 126, 137, 173 Anytus 11 Alcibiades’ mistreatment of 144–8 compared to Alcibiades’ mistreatment of Hipparete 159–62 compared to Alcibiades’ mistreatment of Hipponicus 159 Apelles 320 Apollo 2, 8, 24, 29, 47–51, 55, 65, 80, 96, 313–15, 321 Apollonia 214 Apollonius, of Tyana 226, 299 Appian 2 Aratus 48, 216 Archias, Theban 193, 194 Archidamus 106, 108, 115 Archilochus 253, 258 architect 12, 62, 95, 257, 289, 291 architecture 2, 4–8, 10, 62, 81–101, 254, 318 monumental, Roman 59 archon, archonship 21, 33–5, 39, 43, 46–50, 53, 93, 151, 160–1, 194 Areopagus 259, 276 Ares 89 Ares, temple of 10, 81, 87, 90–6, 100 Argos 99, 109 Aristides 12, 196–7 battle of Plataea 187

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Aristodemus, in Non posse 74, 294–5 Aristophanes 12, 88, 93, 124–5, 131, 134, 136–7, 141, 147, 164–5, 258, 299 Aristotle 118–19, 158, 207, 211, 215–16, 253–4, 260–1, 283 Arrian of Nicomedia 42 artefacts 8, 81, 95–6, 100, 313, 318–19 Artemisium, Athenian victory 89–90, 99 artist 2, 85, 290–1 Arulenus Rusticus 9, 70 asty/ἄστυ 3–4, 6, 96, 127, 264, 292 Astyanax 230 ataraxia 302–3 Atargatis 305, 308 atheism, atheists 293–309 Athena 115, 136, 221. See also statue Itonia 40 Parthenon 115 peplos 222, 319 Polias 127 and return of Peisistratus 137 Trojan 223–4, 315 Athenaeus 142, 147 Athenian, the, in Plato’s Laws 6 Athens, Athenians 1–6, 9, 10–14, 16, 19, 22–5, 32, 35–42, 47, 53, 61, 78, 81–101, 105–21, 122–40, 141–65, 166–82, 203, 213, 215 audience 1, 2, 10, 81, 83, 87, 89, 96, 99, 100–1, 112, 132, 140, 143, 146, 156, 160, 213, 216, 237, 298–9, 300 Augustine 281 Augustus Delphic amphictyony 52 inscriptions and statues 95 Autobulus, son of Plutarch 34, 38–9, 41, 44, 46, 78 autochthony 168–9 autocratic 180 autonomy 1, 53, 167–8, 171, 179, 181, 183 autopsy 3, 6–9, 16, 29, 31, 42, 59–60, 63, 69, 75, 215, 313–14 Avidius Nigrinus, the younger 50, 53 Axios, river 13, 204–7, 212 Babylon 281 Bacchon 9, 79 barbarian 121, 186–7, 196, 215–6, 220, 248, 305 barbarians 306 Basilica Iulia 70 Bermion 204–5 Beroia 13, 207, 209–11, 214 Beroia, battle of 209–10

biography, biographical 8, 58–60, 63–4, 66, 82, 122, 125, 129, 173, 176, 179, 204, 217, 226, 253, 264, 281, 285, 314 books 7, 16, 20, 64, 73, 78, 80, 100, 179, 296 Bottia 204–5 Brasidas 107, 206 Brutus 214, 276. See also statue and Portia 13, 227–32 building 68 building programme 11, 57, 88, 95, 114, 125–6, 169, 180 public buildings 4, 5, 7, 11, 49, 57, 60, 63–4, 74, 81, 94–5, 99–100, 136 Buthroton 214 Cadmea, liberation of 12, 184, 190, 192–5, 197 Caesar, C. Iulius 13, 68, 97, 173, 212–13, 224–6, 228, 230, 258, 262, 264 Caesar, Gaius 95 Caesar, Lucius 95 Callimachus, Athenian polemarch 85–6, 112 Callipolis 6, 242 Camillus 67, 173 Campus Martius 66, 76 Caphis 29 Capitolium 63 Carthage 65, 113, 163, 215, 305 Cassander 99, 178–9, 207, 213 Cassandreia 207, 214 Cassius Dio 2 Cato, Elder 9, 65, 263, 276 Cato, younger 13, 173, 176, 228, 258, 275, 280 Cephalus, house of 6 ceremony, ceremonial sacred 74, 126, 130, 134 secular 125, 135, 137, 316 Ceramicus 127, 175 Chaeronea 8, 14, 19–43 Chaeronea, battle of 22, 26–8, 184, 201 and Sulla 26, 28–30 Charon, Theban 194, 199 Chalcis 21, 40, 212 Chlidon 193–5, 240 chorus 5, 78, 88, 93, 97, 124–5, 134, 189 choregia 88, 93 choregic 89, 93 choregoi 88, 93 Christian 297, 307–8 Chrysippus 290 Cicero 173, 180, 276 Cimon 12, 88, 95, 121, 141, 180, 196 Circus Maximus 63 citadel 194–5, 223 of the soul 14, 245, 247, 249–51

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     Cithaeron 78 citizen 3, 5, 7, 10–11, 19–20, 32, 35, 45, 47, 49, 74, 99, 101, 117, 123, 130, 133–5, 138, 142, 146, 148, 151, 153, 161–2, 164, 167–8, 175, 178, 181, 188, 193, 198, 235, 240, 242, 246, 248, 257–8, 260–5, 273–4, 277, 279, 293 city-state 3, 14, 143, 252 civic art 318–9 civic life 203, 214–5 civitas dei 15, 282, 286–7, 292 Claudius, emperor 52–3 Cleisthenes 173 Cleombrotus of Sparta 76 Cleomenes, late-sixth century 109, 111 Cleomenes, co-ruler with Agis 116, 216 Cleon 107, 112–14, 149, 163, 291 Clinias 6 Cnossus 6 coins 52, 149 Colotes 287, 295–6 comedy 10, 93, 115, 292, 305 community 3–4, 6, 62, 123, 135–7, 141, 237, 241, 316 competition 1, 40, 78, 94, 314, 316. See also agōn constitution 116, 166–70, 177–8, 181, 198, 238, 241, 248, 285 control 56, 165, 178, 186, 225, 239 control, political 128, 131, 156, 178, 186, 216, 246, 259, 261–2, 265, 274, 276, 279 Corcyra 106, 114, 213 Corinna advice to Pindar 87 Corinth, Corinthian 8, 19, 36–7, 40, 42, 44, 46, 51, 53, 78, 106–7, 109, 121, 188–90, 192, 212–3, 238 Coriolanus 67, 156, 250, 260 Cornelius Nepos 129, 171 Coronea 24–5, 37, 40–1, 121, 191, Coronea, battle of 25, 121, 191 cosmopolitan, cosmopolitanism 36, 237, 275, 314, 317. See also kosmopolites Crannon, battle of 177 Crassus 225 Craterus 166, 212 Cratinus 88 Crete, Cretan 25, 117, 206 Croesus 52, 109, 221 cult 8, 16, 19, 23, 33, 77, 96, 281, 283–4, 299, 305, 308, 316 imperial 95–6, 99 Cynegirus 85–6 Cyrene 4

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Damis, Epicurean 298–9, 301 Damis, in Philostratus’ Apollonius 299 Damon Peripoltas 23, 31–2 Darius 121, 243, 276 Daulis 22 debate 13, 14, 16, 48, 94, 99, 111, 114, 118, 137, 142, 154, 156, 168–70, 178–80, 203, 219–22, 232, 240, 282, 293, 297, 299–300, 305, 309, 320 Decelea 128, 130–1, 160, 191 dedication 50, 93, 136, 270 deictic 5, 81, 89, 91 deixis 100 Delium 156 Delos 11, 25, 109, 124, 139, 315 Delphi 2, 4, 8–9, 14, 20, 22, 24–5, 28, 33, 35–46, 47–58, 60, 63, 76–8, 124, 190, 203, 257, 259, 285, 298, 313–16 Demades 115, 171, 177, 254 Demaratus 110, 121, 134, 186 Demeter 127 Demetrias 212 Demetrius of Phalerum 12, 166–82, 317 Demetrius Poliorcetes 12, 115, 173, 176, 178–9, 182, 207–13, 216–17, 319–21 Demetrius of Scepsis 221 Demochares 171, 179–80 democracy 11, 12, 84, 107–9, 111, 113, 141, 145, 148, 155, 166–9, 171, 177–8, 180, 193, 274, 276–7 democratic institutions 111, 141, 143, 155, 171, 174, 317 Democritus 291, 302 demos 113, 115, 136, 147, 156, 159, 162–4, 176, 206, 250 Demos, painting of 84 Demosthenes, orator 27, 115, 142, 146, 158–9, 177, 183, 201, 206, 248, 259 dialogue 1, 8, 14, 16, 39, 41, 48, 54–6, 69, 76–9, 144, 192, 290, 294–300, 313, 317, 321 Dinarchus 183 Dio of Prusa 1, 2, 229, 235 Diodorus Siculus 129, 155, 178, 192, 285 Diogenes Laertius 177, 180, 299 Diogenes, of Oenoanda 299, 302 Diogenianus 45–6, 313 Dion, city 207, 214–5 Dionysus 12, 25, 31, 33, 134, 190 dithyramb 4, 89–90, 92, 94, 99 Dodona 214–5 dog show, theatre of Marcellus 9, 70 Domitian 9, 48–9, 52–3, 62–3, 70–1, 75–6 Draco 170, 180

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drama 16, 35, 40, 51, 78, 88–9, 93–4, 134, 137–9, 192–3, 210, 254, 265, 292, 295, 297, 299–300, 309 Duris, of Samos 22 ecphrasis 227–8, 230 Egeria 285 Edessa 13, 207, 211, 214 education 11, 47, 80, 117–20, 154, 167, 170, 172, 238, 241, 250–1, 273, 283 Egypt 9, 50, 55, 73, 203 Elateia 213 Elea 13, 227 Eleusis 11, 21, 35, 43, 125, 127–31, 171–2, 315, 342 festival 11, 127–31, 315. See also Games mysteries 128, 144–5, 156, 174, 182 Elis 36, 44, 78 Elpinice 86–7 emblem, emblematic 110, 129, 139, 176, 318–19 emotion, emotions, emotional 9, 13, 47, 55, 71, 83, 85, 132–3, 164–5, 225, 229, 236, 238–9, 253, 300, 303, 313–4, 318 enargeia 220, 314, 318–19. See also vividness encomium 4, 79, 90, 94, 96, 100–1, 201, 318 environment architectural 9 artistic 1, 9, 313 Athens 9, 131 built 3, 6, 100 metropolitan 236 natural 1, 14, 253 political 203 social 203 Epaminondas 12, 84, 89, 120, 183–4, 192–4, 196–201, 318 Epictetus 249–50 Epicurus, Epicurean 16, 39, 43–4, 46, 74, 270–1, 284, 287, 294–5, 297–9, 301–5, 331, 348 Epidamnos 214 epideictic speech 81, 204, 287 epideixis 97 epimeletes 48–50, 52 Epirus 204–5, 214–5 ἐπιστάτης τῆς πόλεως 205, 216 Erechtheus 169 Erianthus 96, 189 Eros 41, 79 eros, love 12, 79, 146, 149–51, 163–5, 247 erudition 6–7, 100 Euboea 74, 107, 213 Eucles, Marathon runner 86–7 Eucles IV 87 Euphanes 270

Euripides 97, 112, 121, 189, 258, 288 Eurymedon, battle of 99, 320 eusebeia, See piety Eusebius 77 Euthydamus, C. Memmius, Delphic priest 35–6 Euthydemus, of Sunium 36, 44–5 experience 1, 7, 9, 15–16, 28, 32, 34, 60, 62–3, 68, 71, 85, 170, 180, 226, 238, 243–4, 253, 265, 274, 308, 313–14 festival 109, 134, 284 Agrionia 33, 77 Bendis 6 Chaeronean 33, 40, 316 Daedala 9 Dionysia 9, 33, 78, 125, 134 Elaphebolia 9 Eleusinia, Athenian 127–31, 315 Eleusinia, Theban 40 Eros, Erotidia 9, 41, 78–80 Isthmia 9, 40, 78 Lenaea 93 Museia 41 Panathenaea 126, 136, 154 Pamboeotia 40 Plynteria, Athenian 138 Pythia 41 Romaia 40 Trophonia 40 Flamininus, T. Quinctius 8, 9, 51, 58, 65–6, 121, 205, 212–3 Flavius Megalinus 49 Florus, L. Mestrius 34, 36, 38–40, 43–6, 49 foreigner 12, 144, 147, 167–8, 175, 211 fortuna 68 Forum Boarium 63, 69 Forum Romanum 63 freedom 27, 51, 53, 70, 88, 90, 110–12, 121, 179, 181, 184, 193, 195, 199–200, 202, 212–13, 224, 238, 318 Games. See also agōn, festival Isthmian 9, 40, 78 Olympic 1, 78, 117, 135, 304 Pythian 9, 48, 49, 50, 53, 78 gate 69, 127, 222, 231, 244–7, 252, 318 of the soul 14, 247 Gaul, Gallic 22, 28, 36, 45, 258, 305 generals 2, 8, 58, 82, 85, 88–9, 91–2, 94–5, 113–15, 121, 152, 156–7, 164, 183–4, 200, 232 geographical, geography 4, 81, 127, 206 glory 2, 4, 6, 27, 47, 51, 61, 89–90, 97, 128, 131, 152, 155–6, 183, 186, 200, 221, 262

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     Gomphi-Philippopolis 212 governor 200, 263, 275, 278–9, 289, guide 7, 8, 29, 50, 63, 76, 80, 225, 253, 282, 288, 298, 301 Hadrian 49–50 Haemon. See Thermodon Haliacmon, river 13, 206–7, 212 Haliartus, battle of 25, 191 Hannibal 67 Harpalus 99, 177, 248 Hebros, river 13, 206 Hector 13, 225, 227–31, 314, 318 hegemony 181 Athenian 88, 129, 166, 170 Spartan 5, 12, 184 Theban 12, 184, 192, 195–209 Helicon 9, 41, 79–80, 191 Helvidius Priscus 70 Hephaesteion 50 Hephaestus 23, 231 Heracleides Ponticus 86 Heracles 186, 190, 211, 222 Heraclitus, of Ephesus 55 Heraclitus, allegorist 300 herm 92–3, 131, 134, 156, 164 Hermes 267 Herodes Atticus father of 46, 87 Herodotus 10–11, 23–4, 55, 105–21, 128, 134, 185–7, 223–4, 257, 285, 317 hieromnemon 48 Hipparete 159–62 Hipponicus 11, 157–9, 161 Hipposthenidas 193–5 historicity 30, 34, 313 Homer 4, 10, 13, 23, 57, 153–4, 219–25, 227, 229–32, 253, 300, 318 Hyampolis 35–6, 43–4, 46, 77 hybris 135, 142, 145–7, 150, 153–4, 158–63 Iacchus 127–8, 130, 134, 136 iconography, Athenian 2, 5, 81–7, 100–1 ideal, idealism 6, 7, 14–16, 108, 112, 118, 124, 136, 169–70, 180, 220, 241, 271–7, 279–81, 292, 297, 300, 319–21 identify, identifying 33, 41, 67, 75, 92, 245, 253, 308 ideology 273 Ilians, Ilium. See Troy imagination 6, 7, 10, 16, 125, 145, 192, 223, 231 imperial 13, 40–1, 49–50, 52–3, 57–61, 63, 68, 70, 76, 95, 99, 227, 252 court 63

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family 96 Greece 40–1, 49–50, 52–3, 57–8, 60 Greek literature 13, 241, 296 imperium Romanum 15, 279 inscription 8, 16, 30, 50–3, 65–6, 222, 346, 348 institution 1, 3–4, 13, 16, 61, 117, 142, 171, 174, 176, 178, 180–1, 214–16, 239, 262–3, 274, 280, 285, 289, 317 intertextual, intertextuality 8, 112, 206, 223, 235, 240–1, 250–1, 300 Ion of Chios 10, 39, 115, 317 Ismenias 193, 199 Ismenodora 9, 79 Isocrates 90, 188, 282–4 Italy 28, 31, 70, 203, 264 Jerusalem 281, 308 Jewish, Jews 307–8 Judaeo-Christian 308 justice, divine 15, 281, 287–9, 292, 297, 320 justice, human 119, 167, 194, 197, 199, 267, 272 Justin 129 koinon, koina 204–5, 216 kōmos 89, 144–5 Kore 127 kosmopolites 166, 181. See also cosmopolitan Lacedaemonius, son of Cimon 114 Lamprias 42–6, 49, 55–7, 244, 290 Lamprias catalogue 41, 73, 77–8, 293, 295, 304 landscape 99, 101 architectural 4, 5 cultural 4, 7, 10, 101, 115 intellectual 7, 299 natural 3, 16 political 248, 317 religious 7, 308 Laomedon 222 Larissa 208 law, laws 15, 52, 110, 118, 124, 131, 153, 155–6, 160–1, 167–9, 178–9, 181–2, 190, 194, 200, 213, 259, 263, 272–3, 282, 285, 287–9 legislation 15, 168, 178, 289 legislator 61, 177, 259, 275 Leonidas 110, 186–7 Leuctra, battle of 28, 82, 116, 120–1, 183, 196, 198 library 3, 7, 16, 19, 41, 49, 71, 100, 179, 299 life, daily 59–60, 69, 253 Livia Drusilla 52, 54 local knowledge 23–6, 29–31, 33 localization 10, 81, 87, 92, 94, 96, 314, 319

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Locris, Locrian 28, 191, 213, 221–2 Locrus, sculptor 90 Lucan 224–6 Lucian 2, 16, 277–9, 297, 301, 309 Lucretius 301 Lucullus 31–2, 272 Lycurgus 2, 61, 109, 116–18, 120, 197, 205, 241, 274, 285–6, 289, 328, 338, 346, 348–9, 351 Lysander 25, 51, 116–17, 119–20, 137, 164, 188, 191, 198, 238, 250 Lysimachus 209, 211 Macedon, Macedonian 1, 12–13, 26–7, 51, 166, 170, 172, 203–18 Magnesia, ideal city 6 Magnesia, region of Macedon 212 Mantinea, battle of 9, 193, 200 Marathon 87 Marathon, battle of 9, 28, 84–7, 95, 99, 111–2, 185, 197, 320 Marathon runner. See Eucles Marcus Aurelius 20, 249–50 marriage 37, 79, 118, 160–3, 168, 272 Mater Matuta 33, 69 material evidence 3–4, 6, 16, 100, 283, 303 medism Chaeronean 26 Theban 12, 24, 185, 188, 317 Thessalian 185 Megacleides, victor at Lenaea 93 Megara, Megarian 22, 106, 114, 194, 321 Meidias 142, 154, 158–9 Melanthius 87 memory 34 , 56–7, 70–1, 93, 239 cultural 21, 51, 101, 316 historical 13, 31–2, 64, 141, 216 visual 7, 10, 101 men of action 2, 82, 98, 314 Menander 87, 305 Meneclaidas 199 Menemachus 270, 275 Messene 183, 199–200 metaphor, metaphorical 14, 124, 172–3, 179, 195, 235, 237, 239, 243, 245–6, 249–50, 253–68, 276, 319 Methone 207 metic, metics 145, 147–51, 159, 167 Mieza 207, 211, 215 Miltiades 86–9, 95, 99, 112, 197 mirror image 76, 113, 120, 169, 172, 180, 193, 231, 235, 313–14 mirror of deeds 82, 94, 120 Molossian 214

monarchy 12–13, 179, 216–7, 250, 261, 276 Antigonid 13, 216–7 monster-market, in Rome 69, 80 monuments 8, 10, 16, 50–1, 55–60, 63–5, 67, 71, 76–7, 82, 84, 100, 123, 125–6, 136, 214, 216 Munychia 174, 178 Muses 88, 94 sanctuary of 9, 29, 41, 77, 79–80, 314 music 80, 88, 117, 291, 306, 321 musician 40 Mycenae 5–6 myth, mythical, mythological 2, 7, 19, 22–3, 25, 31, 42, 88, 125, 168, 188, 213, 228, 230–1, 284, 300–1 narrator, narratorial 78, 145, 147, 161–2, 194, 229, 231, 240, 320 Naxos, battle of 28, 173–4 Nero 41, 48–9, 52–4, 70 Nestos, river 13, 206 Nicagoras 21 Nicarchus, Plutarch’s grandfather 32 Nicarchus, son of Homoloïchus 40 Nicias, Athenian 13, 82, 107, 114, 123, 139–40, 164, 196, 315 Nicias, doctor 37, 45 Niger, sophist 35, 45 Niobe 301 Nicochares, victor at Lenaea 93 nomothetes 166, 178, 180 Notion 156 Numa 256, 276, 285 Nymphs 80, 314 Nymphaion 211 oikos 272 oligarchy 12, 169, 175, 178, 186, 188 Olympia 1, 36, 44, 78, 135 Olynthus 144, 201 omen 117, 138, 174, 207, 215 Onesippus 92 Opheltas 23, 28, 31, 47 oracle 22–5, 48, 50–51, 54–5, 57, 77, 214, 259, 282, 285 orators 76, 94–5, 141, 254, 268 Orchomenus 23–4, 28–9, 31, 42, 77 Paetus, Thrasea 70 paideia 8, 172–3, 248, 314, 316 painter 13, 81–3, 85, 92, 217–8, 291 painting 9, 13, 16, 67, 69, 80–87, 92, 227–32, 314, 318–20 battle of Mantinea 9, 82–4, 86, 92, 318

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     battle of Marathon 9, 84–7 Hector and Andromache 13, 227–30, 314, 318 Ialysus 319–20 sack of Troy 230 Tarentine 67 Theseus, Democracy and Demos 84 palace, Domitian’s 9, 62–3, 76 palaestra 41, 79 Pallene 91, 95 Panathenaic way 82, 87, 127 panegyric 10, 81, 97–8 Panhellenic 8, 12, 112, 127, 198, 316 paradigm 2, 4, 7, 14, 123–4, 167, 237, 281, 296 parallelism 61, 197, 240, 255, 292 Paris 223–4 patrios politeia 12, 169–70, 180, 193, 195 Pausanias, Spartan general 111 Pausanias, periegete 1–2, 23–4, 33, 51, 76, 83–4, 90–2 Peisistratus 109, 137 Pella 13, 207–8, 211–12, 214, 315 Pelopidas 12, 183–202, 195–200 Peloponnesian War 12, 24, 109, 115, 141, 155, 169–70, 172, 174, 184, 188, 265 pepaideumenoi 1, 8, 100, 321 Pergamum 42, 45, 313 Pericles 11, 13, 61, 82, 75, 88, 99, 107, 112, 114–5, 154–7, 163, 168, 171, 178–80, 196–7, 201, 238, 263–4, 276–8 Perrhaebian 213 Perseus, king of Macedon 51, 206–8, 211 Persian wars 4, 12, 23, 28–9, 51, 84, 95–6, 106, 184–5, 188–9, 321 Petraeus, L. Cassius 44, 49, 52 Phila 213 Philinus 41, 43–6, 313 Philip II 22, 26–8, 31, 115, 170, 172, 184, 199, 201, 204–7, 213, 216, 242 Philip V 212 Philippi 204–5 philonikia / φιλονικία 11, 119–21, 317 Philopoemen 8, 58, 120, 203, 205 Philostratus 247, 299, 316 Philotas 201 philotimia / φιλοτιμία 67, 119–21, 152 Phocion 12, 27, 115, 166–76, 179–81, 258, 275, 317 Phocis, Phocian 9, 23, 25–6, 29, 32, 47, 77, 97, 191, 213 Phoebidas 193, 196 Phoenix 201 Phormio 82 Phrynichus, tragedian 90, 99 Pieria 204, 207

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piety 2, 129, 131, 285, 294–5, 300, 305 pilgrim, pilgrimage 50, 52, 73–80. See also theoria. Pindar 4–5, 10, 55, 87–94, 96, 99–100, 201, 267, 289–92, 314, 318–19 Pindos 204 Piraeus 6, 107, 138, 143, 178–9, 189, 212 pistis 307–8 Plataea, battle of 84, 90, 99, 110, 111, 185, 187, 320 Plato 4, 6, 8, 14–16, 36–9, 41, 45, 54–6, 83, 88, 98, 112–14, 118–19, 141, 143–4, 148, 151–2, 155–6, 158, 163, 172, 176, 197, 221, 235, 240–52, 254, 265, 270, 272–3, 276, 280–1, 286–90, 292, 294–7, 300–2, 316–19 Pliny the Elder 86 poetry 40, 84–5, 88, 92, 94, 98, 243, 254 classical 253 epic 4, 88, 230, 232, 300 hymnic 4 melic 88, 92 poets 5, 6, 40, 56, 88, 92–5, 97, 178, 189, 253–4, 285, 317, 354 Polemarchus, Cephalus’ son 6 politarches 205 polites 12, 166–82 politician 12, 15, 59, 107, 115, 139, 169, 171–2, 177, 260, 262, 264–5, 272–80, 289–90 Polycharmus 87 Polycrates 44, 49, 148 Polygnotus 86–7, 230 Polyperchon 177–8, 181 Polyzelus 85–6 Pompey 212, 224, 226, 258 Porta Fenestella 68–9 Portia (Porcia) 13, 227–32, 314, 318 post-classical 10, 100 Potidaea 106, 207 battle of 155–6 pragmatism 14–15, 271, 280 Praxiteles, periegete 44, 46, 78 Praxiteles, sculptor 90 priest 8, 16, 35–6, 47–9, 52, 54, 57–8, 78, 127, 130, 190, 201, 260, 285, 293–4, 315 procession 11, 48, 53, 82, 88, 122–40, 160, 315 Proclus, commentator on Plato 20, 138, 142, 149 Prothytes 201 Protogenes, grammaticus 37, 45–6 Protogenes, painter 318–20 providence, divine 15, 55, 58, 254, 281, 284, 287–90, 292, 298, 303 proxenia 4, 90 Ptolemy I 12, 179–80, 209, 317

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Ptolemy II Philadelphos 180 Ptolemy Keraunos 180 Publicola 61–2, 67 Pydna 206–8, 211 Pyrrhus 208–11, 213, 258 Pythia, priestess 48–9, 55–7, 257, 285, 298 religion 1–2, 7, 11, 13–16, 33, 50, 62, 73, 76–8, 109, 117, 127, 171, 207, 214, 216, 238, 281, 283–4, 287, 289, 293–309, 315–16, 319–20 Roman 2, 9, 75 representation 7–8, 13, 34, 82–5, 87, 94, 98, 126, 128, 176, 203, 214–15, 266, 281–2, 317 rhetorical exercise 10, 15, 97, 99, 270, 305 rhetorical school 97, 99, 320 Rhodians 319–20 rite 57, 67, 88, 125–6, 130–1, 200, 282, 316 ritual 10, 11, 16, 33, 35, 48, 57, 74, 82, 122–40, 216, 305, 307, 315–16 rivalry Alcibiades and the Athenians 135 Lysander and Agesilaus 119 political 274 Polyperchon and diadochi 177 Pyrrhus and Demetrius 208, 210 romance 196, 300 Rome, city 2–3, 8–9, 13, 15–16, 19, 33, 35–6, 39, 41–3, 45–8, 51, 53, 59–80, 203, 227, 231, 258, 264, 281, 286, 308, 313–15 Rome, political power 1, 32, 51–2, 57, 61, 99, 119, 121, 173, 176, 184, 203, 213, 215, 238, 240, 255–7, 262, 279, 284–7 Romulus 60–1, 66–7, 255, 257, 277, 280, 286, 329, 346 sabbath 306–7 Sacred Way / hiera hodos 123 Athens 127, 131 Delphi 50, 313 sacrifice 8, 23–5, 31, 33, 41, 48, 57, 74, 79, 84, 89, 99, 113, 125, 130, 134–6, 190, 198, 207, 223–4, 246, 282–4, 299, 305 Salamis, battle of 28, 90, 185, 197–8 Samos 74, 109 Samothrace 206–7 sanctuary 6, 8–9, 11, 29, 41, 47–55, 57, 60, 73–82, 84, 87, 90, 92, 94–6, 127, 214, 313–4. See also shrine Scaean gates 13, 230–1, 318 sculpture 16, 82, 99, 100–1, 318 Senecio, Q. Sosius 33–5, 39–40, 42–4, 49–50, 280

Servius Tullius 68–9, 75 Sextus, of Chaeronea 20–1 ship, as metaphor 14, 115, 173, 253–68 shrine 74, 78–9. See also sanctuary Amon 76 Aphrodite 244 Delphi 190 Earth 51 Fortuna 75 Muses 79–80, 314 Nymphs 80, 314 Pan 80 pastoral 79 in Rome 80 on Tiber Isle 76 Sicily 28, 107, 114, 129, 164, 169, 172, 200, 258 Simonides 85, 166, 181, 274 slave, slavery 12, 33, 70, 96–7, 145, 150, 154, 168, 175, 189, 193, 201, 283–4 society 3, 10, 15, 60, 70, 136, 156, 167, 289 Soclarus of Tithora 29, 43–5, 49 Soclarus, L. Mestrius 22, 33, 46 Soclarus, Flavius 49 Soclarus, Plutarch’s son 46 Soclarus, Titus Flavius 49 Socrates 6, 26, 141–2, 144–5, 148–54, 156–7, 160, 171–2, 176, 192, 197, 242–3, 253, 301–2 Solon 168, 170, 180, 236, 259, 276, 291 sophist 21, 37, 40, 43, 45, 87, 99, 170, 242, 320 Sophocles 239, 254, 258 Sosicles, of Coronea 37, 40–4 Sosicrates, victor at Lenaea 93 sovereign, sovereignty 12, 68, 167–8, 181, 216, 255 space 95, 115, 123 space control 10, 122–3, 131, 148, 315 space, sacred 11, 16 Sparta, Spartan 1–2, 5–6, 10–13, 25, 42, 105–21, 164 Sphodrias 196, spectacle 70, 74, 88, 130, 134, 247, 265 spectator 40, 49, 85–6, 134, 213, 292, 314 Stageira 207 statue 8 Alexander 200 Aphrodite 90 Apollo Anadoumenos 90 Ares 90 Athena 90 Augustus 95 Calades 90 Cato the Elder 65

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of Iuppiter Capitolinus 9, 61, 75 of Peace 309 Theagenes, Theban 27, 202 theatre 12, 35, 37, 40, 53, 70, 80, 88–9, 93, 175–6, 211–12, 249, 282, 317 Thebes 2, 4, 10, 12–13, 25, 27, 42, 47, 109 Themistocles 12, 82, 89, 99, 128, 140, 196–8, 250, 257–8, 317 theology 284, 299, 301–2, 304–5 Theon 35, 42, 46, 49, 51–4, 55, 57, 242, 295, 321 Theophrastus 176, 305 Theopompus 242, 254, 267 theoria 9, 78, 139, 314–15. See also pilgrim, pilgrimage Theramenes 160, 170, 246, 335, 338, 342 Thermodon, river 22 Thermopylae battle of 110, 186–7 symposia at 36–40, 44–6, 75 Thersippus of Erchia 86 Theseus 22, 60–1, 74, 84, 168, 205, 277 Theseum 74 Thespiae 9, 41, 78–9, 187 Thespis 90 Thessaly 185, 204–5, 208, 212–5 Thrace 204, 207, 209, 214 Thrasybulus, Athenian 189–90, 193 Thucydides 5–6, 10–11, 82, 84–6, 105–21, 123, 133, 141–3, 145, 152, 156, 163–4, 188, 277, 317–18 Timagoras 199 Timon, Plutarch’s brother 35–7, 42, 47 Timocleia 27, 184, 202 Timocles 298–9 Timoxena 41 Tithora 29, 37, 43 Titus, emperor 48, 52–3 Tolmides 24 topography, topographical 2, 4, 7, 9–10, 19, 23, 25–6, 28, 59–60, 67–9, 81–2, 100–1, 125–6, 212, 215 Torone 207 tourism, tourist 8, 50, 73–8 Trajan 27, 46, 48, 50, 53, 71, 270 tryphē 142, 146, 162–3 travel 1, 2, 4, 7, 16, 25, 41, 59, 63, 73, 76–7, 80, 100, 105, 282, 313 tyranny 111, 133, 135, 142, 156, 178, 238, 248–9, 252, 263 tyrant 51, 111–12, 114, 143, 155–6, 246, 248–9, 251, 275, 292 Troy 5, 10, 13, 28, 219–32, 227–32, 314–5, 317–18

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Varro, C. Terentius 265 Varro, M. Terentius 67 Veii 258 verbal 82, 115, 157, 230, 254 media 8 Vespasian 9, 53, 62–3, 70–1, 75 viewer 13, 125, 132, 134, 137, 231, 314–15 visible 5, 52–4, 64, 87, 117, 177, 205, 243, 250, 283, 286 visitor 8, 37–9, 48–50, 57, 76–8, 84, 220, 222, 313–14 Vitellius 75 vividness 19, 83, 85. See also enargeia

walls, city 2, 6, 31, 69, 88, 123, 169, 211, 228, 236, 245–7, 250, 282, 307 women 12, 51, 69, 80, 146, 161–2, 167–8, 175, 198, 220, 228–9, 231, 315 Xenocrates 172, 177 Xenophanes 300 Xenophon 11, 25, 39, 84, 97, 112, 116–17, 119–20, 129, 133–4, 143, 148, 156–7, 188–90, 192, 197–8, 283, 317 Xerxes 110, 112, 128, 186–7, 223–6, 305 Zeus 135, 214, 225, 284, 288–90, 292, 298, 301 cave of 6