Chapter III: Ancestry of Shakespeare’s Roman Plays (1)

1. PLUTARCH[75]

Plutarch, born at Chaeronea in Boeotia, about 45 or 50 A.D., flourished in the last quarter of the first and the earliest quarter of the second century. He came of good stock, which he is not reluctant to talk about. Indeed, his habit of introducing or quoting his father, his grandfather, and even his great grandfather, gives us glimpses of a home in which the prescribed pieties of family life were warmly cherished; and some of the references imply an atmosphere of simplicity, urbanity, and culture.

[75] See Plutarch’s works _passim_, especially North’s version of the _Lives_ reprinted in the _Tudor Translations_, and the _Morals_ translated by Philemon Holland (1603). See also Archbishop Trench’s _Lectures on Plutarch_.

The lad was sent to Athens to complete his education under Ammonius, an eminent philosopher of that generation, though in Carlyle’s phrase, ‘now dim to us,’ who also took part in what little administrative work was still intrusted to provincials, and more than once held the distinguished position of strategos. Thus, as in childhood Plutarch was trained in the best domestic traditions of elder Greece, so now he had before his eyes an example of such active citizenship as survived in the changed condition of things.

The same spirit of reverence for the past presided over his routine of study. His works afterwards show a wide familiarity with the earlier literature and philosophy of his country, and the foundations of this must have been laid in his student days. It was still in accordance with accepted precedents and his own reminiscent tastes, that when he set out on his travels, he should first, as so many of his predecessors were reported to have done, betake himself to the storied land of Egypt. We know that this must have been after 66 A.D., for in that year, when Nero made his progress through Greece, Plutarch tells us that he was still the pupil of Ammonius. We know, further, that he must have visited Alexandria, for he mentions that in his grandfather’s opinion his father gave too large a banquet to celebrate their homecoming from that city. But he does not inform us how much of Egypt he saw, or how long was his stay, or in what way he employed himself. It is only a probable conjecture at most that his treatise on _Isis and Osiris_ may be one of the fruits of this expedition.

Of another and later journey that took him to Italy, there is more to be said. Plutarch at an early age, whether before or after the Egyptian tour, had already been employed in public affairs. He tells us:

I remember my selfe, that when I was but of yoong yeres I
was sent with another in embassage to the Proconsul: and
in that my companion staid about I wot not what behind, I
went alone and did that which we had in commission to do
together. After my returne when I was to give an account
unto the State, and to report the effect of my charge and
message back again, my father arose, and taking me apart,
willed me in no wise to speak in the singular number and
say, _I departed or went_, but, _We departed_; item not
_I said_ (or _quoth I_) but _We said_; and in the whole
narration of the rest to joine alwaies my companion as if he
had been associated and at one hand with me in that which I
did alone.[76]

[76] _Instructions for them, etc._

Such courtesy conciliates good will, and he was subsequently sent ‘on public business’ to Rome. This must have been before 90 A.D., when Rusticus, whom Plutarch mentions that he met, was condemned to death, and when the philosophers were expelled from the city; and was probably some time after 74 A.D., the date of their previous expulsion, when, moreover, Plutarch was too young to be charged with matters so weighty as to need settlement in the capital. But it is not certain whether this was his only visit to Italy, and whether he made it in the reign of Vespasian or of Domitian. His story of a performing dog that took part in an exhibition in presence of Vespasian, has been thought to have the verisimilitude of a witnessed scene, and has been used to support the former supposition: his description of the sumptuousness of Domitian’s buildings makes a similar impression, and has been used to support the latter. All this must remain doubtful, but some things are certain: that his business was so engrossing, and those who came to him for instruction were so numerous, that he had little time for the study of the Latin language; that he delivered lectures, some of which were the first drafts of essays subsequently included in the _Moralia_; that he had as his acquaintances or auditors several of the most distinguished men in Rome, among them Mestrius Florus, a table companion of Vespasian, Sosius Senecio, the correspondent of Pliny, and that Arulenus Rusticus afterwards put to death by Domitian, who on one occasion would not interrupt a lecture of Plutarch’s to read a letter from the Emperor; that he traversed Italy as far north as Ravenna, where he saw the bust of Marius, and even as Bedriacum, where he inspected the battlefields of 69 A.D.

But though Plutarch loved travel and sight-seeing, and though he was fully alive to the advantages of a great city, with its instructive society and its collections of books, his heart was in his native place, and he returned to settle there. “I my selfe,” he says, “dwelle in a poore little towne, and yet doe remayne there willingly, least it should become lesse.”[77] And in point of fact he seems henceforth only to have left it for short excursions to various parts of Greece. One of these exhibits him in a characteristic and amiable light. Apparently soon after his marriage a dispute had broken out between the parents of the newly wedded pair, and Plutarch in his conciliatory way took his wife, as we should say, ‘on a pilgrimage,’ to the shrine at Thespiae on Mount Helicon to offer a sacrifice to Love.[78] This is in keeping with all the express utterances and all the unconscious revelations he makes of his feeling for the sacredness of the family tie. He was one of those whose soul rings true to the claims of kith and kin. He thanks Fortune as a chief favour for the comradeship of his brother Timon, and delights to show off the idiosyncrasies of his brother Lamprias. We do not know when his marriage took place, but if Plutarch acted on his avowed principles, it must have been when he was still a young man, and it was a very happy one. As we should expect; for of all the affections it is wedded love that he dwells on most fully, and few have spoken more nobly and sincerely of it than he. Again and again he gives the point of view, which is often said to have been attained by the Modern World only by the combined assistance of Germanic character and Christian religion. Thus he says of a virtuous attachment:

[77] _Life of Demosthenes._

[78] _Love._

But looke what person soever love setleth upon in mariage,
so as he be inspired once therewith, at the very first,
like as it is in Platoes Common-wealth, he will not have
these words in his mouth, _Mine_ and _Thine_; for simply
all goods are not common among all friends, but only those
who being severed apart in body, conjoine and colliquate as
it were perforce their soules together, neither willing nor
believing that they should be twaine but one: and afterward
by true pudicitie and reverence one unto the other, whereof
wedlock hath most need.... In true love there is so much
continency, modesty, loyalty and faithfulnesse, that though
otherwhile it touche a wanton and lascivious minde, yet
it diverteth it from other lovers, and by cutting off all
malapert boldnesse, by taking downe and debasing insolent
pride and untaught stubornesse, it placeth in lieu thereof
modest bashfulnesse, silence, and taciturnity; it adorneth
it with decent gesture and seemly countenance, making it
for ever after obedient to one lover onely.... For like
as at Rome, when there was a Lord Dictatour once chosen,
all other officers of state and magistrates valed bonnet,
were presently deposed, and laied downe their ensignes of
authority; even so those over whom love hath gotten the
mastery and rule, incontinently are quit freed and delivered
from all other lords and rulers, no otherwise than such as
are devoted to the service of some religious place.[79]

[79] _Love._

His wife bore him at least five children, of whom three died in childhood, the eldest son, “the lovely Chaeron,” and then their little daughter, born after her four brothers, and called by her mother’s name, Timoxena. The letter of comfort which Plutarch, who was absent at Tanagra, sent home after the death took place, is good to read. There is perhaps here and there a touch that suggests the professional moralist and rhetorician: as when he recounts a fable of Aesop’s to enforce his advice; or bids his wife not to dwell on her griefs rather than her blessings, like “those Criticks who collect and gather together all the lame and defective verses of Homer, which are but few in number; and in the meane time passe over an infinite sort of others which were by him most excellently made”; or warns her to look to her health because, if “the bodie be evill entreated and not regarded with good diet and choice keeping, it becometh dry, rough and hard, in such sort as from it there breathe no sweet and comfortable exhalations unto the soule, but all smoakie and bitter vapors of dolour griefe and sadnesse annoy her.” These were the toll Plutarch paid to his age and to his training. But the tender feeling for his wife’s grief, and the confidence in her dignified endurance of it are very beautiful and human. And his descriptions of the child’s sweet nature, which he does not leave general, but after his wont lights up with special reminiscences, and which, he insists, they must not lose from mind or turn to bitterness but cherish as an abiding joy, strike the note that is still perhaps most comforting to mourners. After telling over her other winsome and gracious ways, he recalls:

She was of a wonderfull kinde and gentle nature; loving she
was againe to those that loved her, and marvellous desirous
to gratifie and pleasure others: in which regards she both
delighted me and also yielded no small testimonie of rare
debonairetie that nature had endued her withall; for she
would make pretie means[80] to her nourse, and seeme (as it
were) to intreat her to give the brest or pap, not only to
other infants but also to little babies[81] and puppets and
such-like gauds as little ones take joy in and wherewith
they use to play; as if upon a singular courtesie and
humanitie shee could finde in her heart to communicate and
distribute from her owne table even the best things that
shee had, among them that did her any pleasure. But I see
no reason (sweet wife) why these lovely qualities and such
like, wherein we took contentment and joy in her life time,
should disquiet and trouble us now after her death, when we
either think or make relation of them: and I feare againe,
lest by our dolour and griefe, we abandon and put cleane
away all the remembrance thereof; like as Clymene desired to
do when she said

“I hate the bow so light of cornel tree:
All exercise abroad, farewell for me,”

as avoiding alwaies and trembling at the commemoration
of her sonne which should do no other good but renew her
griefe and dolour; for naturally we seeke to flee all that
troubleth and offendeth us. We oughte therefore so to
demeane ourselves, that, as whiles she lived, we had nothing
in the world more sweet to embrace, more pleasant to see or
delectable to heare than our daughter; so the cogitation
of her may still abide and live with us all our life time,
having by many degrees our joy multiplied more than our
heavinesse augmented.[82]

[80] = Coax.

[81] Dolls.

[82] _Epistle to Wife._

And then there is the confident expectation of immortality to mitigate the present pang of severance.

But Plutarch and his wife had other consolations as well. Two sons, Aristobulus and a younger Plutarch, lived to be men, and to them he dedicated a treatise on the _Timaeus_. We know that one of them at least married and had a son in his father’s lifetime. Beyond his domestic circle Plutarch had a large number of friends in Chaeronea and elsewhere, including such distinguished names as Favorinus the philosopher and Serapion the poet; and being, in Dr. Johnson’s phrase, an eminently “clubbable man,” he was often host and guest at banquets, fragments of the talk at which he has preserved in his _Symposiacs_. Almost the only rigorous line in his portrait is contributed by Aulus Gellius, his later contemporary, and the friend of their common friend Favorinus. Gellius[83] represents the philosopher Taurus as telling about “Plutarchus noster”—a phrase that shows the attachment men felt for him—a story of which Dryden gives the following free and amplified but very racy translation:

[83] _Noctes Atticae_, I. xxvi.

Plutarch had a certain slave, a saucy stubborn kind of
fellow; in a word one of these pragmatical servants who
never make a fault but they give a reason for it. His
justifications one time would not serve his turn, but his
master commanded that he should be stripped and that the law
should be laid on his back. He no sooner felt the smart but
he muttered that he was unjustly punished, and that he had
done nothing to deserve the scourge. At last he began to
bawl out louder; and leaving off his groaning, his sighs,
and his lamentations, to argue the matter with more show
of reason: and, as under such a master he must needs have
gained a smattering of learning, he cried out that Plutarch
was not the philosopher he pretended himself to be; that
he had heard him waging war against all the passions, and
maintaining that anger was unbecoming a wise man; nay,
that he had written a particular treatise in commendation
of clemency; that therefore he contradicted his precepts
by his practices, since, abandoning himself over to his
choler, he exercised such inhuman cruelty on the body of
his fellow-creature. “How is this, Mr. Varlet?” (answered
Plutarch). “By what signs and tokens can you prove that I am
in passion? Is it by my countenance, my voice, the colour
of my face, by my words or by my gestures that you have
discovered this my fury? I am not of opinion that my eyes
sparkle, that I foam at the mouth, that I gnash my teeth, or
that my voice is more vehement, or that my colour is either
more pale or more red than at other times; that I either
shake or stamp with madness; that I say or do anything
unbecoming a philosopher. These, if you know them not, are
the symptoms of a man in rage. In the meantime,” (turning to
the officer who scourged him) “while he and I dispute this
matter, mind your business on his back.”

This story, as we have seen, comes from one who was in a position to get authentic information about Plutarch, and it may very well be true; but it should be corrected, or at least supplemented, by his own utterances in regard to his servants. “Sometimes,” he says, “I use to get angry with my slaves, but at last I saw that it was better to spoil them by indulgence, than to injure myself by rage in the effort to amend them.” And more emphatically:

As for me I coulde never finde in my hart to sell my drawght
Oxe that hadde plowed my lande a longe time, because he
coulde plowe no longer for age; and much lesse my slave to
sell him for a litle money, out of the contrie where he had
dwelt a long time, to plucke him from his olde trade of life
wherewith he was best acquainted, and then specially, when
he shalbe as unprofitable for the buyer as also for the
seller.[84]

[84] _Cato Major._

Plutarch was thus fully alive to the social and domestic amenities of life, and to his responsibilities as householder, but he did not for them overlook other claims. He became priest of Apollo in Delphi, and for many years fulfilled the priestly functions, taking part in the sacrifices, processions and dances even as an old man; for philosopher as he was, his very philosophy supplied him with various contrivances for conformity with the ancient cult, and he probably had no more difficulty about it than a modern Hegelian has with the Thirty-nine Articles. His deeper religious needs would be satisfied by the Mysteries, in which he and his wife were initiated.

He was equally assiduous in public duties, which he did not despise for the pettiness to which under the Roman domination they had shrunk. In his view even the remnants of self-government are to be jealously guarded and loyally employed, though they may concern merely parochial and municipal affairs, and for them vigilant training and discipline are required.

Surely impossible it is that they should ever have their
part of any great roial and magnificall joy, such as indeed
causeth magnanimitie and hautinesse of courage, bringeth
glorious honour abroad or tranquillitie of spirit at home,
who have made choice of a close and private life within
doors, never showing themselves in the world nor medling
with publicke affaires of common weale; a life, I say,
sequestered from all offices of humanitie, far removed
from any instinct of honour or desire to gratifie others,
thereby to deserve thankes or winne favour: for the soul,
I may tell you, is no base and small thing; it is not vile
and illiberal, extending her desires onely to that which is
good to be eaten, as doe these poulpes[85] or pour cuttle
fishes which stretch their cleies as far as to their meat
and no farther: for such appetites as these are most quickly
cut off with satietie and filled in a moment. But when the
motives and desires of the minde tending to vertue and
honestie, to honour and contentment of conscience are once
growen to their vigour and perfection, they have not for
their limit, the length and tearme onely of one man’s life;
but surely the desire of honour and the affection to profit
the societie of men, comprehending all aeternitie, striveth
still to goe forward in such actions and beneficiall deedes
as yield infinite pleasures that cannot be expressed.[86]

[85] Polypes.

[86] _That a man cannot live pleasantly, etc._

He was true to his principles. He not only officiated as Archon of Chaeronea, but, “gracing the lowliest act in doing it,” was willing to discharge the functions of a more subordinate post, which some thought beneath his dignity.

Mine answer is to such as reprove me, when they find me
in proper person present, at the measuring and counting
of bricks and tiles, or to see the stones, sand and
lime laid downe, which is brought into the citie: “It
is not for myselfe that I builde, but for the citie and
commonwealth.”[87]

[87] _Instructions for them, etc._

He was thus faithful over a few things; tradition made him ruler over many things. It is related that Trajan granted him consular rank and directed the governor of Achaia to avail himself of his advice. This was embellished by the report that he had been Trajan’s preceptor; and in the Middle Ages a letter very magisterial in tone was fabricated from him to his imperial pupil. It was even said that in his old age Hadrian had made him governor of Greece.

There is a poetic justification for such legends. The government of Trajan and Hadrian was felt to be such that the precepts of philosophy might very fittingly have inspired it, and that the philosopher might very well have been the administrator of their policy. And indeed it is perhaps no fable that Plutarch had something to do with the better _régime_ that was commencing; for his nephew Sextus of Chaeronea, who may have inherited something of his uncle’s spirit, was an honoured teacher of Marcus Aurelius, and influenced his pupil by his example no less than by his teaching. The social renovation which was then in progress should be remembered in estimating Plutarch’s career. Gibbon says: “If a man were called to fix the period in the History of the World, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” Probably this statement would need to be, if not greatly qualified, at least greatly amplified, before it commanded universal assent, but, as it stands, there is a truth in it which anyone can perceive. There was peace throughout a great portion of the world; there was good government within the Empire; there was a rejuvenescence of antique culture, literature, and conduct. Indeed, the upward tendency begins with the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, and even the thwarting influence of Domitian’s principate would be felt in Rome rather than in the provinces. It was in this time of “reaction against corruption” that Plutarch flourished, and his later life especially fell well within that Indian summer of classical civilisation that Gibbon celebrates. The tradition that he survived till the accession of Antonine may be incorrect, but he certainly enjoyed eight years of Trajan’s government, and, by Eusebius’ statement, was still alive in the third year of Hadrian’s reign. It is to his latter days that his _Lives_ as a whole are assigned, partly on account of the casual reference to contemporary events that some of them contain.

Plutarch’s character, circumstances, and career in a world which was reaching its close, well fitted him for the work that he did. This Greek citizen of the Roman Empire had cultivated his mind by study and travel, and had assimilated the wisdom of wide experience and pregnant memories which Antiquity had amassed in earlier times and to which this interval of revival was heir. Benevolent and dutiful, temperate and devout, with a deep sense of his public obligations and the ethos of his race, he sympathised with the best principles that had moulded the life of olden days, and that were emerging to direct the life of the present. And he combined his amplitude of traditional lore and enthusiasm for traditional virtue in a way that made him more than an antiquary or a moralist. The explorer and practitioner of antique ideas, in a sense he was their artist as well.

His treatment and style already suggest the manifold influences that went to form his mind. One of his charms lies in his quotations, which he culls, or rather which spring up of their own accord, from his reading of the most various authors of the most different times. He is at home in Greek literature, and likes to clinch his argument with a saying from the poets, for he seems to find that their words put his thought better than he could himself. But this affects his original expression. Dryden writes:

Being conversant in so great a variety of authors, and
collecting from all of them what he thought most excellent,
out of the confusion or rather mixture of their styles he
formed his own, which partaking of each was yet none of
them, but a compound of them all:—like the Corinthian metal
which had in it gold and brass and silver, and yet was a
species in itself.

There may be a suggestion of the curious mosaic-worker in his procedure, something of artifice, or at least of conscious art; and indeed his treatises are not free from a rhetorical and sometimes declamatory strain.[88] That in so far is what Courier means when he says that Plutarch writes in the style of a _sophistes_; but it was inseparable from his composite culture and academic training, and it does not interfere with his sincerity and directness.

[88] Even in the narrative passages one is conscious that the descriptions have been worked up. Take, _e.g._ the following passage from the _Life of Marius_:—

Ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλοὺς τῶν Ἀμβρώνων οἰ Ῥωμαῖοι διαφθείραντες ἀνεχώρησαν ὀπίσω καὶ σκότος ἐπέσχεν, οὐχ ὥσπερ εὐτυχήματι τοσούτῳ τὸν στρατὸν ἐδέξαντο παιᾶνες ἐπινίκιοι καὶ πότοι κατὰ σκηνὰς καὶ φιλοφροσύναι περὶ δεῖπνα, καὶ, τὸ πάντων ἥδιστον ἀνδράσιν εὐτυχῶς μεμαχημένοις, ὕπνος ἤπιος, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνην μάλιστα τὴν νύκτα φοβερὰν καὶ ταραχώδη διήγαγον. Ἦν μὲν γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἀχαράκωτον τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ ἀτείχιστον, ἀπελείποντο δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων ἔτι πολλαὶ μυριάδες ἀήττητοι καὶ σνμμεμιγμένων τούτοις, ὅσοι διαπεφεύγεσαν, τῶν Ἀμβρώνων ὀδυρμὸς ἦν διὰ νυκτὸς, οὐ κλαυθμοῖς ούδὲ στεναγμοῖς ἀνθρώπων ἐοικῶς, ἀλλὰ θηρομιγής τις ὠρυγὴ καὶ βρύχημα μεμιγμένον ἀπειλαῖς καὶ θρήνοις ἀναπεμπόμενον ἐκ πλήθους τοσούτου τά τε πέριξ ὄρη καὶ τὰ κοῖλα τοῦ ποταμοῦ περιεφώνει. Καὶ κατεῖχε φρικώδης ἦχος τὸ πεδίον.

(XX. Döhner’s Edition.)

Or take this from the _Life of Sulla_:—

Τὴν δὲ κραυγὴν καὶ ἀλαλαγμὸν οὐκ ἔστεγεν ὁ ἀὴρ ἐθνῶν τοσούτων ἅμα καθισταμένων εἰς τάξιν. Ἤν δὲ ἅμα καὶ τὸ κομπῶδες καὶ σοβαρὸν αὐτῶν τῆς πολυτελείας οὐκ ἀργὸν οὐδὲ ἄχρηστον εἰς ἔκπληξιν, ἀλλ’ αἵ τε μαρμαρυγαὶ τῶν ὅπλων ἠσκημένων χρνσῷ τε καὶ ἀργύρῳ διαπρεπῶς αἵ τε βαφαὶ τῶν Μηδικῶν καὶ Σκυθικῶν χιτώνων ἀναμεμιγμέναι χαλκῷ καὶ σιδήρῳ λάμποντι πυροειδῆ καὶ φοβερὰν ἐν τῷ σαλεύεσθαι καὶ διαφέρεσθαι προσέβαλλον ὄψιν, ὤστε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ὑπὸ τὸν χάρακα συστέλλειν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ τὸν Σύλλαν μηδενὶ λόγῳ τὸ θάμβος αὐτῶν ἀφελεῖν δυνάμενον βιάζεσθαί τε ἀποδιδράσκοντας οὐ βονλόμενον ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν καὶ φέρειν βαρέως ἐφυβρίζοντας ὁρῶντα κομπασμῷ καὶ γέλωτι τοὺς βαρβάρους.

(XVI. Döhner’s Edition.)

This is very different from the unstudied charm of Herodotus. Even in North’s translation, though something of the cunning has been lost in the selection and manipulation of the words, it is easy to see that the pictures are elaborate both in their general effect and their details.

Now the Romaines, after they had overcome the most parte of the Ambrons, retyring backe by reason the night had overtaken them, did not (as they were wont after they had geven such an overthrow) sing songes of victory and triumphe, nor make good chere in their tentes one with an other, and least of all sleepe: (which is the best and sweetest refreshing for men that have fought happely), but contrarily they watched all that night with great feare and trouble, bicause their campe was not trenched and fortified, and bicause they knewe also that there remained almost innumerable thowsandes of barbarous people, that had not yet fought: besides also that the Ambrons that had fled and scaped from the overthrow, did howle out all night with lowd cries, which were nothing like men’s lamentacions and sighes, but rather like wild beastes bellowing and roaringe. So that the bellowinge of such a great multitude of beastly people, mingled together with threates and waylinges, made the mountains thereabouts and the running river to rebounde againe of the sounde and ecco of their cries marvellously: by reason whereof, all the valley that lay between both, thundered to heare the horrible and fearfull trembling.

The ayer was even cut a sunder as it were with the violence of the noyse and cries of so many sundry nations, which altogether did put them selves in battell ray. The sumptuousness of their furniture moreover, was not altogether superfluous and unprofitable, but served greatly to feare the beholders. For the glistering of their harnesse, so richly trimmed and set forth with gold and silver, the cullers of their arming coates upon their curaces, after the facion of the Medes and Scythians, mingled with the bright glistering steele and shining copper, gave such a showe as they went and removed to and fro, that made a light as clere as if all had bene on a very fire, a fearfull thing to looke upon. In so much as the Romaines durst not so much as once goe out of the trenches of their campe, nor Sylla with all his perswasion coulde take away this great conceived feare from them: wherefore, (and bicause also he would not compell them to goe forth in this feare) he was driven not to stirre, but close to abide, (though it grieved him greatly) to see the barbarous people so proudly and villanously laugh him and his men to scorne.

His philosophy makes a similar impression. He is an eclectic or syncretist, and has learned from many of the mighty teachers of bygone times. Plato is his chief authority, but Plato’s doctrines are consciously modified in an Aristotelian sense, while nevertheless those aspects of them are made prominent which were afterwards elaborated by Neo-Platonism strictly so-called. But Plutarch, though he has the good word of Neo-Platonic thinkers, is not himself to be reckoned of their company. He is comparatively untouched by their mysticism, borrowed freely from the Theosophy of the East, and he stands in closer lineal relation to the antique Greek spirit than some, like Philo, who precede him in time. He was so indifferent to the Semitic habit of mind that, despite his almost omnivorous curiosity, he never thought it worth while to instruct himself in the exact nature of Judaism or its difference from the Syrian cult, far less to spend on Christianity so much as a passing glance. He approaches Neo-Platonism most nearly in certain religious imaginings which, as he himself recognised, have affinity with beliefs which prevailed in Persia and Egypt; but even so, he hardly ceases to be national, for these were the two countries with which in days of yore Greece had the most important historic connections. And moreover, his interest in such surmises is not, in the first place, a speculative one, but springs from the hope of his finding some explanation of and comfort for the trials and difficulties of actual life. For on the whole he differs from Plato chiefly in his subordination of theory to practice. This compels him to accept loans from the very schools that he most criticises, the Stoics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans themselves. It is his preoccupation with conduct, rather than eclectic debility, that makes him averse to any one-sided scheme, and inclined to supplement it with manifold additions. But as in his style, so in his thought, he blends the heterogeneous elements to his own purpose, and fixes on them the stamp of his own mind. It is not without reason that his various treatises are included under the common title of _Moralia_. He may dilate on the worship of _Isis and Osiris_, or _The Face appearing within the Roundle of the Moone_; he may discuss _Whether creatures be more wise, they of the land or those of the water_; _What signifieth this word Ei engraven over the Dore of Appolloes Temple in the City of Delphi_, and various other recondite matters; but the prevailing impression is ethical, and he is at his best when he is discoursing expressly on some moral theme, on _Unseemly and Naughty Bashfulnesse_, or _Brotherly Love_, or _Tranquillitie and Contentment of Mind_, or the _Pluralitie of Friends_, or the question _Whether this common Mot be well said ‘Live Hidden.’_ There is the background of serious study and philosophic knowledge, but against it is detached the figure of the sagacious and practical teacher, who wishes to make his readers better men and better women, but never forgets his urbanity and culture in his admonitions, and drives them home with pointed anecdote and apt quotation. And the substance of his teaching, though so sane and experimental that it is sometimes described as obvious and trite, has a generous, ideal, and even chivalrous strain, when he touches on such subjects as love, or devotion, or the claims of virtue; and his sympathy goes out spontaneously to noble words or deeds or minds.

It is an easy step from the famous _Moralia_ to the still more famous _Parallel Lives_. “All history,” says Dryden, in reference to the latter, “is only the precepts of moral philosophy reduced into examples.” This, at least, is no bad description of Plutarch’s point of view; and his methods do not greatly differ in the series of essays and in the series of biographies. In the essays he did not let himself be unduly hampered by the etiquette of the Moral Treatise, but expatiated at will among Collections and Recollections, and embroidered his abstract argument with the stories that he delights to tell. As historian, on the other hand, he is not tied down to historical narration and exposition, but indulges his moralising bent to the full. He is on the lookout for edification, and is seldom at a loss for a peg to hang a lecture on. And these discourses of his, though the material is sometimes the sober drab of the decent _bourgeois_, are always fine in texture, and relieved by the quaintness of the cut and the ingenuity of the garnishing: nor are they the less interesting that they do not belong to the regulation historical outfit. Such improving digressions, indeed, are among Plutarch’s charms. “I am always pleased,” says Dryden, “when I see him and his imitator Montaigne when they strike a little out of the common road; for we are sure to be the better for their wandering. The best quarry does not always lie on the open field, and who would not be content to follow a good huntsman over hedges and ditches, when he knows the game will reward his pains.”[89]

[89] There are so many good things, despite all the inevitable mistakes, in Dryden’s _Life of Plutarch_, that one half regrets that Professor Ker’s plan did not allow him to include at least part of it in his admirable selection. Thus, in excuse for omitting the catalogue of Plutarch’s lost works, which had been given in full in the Paris edition: “But it is a small comfort to the merchant to pursue his bill of freight when he is certain his ship is cast away; moved by the like reason, I have omitted that ungrateful task.”

Proceeding in this way it is not to be expected that Plutarch should compose his _Lives_ with much care for dexterous design. Just as in his philosophy he has no rigidly consequent system of doctrine, so in his biographies he has no orderly or well-digested plan. The excellences that arise from a definite and vigorous conception of the whole are not those at which he aims. He would proceed very much at haphazard, were it not for the chronological clue; which, for the rest, he is very willing to abandon if a tempting by-path presents itself, or if he thinks of something for which he must retrace his steps. Yet, no more than in his metaphysics is he without an instinctive method of his own. The house is finished, and with all its irregularities it is good to dwell in; the journey is ended, and there has been no monotony on the devious track. There is this advantage indeed in his procedure over that of more systematic biographers, that it offers hospitality to all the suggestions that crowd for admission. None is rejected because it is out of place and insignificant. Gossip and allotria of every kind that do not make out their claims at first sight, and that the more ambitious historian would exclude as trivial, find an entry if they can show a far-off connection with the subject. And, lo and behold, they often turn out to be the most instructive of all.

But Plutarch welcomes them without scrutinising them very austerely. He submits their credentials to no stringent test. He is no severe critic of their authenticity. He takes them where he finds them, just as he picks up philosophic ideas from all quarters, even from the detested Epicureans, without condemning them on account of their suspicious source: it is enough for him if they adapt themselves to his use. Nor does he educe from them all that they involve. He does not even confront them with each other, to examine whether opposite hints about his heroes may not lead to fuller and subtler conceptions of them. This is the point of the charge brought against him by St. Évremond, that he might have carried his analysis further and penetrated more deeply into human nature. St. Évremond notes how different a man is from himself, the same person being just and unjust, merciful and cruel; “which qualities,” proceeds the critic, “seeming to belie each other in him, [Plutarch] attributes these inconsistencies to foreign causes. He could never ... reconcile contrarieties in the same subject.” He never tried to do so. He collects a number of vivid traits, which, like a number of minute lines, set forth the likeness to his own mind, but he is ordinarily as far from interrogating and combining his impressions as he is from subjecting them to any punctilious test. He exhibits characters in the particular aspects and manifestations which history or hearsay has presented, and is content with the general sense of verisimilitude that these successive indications, credited or accredited, have left behind. But he stops there, and does not study his manifold data to construct from them a consistent complex individuality in its oneness and difference. And if this is true of him as biographer, it is still truer of him as historian. He touches on all sorts of historical subjects—war, policy, administration, government; and he has abundance of acute and just remarks on them all. But it is not in these that his chief interest lies, and it is not over them that he holds his torch. This does not mean that he fails to perceive the main drift of things or to appreciate the importance of statecraft. Mr. Wyndham, defending him against those who have “denied him any political insight,” very justly shows that, despite “the paucity of his political pronouncements,” he has a “political bent.” His choice of heroes, in the final arrangement to which they lent themselves, proves that he has an eye for the general course of Greek and Roman history, for the impotence into which the city state is sunk by rivalry with neighbours in the one case, for its transmutation into an Empire on the other: “The tragedy of Athens, the drama of Rome,” says Mr. Wyndham, “these are the historic poles of the _Parallel Lives_.” And Plutarch has a political ideal: the “need of authority and the obligation of the few to maintain it—by a ‘natural grace’ springing on the one hand from courage combined with forbearance, and leading, on the other, to harmony between the rulers and the ruled—is the text, which, given out in the _Lycurgus_, is illustrated throughout the _Parallel Lives_.” So much indeed we had a right to expect from the thoughtful patriot and experienced magistrate of Chaeronea. The salient outlines of the story of Greece and Rome could hardly remain hidden from a clear-sighted man with Plutarch’s knowledge of the past: the relations of governor and governed had not only engaged him practically, but had suggested to him one of his most pithy essays, _Praecepta gerendae Reipublicae_, a title which Philemon Holland paraphrases in stricter accordance with the contents, _Instructions for them that manage Affaires of State_. But this does not carry us very far. Shakespeare in his English Histories shows at least as much political discernment and political instinct. He brings out the general lesson of the wars of Lancaster and York, and in _Henry V._ gives his conception of the ideal ruler. But no one would say that this series shows a conspicuous genius for political research or political history. The same thing is true, and in a greater degree, of Plutarch. He is public-spirited, but he is not a publicist. He has not much concern or understanding for particular measures and movements and problems, however critical they may be. It is impossible to challenge the justice of Archbishop Trench’s verdict, either in its general scope or in its particular instances, when he says:

One who already knows the times of Marius and Sulla will
obtain a vast amount of instruction from his several _Lives_
of these, will clothe with flesh and blood what would else,
in some parts, have been the mere skeleton of a story; but
I am bold to say no one would understand those times from
him. The suppression of the Catilinarian Conspiracy was the
most notable event in the life of Cicero; but one rises
from Plutarch’s _Life_ with only the faintest impression of
what that conspiracy, a sort of anticipation of the French
Commune, and having objects social rather than political,
meant. Or take his _Lives_ of the Gracchi. Admirable in
many respects as these are, greatly as we are debtors to
him here for important facts, whereof otherwise we should
have been totally ignorant, few, I think, would affirm that
he at all plants them in a position for understanding that
vast revolution effected, with the still vaster revolution
attempted by them, and for ever connected with their names.

In Plutarch the historian, as well as the biographer, is subordinate to the ethical teacher who wishes to enforce lessons that may be useful to men in the management of their lives. He gathers his material for its “fine moral effects,” not for “purposes of research.”[90]

[90] De Quincey says: “Nor do I believe Wordsworth would much have lamented on his own account if all books had perished, except the entire body of English poetry and Plutarch’s Lives.... I do not mean to insinuate that Wordsworth was at all in the dark about the inaccuracy or want of authentic weight attaching to Plutarch as historian, but his business with Plutarch was not for _purposes of research_; he was satisfied with his _fine moral effects_.” So too one of Plutarch’s latest editors, Mr. Holden, says in a similar sense: “Plutarch has no idea of historic criticism.... He thought far less of finding out and relating what actually occurred than of edifying his readers and promoting virtue.”

Plutarch, then, had already composed many disquisitions to commend his humane and righteous ideas, and it was partly in the same didactic spirit that he seems to have written his _Parallel Lives_. At the beginning of the _Life of Pericles_ he says:

Vertue is of this power, that she allureth a mans minde
presently to use her, and maketh him very desirous in his
harte to followe her: and doth not frame his manners that
beholdeth her by any imitation but by the only understanding
and knowledge of vertuous deedes, which sodainely bringeth
unto him a resolute desire to doe the like. _And this is the
reason why methought I should continew still to write on the
lives of noble men._

And similar statements occur again and again. They clearly show the aim that he consciously had in view. The new generation was to be admonished and renovated by the examples of the leading spirits who had flourished in former times. And since he was addressing the whole civilised world, he took his examples both from Roman and from Grecian History, and arranged his persons in pairs, each pair supplying the matter for one book. Thus he couples Theseus and Romulus, Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Alexander and Caesar, Dion and Brutus, Demetrius and Antony. Such parallelism is a little far-fetched, and though some of the detailed comparisons with which it is justified, are not from Plutarch’s hand, and belong to a later time, it of itself betrays a certain fondness for symmetry and antithesis, a leaning towards artifice and rhetoric which, as we have seen, the author owed to his environment. He wishes in an eloquent way to inculcate his lessons, and is perhaps, for the same reason, somewhat prone to exaggerate the greatness of the past, and show it in an idealised light. But this is by no means the pose of the histrionic revivalist. It corresponds to an authentic sentiment in his own nature, which loved to linger amid the glooms and glories of tradition, and pay vows at the shrine of the Great Departed. “The cradle of war and statecraft,” says Mr. Wyndham, “was become a memory dear to him, and ever evolved by his personal contact with the triumphs of Rome. From this contrast flowed his inspiration for the _Parallel Lives_—his desire as a man to draw the noble Grecians, long since dead, a little nearer to the noon-day of the living; his delight as an artist in setting the noble Romans, whose names were in every mouth, a little further into the twilight of more ancient Romance.”

But this transfiguration of the recent and resurrection of the remoter past, in which Mr. Wyndham rightly sees something “romantic,” does not lay Plutarch open to the charge of vagueness or unreality. He was saved from such vices by his interest in human nature and suggestive _ana_ and picturesque incidents on the one hand, and by his deference for political history and civil society on the other.

He loved marked individualities: no two of his heroes are alike, and each, though in a varying degree, has an unmistakable physiognomy of his own. There is no sameness in his gallery of biographies, and even the legends of demigods yield figures of firm outline that resist the touch. This is largely due to his joy in details, and the imperious demand his imagination makes for them. In his _Life of Alexander_ he uses words which very truly describe his own method, words which Boswell[91] was afterwards to quote in justification of his own similar procedure.

The noblest deedes doe not alwayes shew men’s vertues and
vices, but often times a light occasion, a word, or some
sporte, makes men’s natural dispositions and manners appear
more plaine, then the famous battells wonne wherein are
slaine tenne thousande men, or the great armies, or cities
wonne by siege or assault. For like as painters or drawers
of pictures, which make no accompt of other parts of the
bodie, do take the resemblaunces of the face and favor of
the countenance, in the which consisteth the judgement of
their maners and disposition; even so they must give us
leave to seeke out the signes and tokens of the minde only,
and thereby shewe the life of either of them, referring you
unto others to wryte the warres, battells and other great
thinges they did.[92]

[91] _Johnson’s Life_, ed. B. Hill, i. 31.

[92] _Life of Alexander._

So he likes to give the familiar traits and emphasise the suggestive nothings that best discover character. But his purpose is almost always to discover character, and, so far as his principal persons are concerned, to discover great character. Though so assiduous in sharking up their mannerisms, foibles, and oddities, their tricks of gait or speech or costume, he is not like the Man with the Muck Rake, and is not piling together the rubbish of tittle-tattle just because he has a soul for nothing higher. Still less does he take the valet’s view of the hero, and hold that he is no hero at all because he can be seen in undress or in relations that show his common human nature. Reverence for greatness is the point from which he starts, reverence for greatness is the star that guides his course, and his reverence is so entire, that on the one hand he welcomes all that will help him to restore the great one in his speech and habit as he lived, and on the other, he assumes that the greatness must pervade the whole life, and that flashes of glory will be refracted from the daily talk and walk. Like Carlyle, though in a more _naïf_ and simple way, he is a hero-worshipper; like Carlyle he believes that the hero will not lose but gain by the record of his minutest traits, and that these will only throw new light on his essential heroism. In the object he proposed to himself he has succeeded well. “Plutarch,” says Rousseau, almost reproducing the biographer’s own words, “has inimitable dexterity in painting great men in little things, and he is so happy in his selection, that often a phrase, a simile, a gesture suffices him to set forth a hero. That is the true art of portraiture. The physiognomy does not display itself in the main lines, nor the characters in great actions; it is in trifles that the temperament discloses itself.” An interesting testimony; for Rousseau, when he sets up as character-painter, belongs to a very different school.

It is not otherwise with his narratives of actions or his descriptions of scenes, if action or scene really interest him; and there is little of intrinsic value, comic or tragic, vivacious or stately, familiar or weird, that does not interest him. Under his quick successive strokes, some of them so light that at first they evade notice, some of them so simple that at first they seem commonplace, the situation becomes visible and luminous. He knows how to choose the accessories and what to do with them. When our attention is awakened, we ask ourselves how he has produced the effect by means apparently so insignificant; and we cannot answer. Here he may have selected a hint from his authorities, there he may derive another from the mental vision he himself has evoked, but in either case the result is equally wonderful. Whether from his tact in reporting or his energy in imagining, he contrives to make us view the occurrence as a fact, and a fact that is like itself and like nothing else.

But again Plutarch was saved from wanton and empty phantasms by his political bias. He was not a politician or a statesman or an historian of politics or institutions, but he was a citizen with a citizen’s respect for the State. “For himself,” to quote Mr. Wyndham once more, “he was painting individual character, and he sought it among men bearing a personal stamp. But he never sought it in a private person, or a comedian, nor even in a poet or a master of the Fine Arts.” He confines himself to public men, as we should call them, and never fails to recollect that they played their part on the public stage. And this not only gave a robustness of touch and breadth of stroke to his delineations; the connection with well-known and certified events preserved him from the worst licenses to which the romantic and rhetorical temper is liable. Courier, indeed, says of him that he was “capable of making Pompey win the battle of Pharsalia, if it would have rounded his sentence ever so little.” But though he may be credulous of details and manipulate his copy, and with a light heart make one statement at one time and a different one at another, the sort of liberty Courier attributes to him is precisely the one he does not take. Facts are stubborn things, and the great outstanding facts he is careful to observe: they bring a good deal else in their train.

2. AMYOT[93]

A book like the _Parallel Lives_ was bound to achieve a great popularity at the Renaissance. That it was full of instruction and served for warning and example commended it to a generation that was but too inclined to prize the didactic in literature. Its long list of worthies included not a few of the names that were being held up as the greatest in human history, and these celebrities were exhibited not aloft on their official pedestals, but, however impressive and imposing the _mise-en-scène_ might be, as men among men in the private and personal passages of their lives. And yet they were not private persons but historical magnates, the founders or leaders of world-renowned states: and as such they were particularly congenial to an age in which many of the best minds—More and Buchanan, L’Hôpital and La Boëtie, Brand and Hutten—were awakening to the antique idea of civic and political manhood, and finding few unalloyed examples of it in the feudalised West. It was not enough that Plutarch was made more accessible in the Latin form. He deserved a vernacular dress, and after various tentative experiments this was first satisfactorily, in truth, admirably, supplied by Bishop Amyot in France.

[93] See De Blignières’ _Essai sur Amyot_, and Amyot’s translations _passim_, with the prefatory epistles.