Between Heathenism and Christianity · Charles William Super
PLUTARCH AND THE GREECE OF HIS AGE.
“Plutarch, whose fame as a biographer has, I think, unduly eclipsed his reputation as a moralist, may be justly regarded as the leader of this movement, and his moral writings may be profitably compared with those of Seneca, the most ample exponent of the sterner school. Seneca is not unfrequently self-conscious, theatrical, and over-strained. His precepts have something of the affected ring of a popular preacher. The imperfect fusion of his short sentences gives his style a disjointed and, so to speak, granulated character, which the emperor Caligula happily expressed when he compared it to sand without cement; yet he often rises to a majesty of eloquence, a grandeur both of thought and expression, that few moralists have ever rivaled. Plutarch, though far less sublime, is more sustained, equable and uniformly pleasing. The Montaigne of antiquity, his genius coruscates playfully and gracefully around his subject; he delights in illustrations which are often singularly vivid and original, but which by their excessive multiplication appear sometimes rather the texture than the ornament of his discourse. A gentle, tender spirit, and a judgment equally free from paradox, exaggeration, and excessive subtilty, are characteristics of all he wrote. Plutarch excels most in collecting motives of consolation; Seneca in forming characters that need no consolation.
There is something of the woman in Plutarch; Seneca is all man.[4] The writings of the first resemble the strains of the flute, to which the ancients attributed the power of calming the possessions and chasing away the clouds of sorrow, and drawing men by gentle suasion into the paths of virtue; the writings of the other are like the trumpet blast which kindles the soul with heroic courage. The first is more fitted to console a mother sorrowing over her dead child; the second to nerve a brave man, without flinching and without illusion, to grapple with an inevitable fate. The elaborate letters which Seneca has left us on distinctive tenets of the Stoical school, such as the equality of the vices, or the evil of the affections, have now little more than an historic interest; but the general tone of his writings gives them a permanent importance, for they reflect and foster a certain type of excellence which, since the extinction of Stoicism, has had no adequate expression in literature. The prevailing moral tone of Plutarch, on the other hand, being formed mainly on the prominence of the amiable virtues has been eclipsed or transcended by the Christian writers, but his definite contribution to philosophy and morals are more important than those of Seneca. He has left us one of the best works on Superstition, and one of the most ingenious on Providence, we possess. He was probably the first writer who advocated very strongly humanity to animals on the broad ground of universal benevolence, as distinguished from the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration, as he was also remarkable, beyond all his contemporaries for his high sense of female excellence, and of the sanctity of female love.”
Seneca, Plutarch, and the Apostle Paul were in a sense contemporaries. All three did what they could to make the world better in their time and after them. All three were preachers of righteousness, each in his way. All three wrote much that has engaged the attention of the world, and stimulated its thought. But how great the contrast between the projects of these men, especially the two last! Plutarch was wholly lacking in Paul’s devotion to an idea. He would have scouted the suggestion that a man should give up friends, social position, country, kindred, everything, to go forth to preach a new doctrine. How widely apart, how almost diametrically opposite the methods of two men who are in a sense seeking the same end! The thoughts of the philosopher, his intellectual vision, was turned toward the setting sun. At most he could only hope, as we now see, to prolong the dim twilight that still hovered over the earth. The world had well-nigh lost faith in the power of human reason to regenerate mankind. The spiritual eyes of the Christian were on the rising sun. Though he saw that it was as yet shining but dimly, he had no doubt that in time it would rise to noonday splendor. The pillar of fire that led and lighted the way for the saint; the beatific vision that always stood before his enraptured gaze; the world-embracing panorama that kept growing larger and larger as the little Christian colonies were planted one after another in Asia Minor, in Greece, in Rome, had no existence for the philosopher. He has, it is true, a belief in an overruling Providence, but it lacks clearness, because weakened by a polytheistic creed, or at least by the remnants of such a creed. To it he still tenaciously clings, though it may be half unconsciously. He too had a belief in an existence after death; but it was not of the sort that made him feel that all the tribulations of this world which were but for a moment were not to be compared with the glory that should follow.
If we would personify Christianity and Philosophy as they met each other at the close of the first century of our era, we may designate the one as the young man, who, though poor in this world’s goods, is strong in hope, in faith, in himself and in his cause. His superb physique, his capital digestion, make him ready for any enterprise, any sacrifice that shall promise success. Any field in which he may display his splendid energies is welcome to him, for he lives not in the past, but in the future. The other is the old man who has, in the main, lived a useful and honorable life, who has performed some noble deeds, and whose chief anxiety is to give the rising generation the benefit of the wisdom that has come to him in a life of study and observation. But, as is usually the case with the aged, his advice has become commonplace and the rising generation passes him by almost unheeded. Few have now any confidence in his teachings, while many of his former disciples have deserted him. It is his sad fate, to see himself jostled at first and finally thrust aside by the passing stream of humanity. Footnote 3: Students of German literature are reminded of a certain moral and intellectual similarity between Plutarch and Gellert. The latter, though a man of much less natural ability, had all of Plutarch’s kindliness, moral and religious earnestness, sympathy for those in distress, and the same popularity among all classes from prince to peasant. Both were equally religious, though one was a heathen and the other a Christian; both preserved the same serenity of mind and cheerfulness of heart in a time of national degradation and immorality.
Footnote 4: “When Plutarch, after the death of his daughter; was writing a letter of consolation to his wife, we find him turning away from all the commonplaces of the stoics as the recollection of one simple trait of his little child rushed upon his mind:—‘She desired her nurse to press even her dolls to her breast. She was so loving that she wished everything that gave her pleasure to share in the best she had.’” The statement that Seneca is all man will be questioned by those who know that two of his Letters of Condolence are addressed to women. These are almost the only writings in Roman literature so addressed. * * * * * The principal works used in the study of Plutarch here placed before the reader are the following: _Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia. Edidit Daniel Wyttenbach. 8 voll. Oxonii, 1795-1821._ _R. Volkmann. Leben und Schriften des Plutarch von Chaeronea. Berlin, 1869._ _O. Grèard. De la Morale de Plutarque. Cinquiéme edition. Paris, 1892._ _Plutarch’s Werke übersetzt von Klaiber, Bähr, u. A. Stuttgart, 1837-57._ _Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia. Recognovit Gregorius N. Bernardakis. Lipsiae, 1888-96. 7 voll._ The last named contains a revised text only; from it my translation of the De Sera was made. The German translation of Bähr, the well-known Heidelberg professor, in the collection above cited, follows the original very closely and has been of much service to me by its interpretation of obscure passages.
A complete catalogue of Plutarch’s Moralia is given in the appendix. The list is borrowed from the edition of Bernardakis and the question of authenticity is not taken into account. NOTE:—To translate Plutarch is a very different task from that of translating Seneca. The style of the latter is terse and epigrammatic; clauses and sentences often follow each other without connectives, and are in the main short. That of the former is the reverse. Most of his sentences are long, many of them very long. These, as well as clauses and words, are often strung together with the participles καὶ and γὰρ, or other connectives, until the reader sometimes wonders whether they will ever end. Seneca is full of pithy sayings well suited for quotation; in Plutarch they are rare. The style of both writers is highly rhetorical, but, if we except the evident striving after effect, they have little else in common. As in the case of Seneca, it has been my aim to preserve for the English reader the peculiarities of the Greek, so far as possible. There is much to be said in favor of making a translation, above everything else, readable; but in the effort to do so, the translator is constantly exposed to the danger of displacing the style of the original with his own. I hope I have in a measure, at least, succeeded in putting before the English reader, not only what Plutarch said in the following Tract, but also how he said it. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” CONCERNING THE DELAY OF THE DEITY IN PUNISHING THE WICKED.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.