Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II. · Plutarch
THE SPEAKERS
AMMONIUS, the Platonist philosopher, Plutarch’s teacher. LAMPRIAS, Plutarch’s brother. PLUTARCH. THEON, a literary friend. EUSTROPHUS, an Athenian. NICANDER, a priest of the temple. Chap. 1. Dedication to Serapion at Athens. I am sending you, as an instalment, some of my Pythian Dialogues. What is the problem put before us by Apollo under the form of the letter E? I had always avoided the question, but here is a report of a conversation with some visitors, of whom Ammonius was one, in, or soon after, the year A. D. 66, when Nero came to Greece. 2. AMMONIUS was arguing that Apollo propounds subjects for philosophical inquiry in the ordinances and emblems of his temple, not least in this letter E. 3. LAMPRIAS quoted the traditional account, that the Wise Men, who were properly five, not seven, met here, and, after discussion, set up the letter E, as a numeral, for a protest against the intrusion of a sixth and seventh into their company. The ancient wooden E is still called that of the Wise Men. 4. AMMONIUS smiled, knowing Lamprias to be capable of improvising a ‘traditional view’. One of the company mentioned a Chaldaean visitor, who had lately talked much nonsense about the number seven. The officials of the temple know no view except that the letter is significant as a word (‘if’ or ‘whether’).
5. NICANDER confirmed this. ‘If’ is used with us in the formula of questions put to the god, or, as ‘if only’, in prayers. 6. THEON puts in a plea for ‘Dialectic’, i.e. Logic. ‘If’ is the conjunction which holds together the conjunctive proposition or syllogism, the special prerogative of _human_ intellect. Hercules, in his early days, mocked at Logic and the E, and then removed the tripod by force. 7. EUSTROPHUS: ‘Bravo, Theon, a Hercules, all but the lion’s skin!’ He appeals to the devotees of Mathematics to say a word for the arithmetical virtues of the number five (a thrust at Plutarch himself, who had yet to learn Academic moderation in his zeal for Mathematics). 8-16. PLUTARCH _loq._: 8. Yes, five has virtues: 5 = 2 + 3, the first even added to the first odd. It is called ‘Marriage’. After multiplication it reproduces itself, and so symbolizes the ‘Conflagration’ and ‘Renovation’ of Heraclitus (and the Stoics), 9. Which relate to the legends of Apollo and also of Dionysus. 10. Five, when multiplied, gives alternately five itself and the perfect ten. It is also essential in harmonies. 11. Plato holds that, _if_ there are more worlds than one, there _may_ be five, and no more. Aristotle that there is one world composed of five elements, the five regular solids.
12. The five senses are related to the five elements and the five solids. 13. We must not forget Homer, and his five-fold division of the universe. But, going back: Four dimensions (point, line, plane, solid) are all very well. But animate being requires a fifth. 14. The true derivation is not 2 + 3 = 5 but 1 + 4 i.e., unity (which is itself really a square) _plus_ the first square. 15. There are five modes of being (see the _Sophist_, and _Philebus_ of Plato). Some early inquirer saw this, and set up _two_ E’s. 16. I ask the initiated whether five has not a special virtue in their mysteries. (‘Yes,’ from NICANDER, ‘but it is a secret.’) Well I must wait till I become a priest myself. 17. AMMONIUS, though in sympathy with Mathematics, deprecates too much exactness. There is much to be said for the number seven. But the ‘E’ is really something different from all the suggestions. The God greets his visitors with ‘Know Thyself.’ They answer, THOU ART. 18. _We_ ‘are’ not at all, but always change from state to state, and so (says Heraclitus) does all Nature. 19. In true being is no past, present, or future; our common speech confesses to our not being. 20. But God IS, and is rightly addressed as ‘Thou Art’ or ‘Thou Art One’. 21. The identification of Apollo with the sun is a beautiful attempt to grasp the spiritual through the sensible. Not so the stories of his change into fire, and the like, which are better ascribed to some daemon than to the God. ‘Know Thyself’ calls us back from these lofty speculations: ‘Man, know thy nature and its limitations!’
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