Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3 Essays and Miscellanies
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Attributed (authorship debated)
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~280,000 words · 1,348 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlutarch. (n.d.). Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3 Essays and Miscellanies. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/complete-works-of-plutarch-volume-3-essays-and-miscellanies
- MLAPlutarch. Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3 Essays and Miscellanies. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/complete-works-of-plutarch-volume-3-essays-and-miscellanies.
- ChicagoPlutarch. Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3 Essays and Miscellanies. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/complete-works-of-plutarch-volume-3-essays-and-miscellanies.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Plutarch's essays: not the Lives but what is known as the Moralia — dozens of short pieces on anger, talkativeness, superstition, the education of children, the oracle at Delphi, and the face one sees in the moon.
Context and history
The two should not be confused: the catalogue holds the Parallel Lives and it holds this, the less read half of Plutarch though the more varied. Here one sees that he was a priest at Delphi and that everything interested him; many of the passages quoted from him on friendship and calm come from here. Some of the attributed treatises are of disputed authenticity, as is common in so large a collection.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
fitting. I am sure, Heraclides went away disgusted with us, for handling Epicurus and Aletrodorus more roughly than they deserved. Yet you may remember, replied Theon, how you told them that Colotes himself, compared with the rhetoric of those two gentlemen, would appear the complaisantest man alive; for when they have raked together the lewdest terms of ignominy the tongue of man ever used, as buffooneries, trollings, arrogancies, whorings, assassinations, whining counterfeits, black-guards, and blockheads, they faintly throw them in the faces of Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras, Protagoras, Theophrastus, Heraclides, Hipparchus, and which not, even of the best and most celebrated authorities. So that, should they pass for very knowing men upon all other accounts, yet their very calumnies and reviling language would bespeak them at the greatest distance from philosophy imaginable. For emulation can never enter that godlike consort, nor such fretfulness as wants resolution to conceal its own resentments. Aristodemus then subjoined: Heraclides, you know, is a great philologist; and that may be the reason why he made Epicurus those amends for the poetic din (so, that party style poetry) and for the fooleries of Homer; or else, it may be, it was because Metrodorus had libelled that poet in so many books. But let us let these gentlemen pass at present, Zeuxippus, and rather return to what was charged upon the philosophers in the beginning of our discourse, that it is impossible to live according to their tenets. And I see not why we two may not despatch this affair betwixt us, with the good assistance of Theon; for I find this gentleman (meaning me) is already tired. Then Theon said to him, Our fellows have that garland from us won; therefore, if you please, Let's fix another goal, and at that run.…