Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 611 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlutarch. (n.d.). Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/selected-essays-of-plutarch-vol-ii
- MLAPlutarch. "Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/selected-essays-of-plutarch-vol-ii.
- ChicagoPlutarch. Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/selected-essays-of-plutarch-vol-ii.
What it is about
The second volume of a selection from Plutarch's 'Moralia': the non-biographical part of his work, where his moral essays and his conversations are.
Context and history
The catalogue also holds the complete 'Moralia', and this is a selection made by an editor for a general readership; one should always say which treatise a passage comes from, not merely the volume. Plutarch was a priest at Delphi and a Platonist, and he writes like a cultivated man conversing with the reader: he gives advice on friendship and on how to tell a flatterer from a friend, discusses anger and tranquillity of mind, speaks of the education of children and of whether animals reason. Montaigne read him all his life and owes much of the tone of his 'Essays' to him; those too are in the corpus.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
‘But the Author in whom he delighted most was Plutarch, of whose works he was lucky enough to possess the worthier half; if the other had perished Plutarch would not have been a popular writer, but he would have held a higher place in the estimation of the judicious.’—SOUTHEY, _The Doctor_, chapter vi, p. 1. OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS PREFACE This volume covers about one-eighth part of the miscellaneous works of Plutarch known as the _Moralia_, much the same quantity as is contained in Professor Tucker’s volume of this series which appeared in 1913. All the pieces now offered are in the form of dialogue, except the short treatise _On Superstition_, which seemed to justify its inclusion by a certain affinity of thought. The text followed is that of Wyttenbach, issued by the Clarendon Press in 1795-1800, or rather a text compounded of the Greek text there printed, his own critical notes and revision of the old Latin version, his commentary, where one exists, and his posthumous Index of Greek words used by Plutarch (1830). A few corrections by C. F. Hermann, Emperius, Madvig, and other scholars, have been introduced, for many of which I am indebted, in the first place, as I have acknowledged more particularly, to M. G. N. Bernardakis, the accomplished editor of the _Moralia_ in the Teubner series (1888-96). A very few fresh corrections, mostly on obvious points, have been admitted. The notes at the foot of the page are intended to show all deviations from Wyttenbach’s text, so constituted, or to give references to the authors of passa