Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 611 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlutarch. (n.d.). Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/selected-essays-of-plutarch-vol-ii
- MLAPlutarch. Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/selected-essays-of-plutarch-vol-ii.
- ChicagoPlutarch. Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/selected-essays-of-plutarch-vol-ii.
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
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.
_Instances of Delay in Divine Punishment_ from its simpler psychology and demonology, and perhaps from some crudity in style, suggests a date earlier than that of some of the others. Dr. Max Adler, in his lucid and learned dissertation, has established the close connexion between the _Face in the Moon_ and the _Cessation of the Oracles_, and thinks the former to have been the earlier, and to have been utilized for the latter piece.[5] Montaigne, who knew his Plutarch up and down, has said that he is one of the authors whom he likes to take after the manner of the Danaids,[6] which may be described as a method of ‘dip and waste’. You may dip anywhere, as you may into the pages of _The Doctor_, and be sure of finding something which you would wish to remember; but you may also find, on re-reading the same passage, that you have not remembered it at all, so that the waste is continual. The freshness need not be impaired by a little more system; indeed it would be enhanced, at least for the dialogues, for this reason, that they all represent real conversations between real persons, and it is worth our while to put together our impressions about each. The fullest materials for such an attempt will be found in the _Symposiacs_ or dialogues over wine.[7] The _Symposiacs_ are arranged in nine books, each of which contains ten conversations of unequal length, but all short, except the last which has fifteen. On the other hand nine, viz. four of the fourth book and five of the last, are missing, only the titles being preserved. All the books are dedicated to Sossius Senecio, who was consul first in A.D. 99; and as there is no reference to the dignity, we may perhaps infer that all were written before that year.[8] There is not a single reference in all the nine books to any public or personal event which might help us to a date.…