Plutarch – Part I – Larus Thorhallsson

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. I of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by F. C. Babbitt. 1927. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_liberis_educandis*.html

THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
1: Let us consider what may be said of the education of free-born children, and what advantages they should enjoy to give them a sound character when they grow up.
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4: As a general statement, the same assertion may be made in regard to moral excellence that we are in the habit of making in regard to the arts and sciences, namely, that there must be a concurrence of three things in order to produce perfectly right action, and these are: nature, reason, and habit. By reason I mean the act of learning, and by habit constant practice. The first beginnings come from nature, advancement from learning, the practical use from continued repetition, and the culmination from all combined; but so far as any one of these is wanting, the moral excellence must, to this extent, be crippled. For nature without learning is a blind thing, and learning without nature is an imperfect thing, and practice without both is an ineffective thing. Just as in farming, first of all the soil must be good, secondly, the husbandman skilful, and thirdly, the seed sound, so, after the same manner, nature is like to the soil, the teacher to the farmer, and the verbal counsels and precepts like to the seed. I should strenuously insist that all three qualities met together and formed a perfect union in the souls of those men who are celebrated among all mankind, — Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and all who have attained an ever-living fame.
Now it is a fortunate thing and a token of divine love if ever a heavenly power has bestowed all these qualities on any one man; but if anybody imagines that those not endowed with natural gifts, who yet have the chance to learn and to apply themselves in the right way to the attaining of virtue, cannot repair the want of their nature and advance so far as in them lies, let him know that he is in great, or rather total, error. For indifference ruins a good natural endowment, but instruction amends a poor one; easy things escape the careless, but difficult things are conquered by careful application. One may understand how effective and how productive a thing is application and hard work, if he only direct his attention to many effects that are daily observed. For drops of water make hollows in rocks, steel and bronze are worn away by the touch of hands, and rims of chariot-wheels once bent by dint of labour, cannot, no matter what be done, recover their original lines. The bent staves which actors use it is impossible to straighten; indeed the unnatural shape has, through labour, come to predominate over the natural. And are these the only things which clearly show the potency of diligence? No, but myriads upon myriads. A piece of land is good by nature, but without care it grows waste, and the better it is by nature, so much the more is it spoiled by neglect if it be not worked. Another piece is forbidding and rougher than land should be, but, if it be tilled, straightway it produces noble crops. What trees if they are neglected do not grow crooked and prove unfruitful? Yet if they receive right culture, they become fruitful, and bring their fruit to maturity. What bodily strength is not impaired and finally ruined by neglect and luxury and ill condition? On the other hand, what weak physique does not show a very great improvement in strength if men exercise and train themselves? What horses if they are well broken when young do not become obedient to their riders, whereas if they are left unbroken they turn out stubborn and restive? Why wonder at other instances, seeing as we do that many of the wildest animals are made tame and used to their labours? Well did the Thessalian say, when asked who were the most pacific of the Thessalians, “Those who are just returning from war.” But why discuss the matter at length? For character is habit long continued, and if one were to call the virtues of character the virtues of habit, he would not seem to go far astray. I will cite but one more example on this point and then I shall desist from discussing it further. Lycurgus, the lawgiver of the Spartans, took two puppies of the same litter, and reared them in quite different ways, so that from the one he produced a mischievous and greedy cur, and from the other a dog able to follow a scent and to hunt. And then at a time when the Spartans were gathered together, he said: “Men of Sparta, of a truth habit and training and teaching and guidance in living are a great influence toward engendering excellence, and I will make this evident to you at once.” Thereupon producing the two dogs, he let them loose, putting down directly in front of them a dish of food and a hare. The one dog rushed after the hare, and the other made for the dish. While the Spartans were as yet unable to make out what import he gave to this, and with what intent he was exhibiting the dogs, he said, “These dogs are both of the same litter, but they have received a different bringing-up, with the result that the one has turned out a glutton and the other a hunter.” In regard to habits and manner of life let this suffice.
5: Next in order comes the subject of feeding. Mothers ought, I should say, themselves to feed their infants and nurse them themselves. For they will feed them with a livelier affection and greater care, as loving them inwardly, and, according to the proverb, to their finger-tips. But the good-will of foster-mothers and nursemaids is insincere and forced, since they love for pay. Nature too makes clear the fact that mothers should themselves nurse and feed what they have brought into the world, since it is for this purpose that she has provided for every animal which gives birth to young a source of food in its milk. Wise also is her forethought; for she has fashioned women’s breasts double, so, if any be twins, they may have a double source of nutrition. Yet apart from all this, mothers would come to be more kindly disposed towards their children, and more inclined to show them affection. Not unnaturally either, I swear; for this fellowship in feeding is a bond that knits kindliness together. Yes, even the brute beasts, when dragged away from their companions in feeding, evidently miss them. So, as I have said, mothers must endeavour, if possible, to nurse their children themselves; but if they are unable to do this, either because of bodily weakness (for such a thing can happen) or because they are in haste to bear more children, yet foster-mothers and nursemaids are not to be selected at random, but as good ones as possible must be chosen; and, first of all, in character they must be Greek. For just as it is necessary, immediately after birth, to begin to mould the limbs of the children’s bodies in order that these may grow straight and without deformity, so, in the same fashion, it is fitting from the beginning to regulate the characters of children. For youth is impressionable and plastic, and while such minds are still tender lessons are infused deeply into them; but anything which has become hard is with difficulty softened. For just as seals leave their impression in soft wax, so are lessons impressed upon the minds of children while they are young. And, as it seems to me, Plato, that remarkable man, quite properly advises nurses, even in telling stories to children, not to choose at random, lest haply their minds be filled at the outset with foolishness and corruption. Phocylides, too, the poet, appears to give admirable advice in saying:

Should teach while still a child
The tale of noble deeds.

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7: When now they attain to an age to be put under the charge of attendants, then especially great care must be taken in the appointment of these, so as not to entrust one’s children inadvertently to slaves taken in war or to barbarians or to those who are unstable. Nowadays, the common practice of many persons is more than ridiculous; for some of their trustworthy slaves they appoint to manage their farms, bothers they make masters of their ships, others their factors, others they make house-stewards, and some even money-lenders; but any slave whom they find to be a wine-bibber and a glutton, and useless for any kind of business, to him they bring their sons and put them in his charge. But the good attendant ought to be a man of such nature as was Phoenix, the attendant of Achilles.
I come now to a point which is more important and weighty than anything I have said so far. Teachers must be sought for the children who are free from scandal in their lives, who are unimpeachable in their manners, and in experience the very best that may be found. For to receive a proper education is the source and root of all goodness. As husbandmen place stakes beside the young plants, so do competent teachers with all care set their precepts and exhortations beside the young, in order that their characters may grow to be upright. Nowadays there are some fathers who deserve utter contempt, who, before examining those who are going to teach, either because of ignorance, or sometimes because of inexperience, hand over their children to untried and untrustworthy men. This is not so ridiculous if their action is due to inexperience, but there is another case which is absurd to the last degree. What is this? Why, sometimes even with knowledge and with information from others, who tell them of the inexperience and even of the depravity of certain teachers, they nevertheless entrust their children to them; some yield to the flatteries of those who would please them, and there are those who do it as a favour to insistent friends. Their action resembles that of a person, who, if he were afflicted with bodily disease, should reject that man who by his knowledge might be able to save his life, and, as a favour to a friend, should prefer one who by his inexperience might cause his death; or again that of a person who should dismiss a most excellent shipmaster, and accept the very worst because of a friend’s insistence. Heaven help us! Does a man who bears the name of father think more of gratifying those who ask favours than he thinks of the education of his children? And did not Socrates of old often say very fittingly, that if it were in any way possible one should go up to the loftiest part of the city and cry aloud, “Men, whither is your course taking you, who give all possible attention to the acquiring of money but give small thought to your sons to whom ye are to leave it?” To this I should like to add that such fathers act nearly as one would act who should give thought to his shoe but pay no regard to his foot. Many fathers, however, go so far in their devotion to money as well as in animosity toward their children, that in order to avoid paying a larger fee, they select as teachers for their children men who are not worth any wage at all — looking for ignorance, which is cheap enough. Wherefore Aristippus not inelegantly, in fact very cleverly, rebuked a father who was devoid both of mind and sense. For when a man asked him what fee he should require for teaching his child, Aristippus replied, “A thousand drachmas”; but when the other exclaimed, “Great Heavens! what an excessive demand! I can buy a slave for a thousand,” Aristippus retorted, “Then you will have two slaves, your son and the one you buy.”…
Now I will tell what happens to these admirable fathers when they have badly brought up and badly educated their sons. When their sons are enrolled in the ranks of men, and disdain the sane and orderly life, and throw themselves headlong into disorderly and slavish pleasures, then, when it is of no use, the fathers regret that they have been false to their duty in the education of their sons, being now distressed at their wrongdoing…
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8: Briefly, then, I say (an oracle one might properly call it, rather than advice) that, to sum up, the beginning, the middle, and end in all these matters is good education and proper training; and it is this, I say, which leads on and helps towards moral excellence and towards happiness. And, in comparison with this, all other advantages are human, and trivial, and not worth our serious concern. Good birth is a fine thing, but it is an advantage which must be credited to one’s ancestors. Wealth is held in esteem, but it is a chattel of fortune, since oftentimes she takes it away from those who possess it, and brings and presents it to those who do not expect it. Besides, great wealth is the very mark for those who aim their shafts at the purse — rascally slaves and blackmailers; and above all, even the vilest may possess it. Repute, moreover, is imposing, but unstable. Beauty is highly prized, but short-lived. Health is a valued possession, but inconstant. Strength is much admired, but it falls an easy prey to disease and old age. And, in general, if anybody prides himself wholly upon the strength of his body, let him know that he is sadly mistaken in judgement. For how small is man’s strength compared with the power of other living creatures! I mean, for instance, elephants and bulls and lions. But learning, of all things in this world, is alone immortal and divine. Two elements in man’s nature are supreme over all — mind and reason. The mind exercises control over reason, and reason is servant of the mind, unassailable by disease, unimpaired by old age. For the mind alone grows young with increase of years, and time, which takes away all things else, but adds wisdom to old age. War, again, like a torrent, sweeps everything away and carries everything along in its current, but learning alone it cannot take away. It seems to me that Stilpo, the philosopher of Megara, made an answer worth recording, at the time when Demetrius, having reduced the people of that city to slavery and razed its buildings, asked him whether perchance he had lost anything; but Stilpo replied: “No, indeed, for war cannot make spoil of virtue.” In full accord and harmony with these appears the reply of Socrates. For he, when someone (I think it was Gorgias) asked him what notion he had regarding the great king, and whether he thought him happy, said, “I do not know how he stands in the matter of righteousness and learning,” — his thought being that happiness depends upon these and not upon accidental advantages.
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10: Now the free-born child should not be allowed to go without some knowledge, both through hearing and observation, of every branch also of what is called general education; yet these he should learn only incidentally, just to get a taste of them, as it were (for perfection in everything is impossible), but philosophy he should honour above all else. I can perhaps make my opinion clear by means of a figure: for example, it is a fine thing to voyage about and view many cities, but profitable to dwell only in the best one. And it was a clever saying of Bion, the philosopher, that, just as the suitors, not being able to approach Penelope, consorted with her maid-servants, so also do those who are not able to attain to philosophy wear themselves to a shadow over the other kinds of education which have no value. Wherefore it is necessary to make philosophy as it were the head and front of all education. For as regards the care of the body men have discovered two sciences, the medical and the gymnastic, of which the one implants health, the other sturdiness, in the body; but for the illnesses and affections of the mind philosophy alone is the remedy. For through philosophy and in company with philosophy it is possible to attain knowledge of what is honourable and what is shameful, what is just and what is unjust, what, in brief, is to be chosen and what to be avoided, how a man must bear himself in his relations with the gods, with his parents, with his elders, with the laws, with strangers, with those in authority, with friends, with women, with children, with servants; that one ought to reverence the gods, to honour one’s parents, to respect one’s elders, to be obedient to the laws, to yield to those in authority, to love one’s friends, to be chaste with women, to be affectionate with children, and not to be overbearing with slaves; and, most important of all, not to be overjoyful at success or overmuch distressed at misfortune, nor to be dissolute in pleasures, nor impulsive and brutish in temper. These things I regard as pre-eminent among all the advantages which accrue from philosophy. For to have a generous heart in prosperity shows a man, to excite no envy withal shows a disciplined nature; to rule pleasure by reason marks the wise man, and not every man can master his passion…
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11: It is not proper, either, to overlook the exercise of the body, but we should send the children to the trainer’s and cultivate adequately this side of education with all diligence, not merely for the sake of gracefulness of body but also with an eye to strength; for sturdiness of body in childhood is the foundation of a hale old age. Just as in fair weather, then, one ought to prepare for storm, so also in youth one should store up discipline and self-restraint as a provision for old age…
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13: In my time I have seen fathers in whom excessive affection had become the cause of no affection. What is it that I mean to say, in order that by the example I give I may make my argument more luminous? It is this: in their eagerness that their children may the sooner rank first in everything, they lay upon them unreasonable tasks, which the children find themselves unable to perform, and so come to grief; besides, being depressed by their unfortunate experiences, they do not respond to the instruction which they receive. For, just as plants are nourished by moderate applications of water, but are drowned by many in succession, in the same fashion the mind is made to grow by properly adapted tasks, but is submerged by those which are excessive. Children must be given some breathing-space from continued tasks, for we must bear in mind that our whole life is divided between relaxation and application. For this reason there have been created not only waking hours but also sleep, not only war but also peace, not only storm but also fair weather, not only periods of vigorous activity but also holidays. In short, rest gives relish to labour. We may observe that this holds true not merely in the case of living creatures, but also in the case of inanimate things, for we unstring bows and lyres that we may be able to tighten them again. The body, generally speaking, is maintained by hunger and its satisfaction, and the mind by relaxation and labour.
It is right to rebuke some fathers who, after entrusting their sons to attendants and masters, do not themselves take cognizance at all of their instruction by means of their own eyes or their own ears. Herein they most fail in their duty; for they ought themselves every few days to test their children, and not rest their hopes upon the disposition of a hired person; for even those persons will devote more attention to the children if they know they must from time to time render an account. And in this connexion there is point as well as wit in the remark of the groom who said that nothing makes the horse so fat as the king’s eye.
Above all, the memory of children should be trained and exercised; for this is, as it were, a storehouse of learning…
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We must now lay down some rules of conduct which the young should follow no less but even more than those previously given. These are: To practise the simple life, to hold the tongue in check, to conquer anger, to control the hands…
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The control of the tongue, then, still remains to be discussed of the topics I suggested. If anybody has the notion that this is a slight and insignificant matter, he is very far from the truth. For timely silence is a wise thing, and better than any speech. And this is the reason, as it appears to me, why the men of olden time established the rites of initiation into the mysteries, that we, by becoming accustomed to keep silence there, may transfer that fear which we learned from the divine secrets to the safe keeping of the secrets of men. For, again, nobody was ever sorry because he kept silent, but hundreds because they talked. Again, the word unspoken cannot possibly be recalled. I have heard of countless men who have fallen into the greatest misfortunes through intemperate speech…
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… But again, when I think of Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines, Cebes, and that whole band of men who sanctioned affection between men, and thus guided the youth onward to learning, leadership, and virtuous conduct, I am of a different mind again, and am inclined to emulate their example. Euripides gives testimony in their favour when he says:

Among mankind another love exists,
That of an upright, chaste, and noble soul.

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18: Now all these rules concern honour and good profit, but what follows concerns human nature. Take the fathers again: I do not think they should be utterly harsh and austere in their nature, but they should in many cases concede some shortcomings to the younger person, and remind themselves that they once were young. As physicians, by mixing bitter drugs with sweet syrups, have found that the agreeable taste gains access for what is beneficial, so fathers should combine the abruptness of their rebukes with mildness, and at one time grant some licence to the desires of their children, and slacken the reins a little, and then at another time draw them tight again. Most desirable is it that they should bear misdeeds with serenity, but if that be impossible, yet, if they be on occasion angered, they should quickly cool down. For it is better that a father should be quick-tempered than sullen, since a hostile and irreconcilable spirit is no small proof of animosity towards one’s children. It is a good thing also to pretend not to know of some shortcomings, and to turn the old man’s dull eye and dull ear to what they do, and seeing, not to see, and, hearing, not to hear, sometimes, what goes on. Our friends’ shortcomings we bear with: why should it be surprising that we bear with our children’s?…
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20: I will add but little more and then conclude my suggestions. Fathers ought above all, by not misbehaving and by doing as they ought to do, to make themselves a manifest example to their children, so that the latter, by looking at their fathers’ lives as at a mirror, may be deterred from disgraceful deeds and words. For those who are themselves involved in the same errors as those for which they rebuke their erring sons, unwittingly accuse themselves in their sons’ name. If the life they lead is wholly bad, they are not free to admonish even their slaves, let alone their sons. Besides, they are likely to become counsellors and instructors to their sons in their wrongdoing. For, wherever old men are lacking in decency, young men too are sure to be most shameless.
We must endeavour, therefore, to employ every proper device for the discipline of our children, emulating the example of Eurydice, who, although she was an Illyrian and an utter barbarian, yet late in life took up education in the interest of her children’s studies. The inscription which she dedicated to the Muses sufficiently attests her love for her children:

Eurydice of Hierapolis
Made to the Muses this her offering
When she had gained her soul’s desire to learn.
Mother of young and lusty sons was she,
And by her diligence attained to learn
Letters, wherein lies buried all our lore.

Now to put into effect all the suggestions which I have given is the province of prayer, perhaps, or exhortation. And even to follow zealously the majority of them demands good fortune and much careful attention, but to accomplish this lies within the capability of man.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. VI of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by W. C. Helmbold. 1939. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_amore_prolis*.html

ON AFFECTION FOR OFFSPRING
1: Trials of cases on appeal before special arbitrators and the carrying of cases before foreign courts were first devised by the Greeks by reason of their mutual distrusts, since they had need of the justice supplied by others than themselves, like any other non-indigenous necessity. Is it thus, then, that philosophers also, because of their disagreements with each other, refer some of their questions to the nature of irrational animals, as though to a foreign city, and submit the decision to the emotions and character and habits of these creatures as to a court that cannot be influenced or bribed? Or is this also a common charge against human depravity — that, being in doubt about the most necessary and important things, we seek among horses and dogs and birds how we ourselves should marry and beget and bring up children (as though we had no plain indication of Nature in ourselves); and that we term the traits which brute beasts have “characters” and “emotions,” and accuse our life of a great deviation and departure from Nature, confused and disordered as we are at the very beginning concerning even the first principles? For in dumb animals Nature preserves their special characteristics pure and unmixed and simple, but in men, through reason and habit, they have been modified by many opinions and adventitious judgements so that they have lost their proper form and have acquired a pleasing variety comparable to the variety of perfumes made by the pharmacist on the basis of a single oil. And let us not wonder if irrational animals follow Nature more closely than rational ones; for animals are, in fact, outdone in this by plants, to which Nature has given neither imagination nor impulse, nor desire for something different, which causes men to shake themselves free from what Nature desires; but plants, as though they were fastened in chains, remain in the power of Nature, always traversing the one path along with Nature leads them. Yet in wild beasts versatility of reasoning and uncommon cleverness and excessive love of freedom are not too highly developed; and though they have irrational impulses and desires and often wander about on circuitous paths, they do not go far afield, but ride, as it were, at the anchor provided by Nature, who points out to them the straight way, as to an ass which proceeds under bit and bridle. But in man ungoverned reason is absolute master, and, discovering now one way of deviation and innovation and now another, has left no clear or certain vestige of Nature visible.
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Plutarch’s Morals. Translated by Arthur Richard Shiletto. London, George Bell and Sons. 1898. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg, 2007. Retrieved 2025, from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23639/23639-h/23639-h.htm

ON LOVE.
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… But as nature leads one to eat and drink moderately and sufficiently, and excess in this is called gluttony and gormandizing, so the mutual desires between men and women are natural; but that headlong, violent, and uncontrollable passion for the sex is not rightly called love. For love, when it seizes a noble and young soul, ends in virtue through friendship; but these violent passions for women, at the best, aim only at carnal enjoyment and reaping the harvest of a beauteous prime, as Aristippus showed in his answer to one who told him Lais loved him not, ‘No more,’ he said, ‘do meat and wine love me, but I gladly enjoy both.’ For the end of passion is pleasure and fruition: but love, when it has once lost the promise of friendship, will not remain and continue to cherish merely for beauty that which gives it pain, where it gives no return of friendship and virtue…
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xvii. “Consider also how Love excels in warlike feats, and is by no means idle, as Euripides called him, nor a carpet-knight, nor ‘sleeping on a maiden’s soft cheeks.’ For a man inspired by Love needs not Ares to help him when he goes out as a warrior against the enemy, but at the bidding of his own god is ‘ready’ for his friend ‘to go through fire and water and whirlwinds.’ And in Sophocles’ play, when the sons of Niobe are being shot at and dying, one of them calls out for no helper or assister but his lover…
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… And now next to the mighty power of Love let us consider its good will and favour to mankind, I do not mean as to whether it bestows many gifts on its votaries—that is palpable to all—but whether they derive any further advantage from it. For Euripides, though very amorous, admired a very small matter, when he wrote the line—

‘Love teaches letters to a man unlearn’d.’

For it makes one previously sluggish quick and intelligent, and, as has been said before, it makes the coward brave, as people harden wood in the fire and make it strong from being weak. And every lover becomes liberal and genuine and generous, even if he was mean before, his littleness and miserliness melting away like iron in the fire, so that they rejoice to give to their loves more than they do to receive themselves from others…
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… And as the rest of the company made the same request, my father said, “The Egyptians, (like the Greeks) recognize two Loves, the Pandemian and the Celestial, to which they add the Sun, they also highly venerate Aphrodite. We also see much similarity between Love and the Sun, for neither is a fire, as some think, but a sweet and productive radiance and warmth, the Sun bringing to the body nourishment and light and growth, and Love doing the same to the soul. And as the heat of the Sun is more powerful when it emerges from clouds and after mist, so Love is sweeter and hotter after a jealous tiff with the loved one, and moreover, as some think the Sun is kindled and extinguished, so also do people conceive of Love as mortal and uncertain. Moreover, just as without training the body cannot easily bear the heat of the Sun, so neither can the untrained soul easily bear the yoke of Love, but both are equally out of tune and suffer, for which they blame the deity and not their own weakness. But in this respect they seem to differ, in that the Sun exhibits to the eye things beautiful and ugly alike, whereas Love throws its light only on beautiful things, and persuades lovers to concentrate their attention on these, and to neglect all other things. As to those that call Aphrodite the Moon, they, too, find some points in common between them; for the Moon is divine and heavenly and a sort of halfway-house between mortal and immortal, but inactive in itself and dark without the presence of the Sun, as is the case with Aphrodite in the absence of Love. So we may say that Aphrodite resembles the Moon, and Love the Sun, more than any other deities, yet are not Love and the Sun altogether the same, for just as body and soul are not the same, but something different, so is it with the Sun and Love, the former can be seen, the latter only felt. And if it should not seem too harsh a saying, one might argue that the Sun acts entirely opposite to Love, for it turns the mind away from the world of fancy to the world of reality, beguiling us by its grace and splendid appearance, and persuading us to seek for truth and everything else in and round it and nowhere else. For as Euripides says,

‘Too passionately do we love the Sun,
Because it always shines upon the earth,
From inexperience of another life,’

or rather from forgetfulness of those things which Love brings to our remembrance. For as when we are woke by a great and bright light, everything that the soul has seen in dreams is vanished and fled, so the Sun is wont to banish the remembrance of past changes and chances, and to bewitch the intelligence, pleasure and admiration causing this forgetfulness. And though reality is really there, yet the soul cleaves to dreams and is dazzled by what is most beautiful and divine. ‘For round the soul are poured sweet yet deceiving dreams,’ so that the soul thinks everything here good and valuable, unless it obtain divine and chaste Love as its physician and preserver. For Love brings the soul through the body to truth and the region of truth, where pure and guileless beauty is to be found, kindly befriending its votaries like an initiator at the mysteries. And it associates with the soul only through the body…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. VI of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by W. C. Helmbold. 1939. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_fraterno_amore*.html

ON BROTHERLY LOVE
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Now Aristarchus, the father of Theodectes, by way of jeering at the crowd of sophists, used to say that in the old days there were barely seven Sophists, but that in his own day an equally large number of non-sophists could not easily be found. And according to my observation, brotherly love is as rare in our day as brotherly hatred was among the men of old; when instances of such hatred appeared, they were so amazing that the times made them known to all as warning examples in tragedies and other stage-performances; but all men of to day, when they encounter brothers who are good to each other, wonder at them no less than at those famous sons of Molionê, who, according to common belief, were born with their bodies grown together; and to use in common a father’s wealth and friends and slaves is considered as incredible and portentous as for one soul to make use of the hands and feet and eyes of two bodies.
2: And yet the illustration of such common use by brothers Nature has placed at no great distance from us; on the contrary, in the body itself she has contrived to make most of the necessary parts double and brothers and twins: hands, feet, eyes, ears, nostrils; and she has thus taught us that she has divided them in this fashion for mutual preservation and assistance, not for variance and strife. And when she separated the very hands into a number of unequal fingers, she supplied men with the most accurate and skilful of instruments, so that Anaxagoras of old assigned the reason for man’s wisdom and intelligence to his having hands. The contrary of this, however, seems to be true: it is not because man acquired hands that he is wisest of animals; it is because by nature he was endowed with reason and skill that he acquired instruments of a nature adapted to these powers. And this fact is obvious to everyone: Nature from one seed and one source has created two brothers, or three, or more, not for difference and opposition to each other, but that by being separate they might the more readily co-operate with one another. For indeed creatures that had three bodies and an hundred hands, if any such were ever really born, being joined together in all their members, could do nothing independently and apart from one another, as may brothers, who can either remain at home or reside abroad, as well as undertake public office and husbandry through each other’s help if they but preserve that principle of goodwill and concord which Nature has given them. But if they do not, they will differ not at all, I think, from feet which trip up one another and fingers which are unnaturally entwined and twisted by each other. But rather, just as in the same body the combination of moist and dry, cold and hot, sharing one nature and diet, by their consent and agreement engender the best and most pleasant temperament and bodily harmony — without which, they say, there is not any joy or profit either “in wealth” or

In that kingly rule which makes men
Like to gods —

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Eucleides, the Socratic, is famous in the schools because, when he heard an inconsiderate and brutal speech from his brother who said, “May I be damned if I don’t get even with you,” he replied, “And so will I, if I don’t persuade you to stop your anger and love me as you used to do.”
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT?
1: When we discuss Virtue we debate the question whether Prudence, Justice, and the Good Life can be taught; then we are surprised that the achievements of orators, pilots, musicians, architects, and farmers are past counting, whereas “good men” is only a name and a mere term, like “Centaurs,” “Giants,” or “Cyclopes”! And it is impossible to find any deed that is faultless as regards its virtue, or any character undefiled by passion, or any life untouched by dishonour; but even if Nature does spontaneously produce something that is excellent, this excellence is obscured by much that is foreign to it, like wheat mixed with wild and impure stuff. Men learn to play the harp, to dance and to read, to farm and to ride the horse; they learn to put on shoes and to don garments, they are taught to pour wine and to bake meat. All these things it is impossible to do properly without instruction; but shall that for the attainment of which all these things are done, that is, the Good Life, be unteachable, irrational, requiring no skill, and fortuitous?
2: O mortal men! Why do we assert that virtue is unteachable, and thus make it non-existent? For if learning begets virtue, the prevention of learning destroys it…
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3: What then? He who says that the physician’s art concerns itself with rashes and hang-nails, but not with pleurisy or fever or inflammation of the brain, in what does he differ from one who says that schools and lectures and precepts are for instruction in trifling and childish duties, but that for the great and supreme duties there is only brute knocking about and accident? For just as he is ridiculous who declares that one must be taught before pulling at the oar, but may steer the boat even without having learned; so one who grants that the other arts are acquired by learning, but deprives virtue of this… such a man as this gives Reason, like an eye, as it were, to the subservient and ancillary arts, while denying it to virtue.
Yet when Callias, son of Charias, asked the general Iphicrates, “Who are you? Bowman, targeteer, horseman, or hoplite?” Iphicrates replied, “None of these, but the one who commands them all.” Ridiculous, therefore, is the man who declares that the art of using the bow, or of fighting in heavy armour, or of manipulating the sling, or of riding a horse may be taught, but that the art of commanding and leading an army comes at it chances and to whom it chances without previous instruction! Surely he is more ridiculous who affirms that prudence alone cannot be taught, for without prudence there can be no gain or profit from the other arts. But if prudence is in command, the principle which orders all the arts, which assigns each person to a place of usefulness…

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. II of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by F. C. Babbitt. 1928. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_virtute_et_vitio*.html

ON VIRTUE AND VICE
1: Clothes are supposed to make a man warm, not of course by warming him themselves in the sense of adding their warmth to him, because each garment by itself is cold, and for this reason very often persons who feel hot and feverish keep changing from one set of clothes to another; but the warmth which a man gives off from his own person the clothing, closely applied to the body, confines and enwraps, and does not allow it, when thus imprisoned in the body, to be dissipated again. Now the same condition existing in human affairs deceives most people, who think that, if they surround themselves with vast houses, and get together a mass of slaves and money, they shall live pleasantly. But a pleasant and happy life comes not from external things, but, on the contrary, man draws on his own character as a source from which to add the element of pleasure and joy to the things which surround him.

Bright with a blazing fire a house looks far more cheerful,

and wealth is pleasanter, and repute and power more resplendent, if with them goes the gladness which springs from the heart; and so too men bear poverty, exile, and old age lightly and gently in proportion to the serenity and mildness of their character.
2: As perfumes make coarse and ragged garments fragrant, but the body of Anchises gave off a noisome exudation,

Damping the linen robe adown his back,

so every occupation and manner of life, if attended by virtue, is untroubled and delightful, while, on the other hand, any admixture of vice renders those things which to others seem splendid, precious, in imposing, only troublesome, sickening, and unwelcome to their possessors.

This man is happy deemed ‘mid public throng,
But when he opes his door he’s thrice a wretch;
His wife controls, commands, and always fights.

Yet it is not difficult for any man to get rid of a bad wife if he be a real man and not a slave; but against his own vice it is not possible to draw up a writing of divorcement and forthwith to be rid of troubles and to be at peace, having arranged to be by himself. No, his vice, a settled tenant of his very vitals always, both at night and by day,

Burns, but without e’er a brand, and consigns to an eld all untimely.

For in travelling vice is a troublesome companion because of arrogance, at dinner an expensive companion owing to gluttony, and a distressing bedfellow, since by anxieties, cares and jealousies it drives out and destroys sleep. For what slumber there may be is sleep and repose for the body only, but for the soul terrors, dreams, and agitations, because of superstition.

When grief o’ertakes me as I close my eyes,
I’m murdered by my dreams.

says one man. In such a state do envy, fear, temper, and licentiousness put a man. For by day vice, looking outside of itself and conforming its attitude to others, is abashed and veils its emotions, and does not give itself up completely to its impulses, but oftentimes resists them and struggles against them; but in the hours of slumber, when it has escaped from opinion and law, and got away as far as possible from feeling fear or shame, it sets every desire stirring, and awakens its depravity and licentiousness. It “attempts incest,” as Plato says, partakes of forbidden meats, abstains from nothing which it wishes to do, but revels in lawlessness so far as it can, with images and visions which end in no pleasure or accomplishment of desire, but have only the power to stir to fierce activity the emotional and morbid propensities.
3: Where, then, is the pleasure in vice, if in no part of it is to be found freedom from care and grief, or contentment or tranquillity or calm? For a well-balanced and healthy condition of the body gives room for engendering the pleasures of the flesh; but in the soul lasting joy and gladness cannot possibly be engendered, unless it provide itself first with cheerfulness, fearlessness, and courageousness as a basis to rest upon, or as a calm tranquillity that no billows disturb; otherwise, even though some hope or delectation lure us with a smile, anxiety suddenly breaks forth, like a hidden rock appearing in fair weather, and the soul is overwhelmed and confounded.
4: Heap up gold, amass silver, build stately promenades, fill your house with slaves and the city with your debtors; unless you lay level the emotions of your soul, put a stop to your insatiate desires, and quit yourself of fears and anxieties, you are but decanting wine for a man in a fever, offering honey to a bilious man, and preparing tid-bits and dainties for sufferers from colic or dysentery, who cannot retain them or be strengthened by them, but are only brought nearer to death thereby. Does not your observation of sick persons teach you that they dislike and reject and decline the finest and costliest viands which their attendants offer and try to force upon them; and then later, when their whole condition has changed, and good breathing, wholesome blood, and normal temperature have returned to their bodies, they get up and have joy and satisfaction in eating plain bread with cheese and cress? It is such a condition that reason creates in the soul. You will be contented with your lot if you learn what the honourable and good is. You will be luxurious in poverty, and live like a king, and you will find no less satisfaction in the care-free life of a private citizen than in the life connected with high military or civic office. If you become a philosopher, you will live not unpleasantly, but you will learn to subsist pleasantly anywhere and with any resources. Wealth will give you gladness for the good you will do to many, poverty for your freedom from many cares, repute for the honours you will enjoy, and obscurity for the certainty that you shall not be envied.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON MORAL VIRTUE
1: It is my purpose to speak of that virtue which is called “moral” and reputed to be so, which differs from contemplative virtue chiefly in that it has as its material the emotions of the soul and as its form reason, and to inquire what its essential nature is and how, by its nature, it subsists; whether, also, that part of the soul which receives it is equipped with its own reason, or does but share in the reason of some other part; and if the latter, whether it does this after the manner of elements that are mingled with what is better than themselves, or rather, whether this portion of the soul is guided and governed by another part and in this sense may be said to share in that governing part’s power. For that it is possible for virtue also to have come into being and to remain entirely independent of matter and free from all admixture with it, I think is quite obvious. It is better, however, to run summarily through the opinions of the philosophers holding opposing views, not so much for the sake of inquiring into them as that my own opinions may become clearer and more firmly established when those of the philosophers in question have been presented.
2: In the first place, Menedemus of Eretria deprived the virtues of both plurality and differences by asserting that virtue is but one, though it goes under many names: the same thing is meant by temperance and courage and justice, as is the case with “mortal” and “man.” And Ariston of Chios himself also made virtue but one in its essential nature and called it health; but in its relative aspect he made certain distinctions and multiplied virtues, just as though one should wish to call our sight “white-sight” when it is applied to white objects, or “black-sight” when applied to black objects, or anything else of the sort. For instance virtue, when it considers what we must do or avoid, is called prudence; when it controls our desires and lays down for them the limitations of moderation and seasonableness in our pleasures, it is called temperance; when it has to do with men’s relations to one another and their commercial dealings, it is called justice — just as a knife is one and the same knife, though it cuts now one thing, now another, or as a fire retains its single nature though it operates upon different substances. Moreover it appears likely that Zeno of Citium also inclines in some measure to this opinion, for he defines prudence as justice when it is concerned with what must be rendered to others as their due, as temperance when concerned with what must be chosen or avoided, as fortitude when concerned with what must be endured; and those who defend Zeno postulate that in these definitions he uses the word prudence in the sense of knowledge. Chrysippus, however, by his opinion that corresponding to each several quality a virtue is formed by its own distinctive attribute of quality, unwittingly stirred up a “swarm of virtues,” as Plato has it, which were not familiar nor even known; for as from the adjective “brave” he derived “bravery,” from “mild” “mildness,” and “justice” from “just,” so from “charming” he derived “charmingness,” from “virtuous” “virtuousnesses,” from “great” “greatnesses,” from “honourable” “honourablenesses,” postlating also the other qualities of the same sort, dexterousnesses, approachablenesses, adroitnesses, as virtues, and thus filled philosophy, which needed nothing of the sort, with many uncouth names.
3: Yet all of these men agree in supposing virtue to be a certain disposition of the governing portion of the soul and a faculty engendered by reason, or rather to be itself reason which is in accord with virtue and is firm and unshaken. They also think that the passionate and irrational part of the soul is not distinguished from the rational by any difference or by its nature, but is the same part, which, indeed, they term intelligence and the governing part; it is, they say, wholly transformed and changes both during its emotional states and in the alterations brought about in accordance with an acquired disposition or condition and thus becomes both vice and virtue; it contains nothing irrational within itself, but is called irrational whenever, by the overmastering power of our impulses, which have become strong and prevail, it is hurried on to something outrageous which contravenes the convictions of reason. Passion, in fact, according to them, is a vicious and intemperate reason, formed from an evil and perverse judgement which has acquired additional violence and strength.
But it seems to have eluded all these philosophers in what way each of us is truly two fold and composite. For that other two fold nature of ours they have not discerned, but merely the more obvious one, the blend of soul and body. But that there is some element of composition, some two fold nature and dissimilarity of the very soul within itself, since the irrational, as though it were another substance, is mingled and joined with reason by some compulsion of Nature — this, it is likely, was not unknown even to Pythagoras, if we may judge by the man’s enthusiasm for the study of music, which he introduced to enchant and assuage the soul, perceiving that the soul has not every part of itself in subjection to discipline and study, and that not every part can be changed from vice by reason, but that the several parts have need of some other kind of persuasion to co operate with them, to mould them, and to tame them, if they are not to be utterly intractable and obstinate to the teaching of philosophy.
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4: Those who wonder how it is that this part is irrational, yet subservient to reason, do not seem to me to reflect thoroughly upon the power of reason,

How great it is, how far it penetrates,

through its mastery and guidance, not by harsh and inflexible methods, but by flexible ones, which have a quality of yielding and submitting to the rein which is more effective than any possible constraint or violence. For, to be sure, even our breathing, our sinews and bones, and the other parts of the body, though they are irrational, yet when an impulse comes, with reason shaking the reins, as it were, they all grow taut and are drawn together in ready obedience. So, when a man purposes to run, his feet are keyed for action; if he purposes to throw or to grasp, his hands fall to their business. And most excellently does the Poet portray in the following words the sympathy and conformity of the irrational with reason:

Thus were her fair cheeks wet with tears, as she
Wept for her lord, though he sat by. In heart
Odysseus pitied his lamenting wife,
But kept his eyes firm-fixed within their lids
Like horn or iron: with guile he hid his tears.

Under such subjection to his judgement did he keep his breathing and his blood and his tears.
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Therefore, also, ethical, or moral, virtue (ēthos) is well named, for ethical virtue is, to but sketch the subject, a quality of the irrational, and it is so named because the irrational, being formed by reason, acquires this quality and differentiation by habit (ĕthos), since reason does not wish to eradicate passion completely (for that would be neither possible nor expedient), but puts upon it some limitation and order and implants the ethical virtues, which are not the absence of passion but a due proportion and measure therein; and reason implants them by using prudence to develop the capacity for passion into a good acquired disposition. For these three things the soul is said to possess: capacity, passion, acquired state. Now capacity is the starting-point, or raw material, of passion, as, for instance, irascibility, bashfulness, temerity. And passion is a kind of stirring or movement of the capacity, as anger, shame, boldness. And finally, the acquired state is a settled force and condition being bred by habit and becoming on the one hand vice, if the passion has been educated badly, but virtue, if educated excellently by reason.
5: But inasmuch as philosophers do not make virtue as a whole a mean nor apply to it the term “moral,” we must discuss the difference, starting with first principles. Now in this world things are of two sorts, some of them existing absolutely, others in some relation to us. Things that exist absolutely are earth, heavens, stars, sea; things that exist in relation to us are good and evil, things desirable and to be avoided, things pleasant and painful. Now reason contemplates both of these, but when it is concerned merely with things which exist in relation to us, it is called deliberative and practical. The virtue of the latter activity is called prudence, that of the former wisdom; and prudence differs from wisdom in that when the contemplative faculty is occupied in a certain active relationship with the practical and passionate, prudence comes to subsist in accordance with reason. Therefore prudence has need of chance, but wisdom has no need of it, nor yet of deliberation, to attain its proper end; for wisdom is concerned with things that remain ever the same and unchanging. And just as the geometer does not deliberate whether the triangle has its internal angles equal to two right angles, but knows it to be true (for deliberation concerns matters that are now one way, now another, not things that are sure and immutable), just so the contemplative mind has its activity concerning first principles, things that are permanent and have ever one nature incapable of mutation, and so has no occasion for deliberation. But prudence must often come down among things that are material and are full of error and confusion; it has to move in the realm of chance; to deliberate where the case is doubtful and then at last to reduce deliberation to practice in activities in which decisions are both accompanied by and influenced by the irrational, whose impulsion they, as a matter of fact, need. The impulsion of passion springs from moral virtue; but it needs reason to keep it within moderate bounds and to prevent its exceeding or falling short of its proper season. For it is indeed true that the passionate and irrational moves sometimes too violently and swiftly, at other times more weakly and slothfully than the case demands. Therefore everything that we ever do can succeed but in one way, while it may fail in many ways: for to hit the mark there is but one single, uncomplicated, way, yet it can be missed in several ways, according to whether we exceed the mean, or fall short of it. This, then, is the natural task of practical reason: to eliminate both the defects and the excesses of the passions. For wherever, through infirmity and weakness, or fear and hesitation, the impulsion yields too soon and prematurely forsakes the good, there practical reason comes on the scene to incite and kindle the impulsion; and where, again, the impulsion is borne beyond proper bounds, flowing powerfully and in disorder, there practical reason removes its violence and checks it. And thus by limiting the movement of the passions reason implants in the irrational the moral virtues, which are means between deficiency and excess. For we must not declare that every virtue comes into being by the observance of a mean, but, on the one hand, wisdom, being without any need of the irrational and arising in the activity of the mind, pure and uncontaminated by passion, is, as it were, a self-sufficing perfection and power of reason, by which the most divine and blessed element of knowledge becomes possible for us; on the other hand, that virtue which is necessary to us because of our physical limitations, and needs, by Heaven, for its practical ends the service of the passions as its instrument, so to speak, and is not a destruction nor abolition of the irrational in the soul, but an ordering and regulation thereof, is an extreme as regards its power and quality, but as regards its quantity it is a mean, since it does away with what is excessive and deficient.
6: But since a “mean” is capable of various interpretations (for that which is a compound is a mean between the simple uncompounded substances, as grey is of white and black; and that which contains and is contained is a mean between the contained and the container, as eight of twelve and four; and that which partakes of neither of the extremes is a mean, as the indifferent is a mean between good and bad), in none of these ways can virtue be called a mean, for it is not a mixture of the vices, nor, encompassing what falls short of due measure, is it encompassed by that which is in excess of it; nor is it entirely exempt from the impulses of the passions, wherein are found excess and deficiency. But it is a mean, and is said to be so, in a sense very like that which obtains in musical sounds and harmonies. For there the mean or mesê, a properly-pitched note like the netê and the hypatê, escapes the sharp highness of one and the heavy deepness of the other; so virtue, being an activity and faculty concerned with the irrational, does away with the remissions and overstrainings of the impulse and its excesses and defects altogether, and reduces each passion to moderation and faultlessness. So, for instance, they declare courage to be a mean between cowardice and rashness, of which the former is a defect, the latter is an excess, of the spirited part of the soul; so, likewise, liberality is a mean between parsimony and prodigality, and gentleness between insensibility and cruelty; and temperance itself and justice are means, the latter distributing to itself in contracts neither more nor less than what is due, the former ever regulating the desires to a mean between lack of feeling and intemperance.
In this last instance, indeed, the irrational seems, with particular clearness, to allow us to observe the difference between itself and the rational, and to show that passion is essentially quite a different thing from reason. For self-control would not differ from temperance, nor incontinence from intemperance, as regards the pleasures and desires, if it were the same part of the soul that we naturally use for desiring as for forming judgements. But the fact is that temperance belongs to the sphere where reason guides and manages the passionate element, like a gentle animal obedient to the reins, making it yielding in its desires and willingly receptive of moderation and propriety; but the self-controlled man, while he does indeed direct his desire by the strength and mastery of reason, yet does so not without pain, nor by persuasion, but as its plunges sideways and resists, as though with blow and curb, he forcibly subdues it and holds it in, being the while himself full of internal struggle and turmoil. Such a conflict Plato portrays in his simile of the horses of the soul, where the worse horse struggles against his better yoke-fellow and at the same time disconcerts the charioteer, who is ever forced to hold out against him and with might and main to rein him in,

Lest he let fall from his hands the crimson thongs,

as Simonides has it. That is the reason why they do not account self-control even a virtue in the absolute sense, but less than virtue. For it is not a mean which has been produced by the harmony of the worse with the better, nor has the excess of passion in it been eliminated, nor has the desiderative part of the soul become obedient and compliant to the intelligent part, but is vexed and causes vexation and is confined by compulsion and, though living with reason, lives as in a state of rebellion against it, hostile and inimical:

The city reeks with burning incense, rings
Alike with prayers for health and cries of woe

even so is the soul of the self-controlled man because of its lack of consistency and its conflict. And on the same grounds they hold that incontinence also is something less than a vice, but that intemperance is a full-fledged vice. For intemperance possesses both an evil passion and an evil reason; under the influence of the former, it is incited by desire to shameful conduct; under the influence of the latter, which, since its judgement is evil, is enlisted with the desires, intemperance loses even the perception of its errors. But incontinence, with the aid of reason, preserves its power of judgement intact, yet by its passions, which are stronger than its reason, it is swept along against its judgement. That is why incontinence differs from intemperance, for in it reason is worsted by passion, whereas with intemperance reason does not even fight; in the case of incontinence reason argues against the desires as it follows them, whereas with intemperance reason guides them and is their advocate; it is characteristic of intemperance that its reason shares joyfully in the sins committed, whereas with incontinence the reason shares in them, but with reluctance; with intemperance, reason is willingly swept along into shameful conduct, whereas with incontinence, it betrays honour unwillingly.
So also the difference between them is not less manifest in their words than in their actions. These are, for instance, the sayings of intemperate persons:

What pleasure can there be, what joy, without
The golden Aphroditê? May I die
When things like these no longer comfort me.

And another says,

To eat, to drink, to have one’s way in love:
All other things I call accessory,

as though with all his soul he were acquiescing in pleasures and were being subverted thereby. Not less than these does he who says

Leave me to die, for that is best for me,

have his judgement suffering with the same ailment as his passions.
But the sayings of incontinence are otherwise and different:

A mind I have, but Nature forces me;

and

Alas! from God this evil comes to men
When, knowing what is good, they do it not;

and

The spirit yields and can resist no more,
Like anchor-hook in sand amid the surge.

Here not inaptly the poet terms “an anchor-hook in sand” that which is not under the control of reason, nor firmly fixed, but surrenders its judgement to the loose and soft part of the soul. Very close to this imagery are also those famous lines:

I, like some ship, am tied by ropes to shore,
And when winds blow, our cables do not hold.

For here the poet calls “cables” the judgements which resist shameful conduct and then are broken by passion, as by a great gust of wind. Truly the intemperate man is swept along to his pleasures by his desires with sails full-spread and delivers himself over to them and steers his course directly thither; whereas the course of the incontinent man zigzags here and there, as he strives to emerge from his passion and to stave it off and is yet swept down and shipwrecked on the reef of shameful conduct. Just as Timon used to lampoon Anaxarchus:

The Cynic might of Anaxarchus seemed
Steadfast and bold, wherever he wished, to spring;
Well did he know the truth, they said, and yet
Was bad: for Nature smote him with desire
And led him back from truth — ’twas Nature’s dart,
Before whom trembles many a Sophist heart.

For neither is the wise man continent, though he is temperate, nor is the fool incontinent, though he is intemperate. For the wise man takes pleasure in what is honourable, but the fool is not vexed by shamefulness. Incontinence, therefore, is the mark of a sophistic soul, which has, indeed, reason, but reason which cannot stand firm by its own just decisions.
7: Such, then, are the differences between incontinence and intemperance; and again between continence and temperance, these differences being the counterpart of the former. For continence is not yet free from remorse and pain and indignation; but in the soul of the temperate man there is serenity on all occasions, freedom from violent changes, and sanity, by which the irrational is harmonized and blended with reason, when this is equipped with great persuasion and a wonderful gentleness. And you would say, as you looked at the man,

Then, indeed, ceased the gale; a windless calm
Arose; some god had laid the waves to rest,

since by reason the violent, raging, and furious movements of the desires had been quenched and those movements which Nature absolutely requires had been made sympathetic, submissive, friendly, and, when the man chose a course of action, willing to co operate, so that they did not outstrip the dictates of reason, nor fall short of them, nor misbehave, nor disobey, but so that every impulse was easily led

As new weaned foal beside his mother runs,

and confirmed the remark of Xenocrates about true philosophers, that they alone do willingly what all others do unwillingly because of the law, even as dogs by a blow and cats by a noise are turned from their pleasures and regard with suspicion the danger that threatens them.
It is quite obvious, then, that there is in the soul a perception of some such distinction and difference as regards the desires, as though some force were fighting against them and contradicting them. But some affirm that passion is not essentially different from reason, nor is there quarrelling between the two and factious strife, but only a conversion of one and the same reason to its two aspects; this escapes our notice by reason of the suddenness and swiftness of the change, for we do not perceive that it is the same part of the soul with which we naturally desire and change to aversion, are angry and afraid, are swept along by pleasure to shameful conduct, and then, when the soul itself is being swept away, recover ourselves again. In fact, they say, desire and anger and fear and all such things are but perverse opinions and judgements, which do not arise in one certain part of the soul, but are inclinations and yieldings, assents and impulses of the whole directive faculty and, in a word, certain activities which may in a moment be changed this way or that, just as the sudden assaults of children have an impetuosity and violence that is precarious and inconstant because of children’s weakness.
But this doctrine is, in the first place, contrary to the clear evidence of our perceptions. For no one ever perceives in himself a change from desiring to judging, nor again a change from judging to desiring; nor does the lover cease loving when he reasons that he must restrain his love and fight against it, and then give up again the process of reasoning and judging when he is softened by desire and yields to love; but both while by reason he still continues to oppose passion, he continues in the passion, and again, when mastered by passion, he plainly sees he error by the light of reason: and neither through passion has he done away with reason, nor through reason is he rid of passion, but being borne back and forth from one or the other he lies between them and participates in both. For those who assume now that desire becomes the controlling faculty, now that it is reason which arrays itself against desire, are in the same position as those who assume the hunter and the beast to be not two, but one and the same body which, by a change, is now the beast, and now becomes the hunter. For just as those persons overlook something quite plain, so these testify against the evidence of perception, which tells us that we have in these cases, not a changing of some one thing, but two things struggling and fighting against one another.
“What then?” they object. “Is it not true that man’s deliberative faculty also is often divided and distracted toward contrary opinions regarding what is expedient, but that it is yet one and the same?’ “Quite so,” we shall say, “but the process is not parallel.” For the intellectual part of the soul does not here oppose itself, but, using one and the same faculty, applies itself to different lines of reasoning; or rather, there is but one single reason, which functions on things essentially different, as though on different matters. Therefore neither is pain present in reasoning where passion is absent, nor are men forced, as it were, to choose a course contrary to reason, unless indeed some emotion is furtively attached, as it were, to one pan of the balances. This, in fact, happens often: when it is not reasoning that opposes reasoning, but ambition or contentiousness or the pursuit of favour or jealousy or fear that opposes, we think it is a difference between two reasons, as in the verse:

To refuse they were ashamed, but feared to accept;

and this:

To die is dreadful, yet it brings fair fame;
Not to die is craven, yet there’s pleasure there.

And in the judgement of suits concerning business affairs the passions rush in unawares and cause the greatest waste of time. So also in the councils of kings those who speak to obtain favour are not advocating one or the other of two decisions, but are submitting to some emotion which is contrary to their calculation of what is expedient. Therefore in aristocratic states the magistrates do not allow political speakers to make passionate harangues, for reason, if not influenced by passion, inclines to a just balance toward what is right; but if passion intervenes, the part of the soul that feels pleasure and pain fights and opposes the part which forms judgements and deliberates. Otherwise, why is it that in philosophical speculations no feeling of pain is present when, under the influence of those who hold different opinions, we change our views again and again, but that Aristotle himself and Democritus and Chrysippus have recanted without any dismay or pain, and even with pleasure, some of the dogmas they previously held? It is because passion has set up no opposition to the contemplative and scientific part of the soul and the irrational part remains quiet and does not meddle with these matters. Therefore reason, as soon as the truth appears, dismisses the false and gladly inclines toward the truth; for it is in reason, not in its opposite, that the faculty resides which yields to persuasion and, through persuasion, changes opinion. But with most people, their deliberations, judgements, and decisions which are to be converted into action are in a state of emotion and therefore offer obstructions and difficulties to the path of reason, for reason is checked and confused by the irrational, which, with some emotion of pleasure or fear, pain or desire, rises up to oppose it. In such cases the senses make the decision, since they have contact with both; and if, in fact, one gains the mastery, it does not destroy the other, but forces it to comply and drags it along resisting. For the lover who admonishes himself uses reason against his passion, since they both exist at the same time in his soul, as it were pressing with his hand the other member, which is inflamed, and clearly perceiving that there are two distinct forces and that they are at variance. On the other hand, in those deliberations and speculations where passion is absent (and these are the sort in which the contemplative faculty most commonly engages), if they be equally balanced, no judgement has taken place, but merely a perplexity has arisen, which is a rest or suspension of intellectual activity brought about by opposing probabilities; but if the inclination falls to either side, the winning opinion has cancelled the other, with the result that there is no pain nor any opposition left. In general, when it appears that reason is opposing reason, there is no perception of them as two distinct things, but as a single thing which arises in different impressions upon the senses. Yet when there is a struggle against reason on the part of the irrational, which, by its very nature, can neither conquer nor be conquered without pain, straightway the irrational splits the soul in two by its battling and makes the distinction between the two perfectly obvious.
8: It is not only from their dissension, however, but no less from their agreement, that one can perceive that the source of passion is essentially different from that of reason. For since it is equally possible to love a noble youth, well-formed by nature for virtue, and to love an evil and profligate one, and since it happens that one both becomes angry irrationally against one’s own children or parents, and angry justly on behalf of parents and children against enemies and despots; just as in the one case there is perception of struggle and dissension of passion against reason, so in the other there is perception of persuasion and agreement on the part of passion, which inclines the scales, as it were, in favour of reason and increases its power. Yet again, when a good man has lawfully married a wife, his intention is to treat her respectfully and consort with her honourably and soberly; but as time goes on, his intimacy with her has given birth to passion, when he perceives that his love and affection increases by the exercise of his reason. So again, when young men happen upon cultivated teachers, they follow them and admire them at first because of their usefulness; but later they come to feel affection for them also, and in place of familiar companions and pupils they are called lovers and are actually so. The same thing happens also in people’s relations to good magistrates in cities and good neighbours and relatives by marriage; for in the beginning they dutifully associate with one another from some consideration of usefulness, but later they are carried unconsciously into genuine affection, reason drawing along, and aiding in the persuasion of, the passionate element. Is it not obvious that he who said,

And modesty. Two kinds there are: the one
Not bad, the other burdening our homes,

has perceived in himself that this emotion often follows the lead of reason and is arrayed at reason’s side, but often, contrary to reason, by hesitations and delays ruins opportunities and actions?
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10: Now if, by positing that all errors and faults are equal, they are in some other way over-looking the truth, this present discourse is not the proper occasion to confute them; but in the case of the emotions they certainly appear to be in opposition to reason and contrary to plain evidence. For, according to them, every emotion is an error, and every one who grieves or fears or desires is guilty of error. Yet there are seen to be great differences in the emotions according to their greater or lesser intensity…
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11: For how is it possible for the same man to be both better and worse than himself, or to be master of himself and at the same time be mastered, if in some way or other each man were not by nature double and had not both the worse and the better within himself? This being the case, he who holds the worse in subjection to the better is self-controlled and better than himself, but he who permits the better part to follow and be in subjection to the intemperate and irrational part of his soul is called worse than himself and incontinent and in a state contrary to Nature.
For, in accordance with Nature, it is proper that reason, which is divine, should lead and rule the irrational, which derives its origin directly from the body to which Nature has designed that it should bear a resemblance and share in the body’s passions and be contaminated by it, since it has entered into the body and has become merged with it; that this is so is shown by our impulses, which arise and are set in motion toward corporal objects and become violent or relax in keeping with the changes of the body…
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12: And in general, both as my opponents themselves admit and as is quite obvious, in this world some things are governed by an acquired disposition, others by a natural one, some by an irrational soul, others by a rational and intellectual one; and in practically all these things man participates and he is subject to all the differences I have mentioned. For he is controlled by his acquired disposition, nurtured by his natural disposition, and makes use of reason and intellect. He has, therefore, some portion of the spring of the irrational also and has innate within him the mainspring of emotion, not as an adventitious accessory, but as a necessary part of his being, which should never be done away with entirely, but must needs have careful tending and education. Therefore the work of reason is not Thracian, not like that of Lycurgus — to cut down and destroy the helpful elements of emotion together with the harmful — but to do as the god who watches over crops and the god who guards the vine do to lop off the wild growth and to clip away excessive luxuriance, and then to cultivate and to dispose for use the serviceable remainder. For neither do those who fear drunkenness pour out their wine upon the ground, nor do those who fear passion eradicate the disturbing element, but both temper what they fear. It is, in fact, the rebellious kicking and plunging of oxen and horses that men do away with, not their movements and activities; even so reason makes use of the emotions when they have been subdued and are tame, and does not hamstring nor altogether excise that part of the soul which should be its servant. For

The horse is meet for the chariot,

as Pindar says,

the ox for the plough;
But if you think to slay a boar, you must find a stout-hearted hound.

Yet much more useful than these beasts are the whole brood of passions when they are present in the service of reason and help to intensify the virtues: anger, if it be moderate, will assist courage, and hatred of evil will aid justice, and righteous indignation will oppose those who are prosperous beyond their deserts when their souls are inflamed with folly and insolence and they need to be checked. For who, even if he so wished, could separate or sever from friendship a natural propensity toward affection, from humaneness pity, and from true benevolence the mutual participation in joy and grief? And if those err who discard love entirely because love may bring madness, neither are they right who blame commerce because it may beget covetousness; on the contrary, what they do is somewhat like the action of those who would abolish running because one may chance to stumble, or shooting because one may overshoot the mark, and dislike any singing at all because some sing off key. For as in the realm of sound musical art produces consonance, not by doing away with the deep low and the shrill high notes; and in the case of the body, medical art produces health, not by the removal of heat and coldness, but by the proportionately quantitative admixture of the two; so in the soul moral virtue is produced when equity and moderation are engendered by reason in the emotional faculties and activities. For a soul possessed of excessive pain or joy or fear is like a swollen and feverish body; it is not so, however, if the joy or pain or fear be moderate. And Homer in his admirable words,

A valiant man will never change his hue,
Nor will his fear be over-great,

does not abolish fear, but excessive fear, in order that the valiant man may have not foolhardiness but courage, not audacity but daring. In his pleasures, therefore, a man must rid himself of excessive desire, and in punishing wrong, of excessive hatred of evil: for in this way he will be, in the former case, not insensible but temperate, and in the latter case, just, not serving nor cruel. But if the passions could in reality be entirely done away with, in many persons reason would be too inactive and dulled, like a pilot when the wind dies down. It is surely this truth that the legislators also have perceived when they try to put into their constitutions the emotions of ambition and emulation as regards the citizens’ relations to each other, but in relation to the enemy they try to rouse and increase their spirited and fighting qualities with trumpets and pipes. For it is not in poetry only that, as Plato says, he who is inspired and possessed by the Muses renders ridiculous the man who is an artist equipped with exact knowledge of technique, but in battles also the passionate and inspired is irresistible and invincible. This quality it is that Homer says the gods instil into men:

So did he speak and he breathed great might
Into the shepherd of the people;

and

Not without some god does he
These deeds of madness;

as though the gods were adding passion as an incitement or a vehicle to reason.
Indeed we may see these very opponents of mine often inciting young men with praise and often chastising them with admonitions; and of these, in the first case pleasure is the consequence, in the second pain (in fact, admonition and rebuke engender repentance and shame, of which the first is a kind of pain, the second a kind of fear); and of these methods they make particular use to improve their charges. As Diogenes also remarked, when Plato was being praised, “What is there so august about one who has spent so much time talking philosophy, yet has never caused anyone pain?” For surely studies could not so properly be called, to use Xenocrates’ words, the “grips of philosophy,” as could the emotions of young men: shame, desire, repentance, pleasure, pain, ambition. On these if reason and law obtain a suitable and salutary grip, they efficaciously set the young man upon the path that he should take. Therefore the Spartan tutor was not wide of the mark when he said that he intended to make a boy entrusted to him delight in honourable and be vexed at dishonourable things. Than this saying there can be shown no greater nor fairer end of such education as befits a free-born child.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. I of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by F. C. Babbitt. 1927. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Quomodo_quis_sentiat*.html

HOW A MAN MAY BECOME AWARE OF HIS PROGRESS IN VIRTUE
1 What possible form of argument, my dear Sosius Senecio, will keep alive in a man the consciousness that he is growing better in regard to virtue, if it is a fact that the successive stages of his progress produce no abatement of his unwisdom, but, on the contrary, vice constantly besets all progress and with countervailing weight drags him down,

As leaden weights submerge the fisher’s net?

For, by the same token, in music or grammar a man would not realize that he was making any improvement if in the process of learning he should in no wise lower the level of his ignorance about these subjects, and his lack of proficiency should all the time persist to the same degree. So, too, in the case of a sick man, a course of treatment that should not in some way effect an easing and alleviation of the malady, by making it to yield and let go its hold on him, would not afford him any perception of a change for the better until the opposite condition had been unmistakably engendered, his body having completely recovered its strength. On the contrary, just as in these cases persons make no progress unless their progress is marked by such an abatement of what is oppressing them, that, when the scale turns and they swing upward in the opposite direction, they can note the change, so too, in the study of philosophy, neither progress nor any sense of progress is to be assumed, if the soul does not put aside any of its gross stupidity and purge itself thereof, and if, up to the moment of its attaining the absolute and perfect good, it is wedded to evil which is also absolute. Why if this is so, the wise man in a moment or a second of time changes from the lowest possible depravity to an unsurpassable state of virtue; and all his vice, of which he has not in long years succeeded in removing even a small portion, he suddenly leaves behind for ever.
Yet you doubtless know that, on the other hand, the authors of such assertions make for themselves much trouble and great difficulties over the unwitting man, who has as yet failed to apprehend the fact that he has become wise, but does not know, and hesitates to believe, that his advancement, which has been effected by the gradual and long-continued process of divesting himself of some qualities and adding others, has, as walking brings one where he would be, imperceptibly and quietly brought him into virtue’s company. But if there were such a swiftness in the change and a difference so vast, that the man who was the very worst in the morning should have become the very best at evening, or should the change so come about that he who was a worthless dolt when he fell asleep should awake wise, and, having dismissed from his soul his gross stupidities and false concepts of yesterday, could exclaim:

False dreams, farewell! Ye are but naught, it seems,

— who would fail to recognize that a great difference like this had been wrought in his own self, and that the light of wisdom had all at once burst upon him? Why, it seems to me that anyone who, like Caeneus, were made from woman in answer to prayer, would sooner fail to recognize the transformation, than that anyone made temperate, wise, and brave, from being cowardly, foolish, and licentious, and transferred from a bestial to a godlike life, should for a single second not perceive what had happened to him.
2: Rightly has it been said:

Adjust the stone to fit
The line, and not the line to fit the stone.

But those who do not adjust their tenets to fit the facts, but rather try to force the facts into an unnatural agreement with their own assumptions, have filled philosophy with a great number of difficulties, of which the greatest is that which would assign all men to a general category of badness with the single exception of the absolutely perfect man; the result of which is to make a puzzle out of what we call progress, since it falls but little short of the utmost foolishness, and represents men who have been released by it from all kinds of passions and weaknesses as living in a state of equal wretchedness with those who have not yet been freed from a single one of the worst evils. Now these men really refute themselves when, in their lectures, they put the wrongdoing of Aristeides on an equality with that of Phalaris, and cowardice of Brasidas on equality with that of Dolon, and the hard-hearted attitude of Plato as actually not differing at all from that of Meletus; whereas in their life and practice they show an aversion for these latter men and avoid them as ruthless, but the former they seem to think are men of great worth, for they cite them with confidence in the most important matters.
3: But as for us, we observe that there are degrees in every kind of evil, and especially in the indeterminate and undefined kind that has to do with the soul. (In the same way also there are different degrees of progress produced by the abatement of baseness like a receding shadow, as reason gradually illuminates and purifies the soul.) We do not, therefore, think that consciousness of the change is unreasonable in the case of persons who are, as it were, making their way upward out of some deep gorge, but there are ways in which it can be computed. Of these I beg you to consider the first without further preface. Just as men sailing out into the open sea calculate their run by the time elapsed in conjunction with the strength of the wind, reckoning how much distance, after spending a certain time, while carried onward by a certain force, they are likely to have accomplished; so too in philosophy a man may take for himself as a proof that he is gaining ground the uniformity and continuity of his course, which makes on the way no frequent halts, followed by leaps and bounds, but smoothly and regularly forges ahead, and goes through the course of philosophic reasoning without mishap. For the lines:

If even small upon the small you place
And do this oft,

Dare not merely well put in regard to the increase of money, but they apply to everything, and especially to advancement in virtue, since reason thereby gains the aid of constant and effective habit. But the variation and obtuseness often shown by students of philosophy not only cause delays and stoppages in their progress on the road to knowledge, but also bring about retrogressions, since vice always makes an onset on the man who yields ground by loitering, and carries him backward in the opposite direction.
Mathematicians tell us that the planets, when their forward movement ceases, become for the moment stationary, but in the study of philosophy there is no intermission when progress halts, nor any such thing as remaining stationary, but Nature, being never free from motion of some sort, is wont to move up or down, as though suspended on a balance, and to be swayed by the better motives, or else under the influence of the contrary motives it moves rapidly towards what is worse. If therefore you follow the advice given by the god in the oracle, to “fight the Cirrhaeans all days and all nights,” and are conscious that you likewise in the daytime and the night-time have always carried on an unrelenting warfare against vice, or at least that you have not often relaxed your vigilance nor constantly granted admission to divers pleasures, recreations, and pastimes, which are, as it were, envoys sent by vice to treat for a truce, it is then quite probable that you may go on with good courage and confidence to what still remains.
4: However, even though it be that intermissions occur in one’s philosophical studies, yet if the later periods of study are more constant and long-continued than they were earlier, this is no slight indication that the spirit of indifference is being expelled through industry and practice; but there is something pernicious in the opposite condition, when numerous and continued set-backs occur after no long time, as if the spirit of eagerness were withering away. We may compare a reed, the growth of which at its beginning has a very great impetus, which results in an even and continuous length, at first in long sections, since it meets with few obstacles and repulses, but later, as though for lack of breath as it gets higher up, it grows weak and weary, and is gathered up in the many frequent nodules, when the life-giving spirit meets with buffets and shocks; so with philosophy, those who at the outset engage in long excursions into its realms and later meet with a long series of obstacles and distractions without becoming aware of any change toward the better, finally get wearied out, and give up. But a man of the other type “is again given wings” by the help he gets as he is carried onward, and by the strength and eagerness born of successful accomplishment brushes aside pretences as though they were a hindering crowd in his path. In the same way that an indication of the beginning of love is to be found, not in the taking delight in the presence of the loved one (for this is usual), but in feeling a sting of pain when separated; just so are many allured by philosophy and seem to take hold of the task of learning with high aspirations, but if they are forced by other business and occupations to leave it, all that excitement of theirs subsides and they no longer care. But

He in whose heart the prick of youthful love

is planted may appear to you moderate and mild while present at philosophical discussions; but when he is separated and apart from them, behold him ardent and troubled, and dissatisfied with all business and occupations, and, cherishing the mere recollection, he is driven about like an irrational being by his yearning towards philosophy. For we ought not to enjoy being present at discussions as we enjoy the presence of perfumes, and then when we are removed from them not seek after them or even feel uneasy; but we ought in our periods of separation to experience a sensation akin in a way to hunger and thirsty, and so be led to cleave to what makes for real progress, whether it chance to be a wedding or wealth or the duties of friendship or military service that causes the temporary parting. For the greater the acquisition from philosophy is, the more annoyance there is in being cut off from it.
5: Quite the same as this, or nearly the same, is the very ancient elucidation of progress found in Hesiod, which sets forth that the way is no longer uphill, nor very steep, but easy and smooth and readily accomplished, as though it were made smooth by practice, and as though it brought on a light, which is to be found in the study of philosophy, and an illumination succeeding upon perplexity, errant thought, and much vacillation, which students of philosophy encounter at the outset, like persons who have left behind the land which they know and are not yet in sight of the land to which they are sailing. For having given up the common and familiar things before gaining knowledge and possession of the better, they are carried hither and thither in the interval, and oftentimes in the wrong direction. An illustration is the story told about Sextius, the Roman, to the effect that he had renounced his honours and offices in the State for philosophy, but, because he was impatient and found the subject difficult at the outset, he came very near throwing himself down from an upper story. A similar tale, too, they record about Diogenes of Sinope at the beginning of his devotion to philosophy. The Athenians were keeping holiday with public banquets and shows in the theatre and informal gatherings among themselves, and indulging in merry-making the whole night long, while Diogenes, huddled up in a corner trying to sleep, fell into some very disturbing and disheartening reflexions how he from no compulsion had entered upon a toilsome and strange mode of life, and as a result of his own act he was now sitting without part or parcel in all these good things. A moment later, however, a mouse, it is said, crept up and busied itself with the crumbs of his bread, whereupon he once more recovered his spirits, and said to himself as though rebuking himself for cowardice, “What are you saying, Diogenes? Your leavings make a feast for this creature, but as for you, a man of birth and breeding, just because you cannot be getting drunk over there, reclining on soft and flowery couches, do you bewail and lament your lot?’ Now when such fits of dejection become of infrequent occurrence and the objections and protests made by sound sense against them quickly come to our help, as though rallying after a temporary route, and easily dissipate our depression and dismay, we may well believe that our progress rests on a firm foundation.
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7: Whenever, then, by thus setting the advantages of virtue over against merely external advantages, you have succeeded in dispelling all envy and jealousy and the things that vex and depress many beginners in philosophy, you are thus again making clear to yourself in a significant way the reality of your progress. Of no slight significance either is the change which occurs in one’s discourse. For practically all beginners in philosophy are more inclined to pursue those forms of discourse which make for repute; some of these beginners, like birds, are led by their flightiness and ambition to alight on the resplendent heights of the Natural Sciences; while others, “like puppies, delighting to pull and tear,” as Plato puts it, go in for the disputations, knotty problems, and quibbles; but the majority enter a course in Logic and Argumentation, where they straightway stock themselves up for the practice of sophistry; while a few go about making a collection of apophthegms and anecdotes, but, as Anacharsis said of the Greeks that he never saw them put their money to any use save to count it, so these persons are for ever foolishly taking account and inventory of their literary stock, but they lay up nothing else which would be to their own profit. Quite in place here is Antiphanes’ story, which somebody has recounted and applied to Plato’s close acquaintances. Antiphanes said humorously that in a certain city words congealed with the cold the moment they were spoken, and later, as they thawed out, people heard in the summer what they had said to one another in the winter; it was the same way, he asserted, with what was said by Plato to men still in their youth; not until long afterwards, if ever, did most of them come to perceive the meaning, when they had become old men. And this is the general experience with philosophy as a whole until the judgement acquires a healthy stability, and begins to find itself in accord with principles productive of character and breadth of mind, and to look for the kind of discourse whose footprints, in the words of Aesop, are turned toward us rather than away from us. For as Sophocles said, that only after handling with a light touch the turgidity of Aeschylus and next his harshness and artificiality in composition, did he, as a third step, change the character of the language, which has the most to do with moral character and goodness, so, in the same way, when students of philosophy pass from the ostentatious and artificial to the kind of discourse which deals with character and feeling they begin to make real and unaffected progress.
8: Observe, then, not only when you are perusing the writings of philosophers and listening to their discourses, whether you do not give more attention to the mere language than to the subject matter, and whether you are not more on the alert for passages which involve something difficult and odd rather than for those which convey something useful, substantial, and beneficial; moreover, when you are busying yourself with poems and history, you must watch yourself to see whether anything escapes you among the ideas which are suitably expressed and tend to improvement of character or alleviation of emotion. For as Simonides says of the bee that it flits among the flowers,

Making the yellow honey its care,

while the rest of the world contents itself with their colour and fragrance, getting nothing else from them, so, while the rest of the world ranges amid poems for the sake of pleasure or diversion, if a man, through his own initiative, finds and collects something worth while, it is reasonable to expect that he at last, from force of habit and fondness of what is beautiful and appropriate, has made himself capable of appreciating it. In the case, for example, of persons who make use of Plato and Xenophon for their language, and gather therefrom nothing else but the purity of their Attic style, like dew and bloom, what can you say of them, save that they are the sort of persons that content themselves with the sweet odour and bouquet of medicines, but have no desire for their sedative and purgative virtues, nor the power to discern them? But those who are making still more and more progress are always able to derive benefit, not only from what is said, but also from what is seen and done, and to gather what is appropriate and useful therefrom. Examples are found in the stories told of Aeschylus and of others like him. Aeschylus at the Isthmian games was watching a boxing-match, and when one of the men was hit the crowd in the theatre burst into a roar. Aeschylus nudged Ion of Chios, and said, “You see what a thing training is; the man who is hit says nothing; it is the spectators who shout.”… Diogenes at the first sight of a man drinking from his hands took his cup from his wallet and threw it away. Thus attention and intense application makes persons perceptive and receptive of anything that conducts to virtue, from whatever source it come. This is more apt to be the case if they combine theory with practice, not only, as Thucydides says, “carrying on their practice amid dangers,” but also when confronted by pleasures or contentions, and when busy over lawsuits and pleadings at court and the conduct of public affairs, thus, as it were, giving themselves a demonstration of their convictions, or rather arriving at their convictions by putting them to a practical test…
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9: It is therefore imperative that we consider carefully whether, as for ourselves, we employ our discourse for our own improvement, and whether, as it affects others, we employ it, not for the sake of momentary repute, nor from motives of ambition, but rather with the wish to hear and to impart something; but most of all must we consider whether the spirit of contention and quarrelling over debatable questions has been put down, and whether we have ceased to equip ourselves with arguments, as with boxing-gloves or brass knuckles, with which to contend against one another, and to take more delight in scoring a hit or a knockout than in learning and imparting something. For reasonableness and mildness in such matters, and the ability to join in discussions without wrangling, and to close them without anger, and to avoid a sort of arrogance over success in argument and exasperation over defeat, are the marks of a man who is making adequate progress. Aristippus made this clear when he was once outwitted in an argument by a man who had plenty of assurance, but was otherwise foolish and flighty. For seeing that the man was rejoicing and in great conceit, Aristippus said, “For all that I have been defeated I am going home to enjoy a sweeter sleep than you who have defeated me.”
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10: Everybody, without exception, ought to pay careful attention, not only to his words, but also to his actions, to see whether the element of usefulness in them prevails over ostentation, and whether their whole aim is the truth rather than display. For if true love for a youth or a woman does not seek witnesses, but enjoys the fruits of pleasure even if it consummate its desire in secret, it is even more to be expected that the lover of honour and wisdom, in the familiar intercourse with virtue which comes through his actions, should keep his pride in himself to himself and be silent, feeling no need of eulogists and auditors…
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For as Aeschylus puts it:

The ardent eye betrays the youthful maid
Who once has tasted of the joys of love;

but with the young man who has had a taste of real progress in philosophy these words of Sappho are always associated:

My tongue breaks down, and all at once
A secret flame throughout my body runs;

Nevertheless, you will see an eye untroubled and serene, and you would yearn to hear him speak. Just as persons who are being initiated into the Mysteries throng together at the outset amid tumult and shouting, and jostle against one another, but when the holy rites are being performed and disclosed the people are immediately attentive in awe and silence, so too at the beginning of philosophy: about its portals also you will see great tumult and talking and boldness, as some boorishly and violently try to jostle their way towards the repute it bestows; but he who has succeeded in getting inside, and has seen a great light, as though a shrine were opened, adopts another bearing of silence and amazement, and “humble and orderly attends upon” reason as upon a god. To these the humorous remark of Menedemus may, as it seems, be nicely applied; for he said that the multitudes who came to Athens to school were, at the outset wise; later they became lovers of wisdom, later still orators, and, as time went on, just ordinary persons, and the more they laid hold on reason the more they laid aside their self-opinion and conceit.
11: Of persons needing the services of a physician those who have a painful tooth or finger go straightway to those who treat such ills; those who have fever summon the physicians to their houses, and implore their assistance; but those who have reached a state of melancholia or frenzy or delirium sometimes cannot endure even the physicians’ visits, but either drive them away or run away from them, not realizing even that they are ill, because of the violence of their illness. So also of the erring: the incurable are those who take an hostile and savage attitude and show a hot temper toward those who take them to task and admonish them, while those who patiently submit to admonition and welcome it are in less serious plight. And for a man who is in error to submit himself to those who take him to task, to tell what is the matter with him, to disclose his depravity, and not to rejoice in hiding his fault or to take satisfaction in its not being known, but to confess it, and to feel the need of somebody to take him in hand and admonish him, is no slight indication of progress. So Diogenes has somewhere said that, as a matter of self-preservation, a man should be concerned to find either an earnest friend or an ardent enemy, so that either by stern reprehension or by kindly attention he may escape vice. But just so long as a man, displaying a spot or a stain on his garment or a rip in his shoe, puts on airs in public by affecting a silly unconcern for such matters, or, by passing some jest about himself for being dwarfed or hump-backed, imagines that he is thus showing a spirit of youthful bravado, while, at the same time, the inward ugliness of his soul, the despicable acts of his life, his displays of pettiness or love of pleasure or malice or envy, he covers up and conceals as though they were ulcerous sores, and allows nobody to touch them or even see them because of his fear of being reprehended for them — such a man’s part in progress is little, or rather none at all. But the man who grapples with these faults, especially if he shows himself able and willing to make himself unhappy and wretched over his errors, and, next to that, to submit to another’s admonitions without flinching, and with a spirit made purer by such reproofs — such a man truly has every appearance of trying to divest himself of baseness and of abominating it. Beyond all question, anyone ought to have enough self-respect to avoid even giving the impression of being bad; but the man who is more disturbed over the actual existence of baseness than over any ill-repute does not try to avoid uncomplimentary remarks to himself, or replying to them, when this may be made a means of improvement. Very neat was the remark made by Diogenes to a young man, who, being seen at a tavern, fled for refuge within. “The farther you flee inside,” said he, “the more you are in the tavern.” And so of low things, the more each man denies, just so much the deeper does he become involved in vice, and cut off his escape therefrom. So, too, it is that among poor people those who make a show of being rich are even poorer because of their pretension; but the man who is making true progress takes as his example Hippocrates, who published and recorded his failure to apprehend the facts about the cranial sutures; for such a man accounts it a dreadful thing, that here was Hippocrates who declared his own error so that others should not repeat his experience, and yet he himself, a man bent on saving his soul alive, should not have the courage to submit to being taken to task, and to confess his fatuity and ignorance. Indeed the declarations of Bion and Pyrrho might be construed as indication, not merely of progress, but rather of a higher state of mind and one which comes nearer to the ideal. Bion said to his intimate friends that they might well be justified in thinking that they were making progress when they could listen to their revilers as though they heard them say:

Friend, since you have not the look of a man that is base or unthinking,
Health and great joy be yours, and God grant that you ever may prosper.

And the story about Pyrrho is that when he was on a voyage, and in peril during a storm, he pointed to a little pig contentedly feeding upon some barley which had been spilled near by, and said to his companions that a similar indifference must be acquired from reason and philosophy by the man who does not wish to be disturbed by anything that may befall him.
12: Note also the significance of Zeno’s statement. For he said that every man might fairly derive from his dreams a consciousness that he was making progress if he observed that during his period of sleep he felt no pleasure in anything disgraceful, and did not tolerate or commit any dreadful or untoward action, but as though in the clear depth of an absolute calm there came over him the radiant thought that the fanciful and emotional element in his soul had been dispelled by reason. Plato, apparently realizing this even earlier, has given form and expression to the operations of the fanciful and irrational element in a naturally despotic soul during sleep. “It attempts incest,” and feels a sudden hunger for a great variety of food, acting in lawless fashion, and giving loose rein to the desires which in the daytime the law keeps confined by means of shame and fear. Now well-trained beasts of burden, even if their driver lets go the reins, do not attempt to turn aside and leave the road, but in their accustomed manner they go on in their places and keep to their course without mishap; and so it is in the case of persons in whom the irrational impulse has already been rendered obedient and gentle by reason and has been thorough chastened; neither during sleep nor as a result of illness is it willing any longer to indulge readily in arrogance or lawlessness because of the desires, but it observes and bears in mind the habit it has acquired, and it is this which endows our vigilance with strength and intensity. For if the body by virtue of training is actually capable of rendering itself and its members so obedient to its injunctions of indifference that the eyes refrain from tears at a piteous sight, and the heart from throbbing in the midst of terrors, and the passions chastely remain unexcited and undisturbed in the presence of youthful or maidenly beauty, is it not indeed even more probable that training, by taking hold of the emotional element in the soul, will, as it were, do away with the irregularities and vagaries of our fancies and incitements, and carry its repression of them even into our slumbers?…
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13: Inasmuch as complete indifference is a great and divine thing, whereas progress, as they say, resembles a sort of abatement and moderation of the emotions, it is our duty to compare our present emotions with their former selves and with one another, and thus determine the differences. We must compare them with their former selves, to see whether the desires and fears and angry passions which we experience to day are less intense than they used to be, inasmuch as we, by means of reason, are rapidly getting rid of the cause that kindles and inflames them; and we must compare them with one another, to see whether now we are more inclined to feel shame than fear, to be emulous rather than envious, more eager for good repute than for money, and, in general, whether, in case we err by going to extremes, we, after the manner of musicians, incline to the severity of the Dorian key rather than to the softness of the Lydian, as shown by our being strict rather than lax in our mode of life, and deliberate rather than precipitate in our actions, and given to expressing undue admiration rather than contempt of doctrines and persons. For just as the turning aside of a disease into the less vital parts of the body is an encouraging symptom, so it is reasonable to assume that when the vice of those who are making progress is transformed into more moderate emotions, it is being gradually blotted out. When Phrynis added two strings to the seven-stringed lyre, the Ephors inquired whether he preferred to let them cut out the two upper or the two lower strings; but in our case it is both the upper and the lower that require lopping off if we are to be brought to the state which is a mean between excess in either direction; and one of the first results of progress is an abatement of the excess and keenness of our emotions,

Wherein the frenzied are most vehement,

as Sophocles expresses it.
14: Furthermore, as has already been said, the translating of our judgements into deeds, and not allowing our words to remain mere words, but to make them into actions, is, above all else, a specific mark of progress. An indication of this is, in the first place, the desire to emulate what we commend, eagerness to do what we admire, and, on the other hand, unwillingness to do, or even to tolerate, what we censure…
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… but more than that, the man who is truly making progress, comparing himself with the deeds and conduct of a good and perfect man, and being pricked by the consciousness of his own shortcomings, yet at the same time rejoicing because of his hope and yearning, and being filled with an urging that is never still, is ready in the words of Simonides

To run like a weanling colt beside its dam,

so great is his craving all but to merge his own identity in that of the good man. Indeed a peculiar symptom of true progress is found in this feeling of love and affection for the disposition shown by those whose deeds we try to emulate, and in the fact that our efforts to make ourselves like them are always attended by a goodwill which accords to them a fair meed of honour…
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17: Still another, and a not unimportant indication of progress, which, if you will, you may add to the foregoing, is this: a man no longer holds the opinion that any one of his sins is unimportant, but is studiously circumspect and heedful regarding all. For just as those who have given up the hope of ever being rich make nothing of their small expenditures, with the idea that whatever is added to a little will make nothing great, whereas Hope as it draws nearer to its goal joins hands with wealth in increasing the desire for wealth, so it is with the activities which bear upon virtue: the man who does not acquiesce much in the sentiments “What difference does this make?” and “This way now; better next time,” but who gives heed to each separate thing, and is impatient and vexed if vice ever finds its way into the most insignificant of his errors and suggests a reason for condoning it — this man already shows plainly that he is winning for himself a spotless treasure and that he scorns to sully himself in any way whatever. On the other hand, to imagine that nothing can cause any great disgrace, or can even be of any great importance, makes men easy-going and careless about little things. True enough, it makes no difference, when men are building some rough wall which is to have a coping, whether they throw into the foundation a chance piece of timber or a stone picked up from the ground, or whether they put into the lower courses a fallen slab from some tomb, the same sort of thing that moral slovens do when they bring together promiscuously and accumulate actions and conduct of every kind; but those who are making progress, of whose life already, as of some holy temple or large palace,

The golden foundation hath been wrought,

do not indiscriminately accept for it a single action, but, using reason to guide them, they bring each one into place and fit it where it belongs. And we may well conceive that Polycleitus had this in mind when he said that the task is hardest for those whose clay has reached the stage when they must use the finger-nail.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. II of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by F. C. Babbitt. 1928. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_amicorum_multitudine*.html

ON HAVING MANY FRIENDS
1: Meno, the Thessalian, who felt that he had had a good training in debating, and, to quote Empedocles’ familiar expression, was

Haunting the lofty heights of wisdom,

was asked by Socrates what virtue is; and when he replied impulsively and promptly that there is a virtue appropriate to a child and to an old man, to a grown man and to a woman, to a public official and to a private citizen, to a master and to a servant, Socrates exclaimed, “A fine answer! for when asked for one virtue you have stirred up a whole swarm of virtues,” inferring, not badly, that it was because the man knew not a single virtue that he was naming so many. And might not we also be subject to ridicule because we, who are not yet in secure possession of one friendship, are afraid that we may unwittingly become involved in a multitude of friendships? We hardly differ at all from a man who, being maimed or blind, is afraid that he may become a Briareus of the hundred hands or an Argus all-seeing. And yet we commend above measure the youth in Menander’s play who says that any man counts it a marvellous good thing

If he but have the shadow of a friend.

2: One thing which stands out among many others, as particularly antagonistic to our acquisition of friendship, is the craving for numerous friends, which is like that of licentious women, for because of our frequent intimacies with many different persons we cannot keep our hold on our earlier associates, who are neglected and drift away. A better comparison, perhaps, is the nursling of Hypsipyle, who seated himself in the meadow, and

One after another caught up
Handfuls of flowers with joyful heart,
But with childhood’s yearning unsated.

So it is with all of us: because anything new attracts us but soon palls on us, it is always the recent and freshly blooming friend that allures us and makes us change our minds, even while we are busy with many beginnings of friendship and intimacy at the same time, which go but little further, since, in our longing for the person we pursue, we pass over the one already within our grasp.
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… What then is the coin of friendship? It is goodwill and graciousness combined with virtue, than which nature has nothing more rare…
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… But true friendship seeks after three things above all else: virtue as a good thing, intimacy as a pleasant thing, and usefulness as a necessary thing, for a man ought to use judgement before accepting a friend, and to enjoy being with him and to use him when in need of him, and all these things stand in the way of one’s having many friends; but most in the way is the first (which is the most important) — the approval through judgement. Therefore we must, in the first place, consider whether it is possible in a brief period of time to test dancers who are to dance together, or rowers who are to pull together, or servants who are to be guardians of property or attendants of children, let alone the testing of a multitude of friends who are to strip for a general contest with every kind of fortune, each one of whom

Puts his successes with the common store,
And shares in bad luck, too, without distress.

For no ship is launched upon the sea to meet so many storms, nor do men, when they erect protecting walls for strongholds, and dams and moles for harbours, anticipate perils so numerous and so great as those from which friendship, rightly and surely tried, promises a refuge and protection. But when some thrust their friendship upon us without being tried, and are found to be like bad coins when put to the test,

Those who are bereft rejoice,
And those who have them pray for some escape.

But here is the difficulty — that it is not easy to escape or to put aside an unsatisfactory friendship; but as harmful and disquieting food can neither be retained without causing pain and injury, nor ejected in the form in which it was taken in, but only as a disgusting and repulsive mess, so an unprincipled friend either causes pain and intense discomfort by his continued association, or else with accompanying enmity and hostility is forcibly ejected like bile.
4: We ought therefore not to accept readily chance acquaintances, or attach ourselves to them, nor ought we to make friends of those who seek after us, but rather we should seek after those who are worthy of friendship. For one should by no means take what can easily be taken. In fact we step over or thrust aside bramble and brier, which seize hold upon us, and make our way onward to the olive and the vine. Thus it is always an excellent thing not to make an intimate acquaintance of the man who is ready with his embraces, but rather, of our own motion, to embrace those of whom we approve as worthy of our attention and useful to us.
5: Just as Zeuxis, when some persons charged him with painting slowly, retorted by saying, “Yes, it takes me a long time, for it is to last long,” so it is necessary to preserve friendship and intimacy by adopting them only after spending a long time in passing judgement upon them. Is it, then, true that while it is not easy to pass judgement on a large number of friends, yet it is easy to associate with a large number at the same time, or is this also impossible?…
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Now what is commonly called having a multitude of friends apparently produces the opposite result. For friendship draws persons together and unites them and keeps them united in a close fellowship by means of continual association and mutual acts of kindness —

Just as the fig-juice fastens the white milk firmly and binds it,

as Empedocles puts it (for such is the unity and consolidation that true friendship desires to effect); but, on the other hand, having a multitude of friends causes disunion, separation, and divergence, since, by calling one hither and thither, and transferring one’s attention now to this person, now to that, it does not permit any blending or close attachment of goodwill to take place in the intimacy which moulds itself about friendship and takes enduring form…
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6: But if all our friends want the same things at the same time, it is hard to satisfy all, in either their counsels, their public life, their ambitions, or their dispensing of hospitality…
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There is truth in the remark of the wise Chilon, who, in answer to the man who boasted of having no enemy, said, “The chances are that you have no friend either.” For enmities follow close upon friendships, and are interwoven with them, inasmuch as it is impossible for a friend not to share his friend’s wrongs or disrepute or disfavour; for a man’s enemies at once look with suspicion and hatred upon his friend, and oftentimes his other friends are envious and jealous, and try to get him away. As the oracle given to Timesias about his colony prophesied:

Soon shall your swarms of honey-bees turn out to be hornets,

so, in like manner, men who seek for a swarm of friends unwittingly run afoul of hornet’s nests of enemies.
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… And as the natural philosophers say of the formless and colourless substance and material which is the underlying basis of everything and of itself turns into everything, that it is now in a state of combustion, now liquefied, at another time aeriform, and then again solid, so the possession of a multitude of friends will necessarily have, as its underlying basis, a soul that is very impressionable, versatile, pliant, and readily changeable. But friendship seeks for a fixed and steadfast character which does not shift about, but continues in one place and in one intimacy. For this reason a steadfast friend is something rare and hard to find.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Plutarch’s Morals. Translated by Arthur Richard Shiletto. London, George Bell and Sons. 1898. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg, 2007. Retrieved 2025, from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23639/23639-h/23639-h.htm

HOW ONE MAY DISCERN A FLATTERER FROM A FRIEND.
i. Plato says, Antiochus Philopappus, that all men pardon the man who acknowledges that he is excessively fond of himself, but that there is among many other defects this very grave one in self-love, that by it a man becomes incapable of being a just and impartial judge about himself, for love is blind in regard to the loved object, unless a person has learnt and accustomed himself to honour and pursue what is noble rather than his own selfish interests. This gives a great field for the flatterer in friendship, who finds a wonderful base of operations in our self-love, which makes each person his own first and greatest flatterer, and easily admits a flatterer from without, who will be, so he thinks and hopes, both a witness and confirmer of his good opinion of himself. For he that lies open to the reproach of being fond of flatterers is very fond of himself, and owing to his goodwill to himself wishes to possess all good qualities, and thinks he actually does; the wish is not ridiculous, but the thought is misleading and requires a good deal of caution. And if truth is a divine thing, and, according to Plato, the beginning of all good things both to the gods and men, the flatterer is likely to be an enemy to the gods, and especially to Apollo, for he always sets himself against that famous saying, “Know thyself,” implanting in everybody’s mind self-deceit and ignorance of his own good or bad qualities, thus making his good points defective and imperfect, and his bad points altogether incorrigible.
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vi. Let us examine the matter then from the beginning. I said that friendship originated in most cases from a similar disposition and nature, generally inclined to the same habits and morals, and rejoicing in the same pursuits, studies, and amusements, as the following lines testify: “To old man the voice of old man is sweetest, to boy that of boy, to woman is most acceptable that of woman, to the sick person that of sick person, while he that is overtaken by misfortune is a comforter to one in trouble.” The flatterer knowing then that it is innate in us to delight in, and enjoy the company of, and to love, those who are like ourselves, attempts first to approach and get near a person in this direction, (as one tries to catch an animal in the pastures,) by the same pursuits and amusements and studies and modes of life quietly throwing out his bait, and disguising himself in false colours, till his victim give him an opportunity to catch him, and become tame and tractable at his touch. Then too he censures the things and modes of life and persons that he knows his victim dislikes, while he praises those he fancies immoderately, overdoing it indeed with his show of surprise and excessive admiration, making him more and more convinced that his likes and dislikes are the fruits of judgement and not of caprice.
vii. How then is the flatterer convicted, and by what differences is he detected, of being only a counterfeit, and not really like his victim? We must first then look at the even tenor and consistency of his principles, if he always delights in the same things, and always praises the same things, and directs and governs his life after one pattern, as becomes the noble lover of consistent friendship and familiarity. Such a person is a friend. But the flatterer having no fixed character of his own, and not seeking to lead the life suitable for him, but shaping and modelling himself after another’s pattern, is neither simple nor uniform, but complex and unstable, assuming different appearances, like water poured from vessel to vessel, ever in a state of flux and accommodating himself entirely to the fashion of those who entertain him…
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xix. These are indeed trifling matters: but the following are more important and do mischief to foolish people, when flatterers accuse them of the very contrary vices and passions to those to which they are really addicted…
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xx. Now one kind of caution against his snares is to know and ever remember that, whereas the soul contains true and noble and reasoning elements, as also unreasoning and false and emotional ones, the friend is always a counsellor and adviser to the better instincts of the soul, as the physician improves and maintains health, whereas the flatterer works upon the emotional and unreasoning ones, and tickles and titillates them and seduces them from reason, employing sensuality as his bait. As then there are some kinds of food which neither benefit the blood or spirit, nor brace up the nerves and marrow, but stir the passions, excite the lower nature, and make the flesh unsound and rotten, so the language of the flatterer adds nothing to soberness and reason, but encourages some love passion, or stirs up foolish rage, or incites to envy, or produces the empty and burdensome vanity of pride, or joins in bewailing woes, or ever by his calumnies and hints makes malignity and illiberality and suspicion sharp and timid and jealous, and cannot fail to be detected by those that closely observe him. For he is ever anchoring himself upon some passion, and fattening it, and, like a bubo, fastens himself on some unsound and inflamed parts of the soul. Are you angry? Have your revenge, says he. Do you desire anything? Get it. Are you afraid? Let us flee. Do you suspect? Entertain no doubts about it. But if he is difficult to detect in thus playing upon our passions, since they often overthrow reason by their intensity and strength, he will give a handle to find him out in smaller matters, being consistent in them too.
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So great is the power of flattery, and nowhere greater, as it seems, than among the greatest people. For their thinking and wishing the best about themselves makes them credit the flatterer, and gives him courage. For lofty heights are difficult of approach and hard to reach for those who endeavour to scale them, but the highmindedness and conceit of a person thrown off his balance by good fortune or good natural parts is easily reached by mean and petty people.
xxv. And so we advised at the beginning of this discourse, and now advise again, to cut off self-love and too high an opinion of ourselves; for that flatters us first, and makes us more impressionable and prepared for external flatterers. But if we hearken to the god, and recognize the immense importance to everyone of that saying, “Know thyself,” and at the same time carefully observe our nature and education and training, with its thousand shortcomings in respect to good, and the large proportion of vice and vanity mixed up with our words and deeds and feelings, we shall not make ourselves so easy a mark for flatterers. So we, if we observe the blots, blemishes, shortcomings, and imperfections of our private selves, shall perceive clearly that we do not need a friend who shall bestow upon us praise and panegyric, but one that will reprove us, and speak plainly to us, aye, by Zeus, and censure us if we have done amiss. For it is only a few out of many that venture to speak plainly to their friends rather than gratify them…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON LISTENING TO LECTURES
1: The discourse which I gave on the subject of listening to lecture I have written out and sent to you, my dear Nicander, so that you may know how rightly to listen to the voice of persuasion, now that you are no longer subject to authority, having assumed the garb of a man. Now absence of control, which some of the young men, for want of education, think to be freedom, establishes the sway of a set of masters, harsher than the teachers and attendants of childhood, in the form of the desires, which are now, as it were, unchained. And just as Herodotus says that women put off their modesty along with their undergarments, so some of our young men, as soon as they lay aside the garb of childhood, lay aside also their sense of modesty and fear, and, undoing the habit that invests them, straightway become full of unruliness. But you have often heard that to follow God and to obey reason are the same thing, and so I ask you to believe that in persons of good sense the passing from childhood to manhood is not a casting off of control, but a recasting of the controlling agent, since instead of some hired person or slave purchased with money they now take as the divine guide of their life reason, whose followers alone may deservedly be considered free. For they alone, having learned to wish for what they ought, live as they wish; but in untrained and irrational impulses and actions there is something ignoble, and changing one’s mind many times involves but little freedom of will.
2: We may find a comparison in the case of newly naturalized citizens; those among them who were alien born and perfect strangers find fault with many of the things that are done, and are discontented; whereas those who come from the class of resident aliens, having been brought up under our laws and grown to be well acquainted with them, have no difficulty in accepting what devolves upon them and are content. And so you, who have been brought up for a long time in contact with philosophy, and have from the beginning been accustomed to philosophic reasoning as an ingredient in every portion of early instruction and information, ought to feel like an old friend and familiar when you come to philosophy, which alone can array young men in the manly and truly perfect adornment that comes from reason.
I think you may not find unwelcome some preliminary remarks about the sense of hearing, which Theophrastus asserts is the most emotional of all the senses. For nothing which can be seen or tasted or touched brings on such distractions, confusions, and excitements, as take possession of the soul when certain crashing, clashing, and roaring noises assail the hearing. Yet this sense is more rational than emotional. For while many places and parts of the body make way for vice to enter through them and fasten itself upon the soul, virtue’s only hold upon the young is afforded by the ears, if they be uncontaminated and kept from the outset unspoiled by flattery and untouched by vile words. For this reason Xenocrates advised putting ear-protectors on children rather than on athletes, on the ground that the latter have only their ears disfigured by the blows they receive, while the former have their characters disfigured by the words they hear; not that he would thus court heedlessness or deafness, but he advises vigilance against vile words, until such time as other words, of good sort, fostered in the character by philosophy, should, like watchmen, have taken under their charge the post chiefly exposed to influence and persuasion. And Bias of old, on receiving orders to send to Amasis the portion of the sacrificial animal which was at the same time the best and the worst, cut out the tongue and sent it to him, on the ground that speech contains both injuries and benefits in the largest measure. Most people in bestowing an affectionate kiss on little children not only take hold of children by the ears but bid the children to do the same by them, thus insinuating in a playful way that they must love most those who confer benefit through the ears. For surely the fact is plain, that the young man who is debarred from hearing all instruction and gets no taste of speech not only remains wholly unfruitful and makes no growth towards virtue, but may also be perverted towards vice, and the product of his mind, like that of a fallow and untilled piece of ground, will be a plentiful crop of wild oats. For if the impulses towards pleasure and the feelings of suspicion towards hard work (which are not of external origin nor imported products of the spoken word, but indigenous sources, as it were, of pestilent emotions and disorders without number) be allowed to continue unconstrained along their natural channels, and if they be not either removed or diverted another way through the agency of goodly discourse, thus putting the natural endowments in a fit condition, there is not one of the wild beasts but would be found more civilized than man.
3: Therefore, since listening to lectures is attended by great benefit, but by no less danger, to the young, I think it is a good thing to discuss the matter continually both with oneself and with another person. The reason for so doing is because we observe that a poor use is made of this by the great majority of persons, who practise speaking before they have acquired the habit of listening. They think that there must be study and practice in discourse, but as for hearing, benefit will come however it be used. It is true that, in the case of persons playing ball, learning to throw and learning to catch take place at the same time; but in the use of discourse its proper reception comes before its delivery, just as conception and pregnancy come before parturition. It is said that when fowls labour and bring forth wind-eggs, these result from some imperfect and infertile residue from conception; and if young men have not the power to listen, for the habit of getting some profit through listening, the speech brought forth by them is windy indeed, and

Void of repute and unheeded beneath the clouds it is scattered.

For although they can incline and turn vessels properly to receive any liquid which is being poured into them, in order that there may actually be a filling and not a spilling, they never learn to apply themselves to a speaker and to accord attention to his lecture so that none of its good points may escape them. But here is the most ridiculous thing in the world: if they chance upon somebody who is giving an account of a dinner or a procession or a dream or a wordy brawl which he has had with another man, they listen in silence, and importune him to continue; yet if anybody draws them to one side and tries to impart something useful, or to advise them of some duty, or to admonish them when in the wrong, or to mollify them when incensed, they have no patience with him; but, eager to get the better of him if they can, they fight against what he says, or else they beat a hasty retreat in search of other foolish talk, filling their ears like worthless and rotten vessels with anything rather than the things they need. As skilful horse-trainers give us horses with a good mouth for the bit, so too skilful educators give us children with a good ear for speech, by teaching them to hear much and speak little. Indeed, Spintharus declared in commendation of Epameinondas that it was not easy to find a man who knew more and spoke less. And it is a common saying that nature has given to each of us two ears and one tongue, because we ought to do less talking than listening.
4: In all cases, then, silence is a safe adornment for the young man, and especially so, when in listening to another he does not get excited or bawl out every minute, but even if the remarks be none too agreeable, puts up with them, and waits for the speaker to pause, and, when the pause comes, does not at once interpose his objection, but, as Aeschines puts it, allows an interval to elapse, in case the speaker may desire to add something to what he has said, or to alter or unsay anything. But those who instantly interrupt with contradictions, neither hearing nor being heard, but talking while others talk, behave in an unseemly manner; whereas the man who has the habit of listening with restraint and respect, takes in and masters a useful discourse, and more readily sees through and detects a useless or false one, showing himself thus to be a lover of truth and not a lover of disputation, nor froward and contentious. Wherefore it is sometimes said not unaptly that it is even more necessary to take the wind of self-opinion and conceit out of the young, than to deflate wine-skins, if you wish to fill them with something useful; otherwise, being full of bombast and inflation, they have no room to receive it.
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… But in a philosophic discussion we must set aside the repute of the speaker, and examine what he says quite apart…
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8: One ought therefore to strip off the superfluity and inanity from the style, and to seek after the fruit itself, imitating not women that make garlands, but the bees. For those women, culling flower-clusters and sweet-scented leaves, intertwine and plait them, and produce something that is pleasant enough, but short-lived and fruitless; whereas the bees in their flight frequently pass through meadows of violets, roses, and hyacinths, and come to rest upon the exceeding rough and pungent thyme, and on this they settle close,

Making the yellow honey their care,

and when they have got something of use, they fly away home to their own special work. In such wise, then, the sincere and single-minded student ought to regard flowery and dainty language and theatrical and spectacular subject matter as the pasturage of drones who practise the popular lecture; these he should leave alone and use all diligence to sound the deep meaning of the words and the intention of the speaker, drawing from it what is useful and profitable, and remembering that he has not come to a theatre or music-hall, but to a school and classroom with the purpose of amending his life by what is there said. Hence it follows that in making his examination and forming his judgement of the lecture he should begin with himself and his own state of mind, endeavouring to estimate whether any one of his emotions has become less intense, whether any one of his troubles weighs less heavily upon him, whether his confidence and his high purpose have become firmly rooted, whether he has acquired enthusiasm for virtue and goodness. As a matter of course, when he rises to leave the barber’s shop, he stands by the mirror and feels his head, examining the cut of his hair and the difference made by its trimming; so on his way home from a lecture or an academic exercise, it would be a shame not to direct his gaze forthwith upon himself and to note carefully his own spirit, whether it has put from it any of its encumbrances and superfluities, and has become lighter and more cheerful. “For,” as Ariston says, “neither a bath nor a discourse is of any use unless it removes impurity.”
9: Let the young man, then, find pleasure when he finds profit from a discourse; but he should not hold that the pleasure derived from the lecture is an end in itself, nor would I have him hum a merry note or show a jovial face as he leaves the philosopher’s school, any more than he should seek to be sprinkled with perfume when he needs a fomentation and a hot poultice; but he should feel grateful if by pungent discourse someone has cleansed his mind teeming with fogginess and dulness, as a beehive is cleared by smoke. For even though it is quite right for a speaker not to be altogether neglectful of pleasantness and persuasion in his style, yet the young man should make least concern of this, at any rate at first. Afterwards no doubt he may have an eye to that; for just as those who drink, dafter they have quenched their thirst, begin then to observe the ornamentation of the drinking-cups and to turn them about, so the young man, when he is well replenished with doctrines and has some respite, may be allowed to inspect the style to see whether it contains anything elegant and exquisite. But he who at the very outset does not stick to the subject matter, but insists that the style shall be pure Attic and severely plain, is like the man who is unwilling to swallow an antidote for a poison unless the cup be of the finest Attic ware…
10: This leads up to the matter of proposing problems. Now the person who comes to a dinner is bound to eat what is set before him and not to ask for anything else or to be critical; so he who comes to a feast of reason, if it be on a specified subject, must feel bound to listen to the speaker in silence. For those persons who lead the speaker to digress to other topics, and interject questions, and raise new difficulties, are not pleasant or agreeable company at a lecture; they get no benefit from it, and they confuse both the speaker and his speech…
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12: A man must also guard against proposing many problems or proposing them often himself. For this is, in a way, the mark of a man who is taking occasion to show himself off. But to listen good-naturedly when another advances them, marks the considerate gentleman and the scholar. The only exception is in case some matter of his own is troublesome and urgent, some emotion requiring repression, or a disorder requiring relief. For perhaps it may not even be “better to conceal ignorance,” as Heracleitus puts it, but to set it forth in public, and cure it. And if some fit of temper, or attack of superstition, or an intense disagreement with members of our own household, or a mad desire born of love,

Stirring the heart-strings never stirred before,

brings confusion to our thoughts, we must not run away to other kinds of discourse to escape being taken to task, but we must listen to the discussion of these very matters both at the formal exercises, and after the exercises, when we approach the men privately and question them further. But save us from the contrary course, followed by the majority, who are delighted with the philosophers and admire them when they are discoursing about other people; but if the philosopher leaves the other people alone, and addresses himself frankly and freely to them, and sets them in mind of matters that much concern them, they are annoyed and think him officious. For, as a rule, they imagine that they ought to listen to the philosophers in the schools as they listen to the tragedians in the theatres; but in matters out of school they think the philosophers are no better men than themselves…
13: The proprieties in regard to bestowing commendation also require some caution and moderation, for the reason that neither deficiency nor excess therein befits the free man. An offensive and tiresome listener is the man who is not to be touched or moved by anything that is said… who neither moves his brow nor utters a single word to bear witness that he is glad to listen, but by means of silence and an affected gravity and pose… he feels that he is robbing himself of every bit that he bestows on another. For there are many who take that saying of Pythagoras wrongly and out of harmony with his meaning. He declared that he had gained this advantage from philosophy, to wonder at nothing; but these men think that their advantage gained is to commend nothing, to show respect for nothing, holding that immunity from wonder lies in disdain, and seeking to attain to dignity by means of contempt. Now it is true that philosophic reasoning, through knowledge and acquaintance with the cause in every case, does away with the wonder and amazement that spring from blindness and ignorance, but at the same time it does not destroy our serenity, moderation, or human interest…
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… But young men of the opposite temperament, if they ever hear a single word directed against themselves, run away without looking back, and try to desert philosophy; and, although the sense of modesty which Nature has bestowed upon them is an admirable beginning for their salvation, they lose it through effeminacy and weakness, since they display no firmness under reproof, nor do they accept corrections with the proper spirit, but they turn away their ears toward the agreeable and gentle converse of sundry flatterers or voluble talkers, who enchant them with useless and unprofitable but nevertheless pleasant utterances. Just as one who runs away from the physician after an operation, and will not submit to be bandaged, sustains all the pain of the treatment, but waits not for its benefits: so when the word has cut and wounded a man’s foolishness, if he give it no chance to heal and quiet the wound, he comes away from philosophy with a smart and pain but with no benefit. For not only the wound of Telephus, as Euripides says,

Is soothed by fine-rasped filings from the spear,

but the smart from philosophy which sinks deep in young men of good parts is healed by the very words which inflicted the hurt. For this reason he who is taken to task must feel and suffer some smart, yet he should not be crushed or dispirited, but, as though at a solemn rite of novitiate which consecrates him to philosophy, he should submit to the initial purifications and commotions, in the expectation that something delectable and splendid will follow upon his present distress and perturbation. Indeed, even if the reproof seems to be given unjustly, it is an admirable thing to endure it with continued patience while the man is speaking…
17: Moreover, just as in learning to read and write, or in taking up music or physical training, the first lessons are attended with much confusion, hard work, and uncertainty, but later, as the learner makes progress, by slow degrees, just as in his relations with human beings, a full familiarity is engendered and knowledge which renders everything attractive, feasible, and easy, both to say and to do, so also is it with philosophy, which undoubtedly has something knotty and unfamiliar in its terms and subject matter at the outset; yet one ought not to take fright at its beginnings, and to abandon it in timorous and craven fashion; rather should he examine each point, and persist and stick to the task of getting on, while awaiting that familiarity which makes every noble thing a pleasure. For come it will without long delay, bringing with it abundant light for the subject of study; it will inspire also a passionate love for virtue; and anyone who could endure to pass the rest of his life without this passion, because he has exiled himself from philosophy for want of true manliness, brands himself either as a very presumptuous man or else a coward.
It is quite possible that the subject of philosophy contains some matter which is difficult for young and inexperienced students to apprehend at the outset. But, at the same time, they must hold themselves responsible for most of the uncertainty and misunderstanding in which they find themselves involved, since quite opposite characters come to fall into the same error…
18: Let us therefore put from us all such foolishness and pretension, and, as we go onward to the task of learning, let us take pains thoroughly to comprehend all profitable discourses; let us submit with patience to the laughter of those reputed to be clever, as did Cleanthes and Xenocrates, who, although they seemed to be slower than their schoolmates, yet did not try to escape learning or give it up in despair, but were the first to make jokes at themselves by comparing themselves to narrow-necked bottles and bronze tablets, as much as to say that they found great difficulty in taking in what was said, yet they kept it safely and securely…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON TALKATIVENESS
1: It is a troublesome and difficult task that philosophy has in hand when it undertakes to cure garrulousness. For the remedy, words of reason, requires listeners; but the garrulous listen to nobody, for they are always talking. And this is the first symptom of their ailment: looseness of the tongue become impotence of the ears. For it is a deliberate deafness, that of men who, I take it, blame Nature because they have only one tongue, but two ears. If, then, Euripides was right when he said with reference to the unintelligent hearer,

I could not fill a man who will not hold
My wise words flooding into unwise ears,

it would be more just to say to the garrulous man, or rather about the garrulous man,

I could not fill a man who will not take
My wise words flooding into unwise ears,

or rather submerging, a man who talks to those who will not listen, and will not listen when others talk. For even if he does listen for a moment, when his loquacity is, as it were, at ebb, the rising tide immediately makes up for it many times over.
They give the name Seven-voiced to the portico at Olympia which reverberates many times from a single utterance; and if but the least word sets garrulousness in motion, straightway it echoes round about on all sides,

Touching the heart-strings never touched before.

Indeed one might think that the babbler’s ears have no passage bored through to the soul, but only to the tongue. Consequently, while others retain what is said, in talkative persons it goes right through in a flux; Ethen they go about like empty vessels, void of sense, but full of noise.
2: But if, however, we are resolved to leave no means untried, let us say to the babbler,

Hush, child: in silence many virtues lie,

and among them the two first and greatest, the merits of hearing and being heard; neither of these can happen to talkative persons, but even in that which they desire especially they fail miserably. For in other diseases of the soul, such as love of money, love of glory, love of pleasure, there is at least the possibility of attaining their desires, but for babblers this is very difficult: they desire listeners and cannot get them, since every one runs away headlong. If men are sitting in a public lounge or strolling about in a portico, and see a talker coming up, they quickly give each other the counter-sign to break camp. And just as when silence occurs in an assemblage they say that Hermes has joined the company, so when a chatterbox comes into a dinner-party or social gathering, every one grows silent, not wishing to furnish him a hold; and if he begins of his own accord to open his mouth,

As when the North-wind blows along
A sea-beaten headland before the storm,

suspecting that they will be tossed about and sea-sick, they rise up and go out. And so it is a talker’s lot when travelling by land or sea, to find volunteer listeners neither as table-companions nor as tent-mates, but only conscripts; for the talker is at you everywhere, catching your cloak, plucking your beard, digging you in the ribs.

Then are your feet of the greatest value,

as Archilochus says, and on my word the wise Aristotle will agree. For when Aristotle himself was annoyed by a chatterer and bored with some silly stories, and the fellow kept repeating, “Isn’t it wonderful, Aristotle?” “There’s nothing wonderful about that,” said Aristotle, “but that anyone with feet endures you.” To another man of the same sort, who said after a long rigmarole, “Poor philosopher, I’ve wearied you with my talk,” “Heavens, no!” said Aristotle, “I wasn’t listening.” In fact, if chatterers force their talk upon us, the soul surrenders to them the ears to be flooded from outside, but herself within unrolls thoughts of another sort and follows them out by herself. Therefore talkers do not find it easy to secure listeners who either pay attention or believe what they say; for just as they affirm that the seed of persons too prone to lusts of the flesh is barren, so is the speech of babblers ineffectual and fruitless.
3: And yet Nature has built about none of our parts so stout a stockade as about the tongue, having placed before it as an outpost the teeth, so that when reason within tightens “the reins of silence,” if the tongue does not obey or restrain itself, we may check its incontinence by biting it till it bleeds. For Euripides says that “disaster is the end,” not of unbolted treasuries or storerooms, but of “unbridled tongues.” And those who believe that storerooms without doors and purses without fastenings are of no use to their owners, yet keep their mouths without lock or door, maintaining as perpetual an outflow as the mouth of the Black Sea, appear to regard speech as the least valuable of all things. They do not, therefore, meet with belief, which is the object of all speech. For this is the proper end and aim of speech, to engender belief in the hearer; but chatterers are disbelieved even if they are telling the truth. For as wheat shut up in a jar is found to have increased in quantity, but to have deteriorated in quality, so when a story finds its way to a chatterer, it generates a large addition of falsehood and thereby destroys its credit.
4: Again, every self-respecting and orderly man would, I think, avoid drunkenness. For while, according to some, anger lives next door to madness, drunkenness lives in the same house with it; or rather, drunkenness is madness, shorter in duration, but more culpable, because the will also is involved in it. And there is no fault so generally ascribed to drunkenness as that of intemperate and unlimited speech. “For wine,” says the Poet,

Urges a man to sing, though he be wise,
And stirs to merry laughter and the dance.

And what is here so very dreadful? Singing and laughing and dancing? Nothing so far —

But it lets slip some word better unsaid:

this is where the dreadful and dangerous part now comes in. And perhaps the Poet has here resolved the question debated by the philosophers, the difference between being under the influence of wine and being drunk, when he speaks of the former as relaxation, but drunkenness as sheer folly. For what is in a man’s heart when he is sober is on his tongue when he is drunk, as those who are given to proverbs say. Therefore when Bias kept silent at a drinking-bout and was taunted with stupidity by a chatterer, “What fool,” said he, “in his cups can hold his tongue?” And when a certain man at Athens was entertaining envoys from the king, at their earnest request he made every effort to gather the philosophers to meet them; and while the rest took part in the general conversation and made their contributions to it, but Zeno kept silent, the strangers, pledging him courteously, said, “And what are we to tell the king about you, Zeno?” “Nothing,” said he, “except that there is an old man at Athens who can hold his tongue at a drinking-party.”
Thus silence is something profound and awesome and sober, but drunkenness is a babbler, for it is foolish and witless, and therefore loquacious also. And the philosophers even in their very definition of drunkenness say that it is intoxicated and foolish talking; thus drinking is not blamed if silence attends the drinking, but it is foolish talk which converts the influence of wine into drunkenness. While it is true that the drunken man talks foolishness in his cups, the chatterer talks foolishness on all occasions, in the market-place, in the theatre, out walking, drunk or sober, by day, by night…
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8: Zeno the philosopher, in order that even against his will no secret should be betrayed by his body when under torture, bit his tongue through and spat it out at the despot. And Leaena also has a splendid reward for her self-control. She was a courtesan belonging to the group led by Harmodius and Aristogeiton and shared in the conspiracy against the tyrants — with her hopes, all a woman could do; for she also had joined in the revels about that noble mixing-bowl of Eros and through the god had been initiated into the secrets which might not be revealed. When, therefore, the conspirators failed and were put to death, she was questioned and commanded to reveal those who still escaped detection; but she would not do so and continued steadfast, proving that those men had experienced a passion not unworthy of themselves in loving a woman like her. And the Athenians caused a bronze lioness without a tongue to be made and set up in the gates of the Acropolis, representing by the spirited courage of the animal Leaena’s invincible character, and by its tonguelessness her power of silence in keeping a holy secret.
No spoken word, it is true, has ever done such service as have in many instances words unspoken; for it is possible at some later time to tell what you have kept silent, but never to keep silent what once has been spoken — that has been spilled, and has made its way abroad. Hence, I think, in speaking we have men as teachers, but in keeping silent we have gods, and we receive from them this lesson of silence at initiations into the Mysteries. And the Poethas made the most eloquent Odysseus the most reticent, and also his son and his wife and his nurse; for you hear the nurse saying,

I’ll hold it safe like sturdy oak or iron.

And Odysseus himself, as he sat beside Penelopê,

Did pity in his heart his wife in tears,
But kept his eyes firm-fixed within their lids
Like horn or iron.

So full of self-control was his body in every limb, and Reason, with all parts in perfect obedience and submission, ordered his eyes not to weep, his tongue not to utter a sound, his heart not to tremble or bark:

His heart remained enduring in obedience,

since his reason extended even to his irrational or involuntary movements and made amenable and subservient to itself both his breath and his blood… Therefore Pittacus did not do badly, when the king of Egypt sent him a sacrificial animal and bade him cut out the fairest and foulest meat, when he cut out and sent him the tongue, as being the instrument of both the greatest good and the greatest evil.
9: And Ino in Euripides, speaking out boldly concerning herself, says that she knows how to be

Silent in season, to speak where speech is safe.

For those who have received a noble and truly royal education learn first to be silent, and then to speak…
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10: Yet, speaking generally, who has left himself the right to speak out boldly against one who has not kept silent? If the story ought not to have been known, it was wrong for it to be told to another; and if you have let the secret slip from yourself and yet seek to confine it to another, you have taken refuge in another’s good faith when you have already abandoned your own. And if he turns out to be no better than yourself, you are deservedly ruined; if better, you are saved beyond all expectation, since you have found another more faithful on your own behalf than you yourself are…
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16: But these remarks are not to be regarded as an accusation against garrulity, but an attempt to cure it; for we get well by the diagnosis and treatment of our ailments, but the diagnosis must come first; since no one can become habituated to shun or to eradicate from his soul what does not distress him, and we only grow distressed with our ailments when we have perceived, by the exercise of reason, the injuries and shame which result from them.
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And with these exercises in habituation it is proper to intermix and entwine that well-known vigilance and habit of reflection, at the very moment when we are about to speak and the words are hurrying to our lips, “What is this remark that is so pressing and importunate? What object is my tongue panting for? What good will come of its being said or what ill of its being suppressed?” For it is not as though the remark were some oppressive weight which one ought to get rid of, since it stays by you all the same even if it is spoken; when men talk, it is either for their own sake, because they need something, or to benefit their hearers, or they seek to ingratiate themselves with each other by seasoning with the salt of conversation the pastime or business in which they happen to be engaged. But if a remark is neither useful to the speaker nor of serious importance to the hearers, and if pleasure or charm is not in it, why is it made? For the futile and purposeless can exist in speech as well as in deeds.
And over and above all else we must keep at hand and in our minds the saying of Simonides, that he had often repented of speaking, but never of holding his tongue. We must remember also that practice is master of all things and stronger than anything else; since people can even get rid of hiccoughs and coughs by resisting them resolutely and with much pain and trouble. But silence, as Hippocrates says, not only prevents thirst, but also never causes sorrow and suffering.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON BEING A BUSYBODY
1: It is perhaps best to avoid a house which has no ventilation, or is gloomy, or cold in winter, or unhealthy; yet if familiarity has made you fond of the place, it is possible to make it brighter, better ventilated, and healthier by altering the lights, shifting the stairs, and opening some doors and closing others. Even some cities have gained by such changes. So in the case of my own town, which used to face the west and receive the full force of the sun in the late afternoon from Parnassus, they say that it was turned by Chaeron to face the east. And Empedocles, the natural philosopher, by blocking up a certain mountain gorge, which permitted the south wind to blow a dire and pestilential draught down upon the plains, was thought to have shut plague out of his country.
Since, then, there are certain unhealthy and injurious states of mind which allow winter and darkness to enter the soul, it is better to thrust these out and to make a clean sweep to the foundations, thus giving to ourselves a clear sky and light and pure air; but if that is impossible, it is best at least to interchange and readjust them in some way other, turning or shifting them about.
Such a malady of the mind, to take the first instance, is curiosity, which is a desire to learn the troubles of others, a disease which is thought to be free from neither envy nor malice:

Why do you look so sharp on others’ ills,
Malignant man, yet overlook your own?

Shift your curiosity from things without and turn it inwards; if you enjoy dealing with the recital of troubles, you have much occupation at home:

Great as the water flowing down Alizon,
Many as the leaves around the oak,

so great a quantity of transgressions will you find your own life, of afflictions in your own soul, of oversights in the performance of your own obligations.
For as Xenophon says that good householders have a special place for sacrificial utensils, and a special place for dinner-ware, and that farming implements should be stored elsewhere, and apart from them the weapons of war; even so in your own case you have one store of faults arising from envy, another from jealousy, another from cowardice, another from pettiness. Assault these, examine these! Block up the windows and the side-doors of your curiosity that open on your neighbours’ property, and open up others leading to your own — to the men’s quarters, to the women’s quarters, to the living-rooms of your servants! Here this curiosity and meddlesomeness of yours will have an occupation not unhelpful or malicious, but useful and salutary if each one will but say to himself

Where did I err? And what deed have I done?
What duty neglected?

2: But as it is, like the Lamia in the fable, who, they say, when at home sleeps in blindness with her eyes stored away in a jar, but when she goes abroad puts in her eyes and can see, so each one of us, in our dealings with others abroad, puts his meddlesomeness, like an eye, into his maliciousness; but we are often tripped up by our own faults and vices by reason of our ignorance of them, since we provide ourselves with no sight or light by which to inspect them. Therefore the busybody is also more useful to his enemies than to himself, for he rebukes and drags out their faults and demonstrates to them what they should avoid or correct, but he neglects the greater part of his own domestic errors through his passionate interest in those abroad…
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9: Since a natural consequence of much learning is to have much to say (and for this reason Pythagoras enjoined upon the young a five years’ silence which he called a “Truce to Speech”), a necessary concomitant of inquisitiveness is to speak evil. For what the curious delight to hear they delight to tell, and what they zealously collect from others they joyously reveal to everyone else. Consequently, in addition to its other evils, their disease actually impedes the fulfilment of their desires. For everyone is on his guard to hide things from them and is reluctant to do anything while a busybody is looking, or to say anything while one is listening, but defers consultation and postpones the consideration of business until such an inquisitive person is out of the way. And if, when either some secret matter is under discussion or some important business is being transacted, a busybody comes on the scene, men drop the matter from the discussion and conceal it, as one does a tidbit when a cat runs by. Consequently these persons are often the only ones to whom those matters are not told or shown which everyone else may hear and see.
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… Consequently, though that story about Democritus is false, that he deliberately destroyed his sight by fixing his eyes on a red hot mirror and allowing its heat to be reflected on his sight, in order that his eyes might not repeatedly summon his intellect outside and disturb it, but might allow his mind to remain inside at home and occupy itself with pure thinking, blocking up as it were windows which open on the street; yet nothing is more true than this, that those who make most use of the intellect make fewest calls upon the senses. We observe, for instance, that men have built their sanctuaries of the Muses far from cities and that they have called night “kindly” from a belief that its quiet and absence of distraction is greatly conducive to the investigation and solution of the problems in hand.
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. VII of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson. 1959. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_vitioso_pudore*.html

ON COMPLIANCY
1: Certain plants are in themselves wild and unproductive, and when allowed to grow are harmful to cultivated grain and vines and trees; yet the farmer takes them as signs of a soil not unfertile, but generous and rich. So too with the affections of the mind; some that are bad are nevertheless the outgrowths, as it were, of an excellent nature well able to respond to the cultivation of reason. Among these I count what is called “compliancy,” — no unfavourable sign, though it leads to bad conduct. For men who feel shame often show the same faults as those who feel none, with this difference, however: they are grieved and distressed at their errors, unlike the shameless, who take pleasure in theirs. For the shameless feel no pain in doing what is base, whereas the mere semblance of baseness dismays the compliant. For compliancy is excess of shame. Hence the name (dysōpeomai), the face (prosōpon) being somehow involved in the embarrassment and discomposure of the mind. For as dejection (katēpheia) is defined as pain that makes us look down (katō), so when modesty yields to suitors to the point where one does not even look them in the face, it is termed “compliancy.” And so, as the orator said that the shameless man had harlots, not maidens, in his eyes…
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18: But infirmity of the mind resembles a bodily constitution intolerant of either heat or cold. For when praised by the importunate such men go utterly soft and limp; while in face of the complaint and disapproval of rejected suitors they are timorous and fearful. We should make a bold stand on both fronts, yielding neither to intimidation nor to flattery…
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… Menedemus said on the contrary, on hearing that Alexinus often praised him, “For my part I have never a good word for him. The fellow is therefore a knave, as he either praises a knave or is censured by an honest man.”…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

ON THE CONTROL OF ANGER
1: Sulla. A good plan, as it seems to me, Fundanus, is that which painters follow: they scrutinize their productions from time to time before they finish them. They do this because, by withdrawing their gaze and by inspecting their work often, they are able to form a fresh judgement, and one which is more likely to seize upon any slight discrepancy, such as the familiarity of uninterrupted contemplation will conceal. Since, therefore, it is impossible for a man to contemplate himself from time to time by getting apart from himself and interrupting his consciousness of himself by breaking its continuity (and this is what, more than anything else, makes every man a poorer judge of himself than of others), the next best course would be for him to inspect his friends from time to time and likewise to offer himself to them, not to see if he is grown old suddenly or if his body is better or worse, but for them to examine both his behaviour and his character to learn whether time has added some excellence or taken away some vice…
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… Yet the other passions, even at their height, do in some sort yield and admit reason, when it comes from without to the rescue, into the soul; but temper does not, as Melanthius says,

Shunt off the mind, and then do dreadful deeds,

but on the contrary, it shuts out sense completely and locks it out, and just like those who burn themselves up in their own homes, it makes everything within full of confusion and smoke and noise, so that the soul can neither see nor hear anything that might help it. For this reason a ship deserted by her crew in the midst of a storm far out at sea will more easily be able to take on a pilot from the outside, than will a man who is being tossed upon the billows of passion and anger admit the reasoning of another, unless he has his own powers of reason prepared to receive it. But just as those who expect a siege collect and store up all that is useful to them if they despair of relief from without, so it is most important that we should acquire far in advance the reinforcements which philosophy provides against temper and convey them into the soul in the knowledge that, when the occasion for using them comes, it will not be possible to introduce them with ease. For the soul hears nothing from the outside because of its tumult unless it has its own reason within, which, like a boatswain who directs the rowers, will promptly catch and understand every order given. Yet if the soul has heard words of advice which have been quietly and mildly spoken, it despises them; and toward any who insist in a rougher fashion, it grows exasperated. In fact, temper is overbearing and stubborn and altogether difficult for anyone other than itself to move, and, like a well-fortified tyranny, must have its destroyer born and bred in the same household.
….…………………..
5: For the first way, my friend, to dethrone temper as you would a tyrant, is not to obey or hearken when it bids us cry aloud and look fierce and beat our breasts, but to keep quiet and not intensify the passion, as we would a disease, by tossing about and making a clamour. It is quite true that lovers’ practices, such as serenading in concert or alone and crowning the beloved’s door with garlands, do in some way or other bring an alleviation that is not without charm or grace:

I came, but did not shout your name or race;
I merely kissed the door. If this be sin,
Then I have sinned.

So too the surrender of mourners to weeping and wailing carries away much of their grief together with their tears. But temper is the more readily fanned into flame by what people in that state do and say.
The best course, therefore, is for us to compose ourselves, or else to run away and conceal ourselves, and anchor ourselves in a calm harbour, as though we perceived a fit of epilepsy coming on, so that we may not fall, or rather may not fall upon others; and we are especially likely to fall most often upon our friends. For we do not love or envy or fear everyone indiscriminately, but there is nothing that temper will not touch and assail: we grow angry with enemies and friends, with children and parents, yes, even with the gods, with wild beasts and soulless implements…
….…………………..
but anger, which puffs up and distends the face in an unbecoming way, utters a voice still more ugly and unpleasant,

Stirring the heart-strings never stirred before.

For when the sea is disturbed by the winds and casts up tangle and seaweed, they say that it is being cleansed; but the intemperate, bitter, and vulgar words which temper casts forth when the soul is disturbed defile the speakers of them first of all and fill them with disrepute, the implication being that they have always had these traits inside of them and are full of them, but that their inner nature is now laid bare by their anger. Hence for a mere word, the “lightest of things,” as Plato says, they incur the “heaviest of punishments,” being esteemed as hostile, slanderous, and malicious.
7: When I, accordingly, observe these things, and store them carefully away, it occurs to me to lay up and quite thoroughly remember for my own use that, just as it is a good thing in a fever, so it is an even better thing in anger, to keep the tongue soft and smooth. For if the tongue of men who are sick of a fever is in an unnatural state, it is a bad symptom, but not the cause of their malady; but when the tongue of angry men becomes rough and foul and breaks out in unseemly speeches, it brings forth insolence which creates irremediable enmity and argues a festering malevolence within. For unmixed wine produces nothing so intemperate and odious as anger does: words flown with wine go well with laughter and sport, but those which spring from anger are mixed with gall; and whereas the man who keeps silent at a drinking-bout is disagreeable and irksome to the company, there is nothing more dignified, if one is angry, than holding one’s peace, as Sappho advises:

When aggression swells within the breast,
Restrain the idly barking tongue.

8: But it is not these considerations only that constant watching of those who are in the grip of anger furnishes us, but also an understanding of the general nature of ill temper — that it is not well-bred, nor manly, nor possessing any quality of pride or greatness. Yet most people think its turbulence to be activity, its blustering to be confident boldness, its obstinacy force of character; and some claim that even its cruelty is magnificence in action and its implacability firmness in resolution and its moroseness hatred of evil, but they are wrong in this. For the actions and the motions and the whole demeanour of angry persons declare their utter littleness and weakness…
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But a cheerful disposition in some circumstances is helpful, others it adorns, and still others it helps to sweeten; by its gentleness it overcomes both anger and all moroseness. Thus Eucleides, when his brother said to him after a quarrel, “Damned if I don’t get even with you!” answered, “But as for me, may I be damned if I don’t convince you!” and so at once turned him from his purpose and won him over…
….…………………..
… It may be, as Euripides says, that God

Will intervene in matters grown too great,
But small things he lets pass and leaves to Fate;

but I am of the opinion that a man of sense should commit nothing to Fate, nor overlook anything at all, but should trust and use for some things his wife, for others servants, for others friends, as a ruler makes use of overseers and accountants and administrators, but himself keeps under his own control the most important and weighty matters by the use of reason. For as small writing strains the eyes, so do trifling matters, by causing a greater strain, prick and stir up anger, which become a bad habit that affects more important matters.
Accordingly, in addition to all these considerations, I have been wont to regard as great and divine that saying of Empedocles, “Fast from evil,” and to applaud also those other vows made in prayer as being neither ungracious nor inappropriate to a philosopher: to abstain from love and wine for a year, honouring God by continence; or again to refrain from lying for a stated time, paying close heed to ourselves that we shall be truthful always whether in jest or earnest. Then with these I compared my own vow, thinking it no less sacred and pleasant in the sight of God: first, to pass a few days without anger, sober and wineless days, as it were, as though I were offering a sacrifice of honey unmixed with wine; then I would do so for a month or two, and so, making trial of myself little by little, in time I made some progress in my forbearance, continently observing and keeping myself courteous in speech, placid, and free from anger, and pure of the taint of evil words and offensive actions and of passion which, at the price of a little unsatisfying pleasure, brings great perturbations of spirit and the most shameful repentance. By such means, I think — and God also gave me help — experience has shown the truth of that judgement: this placid and gentle and humane spirit is not so agreeable and pleasant and free from sorrow to any of those brought in contact with it as it is to those who themselves possess it.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. VII of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson. 1959. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_invidia_et_odio*.html

ON ENVY AND HATE
1: On the following view it is thought to differ not at all from hate, but to be the same. Thus one may say in general that vice, like a line with many hooks, as it moves to and fro with the passions attached to it, gives them occasion to form many connexions and entanglements one another; and that it is with the passions as with diseases: when one becomes inflamed the other does. Thus it is the fortunate man that is a source of pain to one who feels hate as well as to one who feels envy. Hence we consider goodwill to be contrary to both, as it is the wish for one’s neighbour’s prosperity; and hatred and envy to be the same, since their aim is the contrary to that of friendship. But since similarities do not so surely make for sameness as dissimilarities make for difference, we shall endeavour to settle the question by examining the latter, noting first the origin of the two passions.
2: Now hate arises from a notion that the person hated is bad either in general or toward oneself. Thus it is men’s nature to hate when they think they have been wronged themselves; and again men reprobate and view with disgust all who in any other way are given to wrongdoing or wickedness. Whereas to attract envy all that is required is apparent prosperity. Hence it would appear that no bounds are set to envy, which, like sore eyes, is disturbed by everything resplendent; whereas hate has bounds and is in every case directed against particular subjects.
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6: Now these passions, like plants, must also feed and grow with what produces them. They are consequently intensified by different things. Thus while our hatred increases as the hated progress in vice, envy on the other hand increases with the apparent progress of the envied in virtue. This explains why when Themistocles was still a youth he said that he was doing nothing remarkable, as he was not yet envied. For just as beetles appear most of all in grain when it is ripe for harvest and in roses when they are in full bloom, so envy fastens most of all on characters and persons that are good and increasing in virtue and fame…
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7: Again — or rather this is what we have just been doing —, let us examine the same principle in its negative aspect. Men forgo hostility and hate either when convinced that no injustice is being done them, or when they adopt the view that those they hated as evil are good, or thirdly when they have received from them some benefit, “for the final service,” as Thucydides says, “though small, if opportunely bestowed, wipes out a greater disservice.” Now the first of these circumstances does not wipe out envy; for men feel it though persuaded from the first that no injustice is being done them. The other two actually exasperate it: for enviers eye more jealously those who enjoy a reputation for goodness, feeling that they possess the greatest blessing, virtue; and even if they receive some benefit from the fortunate, are tormented, envying them for both the intention and the power. For the intention proceeds from their virtue, the power from their good fortune, and both are blessings. It is therefore quite distinct from hate, if what soothes the one torments and embitters the other.
8: Let us therefore now take the intention of each of the two passions and examine it by itself. The intention of the hater is to injure, and the meaning of hate is thus defined: it is a certain disposition and intention awaiting the opportunity to injure. In envy this, at any rate, is absent. For there are many of their intimates and connexions that the envious would not be willing to see destroyed or suffer misfortune, although tormented by their good fortune; and while they abridge their fame and glory if they can, they would not, on the other hand, afflict them with irreparable calamities, but as with a house towering above their own, are content to pull down the part that casts them in the shade.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

HOW TO PROFIT BY ONE’S ENEMIES
… Now it may be possible to find a country, in which, as it is recorded of Crete, there are no wild animals, but a government which has not had to bear with envy or jealous rivalry or contention — emotions most productive of enmity — has not hitherto existed. For our very friendships, if nothing else, involve us in enmities. This is what the wise Chilon had in mind, when he asked the man who boasted that he had no enemy whether he had no friend either. Therefore it seems to me to be the duty of a statesman not only to have thoroughly investigated the subject of enemies in general, but also in his reading of Xenophon to have given more than passing attention to the remark that it is a trait of the man of sense “to derive profit even from his enemies.” Some thoughts, therefore, on this subject, which I recently had occasion to express, I have put together in practically the same words, and now send them to you, with the omission, so far as possible, of matter contained in my Advice to Statesmen, since I observe that you often have that book close at hand.
2: Primitive men were quite content if they could escape being injured by strange and fierce animals, and this was the aim and end of their struggles against the wild beasts; but their successors, by learning, as they did, how to make use of them, now profit by them through using their flesh for food, their hair for clothing, their gall and colostrum as medicine, and their skins as armour, so that there is good reason to fear that, if the supply of wild beasts should fail man, his life would become bestial, helpless, and uncivilized. Since, then, it is enough for most people if they can avoid suffering ill-treatment at the hands of their enemies, and since Xenophon asserts that men of sense will even derive profit from those who are at variance with them, we must not refuse him credence, but rather try to discover the system and the art through which this admirable advantage is to be gained by those who find it impossible to live without an enemy.
The farmer cannot domesticate every tree, nor can the huntsman tame every beast; and so they have sought to derive profit from these in ways to meet their other needs: the farmer from the trees that bear no fruit and the huntsman from the wild animals. The water of the sea is unfit to drink and tastes vile; yet fish thrive in it, and it is a medium for the dispatch and conveyance of travellers everywhere…
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3: In the first place, then, it seems to me that the most harmful element in enmity may be made most profitable to those who give heed. What is this? Your enemy, wide awake, is constantly lying in wait to take advantage of your actions, and seeking to gain some hold on you, and keeping a constant patrol about your life; and not only does his sight, like the sight of Lynceus, penetrate the oak-tree and stones and tiles, but your enemy, through every friend and servant and acquaintance as well, so far as possible, plays the detective on your actions and digs his way into your plans and searches them through and through. Oftentimes we do not learn, until too late, of the illness or the deaths of our friends, so careless are we and neglectful; but our curiosity about our enemies all but prompts us to pry into their dreams; sickness, debts, and conjugal disagreements are more likely to be unknown to the very persons affected than to their enemy. Especially does he try to get hold of their failings and ferret them out. And just as vultures are drawn to the smell of decomposed bodies, but have no power to discover those that are clean and healthy, so the infirmities, meannesses, and untoward experiences of life rouse the energies of the enemy, and it is such things as these that the malevolent pounce upon and seize and tear to pieces. Is this then profitable? Assuredly it is, to have to live circumspectly, to give heed to one’s self, and not to do or say anything carelessly or inconsiderately, but always to keep one’s life unassailable as though under an exact regimen. For the circumspection which thus represses the emotions and keeps the reasoning power within bounds gives practice and purpose in living a life that is fair and free from reproach. For just as states which are chastened by border warfare and continual campaigning become well content with good order and a sound government, so persons who have been compelled on account of enmities to practise soberness of living, to guard against indolence and contemptuousness, and to let some good purpose prompt each act, are insensibly led by force of habit to make no mistakes, and are made orderly in their behaviour, even if reason co-operate but slightly. For when men keep always ready in mind the thought that

Priam and Priam’s sons would in truth have cause for rejoicing,

it causes them to face about and turn aside and abandon such things as give their enemies occasion for rejoicing and derision. Furthermore, we observe that the Dionysiac artists often play their parts in the theatres in a listless, dispirited, and inaccurate way when they are by themselves; but when there is rivalry and competition with another company, then they apply not only themselves but their instruments more attentively, picking their strings and tuning them and playing their flutes in more exact harmony. So the man who knows that his enemy is his competitor in life and repute is more heedful of himself, and more circumspect about his action, and brings his life into a more thorough harmony. For it is a peculiar mark of vice, that we feel more ashamed of our faults before our enemies than before our friends. This is the ground of Nasica’s remark, when some expressed their belief that the power of the Romans was now secure, inasmuch as the Carthaginians had been annihilated and the Achaeans reduced to subjection. “Nay,” he said, “now is our position really dangerous, since we have left for ourselves none to make us either afraid or ashamed.”
4: Moreover, as a supplement to this take the declaration of Diogenes, which is thoroughly philosophic and statesmanlike: “How shall I defend myself against my enemy?” “By proving yourself good and honourable.” Men are much distressed when they see their enemies’ horses winning renown or their dogs gaining approval. At the sight of a well-tilled field or a flourishing garden they groan. What, think you, would be their state of mind if you were to show yourself to be an honest, sensible man and a useful citizen, of high repute in speech, clean in actions, orderly in living,

Reaping the deep-sown furrow of your mind
From which all goodly counsels spring?

Pindar says,

The vanquished are bound
In the fetters of silence profound,

not absolutely or universally, however, but only those who realize that they are outdone by their enemies in diligence, goodness, magnanimity, kindly deeds, and good works. These are the things which, as Demosthenes puts it, “retard the tongue, stop the mouth, constrict the throat, and leave one with nothing to say.”

Be thou unlike the base; this thou canst do.

If you wish to distress the man who hates you, do not revile him as lewd, effeminate, licentious, vulgar, or illiberal, but be a man yourself, show self-control, be truthful, and treat with kindness and justice those who have to deal with you. And if you are led into reviling, remove yourself as far as possible from the things for which you revile him. Enter within the portals of your own soul, look about to see if there be any rottenness there, lest some vice lurking somewhere within whisper to you the words of the tragedian:

Wouldst thou heal others, full of sores thyself?

If you call your enemy uneducated, strive to intensify in yourself the love of learning and industry; if you call him a coward, rouse even more your self-reliance and manliness; if you call him unchaste and licentious, obliterate from your soul whatever trace of devotion to pleasure may be lurking there unperceived. For there is nothing more disgraceful or painful than evil-speaking that recoils upon its author. So reflected light appears to be the more troublesome in cases of weak eyesight, and the same is true of censures that by the truth are brought back upon the very persons who are responsible for them. For as surely the north-east wind brings the clouds, so surely does a bad life bring revilings upon itself.
5: As often as Plato found himself in the company of persons whose conduct was unseemly, he was wont to say to himself, “Is it possible that I am like them?” But if the man who reviles another’s life will at once carefully inspect his own, and readjust it by directing and turning it aside into the opposite course, he will have gained something useful from this reviling, which, otherwise, not only gives the impression of being useless and inane, but is so in fact.
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6: There may be, then, so much that is profitable and useful in reviling one’s enemy; but no less profit lies in the alternative of being reviled oneself and ill spoken of by one’s enemies. Hence Antisthenes was quite right in saying that, as a matter of self-preservation, men have need of true friends or else of ardent enemies; for the first by admonition, and the second by reviling, turn them from error. But since friendship’s voice has nowadays become thin and weak when it comes to frank speaking, while its flattery is voluble and its admonition mute, we have to depend upon our enemies to hear the truth. For as Telephus, unable to find a suitable physician, subjected his wound to his enemy’s spear, so those who are cut off from benevolent admonition must submit with patience to the remarks of a malevolent enemy if he exposes and reprehends their vice, and they must give consideration to the facts only, and not to what is in the mind of the detractor…
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8: But, quite apart from this, control over the tongue, which is no small part of virtue, is something which it is impossible to keep always in subjection and obedience to the reasoning faculties, unless a man by training, practice, and industry has mastered the worst of his emotions, such as anger, for example. For the “voice that slips out unintended,” and the

Word that has ‘scaped the lips’ prison,

And

Some of the sayings that flit forth of themselves,

are all incident to temperaments that are quite untrained, and are unsteady and fluctuating, so to speak, owing to weakness of will, headstrong opinions, and a reckless way of living. Just for a word, the lightest thing in the world, is ordained, according to the divine Plato, heaviest punishment, coming from both gods and men. But silence cannot under any circumstances be called to an accounting (it is more than a preventive of thirst, as Hippocrates says of it), and in the midst of reviling it is dignified and Socratic, or rather Heraclean, if it be true that Heracles

Not so much as to a fly gave heed to words of hatred.

Indeed, there is nothing more dignified and noble than to maintain a calm demeanour when an enemy reviles one,

Passing by a man’s scoffs
Just as swimmers swim past a precipitous rock,

but far more important is the practice. If you once acquire the habit of bearing an enemy’s abuse in silence, you will very easily bear up under a wife’s attack when she rails at you, and without discomposure will patiently hear the most bitter utterances of a friend or a brother; and when you meet with blows or missiles at the hands of a father or mother, you will show no sign of passion or wrath. For instance, Socrates bore with Xanthippe, who was irascible and acrimonious, for he thought that he should have no difficulty in getting along with other people if he accustomed himself to bear patiently with her; but it is much better to secure this training from the scurrilous, angry, scoffing, and abusive attacks of enemies and outsiders, and thus accustom the temper to be unruffled and not even impatient in the midst of reviling.
9: In this manner, then, it is possible for us to display the qualities of gentleness and forbearance in connexion with our enmities, and also straightforwardness, magnanimity, and goodness better than in our friendships. For it is not so honourable to do a good turn to a friend as it is disgraceful not to do it when he is in need; but even to forgo taking vengeance on an enemy when he offers a good opportunity is a handsome thing to do. But in case a man shows compassion for an enemy in affliction, and gives a helping hand to him when he has come to be in need, and displays some concern and zeal in behalf of his children and his household affairs when they come to want, I say that whosoever does not feel affection for such a man because of his kindliness, or does not commend his goodness,

Hath a black heart
Forged from adamant or else from steel.

When Caesar gave orders that the statues in honour of Pompey, which had been thrown down, should be restored, Cicero said to him, “You have restored Pompey’s statues, but you have made your own secure.” Wherefore there must be no scanting of commendation or due honour in the case of an enemy who has justly gained a fair repute. For such an attitude wins greater commendation for those who bestow it, and inspires confidence, when later a man makes a complaint that he does so, not because he hates the person, but because he disapproves of the action. But best of all, and most advantageous, is the fact that a man is farthest removed from envying the good fortune of his friends or the success of his relatives, if he has acquired the habit of commending his enemies, and feeling no pang and cherishing no grudge when they prosper. And yet what other process of training produces greater benefit to our souls or a better disposition, than does that which takes from us all our jealousy and our proneness to envy? Just as many of the things which are necessary in war, but bad under other conditions, when they once acquire the sanction of custom and law, cannot easily be abolished by the people even though the people are being injured by them, so enmity introduces envy along with hatred, and leaves as a residue jealousy, joy over others’ misfortunes, and vindictiveness. Moreover, knavery, deceit, and intrigue, which seem not bad or unjust when employed against an enemy, if once they find a lodgement, acquire a permanent tenure, and are hard to eject. The next thing is that men of themselves employ these against their friends through force of habit, unless they are on their guard against using them against their enemies. If then Pythagoras was right when, in trying to accustom men to refrain from cruelty and rapacity in connexion with dumb animals, he used to intercede with fowlers, and buy up catches of fish and direct that they be released, and forbid the killing of any domesticated animal, it is surely a grander achievement by far, in disagreements and contentions with human beings, for a man to be a noble, honest, and ingenuous enemy, and to repress and put down his base, ignoble, and knavish propensities, so that in his dealings with his friends he may be always steadfast and may keep himself from wrongdoing. Scaurus was an enemy of Domitius and his accuser before the law. Now a servant of Domitius came to Scaurus before the trial, claiming to have information on some matters that had escaped Scaurus’s knowledge, but Scaurus would not let him speak, and caused the man to be arrested and taken back to his master. When Cato was prosecuting Murena for corrupt political practices and was getting together his evidence, there followed him, in accordance with the usage of the time, men who watched what was being done. Very often they would ask him if he was intending that day to gather evidence or to do any work on the case, and if he said “No,” they believed him and went away. In these facts may be found the greatest proof of Cato’s repute; but it is a greater thing, and indeed the noblest, that, if we acquire the habit of practising honesty in dealing even with our enemies, we shall never deal dishonestly and knavishly with our intimate associates and friends.
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

Plutarch. Moralia. Vol. X of Loeb Classical Library edition. Translated by H. N. Fowler. 1936. Bill Thayer’s Website, Lacuscurtius. Retrieved 2025, from
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Praecepta_gerendae_reipublicae*.html

PRECEPTS OF STATECRAFT
1: If, Menemachus, it is suitable to apply to anything at all the saying

No one of all the Achaeans finds fault with the words thou hast uttered,
Nor will oppose them in speech; and yet thou hast reached no conclusion,

it may be applied to those philosophers who urge people to take lessons from them, but give no real instruction or advice; for they are like those who trim the lamps, but fail to pour in oil. Therefore, seeing that the desire has been aroused in you a

Speaker of speeches to be, and also a doer of actions

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14: But since, to quote Simonides, “all larks must grow a crest,” and every public career bears its crop of enmities and disagreements, the public man must give especial consideration to these matters. So most people commend Themistocles and Aristeides who, whenever they went on an embassy or in command of an army, laid down their private enmity at the frontier, then took it up again later. And some people are also immensely pleased by the conduct of Cretinas of Magnesia. He was a political opponent of Hermeias, a man who was not powerful but was of ambitious spirit and brilliant mind, and when the Mithridatic war broke out, seeing that the State was in danger, he told Hermeias to take over the command and manage affairs, while he himself withdrew; or, if Hermeias wished him to be general, then Hermeias should remove himself, that they might not by ambitious strife with one another destroy the State. The challenge pleased Hermeias, and saying that Cretinas was more versed in war than himself, he went away with his wife and children. And as he was departing Cretinas escorted him, first giving him out of his own means such things as were more useful to exiles than to people besieged in a city, after which by his excellent military leadership he saved the State unexpectedly when it was on the brink of destruction. For if it is a noble thing and the mark of an exalted spirit to exclaim

I love my children, but I love my country more,

would it not have been easier for each of them to say, “I hate so-and so and wish to do him harm, but I love my country more”? For to be unwilling to make peace with a personal enemy for the sake of those things for which we ought even to give up a friend is shockingly uncivilized and as low as the beasts. Certainly Phocion and Cato and their like acted much better, for they would allow no personal enmity to have any bearing whatsoever upon political differences, but were stern and inexorable only in public contests against sacrificing what was for the common good; yet in private matters they treated kindly and without anger their political opponents. For the statesman should not regard any fellow-citizen as an enemy, unless some man, such as Aristion, Nabis, or Catiline, should appear who is a pest and a running sore to the State. Those who are in other ways out of harmony he should, like a skilful musician, bring into unison by gently tightening or relaxing the strings of his control, not attacking angrily and insultingly those who err, but making an appeal designed rather to make a moral impression, as Homer does:

Truly, my friend, I did think you surpassed other men in your wisdom;

and

Knowledge thou hast to devise other speech that is better than this was.

But if they say or do anything good, he should not be vexed by their honours, nor should he be sparing of complimentary words for their good actions; for if we act in this way our blame, where it is needed, will be thought justified, and we shall make them dislike evil by exalting virtue and showing through comparison that good actions are more worthy and fitting than the other kind…
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… Therefore, just as Plato said that young people should be told from childhood that it is not proper for them to wear gold on their persons or to possess it, since they have a gold of their own mingled in their souls, — a figurative reference, I believe, to the virtue derived by descent, which permeates their natures, — so let us moderate our ambition, saying that we have in ourselves honour, a gold uncorrupted, undefiled, and unpolluted by envy and fault-finding, which increases along with reasoning and the contemplation of our acts and public measures…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

WHETHER AN OLD MAN SHOULD ENGAGE IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS
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… and though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak; but from the servants of Zeus, god of the Council, the Market-place, and the State, we do not demand deeds of hands and feet, but of counsel, foresight, and speech — not such speech as makes a roar and a clamour among the people, but that which contains good sense, prudent thought, and conservatism; and in these the hoary hair and the wrinkles that people make fun of appear as witnesses to a man’s experience and strengthen him by the aid of persuasiveness and the reputation for character. For youth is meant to obey and old age to rule, and that State is most secure

Where old men’s counsels and the young men’s spears
Hold highest rank;

and the lines

First he established a council of old men lofty in spirit
Hard by the vessel of Nestor

meet with wonderful approval… And just as the law places diadem and crown upon the head, so nature puts grey hair upon it as an honourable symbol of the high dignity of leadership. And the words geras (“honour,” also “reward”) and gerairein (“venerate”) retain, I believe, a meaning of veneration derived from old men (gerontes), not because they bathe in warm water or sleep in softer beds than other men, but because they hold royal rank in the States in accordance with their wisdom, the proper and perfect fruit of which, as of a late-bearing plant, nature produces after long effort in old age. At any rate when the king of kings prayed to the gods:

Would that I had ten such advisers among the Achaeans

as Nestor was, not one of the “martial” and “might-breathing Achaeans” found fault with him, but all conceded that, not in civil affairs alone, but in war as well, old age has great weight;

For one wise counsel over many hands
Is victor,

and one sensible and persuasive expression of opinion accomplishes the greatest and most excellent public measures.
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19: And just as Alexander, wishing not to work Bucephalus too hard when he was old, used to ride other horses before the battle in reviewing the phalanx and drawing it up in line, and then, after giving the watchword and mounting him, immediately charged the enemy, and fought the battle to its end; so the statesman, if he is sensible, will curb himself when he has grown old, will keep away from unnecessary activities and allow the State to employ men in their prime for lesser matters, but in important affairs will himself take part vigorously. For athletes keep their bodies untouched by necessary tasks and in full force for useless toils, but we, on the contrary, letting petty and worthless matters go, will save ourselves for things that are seriously worth while…
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28: There are, then, many kinds of political activity by which old men may readily benefit the commonwealth by giving of their best, namely reason, judgement, frankness, and “sapience profound,” as poets say; for not only do our hands or our feet or the strength of our body constitute a possession and a part of the State, but first of all our soul and the beauties of the soul — justice, moderation, and wisdom. And since these acquire their proper quality late and slowly, it is absurd that house, farm, and other property or possessions should derive all the benefit from aged men but that they should be no longer of use to their country in general and their fellow-citizens by reason of their age, for age does not so much diminish our power to perform inferior services as it increases our power for leading and governing. And that is the reason why they make the older Hermae without hands or feet, but with their private parts stiff, indicating figuratively that there is no need whatsoever of old men who are active by their body’s use, if they keep their mind, as it should be, active and fertile.

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

TO AN UNEDUCATED RULER
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2: But most kings and rulers are so foolish as to act like unskilful sculptors, who think their colossal figures look large and imposing if they are modelled with their feet far apart, their muscles tense, and their mouths wide open. For these rulers seem by heaviness of voice, harshness of expression, truculence of manner, and unsociability in their way of living to be imitating the dignity and majesty of the princely station, although in fact they are not at all different from colossal statues which have a heroic and godlike form on the outside, but inside are full of clay, stone, and lead, — except that in the case of the statues the weight of those substances keeps them permanently upright without leaning, whereas uneducated generals and rulers are often rocked and capsized by the ignorance within them; for since the foundation upon which they have built up their lofty power is not laid straight, they lean with it and lose their balance. But just as a rule, if it is made rigid and inflexible, makes other things straight when they are fitted to it and laid alongside it, in like manner the sovereign must first gain command of himself, must regulate his own soul and establish his own character, then make his subjects fit his pattern. For one who is falling cannot hold others up, nor can one who is ignorant teach, nor the uncultivated impart culture, nor the disorderly make order, nor can he rule who is under no rule. But most people foolishly believe that the first advantage of ruling is freedom from being ruled…
3: Who, then, shall rule the ruler? The

Law, the king of all,
Both mortals and immortals,

as Pindar says — not law written outside him in books or on wooden tablets or the like, but reason endowed with life within him, always abiding with him and watching over him and never leaving his soul without its leadership. For example, the King of the Persians had one of his chamberlains assigned to the special duty of entering his chamber in the morning and saying to him: “Arise, O King, and consider matters which the great Oromasdes wished you to consider.” But the educated and wise ruler has within him the voice which always thus speaks to him and exhorts him. Indeed Polemo said that love was “the service of the gods for the care and the preservation of the young”; one might more truly say that rulers serve god for the care and preservation of men, in order that of the glorious gifts which the gods give to men they may distribute some and safeguard others.

Dost thou behold this lofty, boundless sky
Which holds the earth enwrapped in soft embrace?

The sky sends down the beginnings of the appropriate seeds, and the earth causes them to sprout up; some are made to grow by showers and some by winds, and some by the warmth of stars and moon; but it is the sun which adorns all things and mingles in all things what men call the “love charm” which is derived from himself. But these gifts and blessings, so excellent and great, which the gods bestow cannot be rightly enjoyed nor used without law and justice and a ruler. Now justice is the aim and end of law, but law is the work of the ruler, and the ruler is the image of God who orders all things. Such a ruler needs no Pheidias nor Polycleitus nor Myron to model him, but by his virtue he forms himself in the likeness of God and thus creates a statue most delightful of all to behold and most worthy of divinity. Now just as in the heavens God has established as a most beautiful image of himself the sun and the moon, so in states a ruler

who in God’s likeness
Righteous decisions upholds,

that is to say, one who, possessing God’s wisdom, establishes, as his likeness and luminary, intelligence in place of sceptre or thunderbolt or trident, with which attributes some rulers represent themselves in sculpture and painting, thus causing their folly to arouse hostile feelings, because they claim what they cannot attain. For God visits his wrath upon those who imitate his thunders, lightnings, and sunbeams, but with those who emulate his virtue and make themselves like unto his goodness and mercy he is well pleased and therefore causes them to prosper and gives them a share of his own equity, justice, truth, and gentleness, than which nothing is more divine, — nor fire, nor light, nor the course of the sun, nor the risings and settings of the stars, nor eternity and immortality. For God enjoys felicity, not through the length of his life, but through the ruling quality of his virtue; for this is divine; and excellent also is that part of virtue which submits to rule.
4: And it is true that Anaxarchus, trying to console Alexander in his agony of mind over his killing of Cleitus, said that the reason why Justice and Right are seated by the side of Zeus is that men may consider every act of a king as righteous and just; but neither correct nor helpful were the means he took in endeavouring to heal the king’s remorse for his sin, by encouraging him to further acts of the same sort. But if a guess about this matter is proper, I should say that Zeus does not have Justice to sit beside him, but is himself Justice and Right and the oldest and most perfect of laws; but the ancients state it in that way in their writings and teachings, to imply that without Justice not even Zeus can rule well. “She is a virgin,” according to Hesiod, uncorrupted, dwelling with reverence, self-restraint, and helpfulness; and therefore kings are called “reverend,” for it is fitting that those be most revered who have least to fear. But the ruler should have more fear of doing than of suffering evil; for the former is the cause of the latter; and that kind of fear on the part of the ruler is humane and not ignoble to be afraid on behalf of his subjects lest they may without his knowledge suffer harm,

Just as the dogs keep their watch, toiling hard for the flocks in the sheepfold,
When they have heard a ferocious wild beast,

not for their own sake but for the sake of those whom they are guarding. Epameinondas, when all the Thebans crowded to a certain festival and gave themselves utterly to drink, went alone and patrolled the armouries and the walls, saying that he was keeping sober and awake that the others might be free to be drunk and asleep. And Cato at Utica issued a proclamation to send all the other survivors of the defeat to the seashore; he saw them aboard ship, prayed that they might have a good voyage, then returned home and killed himself; thereby teaching us in whose behalf the ruler ought to feel fear and what the ruler ought to despise…
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5: For it is neither probable nor fitting that God is, as some philosophers say, mingled with matter, which is altogether passive, and with things, which are subject to countless necessities, chances, and changes. On the contrary, somewhere up above in contact with that nature which, in accordance with the same principles, remains always as it is, established, as Plato says, upon pedestals of holiness, proceeding in accordance with nature in his straight course, he reaches his goal…
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7: Nor is it possible in positions of power for vices to be concealed. Epileptics, if they go up to a high place and move about, grow dizzy and reel, which makes their disease evident, and just so Fortune by such things as riches, reputations, or offices exalts uneducated and uncultured men a little and then, as soon as they have risen high, gives them a conspicuous fall; or, to use a better simile, just as in a number of vessels you could not tell which is whole and which is defective, but when you pour liquid into them the leak appears, just so corrupt souls cannot contain power, but leak out in acts of desire, anger, imposture, and bad taste…

PLUTARCH – MORALIA

THAT A PHILOSOPHER OUGHT TO CONVERSE ESPECIALLY WITH MEN IN POWER
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… And while it is true that Ariston of Chios, when the sophists spoke ill of him for talking with all who wished it, said, “I wish even the beasts could understand words which incite to virtue,” yet as for us, shall we avoid becoming intimate with powerful men and rulers, as if they were wild and savage?
The teaching of philosophy is not, if I may use the words of Pindar, “a sculptor to carve statues doomed to stand idly on their pedestals and no more”; no, it strives to make everything that it touches active and efficient and alive, it inspires men with impulses which urge to action, with judgements that lead them towards what is useful, with preferences for things that are honourable, with wisdom and greatness of mind joined to gentleness and conservatism, and because they possess these qualities, men of public spirit are more eager to converse with the prominent and powerful. Certainly if a physician is a man of high ideals, he will be better pleased to cure the eye which sees for many and watches over many, and a philosopher will be more eager to attend upon a soul which he sees is solicitous for many and is under obligation to be wise and self-restrained and just in behalf of many… Certainly the teachings of the philosopher, if they take hold of one person in private station who enjoys abstention from affairs and circumscribes himself by his bodily comforts, as by a circle drawn with geometrical compasses, do not spread out to others, but merely create calmness and quiet in that one man, then dry up and disappear. But if these teachings take possession of a ruler, a statesman, and a man of action and fill him with love of honour, through one he benefits many…
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But that would not disturb us, because the aim and end of both the speech in the mind and the speech in the utterance is friendship, towards oneself and towards one’s neighbour respectively; for the former, ending through philosophy in virtue, makes a man harmonious with himself, free from blame from himself, and full of peace and friendliness towards himself.

Faction is not, nor is ill-starred strife, to be found in his members,

there is no passion disobedient to reason, no strife of impulse with impulse, no opposition of argument to argument, there is no rough tumult and pleasure on the border-line, as it were, between desire and repentance, but everything is gentle and friendly and makes each man gain the greatest number of benefits and be pleased with himself…
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if this speaker was not merely a lover of agriculture but also a lover of his fellow men, he would find more pleasure in sowing the field which could feed so many men than in sowing that left plot of Antisthenes’ which would hardly have been big enough for Autolycus to wrestle in; but if [he meant]: “I sow all this in order that I may subjugate the whole inhabited world,” I deprecate the sentiment. And yet Epicurus, who places happiness in the deepest quiet, as in a sheltered and landlocked harbour, says that it is not only nobler, but also pleasanter, to confer than to receive benefits.

For chiefest joy doth gracious kindness give.

Surely he was wise who gave the Graces the names Aglaïa (Splendour), Euphrosynê (Gladness), and Thalia (Good-cheer); for the delight and joy are greater and purer for him who does the gracious act. And therefore people are often ashamed to receive benefits, but are always delighted to confer them; and they who make those men good upon whom many depend confer benefits upon many…
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PLUTARCH – MORALIA

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