What the critics say!
The best survey of Plutarch's influence remains Rudolf Hirzel 1912 Plutarch (Leipzig). Chaironeia has a small bibliography of other works on Plutarch's influence.
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What the critics say! The best survey of Plutarch's influence remains Rudolf Hirzel 1912 Plutarch (Leipzig). Chaironeia has a small bibliography of other works on Plutarch's influence. |
Chaeronean Plutarch, to thy deathless praise
Doth martial Rome this grateful statue raise,
Because both Greece and she thy fame have shared
(Their heroes written and their lives compared).
But thou theyself couldst never write thy own;
Their lives have parallels, but thine has none.
(Greek Anthology 16.331, Translated by John Dryden)
the man of Chaeronea, who belongs to that worthless class of men who are called by impostors philosophers,
In a letter to his wife, Marie de Medicis:
"Vive Dieu. As God liveth, you could not have sent me any
thing which could be more agreeable than the news of the pleasure you
have taken in this reading. Plutarch always delights me with a fresh
novelty. To love him is to love me; for he has been long time the
instructor of my youth. My good mother, to whom I owe all, and who
would not wish, she said, to see her son an illustrious dunce, put
this book into my hands almost when I was a child at the breast. It
has been like my conscience, and has whispered in my ear many good
suggestions and maxims for my conduct, and the government of my
affairs."
(quoted in Emerson's introduction to Goodwin's edition of
Plutarch's Morals p. x) This letter has been determined to be
a forgery, see Hirzel 1912 Plutarch (Leipzig).
"Who's this, thy son?
A pretty youth! What is his name?"
"Plutarchus, sir."
"Plutarchus! how came that about?"
"That year, sir,
That I begot him, I bought Plutarch's Lives
And fell so in love with the book, as I call'd my son
By his name, in hope he should be like him,
And write the names of our great men."
The Devil is an Ass (1616).
Frankenstein's monster speaks
"The volume of Plutarch's Lives, which I possessed, contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book had a far different effect upon me from the Sorrows of Werter. I learned from Werter's imaginations despondency and gloom: but Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. But I was perfectly unacquainted with towns, and large assemblages of men. The cottage of my protectors had been the only school in which I had studied human nature; but this book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as I understood the signification of those terms, relative as they were, as I applied them, to pleasure and pain alone. Induced by these feelings, I was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers, Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus, in preference to Romulus and Theseus. The patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold on my mind; perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with different sensations."
Go with mean people and you think life is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demigods standing around us, who will not let us sleep. (quoted on p. 1 of Edmund Grindlay Berry 1961 Emerson's Plutarch. (Cambridge)).
I understand that you feel you learned a good deal about politics from Plutarch's Lives and that your father read it aloud to you when you were a boy.
"He did. We saved our dimes, threw them into the tray of an old trunk, and they accumulated faster than you'd think even in those days, and then my father sent away, or maybe it was my mother, but one of them sent away, and we got the nicest set of Shakespeare you ever did see and a book of Plutarch's Lives. It had a bright-red cover, and you're right. My father used to read me out loud from that. And I've read Plutarch through many times since. I never figured out how he knew so much. They just don't come any better than old Plutarch. He knew more about politics than all the other writers I've read put together.
"When I was in politics, there would be times when I tried to figure somebody out, and I could always turn to Plutarch, and nine times out of ten I'd be able to find a parallel in there. In 1940, when I was running for reelection to the Senate, there was this big apple-grower named Stark trying to beat me. I'd started him out in politics, but in 1940 he was out to lick me, and I couldn't figure it out.
"But the more I thought about him, the more he reminded me of what Plutarch said about Nero. I'd done a lot of thinking about Nero. What I was interested in was how having started as well as he did, he ended up in ruin. And Plutarch said the start of his troubles was when he began to take his friends for granted and started to buy his enemies.
"And I noticed some of those same traits in old Stark. That's how I decided I could lick him, and I did, of course. Nobody thought I could, but I did. I'll tell you about that campaign at another time...
"But about Plutarch. It was the same with those old birds in Greece and Rome as it is now. I told you. The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."
Merle Miller Plain speaking; an oral biography of Harry S Truman (New York 1974) p. 68-9. Recent examinations of Miller's recordings of his interviews with Truman seem to show that he fabricated at least part of Plain Speaking. I haven't inquired as to the accuracy of the Plutarch section, but I note that Plutarch nowhere makes the statement about Nero quoted above. Of course, if Miller did fabricate these accounts of Plutarchean inspiration, one would think he would have researched to get the facts right.
