Plutarch of Chaeronea, the protagonist of this volume, inhabited the multicultural and increasingly interconnected world of the Roman empire. It was a world in which diverse local, linguistic, and religious identities were combined with a common Graeco-Roman education and culture. In this world, beliefs and values were influenced by both regional civic traditions and integrative imperial ideologies, and the everyday life of the empire’s residents was permeated with common experiences, from dealing with the Roman administration to participating in translocal religious cults, public rites, and, for some, the shared rituals of cultivated elite life.
This sense of interconnectedness is apparent in Plutarch’s works in a number of ways, from the inclusion of speakers from various parts of the empire in his dialogues, to the exploration of Roman history and culture alongside that of Greece. It also manifests itself in an abundance of parallels—such as recurring conceptual frameworks, imagery, literary formats and rhetorical strategies, persistent themes and interests, as well as ethical and political concerns shared by the inhabitants of the empire—which reflect the common cultural participation of Plutarch and other early imperial period writers with backgrounds that differed from his.
This volume aims to put these overlaps and points of intersection between Plutarch and other imperial period writers into the spotlight. While the copiousness of the preserved Plutarchan corpus provides the reader with an inexhaustible abundance of topics and problems to explore, examining it from within the broader context of contemporary literary production contributes to a better understanding of both the empire’s culture in general, and Plutarch in particular. Even if our comprehension of imperial period writers’ familiarity with one another’s literary and intellectual output frequently remains hazy, making it difficult to confidently identify cases of direct interaction, a comparative approach puts into sharper relief ongoing debates and shared concerns, and reveals a complex topography of rearrangements and transfigurations of inherited topics, motifs, and ideas. Investigating both convergences and parallels, as well as variations and modifications in the themes, formats, and literary techniques found in Plutarch and other authors of the early empire allows one to discriminate, even if—due to obliteration of much ancient literature—only provisionally and hypothetically, between the shared cultural background and these ancient writers’ individual tweaks and adjustments, reflecting their personal principles, preoccupations, and agendas. As the contributions in the volume demonstrate, reading Plutarch alongside his contemporaries brings out distinctive features of his thought and uncovers peculiarities in his use of literary and rhetorical strategies, imagery, and philosophical concepts.
The book stems from the 12th International Congress of the International Plutarch Society bearing the same title as the present volume. Initially envisaged as taking place in September 2020 in Warsaw, it had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and ultimately became a virtual event in September 2021, when it was held under the auspices of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw (Poland) and the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (Denmark), and funded by a Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education grant (no. 743/P-DUN/2019). The conference was joined online by speakers who resided across many countries and continents, but nevertheless all shared the experience of the global pandemic, which curiously foregrounded the resonance between the “globalized” world of the Roman empire and the interconnected reality we inhabit today. Sadly, as we were preparing the congress and working on the volume afterwards, two eminent scholars, much-loved longtime members of the Plutarchan community, passed away: Philip A. Stadter and Frederick E. Brenk. It is to their memory that we dedicate the book, in gratefulness for their contribution to the vitality of research on Plutarch and the intellectual generosity with which they supported many younger Plutarchan scholars over the years.
The book contains about half of the papers presented during the congress, all of which were considerably expanded and elaborated by the authors before publication. We organized them into six thematic sections intended to illuminate different, though frequently interlocked, spheres of intellectual life and human existence. Part 1, titled Residents of Empire: Politics and Civic Life, focuses on Plutarch’s and his contemporaries’ engagement with political and civic life in the empire. The stage is set by a chapter by Jeffrey Beneker, who puts into the spotlight Plutarch’s reflection on the period which constituted the beginnings of the Graeco-Roman reality in which he came to live. Beneker examines the narrative dynamics of the intertwined Lives of Philopoemen and Flamininus, and argues that although they focus on events that took place in the second century BCE, they contain Plutarch’s reflection on his own world, and that the complexity in Plutarch’s assessment of the two protagonists reflects the ambiguous valuation of the Greek and Roman constituents of the imperial realm. Next follow three contributions which take a comparative approach to Plutarch and other political thinkers, namely Dio Chrysostom and Seneca the Younger, and scrutinize their take on different configurations of imperial political structures and the sphere of civic activity nestled in them. Colin Bailey and Thierry Oppeneer focus on the world of local politics. Bailey, in his examination of the image of the abandoned agora in Plutarch’s Life of Timoleon and Dio Chrysostom’s Euboean Discourse, shows that the authors’ descriptions of desolate urban spaces constitute an admonitory commentary on civic life in imperial Greek cities. Oppeneer’s contribution compares Plutarch’s advice to a political speaker in Praecepta gerendae reipublicae with Dio’s oratorical practice in the speeches delivered in Prusa. He demonstrates that as a public orator, Dio shapes his voice in agreement with Plutarch’s theoretical advice, which indicates that Plutarch’s political precepts are rooted in his expertise in local politics and convey real-world experience. The last paper in this section, by Andrea Catanzaro, draws attention to Plutarch’s, Dio’s, and Seneca the Younger’s intellectual engagement with the political structure of the empire. He shows that their understanding of it was influenced by the ancient taxonomy which distinguished three types of government shadowed by their negative analogues, and therefore all three authors were wary of the constant risk of monarchy’s degeneration into tyranny. Catanzaro discusses how they address this danger and reach for the one tool they believe they have at their disposal, namely, the education of the ruler.
Part 2, Among Philosophers: Debates and Disputes, looks at Plutarch’s engagement with the philosophical scene, with a particular focus on his treatment of his philosophical opponents. Wim Nijs discusses the striking presence of the Cynic Planetiades among the interlocutors discussing the obsolescence of the oracles in De defectu oraculorum and shows how Plutarch manages both to acknowledge the existence of the Cynic perspective on oracular practices and delimit its impact on the course of the discussion. Richard Stoneman and Geert Roskam scrutinize Plutarch’s interactions with Epicureanism. Stoneman reminds us that while Plutarch time and again attacks Epicureans (though, as a rule, he directs his fire at the founding fathers rather than contemporary philosophers), his own thought nevertheless shows traces of Epicurean influence, manifest in works as divergent as De tranquillitate animi, Gryllus, and De adulatore et amico. Roskam compares Plutarch’s refutation of the Epicurean philosophy in Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum with Maximus of Tyre’s attack on the Epicurean conceptualizations of virtue and pleasure in the Orations. He shows how Plutarch and Maximus, though both are coming from a Platonic perspective in their dismissal of the Epicurean ethics, reach for different argumentative and rhetorical strategies in their polemical dealings with the philosophers of the Garden. Theofanis Tsiampokalos’ chapter explores another corner of the philosophical landscape, drawing attention to Galen’s account of a disagreement between Favorinus and Epictetus and the role the figure of Plutarch—mentioned in some lost works of Favorinus—might have played in it. Prompted by Galen’s report, Tsiampokalos looks for evidence of Plutarch’s embracement and approval of the Academic practice of arguing on two sides of a question, and finds it in the dialogue De sollertia animalium.
Philosophy also features in Part 3, Facing the (Super)natural, which opens with Daniele Morrone’s discussion of Plutarch’s and Apuleius’ approach to mirabilia. The author uncovers several affinities between the two writers in this regard—such as an interest in reporting marvels, accompanied by a rejection of their magical explanations in favor of ones rooted in natural philosophy—which result, he proposes, from their shared Platonic background. Paola Volpe Cacciatore’s essay discusses the Pseudo-Plutarchan De fato and its conceptualizations of fate, Providence, and free will against the backdrop of broader imperial discourse on the topic, in particular Stoic (Seneca the Younger) and Middle Platonic (Apuleius, Maximus of Tyre). Fabio Tanga brings out the theme of dreams, a frequent feature in Plutarch’s Lives and Moralia. He discusses in detail a report about Plutarch’s own premonitory dream, reported in Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica, and discusses it in the context of Plutarch’s interest in dreams, their prophetic power, and their interpretation.
Part 4, Readers and Spectators, looks at encounters and interactions with literature and art, their interpretations and uses. As pepaideumenoi, the educated elite of the Graeco-Roman world, Plutarch and contemporary writers are deeply informed and influenced by the preceding Greek literary tradition; at the same time, they move about the Graeco-Roman world, in which cultural institutions and visual culture are shaped by imperial socio-political circumstances. These two aspects of the cultural life of the period are illuminated in the chapters found in this section. The first two contributions, by Giovanna Pace and Krystyna Bartol, focus on the reception of specific literary traditions. Pace discusses analogies and differences in how Plutarch and Seneca make use of Classical Greek tragedies: what they cite, how they recontextualize and refunctionalize the citations, and how they integrate tragic verses into moralizing discourse. Bartol offers a close examination of the figure of Philoxenus/Philoxeni in Plutarch and Athenaeus, showing that the two authors, as educated Greek intellectuals with extensive antiquarian knowledge, share a familiarity with the traditions concerning Philoxeni; at the same time, they are interested in different aspects of these traditions and employ different means of “filtering” the received lore. Francesco Padovani moves to another segment of the literary heritage which played an important role in the intellectual landscape of the early imperial period, namely historiography. He proposes reading Plutarch’s De Herodoti malignitate and Lucian’s Quo modo historia conscribenda sit as emanations of the period’s debate about historiography, in particular its paideutic role, and delineates how the two authors differ in their understanding of historiography’s principal purpose, and its relation to truth and moral obligations. The theme of historiography is also present in Katarzyna Pietruczuk’s chapter, which considers Plutarch’s biographical writing as a type of historiography which entailed conducting an extensive inquiry into his protagonists and the historical events in which they were involved. Pietruczuk brings Plutarch’s research strategies under scrutiny, directing her attention to his references to libraries, and showing how the Roman conquests recast the distribution of cultural centers and access to literature, with Rome becoming the major cultural hub due to the accumulation of books in the city, a product of its military conquests. The city of Rome also features prominently in Eva Falaschi’s chapter, in which she takes the reader for a walk around the Urbs with Plutarch and Pliny the Elder and looks at its monuments and pieces of art, many taken from Greek cities and sanctuaries and subsequently put on display in the city. She finds in the two authors the same concern that the accumulation of such a vast number of artworks in frenetic and busy Rome makes it impossible to properly contemplate them, and shows that their reflection on art in the city has ethical and political relevance.
In the chapters contained in Part 5, Uses of the Past, the main interest is engagement with the past and cultural memory. Maria Elena De Luna investigates Plutarch’s reception of a local Arcadian tradition in one section of the Quaestiones Graecae, analyzes and interprets its unusual format, and compares Plutarch’s attitude to local Arcadian customs with the approaches of Pliny the Elder and Pausanias. Martina Gatto examines the representation of Lycurgus in Plutarch, Pausanias, and Lucian (Anacharsis), underscoring differences in perspective and emphasis among the three authors. Lycurgus is also the focus of the chapter by Iris Sulimani, who examines the peculiarity of the lawgiver’s biography. She demonstrates how the structure of the Life of Lycurgus and Plutarch’s use and arrangement of quotations and evidence serves in “historicizing” Lycurgus and in downplaying legendary aspects of the Lycurgan tradition. Sulimani also compares the Life with Tacitus’ Agricola and shows how ancient biographies served a variety of functions besides giving an account of the protagonist’s life. Serena Citro’s and Laurens van der Wiel’s contributions both approach Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata and compare it with anecdote collections by other authors. Citro examines closely the rhetorical and lexical structure of selected anecdotes in Plutarch, Valerius Maximus, and Polyaenus, and thereby uncovers Plutarch’s distinctive method of shaping anecdotes and their moralizing message. Van der Wiel, on the other hand, focuses on Valerius Maximus’ and Plutarch’s prefaces and addresses to emperors (Tiberius and Trajan respectively), revealing telling differences between the two authors’ aims and intended audience, but also in their means of self-presentation and understanding of the proper relationship between a ruler and an intellectual. He also entertains the thought that Plutarch may be deliberately “correcting” Valerius Maximus’ excessive submissiveness to the emperor, connecting this chapter to Andrea Catanzaro’s contribution (in Part 1), which addressed the relationship between the ruler and the intellectual.
The last part, titled Cultural Practices: Inhabiting and Subverting the Norms, comprises seven chapters which apply a comparative approach to the works of Plutarch and contemporary authors in subjects such as friendship, the representation of women, the symposium and practices associated with food, as well as the phenomenon of “lay medicine” in imperial culture. In the chapter opening this section, Laura Bottenberg reads Plutarch’s De amicorum multitudine alongside Lucian’s Toxaris and compares their use of the topos of friendship as a union of friends’ bodies and minds. She examines differences in the treatment of this idea in the two authors, and puts their discussions in the broader context of ancient discourse on friendship and conceptualizations of it. The next two chapters, which discuss Plutarch’s representation of and views on women, contribute to an ongoing discussion on Plutarch’s stance on women’s intellectual and ethical potential. Dawn LaValle Norman brings attention to a dissonance between Plutarch’s mentions about discussions he had with learned women and his reluctance, visible in particular in his philosophical dialogues, to having their voices represented. She analyzes a telling example of Cleobulina in the Symposium of the Seven Sages, praised for her wisdom yet remaining silent throughout, and contrasts it with the representation of the female disciples of Jesus who are speakers in early Christian dialogue gospels. Tomohiko Kondo then compares Plutarch’s and Musonius Rufus’ views on women and their intellectual abilities, and scrutinizes the “incomplete feminisms” of the two philosophers, showing how this “incompleteness” develops in different ways and reflects differences in their philosophical and social background. The two papers show how, within existing cultural norms, representatives of different intellectual environments worked out differing approaches to the inclusion of women and acknowledgement of their capacities. Cultural norms—as well as their subversion—are also the focus of two chapters which discuss Plutarch’s Quaestiones convivales. Delfim F. Leão demonstrates how the rules of sympotic decorum we find upheld in Plutarch’s work are deliberately disrupted in the subversive banquet of the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius. This does not necessarily mean that Plutarch was familiar with the Roman author’s work and reacted to it, but demonstrates a tacit understanding of the rules of sympotic civility and propriety by members of the elite. A similar dynamic is uncovered by Anna Ginestí Rosell between sympotic works by Plutarch and Lucian; as she argues, several convivial scenes in the latter’s Symposium appear to satirize Plutarchan idealized representations of banquets and invert the norms which he accepts and follows. Taking into account the early dissemination of Plutarch’s works and verbal parallels between Plutarch and Lucian, Ginestí Rosell makes an argument for the latter’s direct interaction with the Chaeronean. Chiara Di Serio’s chapter also closes on the Quaestiones convivales, through which she investigates Plutarch’s encounter with a tradition differing from his own by focusing on his interlocutors’ discussion of the Jewish abstention from pork. She examines the explanatory strategies employed by them and situates their arguments within the wider context of ancient Greek representations and conceptualizations of foreigners and their “otherness.” The volume closes with Michiel Meeusen’s overview of the imperial phenomenon of “amateur medicine”, in which lay individuals showed a great interest in and substantial knowledge of medical topics. His contribution opens a larger perspective on Plutarch’s non-expert engagement with medicine by examining it against the backdrop of larger cultural trends.
Cumulatively, the twenty-eight chapters shed light on the intricate network of imperial period ideas and topoi, cultural associations and political concerns within which Plutarch and other authors of the times operated, and underscore their distinctive modulations of their shared heritage and current imperial discourse. They make it easier to imagine how a Lucianic-style underworld meeting of Plutarch and his contemporaries could have looked like: who would have liked to sit next to him, enjoying his refinement and vast knowledge, who would have liked to finetune philosophical arguments or discuss portents and miracles with him—and who would have clashed with him, lampooned him, or given him an eye roll.
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Since sharing Plutarch’s legacy should also mean caring for the Plutarchan community, we would like to thank everyone who supported the congress by spreading the word, attending, chairing sessions, and having a good word for others during the difficult times of the pandemic. Above all, we are indebted to all the contributors to this volume for their commitment and spirit of cooperation. Thanks to you, our dialogues and virtual table talks did not fly away, and instead remain for others to share.
Katarzyna Jażdżewska and Filip Doroszewski