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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Plutarch's Morals is a profound collection of philosophical essays and dialogues that delve into ethical questions, social norms, and the human condition through the lens of Platonic thought. Written in a clear, engaging style, these writings not only reflect the moral concerns of ancient Greece but also serve as a bridge between classical philosophy and contemporary ethical dilemmas. Plutarch's incisive analysis and diverse themes, ranging from the nature of friendship to the pursuit of virtue, provide valuable insights into the moral fabric of society in his time and resonate with ongoing dialogues in ethics today. Plutarch, a biographer and philosopher from the 1st century CE, hailed from Chaeronea, Greece. His extensive education and exposure to both Platonic and Stoic traditions significantly influenced his writing. As a Roman citizen, Plutarch sought to foster a dialogue between Greek philosophy and Roman culture, advocating for a life of virtue and ethical reflection. His unique position across cultures enabled him to address universal moral truths, making his works timeless. Readers are encouraged to explore Plutarch's Morals for its rich philosophical discourse and applicability to modern ethical questions. This volume not only illuminates the classical origin of many moral concepts we engage with today but also invites introspection on our values and principles. A must-read for anyone interested in ethics, philosophy, and the interplay between ancient wisdom and contemporary life. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Plutarch's Morals
Table of Contents
Introduction
From the quiet of Chaeronea, Plutarch asks how character governs destiny. Plutarch’s Morals, the traditional English name for the collection commonly known as the Moralia, gathers essays and dialogues that probe the daily practice of virtue. Rather than staging abstract disputes, these pieces bring philosophy into the marketplace, the household, and the sanctuary. They consider how one masters anger, honors the gods, chooses friends, and leads communities. The result is a sustained meditation on the art of living well under the Roman Empire, written in Greek but aimed at readers in any age who want to connect high principle with ordinary conduct.
This book is a classic because it steadily renews its usefulness. Across centuries, readers have turned to it not for system-building but for durable insights into judgment, self-command, piety, and civic responsibility. Its influence can be traced through the Renaissance and Enlightenment, where humanists, moralists, and essayists absorbed its example of learned conversation joined to practical counsel. The collection modeled a humane, eclectic style that shaped later prose traditions and offered a template for ethical reflection grounded in history. Its endurance owes as much to tone as to content: patient, tolerant, and generous, it invites dialogue rather than enforcing doctrine, making it perennially adoptable.
Plutarch (c. 46–after 119 CE) was a Greek biographer, philosopher, and priest at Delphi. Plutarch’s Morals is not a single treatise but a compendium of works written over several decades in the late first and early second centuries CE. Composed in Greek during the early Roman Imperial period, the pieces range widely across ethics, religion, politics, education, and literary criticism. The title Moralia, Latinized in antiquity and conventional in modern scholarship, signals the primary concern with moral philosophy broadly construed. Some items in the transmitted collection are of uncertain authorship, but the core body reflects Plutarch’s voice, interests, and Middle Platonic orientation.
Plutarch’s purpose is practical: to cultivate character capable of wise action in fluctuating circumstances. He writes as a citizen and teacher, aiming to shape judgment for household life, friendship, public office, and worship. He assumes that moral progress is incremental, that passions can be trained, and that philosophy’s worth is measured by its effects in conduct. The essays often address identifiable interlocutors—friends, pupils, fellow citizens—indicating an original context of instruction and conversation. Without prescribing a rigid system, he orients readers toward self-examination, moderation, and reverent curiosity about the divine, thereby offering a program of ethical education suitable to a plural and expansive empire.
Stylistically, Plutarch blends anecdote, historical vignette, mythic exemplum, and close reasoning. He is at once a collector and a judge of stories, choosing episodes that illuminate the springs of choice and habit. The prose moves between calm exposition and lively scene, mirroring the oscillations of ordinary deliberation. He engages rival schools—Stoic, Peripatetic, Epicurean—without caricature, favoring a conciliatory Middle Platonism that harvests truth from many fields. His method trusts that example clarifies principle: an instructive case of anger mastered or wasted teaches more than a definition. Through this approach, the Morals establishes a mode of moral writing that is personal, historically alert, and philosophically resourceful.
The book’s classic status is also a story of transmission and reception. Preserved in manuscript traditions and revitalized by early modern translators, it reached new publics through influential versions, notably in French and English. Renaissance humanists prized its combination of Greek erudition and practical advice, making it a classroom companion and a moral handbook. Essayists such as Michel de Montaigne engaged deeply with Plutarch’s pages, and later writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, found in him a model of ethical breadth and civic candor. Modern critical editions and translations have secured the collection’s accessibility, ensuring its continued role in liberal education and public discourse.
The thematic range is striking. Essays consider governing the emotions, forming and sustaining friendships, educating the young, administering cities, and maintaining integrity amid prosperity or misfortune. They attend to the uses and abuses of wealth, the temptations of power, and the hazards of flattery. Equally, they commend habits of reading, listening, and speaking that refine judgment. Throughout, Plutarch treats virtue as an acquired disposition: teachable, practicable, and subject to improvement. The moral life is neither an austere withdrawal nor an impulsive surrender but a responsive art, balancing reason and feeling. This emphasis on practice lends the collection an immediately usable quality without sacrificing philosophical depth.
Religious inquiry occupies a central place. As a priest at Delphi, Plutarch writes with reverence about ritual, divine providence, and the complexity of popular beliefs. He explores accounts of fate and chance, entertains questions about prophecy and providence, and studies the customs of other peoples with a sympathetic eye. When he examines foreign cults or interprets myths, he does so to extract ethical meaning and to promote intelligent piety rather than credulous fear. His approach is neither credulous nor skeptical in the extreme; it proposes a thoughtful, morally serious religiosity that supports civic life and personal steadiness, reflecting the lived spirituality of the Greco-Roman world.
Civic and domestic ethics intertwine in these pages. Plutarch addresses the duties of office, the burdens of leadership, and the cultivation of public trust, while also attending to marriage, household economy, and the education of children. He asks how one listens to counsel, manages disagreement, and resists envy. His counsel honors the constraints of circumstance and the diversity of temperaments. This attention to scale—from the city to the dining table—keeps the moral life grounded. Virtue is enacted as much in conversation and shared meals as in legislation and sacrifice. The result is a portrait of ethical citizenship rooted in everyday habits and mutual obligations.
Formally, the collection mixes dialogues, letters, and set essays. Some pieces read like familiar lectures, others as intimate advice, and still others as inquiries that invite the reader to weigh competing explanations. The voice is gracious and firm, confident but open to correction. Plutarch distrusts dogma that ignores common experience, and he resists fashionable paradox. He relies on comparison—between persons, customs, and arguments—to clarify what is fitting. This mosaic structure allows readers to enter anywhere, returning as needs and stages of life shift. The Morals thus becomes not a linear treatise but a portable companion to reflection and decision.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance is immediate. Its discussions of anger, rumor, envy, and distraction speak to a world saturated with information and haste. Its pages on public service and private responsibility probe the dilemmas of plural societies. Its pedagogy of listening, remembering, and reasoning offers antidotes to polarization and superficiality. Without promising quick fixes, Plutarch equips readers to find measure, dignity, and fellowship amid pressure. He urges a disciplined curiosity about other cultures and a generous skepticism toward superstition. In all this, the collection models a humane, civic ethics that can sustain modern lives as surely as ancient ones.
Plutarch’s Morals endures because it marries breadth with intimacy, learning with use, and reverence with scrutiny. It speaks to the formation of character in community, the governance of passion by reason, and the honoring of the divine without fanaticism. Its classic status rests on a distinctive voice—civil, capacious, and steady—and on a method that trusts examples as much as precepts. Composed in the early Roman Empire by a Greek thinker deeply engaged with his world, it continues to invite readers into thoughtful practice. Here, philosophy is not escape but equipment: a set of tools for living well, together, over time.
Synopsis (Selection)
Plutarch's Morals, commonly known as the Moralia, is a varied collection of essays and dialogues by Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. 46–120 CE) on ethics, education, politics, religion, and natural philosophy. The pieces are occasional and unsystematic, yet unified by a practical interest in shaping character and guiding conduct. Plutarch develops arguments with historical examples from Greek and Roman life, along with citations of poetry, myth, and philosophy. The collection moves from concerns of personal formation and household order to civic responsibilities and theological questions, interspersed with antiquarian inquiries and convivial discussions. This synopsis follows a broad progression from the individual to the community and to wider cosmological considerations.
The opening ethical and pedagogical writings set the foundation for virtue as a trained habit informed by reason. Essays on the education of children emphasize early moral formation, the coordination of letters and gymnastics, and the decisive role of parents and tutors. Companions treat how a young person should listen to lectures and read poetry, recommending critical engagement that converts learning into character. On moral virtue outlines the mean between extremes as a practical standard. Throughout, Plutarch treats philosophy as a guide for life rather than technical speculation, stressing imitation of worthy models, disciplined study, and measured recreation as supports for stable character.
A substantial group addresses self-mastery and the passions. On the control of anger counsels delaying reaction, rehearsing contrary images, and avoiding provocations. On tranquility of mind offers routines for ordering desires, moderating hopes and fears, and using work and friendship to steady mood. Essays on talkativeness and curiosity argue for restraint in speech and activity, discouraging meddlesomeness and idle display. On the love of wealth urges viewing property as an instrument for virtue, not an end. How to profit by one's enemies reframes criticism as a means to self-correction, while timely reflections on envy, slander, and shame give practical measures for preserving inner balance.
Family and friendship receive sustained attention as arenas for everyday virtue. Advice to bride and groom and Conjugal precepts propose harmony based on mutual respect, shared values, and moderate habits. On brotherly love encourages cooperation, gentle correction, and equitable sharing among kin. Plutarch's consolation to his wife applies philosophical arguments to grief, commending remembrance and measured sorrow. On having many friends weighs intimacy against breadth, favoring a few stable ties rooted in character. How to tell a flatterer from a friend provides criteria to detect insincere praise and to cultivate frankness without offense, situating friendship as a reciprocal practice of moral improvement.
Political and civic writings extend private virtue into public service. Precepts of statecraft outlines the statesman's formation: justice, self-control, and practical intelligence, combined with persuasive speech and knowledge of laws. Plutarch advises working through institutions, building alliances across factions, and preferring gradual reform to disruptive novelty. Whether an old man should engage in public affairs considers the contributions of experience and counsel when vigor wanes. Other pieces discuss when to oppose or accommodate, how to use patronage responsibly, and how to educate citizens through example. The overall emphasis remains on civic friendship, moderation, and the common good as the measure of political success.
Religious and theological essays explore piety, providence, and the status of divine intermediaries. On superstition distinguishes reverent worship from fearful ritualism, arguing that misguided dread harms both character and community. On the delays of divine vengeance considers how justice may be fulfilled over time and across generations. Several Delphic treatises interpret the letter E at Delphi, the manner of oracular response, and the decline of the oracles, often invoking daemons as mediating spirits and changes in human receptivity. The dialogue On the genius of Socrates treats divine signs and conscience. Isis and Osiris interprets Egyptian myth through philosophical allegory to elucidate order and disorder in the cosmos.
Antiquarian works collect customs, sayings, and explanations that link moral reflection with civic memory. Greek questions and Roman questions propose answers for ritual, legal, and ceremonial practices, seeking their historical or symbolic origins. Collections such as Sayings of Spartans and Sayings of Spartan women preserve concise maxims that model courage, discipline, and public spirit. Sayings of kings and commanders extends this to broader leadership. These compilations offer examples rather than arguments, presenting brief, pointed testimonies to character in action. By recording practices and apophthegms, Plutarch situates ethical instruction within inherited traditions that shape communal expectations and provide ready-made patterns for conduct.
Dialogues of convivial and philosophical inquiry show ethics in conversation with science and literature. Table talk gathers discussions from social meals on topics from diet and etiquette to music, rhetoric, and history, exemplifying inquiry that is civil, playful, and instructive. Natural-philosophical treatises such as On the face in the moon, On fate, and On the principle of cold combine observation, myth, and argument to probe the soul, causation, and celestial phenomena. Platonic questions and On the generation of the soul in the Timaeus interpret classic texts for moral and metaphysical insight. These works display a method that tests competing explanations while subordinating speculation to the aims of a well-ordered life.
Taken together, the collection presents an integrated view of moral formation grounded in reasoned practice, civic cooperation, and reverent inquiry. Plutarch treats the household as the seedbed of virtue, friendship as mutual correction, and public office as an extension of character. He commends piety without fear, uses history to supply examples, and embeds philosophy in ordinary settings. The sequence from education through personal discipline, social bonds, civic action, religious reflection, and speculative dialogue conveys a comprehensive program for living well. The overall message is that stable character, guided by tradition and thoughtful examination, produces private happiness and public benefit within a rationally ordered cosmos.
Historical Context
Plutarch’s Morals, or Moralia, emerged in the late first and early second centuries CE within the interconnected world of the Roman Empire’s Greek-speaking provinces. Plutarch (ca. 46–after 119 CE) lived in Chaeronea in Boeotia, within the senatorial province of Achaea, and traveled to Athens, Corinth, and Rome. He wrote in Greek for an educated civic elite whose political careers unfolded under Roman sovereignty. The peace and administrative coherence of the early imperial period provided stability for philosophical and antiquarian inquiry. The essays reflect the rhythms of city councils, festivals, sanctuaries, and households in Greece, while negotiating the realities of imperial hierarchy and provincial governance.
The social geography that frames Moralia includes the sanctuary of Delphi, where Plutarch served as priest of Apollo, and the public institutions of Greek poleis, from archonships to councils. Symposia, law courts, and civic rituals supply the settings and topics of his ethical counsel. Rome’s presence is visible in magistrates who liaised with governors and in the spread of Latin legal and administrative practices. The essays frequently adopt the voice of a local notable advising peers about public service, marriage, piety, and education. Thus the book’s setting is not a single city or time but the civic spaces of Roman Greece between Nero and Hadrian.
Achaea’s provincial framework shaped Plutarch’s outlook. Augustus created the senatorial province of Achaea in 27 BCE; Tiberius transferred it to imperial control in 15 CE, and Claudius restored senatorial administration in 44 CE. Greek elites navigated taxation, assize circuits, and the courts of the proconsul at Corinth. Plutarch’s Political Precepts addresses practical conduct for municipal leaders within this structure, emphasizing moderation, persuasion, and benefaction. His Roman Questions and Greek Questions compare institutions and rituals across cultures, instructing provincial magistrates how to reconcile ancestral customs with Roman law. The essays mirror a world where local autonomy persisted, yet depended on imperial expectations and patronage.
The Year of the Four Emperors (69 CE) and the Flavian consolidation under Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian (69–96) unsettled and then stabilized provincial life. Civil war disrupted supply lines and civic revenues; stability returned with Flavian fiscal reforms and infrastructural investment. Plutarch’s counsels against faction, anger, and reckless ambition reflect memories of turbulence and the imperative of concord. When he urges civic leaders to cultivate philia among citizens and to avoid demagogy, he echoes lessons drawn from 69’s chaos. His analysis of how to distinguish a flatterer from a friend speaks to courtly and municipal politics under autocracy, where loyalty and candor were perilous.
Nero’s tour of Greece in 66–67 CE, culminating in his proclamation of Greek freedom at the Isthmian Games in 67, briefly altered provincial expectations. Vespasian reversed the grant, reimposing fiscal obligations by about 74. The episode highlights how imperial caprice could reshape civic finances and prestige. Plutarch’s essays on music, festivals, and public life, including discussions of the ethical use of cultural spectacles, mirror the heightened attention to Greek agonistic institutions. By framing cultural achievement as moral education rather than imperial flattery, he subtly critiques performative excess while defending the autonomy of Greek paideia within the restored provincial order.
Delphi’s sanctuary, the religious center nearest to Plutarch’s home, provides a historical anchor in Moralia. As priest of Apollo, likely from the late first century CE, he oversaw rites, consulted traditions, and engaged visitors. Essays such as On the Obsolescence of Oracles, On the Oracles of the Pythia, and On the E at Delphi confront the perceived decline and reinterpretation of divination. Under Trajan (98–117) and into Hadrian’s reign (117–138), imperial benefactions and local initiatives supported sanctuaries, though Delphi’s oracular authority had changed since classical times. Plutarch uses Delphic history to probe continuity, religious reform, and the moral use of sacred speech.
The most formative historical process for Moralia was the accommodation of Greek civic elites to Roman imperial rule during the long Pax Romana, especially under Trajan. After decades of civil wars and Julio-Claudian experimentation, the first and early second centuries CE brought fiscal regularity, juridical routines, and predictable channels of imperial favor. Greek notables like Plutarch held municipal offices, served on embassies, and cultivated ties to Roman senators. Plutarch’s own Roman nomen, Mestrius, reflects patronage from Mestrius Florus, signaling the social mechanics of advancement. He dedicated works to Sosius Senecio, twice consul in 99 and 107, exemplifying how intellectual production intersected with political networks. Euergetism—elite public benefaction for theaters, baths, and gymnasia—became the currency of honor in cities like Chaeronea, Thebes, and Corinth; in turn, emperors expected civic order, tax compliance, and ritual loyalty. Moralia’s Political Precepts, Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs, and How to Profit from One’s Enemies instruct officeholders in coalition building, managing envy, and transforming rivalry into civic utility. These counsels presuppose assize visits by proconsuls, appeals to higher courts, and the delicate etiquette of petitions and panegyrics. The Dacian Wars (101–102, 105–106) enriched the imperial treasury, indirectly underwriting public works that Greek cities pursued to display loyalty and status. Plutarch’s ethical teaching thus embeds hard realities: the need to balance local customs with Roman procedure, to praise emperors without servility, and to deploy wealth for common benefit. The result is a moral handbook for provincial governance, born from the specific conditions of Trajanic order, senatorial patronage, and municipal competition across the eastern Mediterranean.
Domitian’s authoritarian turn affected intellectuals across the empire. In 89 and again in 93 CE, he expelled philosophers from Rome and executed figures associated with Stoic opposition, including Herennius Senecio and Arulenus Rusticus in 93. Although Plutarch resided primarily in Greece, these measures shaped the climate in which moralists wrote. Moralia’s essays against flattery, on frank speech, and on exile reflect strategies for preserving integrity under suspicion. By exalting parrhesia tempered by prudence, Plutarch offers a model of civic courage that avoids martyrdom while resisting servility. The historical memory of repression informs his insistence on inner freedom and communal responsibility.
Religious unrest in the eastern provinces formed a significant backdrop. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) culminated in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70, and the widespread Diaspora revolts of 115–117 affected Cyrene, Egypt, and Cyprus. These conflicts sharpened Roman anxieties about sectarian zeal and sacrilege. In On Superstition, Plutarch distinguishes piety from fear and condemns fanatic practices that dissolve civic bonds. While not a commentary on any single group, the essay reflects a world where religious intensity could trigger imperial crackdowns. His Delphic treatises similarly seek a rationalized piety, proposing interpretive discipline as a remedy to violence and credulity.
Trajan’s military expansions reshaped imperial ideology. The conquest of Dacia (101–102, 105–106) and campaigns against Parthia (113–117) proclaimed Rome’s virtus and fortuna. Monumental programs funded by Dacian spoils communicated a theology of victory. Plutarch’s On the Fortune of the Romans and Roman Questions engage Roman rituals and myths, exploring why Roman institutions prospered. He treats Roman success as the fruit of disciplined customs and providence, a stance that encouraged Greek cooperation. By interpreting Rome’s ascendancy through ethical causation rather than brute force, he offered to provincial readers a framework for allegiance that preserved dignity while acknowledging imperial power.
Earlier Hellenistic precedents loom large, especially Alexander the Great’s conquests (334–323 BCE). In On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander, Plutarch argues that Alexander’s achievements expressed rational order spreading across Asia, a theme that invites comparison with Roman hegemony. He examines cities founded, languages mingled, and rituals hybridized, framing empire as a vehicle for ethical cosmopolitanism. The historical facts of campaigns at Issus (333), Gaugamela (331), and the Indus advance are recast as moral lessons about leadership and self-control. In Moralia, Alexander becomes a test case for evaluating ambition, cultural fusion, and the ruler’s obligations to civilize rather than dominate.
Spartan history provides a corpus of exempla. The Sayings of Spartans and related Laconian notes in Moralia preserve apophthegms that evoke Lycurgan discipline and communal austerity, rooted in archaic reforms attributed between the ninth and seventh centuries BCE. Classical milestones—Thermopylae (480 BCE) and Mantinea (418 BCE)—underscore ideals of courage and order. Plutarch mines this record to assess civic training, the regulation of luxury, and the primacy of law over individuals. In a Roman imperial context, Spartan examples serve as a counterweight to courtly excess, illustrating how institutions can form character and how virtue sustains freedom even within constraints.
Athenian constitutional history also informs the essays. The reforms of Solon around 594 BCE, the foundations of isonomia under Cleisthenes in 508–507, and the forensic culture of the democracy supply material for discussions of justice, rhetoric, and citizenship. Moralia’s political counsels invoke Athenian practices to illustrate moderation, education, and the dangers of demagoguery. By placing municipal officeholders in dialogue with Solonian moderation and legal equity, Plutarch aligns Greek civic tradition with responsible service under empire. The historical specificity of Athenian procedures becomes a toolkit for contemporary Greek cities, encouraging lawful deliberation rather than impulsive decrees shaped by factional pressures.
The Augustan settlement and the ideology of the Pax Romana (27 BCE onward) constitute a foundational backdrop. Augustus stabilized institutions, regularized taxation, and promoted social legislation that linked household order to public welfare. This program endured into the first century CE, shaping expectations of moral citizenship and family discipline. In Moralia, essays on the education of children, marital concord, and self-control echo the fusion of private virtue with public order. By presenting domestic governance as civic training, Plutarch accommodates imperial expectations while maintaining Greek ethical frameworks. The historical peace and prosperity underwrite his call for calm minds supporting stable communities.
Cross-cultural religious exchange is crystallized in On Isis and Osiris, which engages an Egyptian cult that spread throughout the Mediterranean from Ptolemaic times in the third century BCE and grew popular in Rome by the first century BCE–CE. Roman authorities alternately suppressed and tolerated the cult until it integrated into urban religious life; Domitian favored Egyptian rites, and temples to Isis appeared in ports such as Cenchreae near Corinth. Plutarch interprets myth allegorically, seeking moral truths beyond ritual exotica. The essay mirrors the historical reality of Mediterranean syncretism, urging disciplined inquiry so that multicultural piety nurtures civic virtue rather than credulity.
As social and political critique, Moralia exposes the structural temptations of provincial rule: flattery at courts, liturgical bankruptcy in cities, and the corrosive envy that divides elites. Plutarch condemns tyranny in miniature, where local magnates wield wealth to dominate councils, and he urges benefaction directed to common needs rather than vanity projects. He attacks superstition as a public danger that legitimizes cruelty and panic, while recommending rational piety to stabilize communities. His counsel to magistrates to listen, compromise, and avoid litigation mania rebukes the performative agon of municipal politics. The ethical citizen emerges as a corrective to imperial and local excess alike.
The book also scrutinizes class divides and domestic injustices. By linking education, marriage, and table conduct to civic peace, Plutarch critiques elite ostentation and neglect of dependents. He calls for humane treatment of household members, moderating anger and curbing the theater of luxury that humiliates the poor at festivals and banquets. In essays distinguishing friends from flatterers, he targets the patronage games that trap cities in debt and faction. His religious treatises oppose fearmongering that exploits lower classes. Without attacking empire directly, Moralia outlines a republican ethic of self-rule, accountability, and measured reverence, offering principled resistance to domination through moral reform.
Author Biography
Plutarch of Chaeronea was a Greek biographer, essayist, and Platonist philosopher who lived from the mid-first to the early second century CE. Writing under the Roman Empire while rooted in Greek cultural traditions, he produced works that shaped moral reflection and historical imagination for millennia. His two principal bodies of writing, the Parallel Lives and the Moralia, blend ethical inquiry with narrative and observation. By juxtaposing character, fortune, and civic duty, he offered readers guidance on virtue through examples rather than abstract doctrine. His synthesis of history, philosophy, and rhetoric secured him a distinctive place in classical literature and later European thought.
Educated within the Greek paideia, Plutarch studied philosophy in Athens, where he is reported to have learned from the Platonist Ammonius. He absorbed Plato’s ethical concerns while engaging critically with Stoic and Epicurean positions, an eclectic approach that informs much of his writing. Proficient in rhetoric and accustomed to public lecturing, he traveled beyond Boeotia, including visits to Rome, where he addressed audiences on moral philosophy. During these engagements he built connections with Roman elites and acquired Roman citizenship, appearing in Latin sources as Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus. These experiences broadened his historical sources and informed his comparative view of Greek and Roman exempla.
Plutarch’s best-known achievement is the Parallel Lives, a series of paired biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen set beside one another for moral comparison. Focused less on chronology than on character, the Lives mine episodes, sayings, and habits that reveal virtue and vice. Plutarch read widely in historians, orators, and poets, integrating material from authors such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, and Livy. He often appended a formal comparison that weighs similarities and differences between the subjects. While mindful of historical accuracy, he declared that small signs of character could be more instructive than grand exploits, emphasizing ethical insight over annalistic detail.
Alongside the Lives stands the Moralia, a diverse collection of essays, dialogues, and treatises on ethics, religion, natural phenomena, education, and social life. Representative pieces include On the Delphic Oracle, On Isis and Osiris, How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend, On Superstition, On Tranquility of Mind, and the convivial Table Talk. These works employ anecdote, quotation, and philosophical argument to explore practical conduct and civic responsibility. Plutarch’s tone ranges from playful to admonitory, yet his aim is consistently therapeutic and pedagogical: to cultivate moderation, friendship, and public-mindedness within the framework of Platonist moral psychology and traditional Greek civic ideals.
Plutarch’s intellectual authority was reinforced by public service. He held local magistracies in his native Chaeronea and, for many years, served as a priest of Apollo at Delphi. His religious role grounded his interest in prophetic institutions and inspired inquiries into the function and decline of oracles. Essays on Delphi blend antiquarian research with philosophical interpretation, defending the cultural relevance of sacred rites within an imperial context. He also acted as a mediator between Greek and Roman elites, hosting visitors and participating in civic and religious events. These duties exemplified his conviction that philosophy should be exercised in civic life rather than isolated study.
His writings circulated widely in late antiquity and the Byzantine period, but their impact was especially pronounced in Renaissance and early modern Europe. Translations of the Lives by Jacques Amyot into French and, from Amyot, by Thomas North into English became foundational texts of humanist education. Shakespeare drew extensively on North for plays such as Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra. Essayists, notably Michel de Montaigne, mined the Moralia for examples and reflections on character. Across Europe, statesmen and schoolmasters treated Plutarch as a handbook of virtue, a guide to leadership, and a lens for interpreting the ancient past.
Plutarch appears to have spent his later years between Chaeronea and Delphi, continuing to teach, write, and administer religious duties into the early second century. His legacy rests on the union of ethical purpose with vivid narrative, a model that has shaped biography from antiquity to the present. Historians consult the Lives with critical care, using them alongside other sources, while readers still prize their portraits of ambition, friendship, and moral testing. The Moralia remains a treasury of classical thought on conduct and belief. Together they sustain Plutarch’s reputation as a humane interpreter of antiquity and a mentor in civic virtue.
Plutarch's Morals
PREFACE.
Plutarch, who was born at Chæronea in Bœotia, probably about A.D. 50, and was a contemporary of Tacitus and Pliny, has written two works still extant, the well-known Lives, and the less-known Moralia. The Lives have often been translated, and have always been a popular work. Great indeed was their power at the period of the French Revolution. The Moralia, on the other hand, consisting of various Essays on various subjects (only twenty-six of which are directly ethical, though they have given their name to the Moralia), are declared by Mr. Paley "to be practically almost unknown to most persons in Britain, even to those who call themselves scholars."1Habent etiam sua fata libelli.
In older days the Moralia were more valued. Montaigne, who was a great lover of Plutarch, and who observes in one passage of his Essays that "Plutarch and Seneca were the only two books of solid learning he seriously settled himself to read," quotes as much from the Moralia as from the Lives. And in the seventeenth century I cannot but think the Moralia were largely read at our Universities, at least at the University of Cambridge. For, not to mention the wonderful way in which the famous Jeremy Taylor has taken the cream of "Conjugal Precepts" in his Sermon called "The Marriage Ring," or the large and copious use he has made in his "Holy Living" of three other Essays in this volume, namely, those "On Curiosity," "On Restraining Anger," and "On Contentedness of Mind," proving conclusively what a storehouse he found the Moralia, we have evidence that that most delightful poet, Robert Herrick, read the Moralia, too, when at Cambridge, so that one cannot but think it was a work read in the University course generally in those days. For in a letter to his uncle written from Cambridge, asking for books or money for books, he makes the following remark: "How kind Arcisilaus the philosopher was unto Apelles the painter, Plutark in his Morals will tell you."2
In 1882 the Reverend C. W. King, Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, translated the six "Theosophical Essays" of the Moralia, forming a volume in Bohn's Classical Library. The present volume consists of the twenty-six "Ethical Essays," which are, in my opinion, the cream of the Moralia, and constitute a highly interesting series of treatises on what might be called "The Ethics of the Hearth and Home." I have grouped these Essays in such a manner as to enable the reader to read together such as touch on the same or on kindred subjects.
As is well known, the text of the Moralia is very corrupt, and the reading very doubtful, in many places. In eight of the twenty-six Essays in this volume I have had the invaluable help of the text of Rudolf Hercher; help so invaluable that one cannot but sadly regret that only one volume of the Moralia has yet appeared in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana. Wyttenbach's text and notes I have always used when available, and when not so have fallen back upon Reiske. Reiske is always ingenious, but too fond of correcting a text, and the criticism of him by Wyttenbach is perhaps substantially correct. "In nullo auctore habitabat; vagabatur per omnes: nec apud quemquam tamdiu divertebat, ut in paulo interiorem ejus consuetudinem se insinuaret." I have also had constantly before me the Didot Edition of the Moralia, edited by Frederic Dübner.
Let any reader who wishes to know more about Plutarch, consult the article on Plutarch, in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, by the well-known scholar F. A. Paley. He will also do well to read an Essay on Plutarch by R. W. Emerson, reprinted in Volume III. of the Bohn's Standard Library Edition of Emerson's Works, and Five Lectures on Plutarch by the late Archbishop Trench, published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co. in 1874. All these contain much of interest, and will repay perusal.
In conclusion, I hope this little volume will be the means of making popular some of the best thoughts of one of the most interesting and thoughtful of the ancients, who often seems indeed almost a modern.
Cambridge,March, 1888.
1 See article Plutarch, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition.
2 Grosart's Herrick, vol. i. p. liii. See in this volume, p. 180, and also note to p. 288. Richard Baxter again is always quoting the Moralia.
PLUTARCH'S MORALS.
ON EDUCATION.
§ i. Come let us consider what one might say on the education of free children, and by what training they would become good citizens.
§ ii. It is perhaps best to begin with birth: I would therefore warn those who desire to be fathers of notable sons, not to form connections with any kind of women, such as courtesans or mistresses: for those who either on the father or mother's side are ill-born have the disgrace of their origin all their life long irretrievably present with them, and offer a ready handle to abuse and vituperation. So that the poet was wise, who said, "Unless the foundation of a house be well laid, the descendants must of necessity be unfortunate."3 Good birth indeed brings with it a store of assurance, which ought to be greatly valued by all who desire legitimate offspring. For the spirit of those who are a spurious and bastard breed is apt to be mean and abject: for as the poet truly says, "It makes a man even of noble spirit servile, when he is conscious of the ill fame of either his father or mother."4 On the other hand the sons of illustrious parents are full of pride and arrogance. As an instance of this it is recorded of Diophantus,5 the son of Themistocles, that he often used to say to various people "that he could do what he pleased with the Athenian people, for what he wished his mother wished, and what she wished Themistocles wished, and what Themistocles wished all the Athenians wished." All praise also ought we to bestow on the Lacedæmonians for their loftiness of soul in fining their king Archidamus for venturing to marry a small woman, for they charged him with intending to furnish them not with kings but kinglets.
§ iii. Next must we mention, what was not overlooked even by those who handled this subject before us, that those who approach their wives for procreation must do so either without having drunk any wine or at least very little. For those children, that their parents begot in drink, are wont to be fond of wine and apt to turn out drunkards. And so Diogenes, seeing a youth out of his mind and crazy, said, "Young man, your father was drunk when he begot you." Let this hint serve as to procreation: now let us discuss education.
§ iv. To speak generally, what we are wont to say about the arts and sciences is also true of moral excellence, for to its perfect development three things must meet together, natural ability, theory, and practice. By theory I mean training, and by practice working at one's craft. Now the foundation must be laid in training, and practice gives facility, but perfection is attained only by the junction of all three. For if any one of these elements be wanting, excellence must be so far deficient. For natural ability without training is blind: and training without natural ability is defective, and practice without both natural ability and training is imperfect. For just as in farming the first requisite is good soil, next a good farmer, next good seed, so also here: the soil corresponds to natural ability, the training to the farmer, the seed to precepts and instruction. I should therefore maintain stoutly that these three elements were found combined in the souls of such universally famous men as Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, and of all who have won undying fame. Happy at any rate and dear to the gods is he to whom any deity has vouchsafed all these elements! But if anyone thinks that those who have not good natural ability cannot to some extent make up for the deficiencies of nature by right training and practice, let such a one know that he is very wide of the mark, if not out of it altogether. For good natural parts are impaired by sloth; while inferior ability is mended by training: and while simple things escape the eyes of the careless, difficult things are reached by painstaking. The wonderful efficacy and power of long and continuous labour you may see indeed every day in the world around you.6 Thus water continually dropping wears away rocks: and iron and steel are moulded by the hands of the artificer: and chariot wheels bent by some strain can never recover their original symmetry: and the crooked staves of actors can never be made straight. But by toil what is contrary to nature becomes stronger than even nature itself. And are these the only things that teach the power of diligence? Not so: ten thousand things teach the same truth. A soil naturally good becomes by neglect barren, and the better its original condition, the worse its ultimate state if uncared for. On the other hand a soil exceedingly rough and sterile by being farmed well produces excellent crops. And what trees do not by neglect become gnarled and unfruitful, whereas by pruning they become fruitful and productive? And what constitution so good but it is marred and impaired by sloth, luxury, and too full habit? And what weak constitution has not derived benefit from exercise and athletics? And what horses broken in young are not docile to their riders? while if they are not broken in till late they become hard-mouthed and unmanageable. And why should we be surprised at similar cases, seeing that we find many of the savagest animals docile and tame by training? Rightly answered the Thessalian, who was asked who the mildest Thessalians were, "Those who have done with fighting."7 But why pursue the line of argument further? For the Greek name for moral virtue is only habit: and if anyone defines moral virtues as habitual virtues, he will not be beside the mark. But I will employ only one more illustration, and dwell no longer on this topic. Lycurgus, the Lacedæmonian legislator, took two puppies of the same parents, and brought them up in an entirely different way: the one he pampered and cosseted up, while he taught the other to hunt and be a retriever. Then on one occasion, when the Lacedæmonians were convened in assembly, he said, "Mighty, O Lacedæmonians, is the influence on moral excellence of habit, and education, and training, and modes of life, as I will prove to you at once." So saying he produced the two puppies, and set before them a platter and a hare: the one darted on the hare, while the other made for the platter. And when the Lacedæmonians could not guess what his meaning was, or with what intent he had produced the puppies, he said, "These puppies are of the same parents, but by virtue of a different bringing up the one is pampered, and the other a good hound." Let so much suffice for habit and modes of life.
§ v. The next point to discuss will be nutrition. In my opinion mothers ought to nurse and suckle their own children. For they will bring them up with more sympathy and care, if they love them so intimately and, as the proverb puts it, "from their first growing their nails."8 Whereas the affection of wet or dry nurses is spurious and counterfeit, being merely for pay. And nature itself teaches that mothers ought themselves to suckle and rear those they have given birth to. And for that purpose she has supplied every female parent with milk. And providence has wisely provided women with two breasts, so that if they should bear twins, they would have a breast for each. And besides this, as is natural enough, they would feel more affection and love for their children by suckling them. For this supplying them with food is as it were a tightener of love, for even the brute creation, if taken away from their young, pine away, as we constantly see. Mothers must therefore, as I said, certainly try to suckle their own children: but if they are unable to do so either through physical weakness (for this contingency sometimes occurs), or in haste to have other children, they must select wet and dry nurses with the greatest care, and not introduce into their houses any kind of women. First and foremost they must be Greeks in their habits. For just as it is necessary immediately after birth to shapen the limbs of children, so that they may grow straight and not crooked, so from the beginning must their habits be carefully attended to. For infancy is supple and easily moulded, and what children learn sinks deeply into their souls while they are young and tender, whereas everything hard is softened only with great difficulty. For just as seals are impressed on soft wax, so instruction leaves its permanent mark on the minds of those still young. And divine Plato seems to me to give excellent advice to nurses not to tell their children any kind of fables, that their souls may not in the very dawn of existence be full of folly or corruption.9 Phocylides the poet also seems to give admirable advice when he says, "We must teach good habits while the pupil is still a boy."
§ vi. Attention also must he given to this point, that the lads that are to wait upon and be with young people must be first and foremost of good morals, and able to speak Greek distinctly and idiomatically, that they may not by contact with foreigners of loose morals contract any of their viciousness. For as those who are fond of quoting proverbs say not amiss, "If you live with a lame man, you will learn to halt."10
§ vii. Next, when our boys are old enough to be put into the hands of tutors,11 great care must be taken that we do not hand them over to slaves, or foreigners, or flighty persons. For what happens nowadays in many cases is highly ridiculous: good slaves are made farmers, or sailors, or merchants, or stewards, or money-lenders; but if they find a winebibbing, greedy, and utterly useless slave, to him parents commit the charge of their sons, whereas the good tutor ought to be such a one as was Phœnix, the tutor of Achilles. The point also which I am now going to speak about is of the utmost importance. The schoolmasters we ought to select for our boys should be of blameless life, of pure character, and of great experience. For a good training is the source and root of gentlemanly behaviour. And just as farmers prop up their trees, so good schoolmasters prop up the young by good advice and suggestions, that they may become upright. How one must despise, therefore, some fathers, who, whether from ignorance or inexperience, before putting the intended teachers to the test, commit their sons to the charge of untried and untested men. If they act so through inexperience it is not so ridiculous; but it is to the remotest degree absurd when, though perfectly aware of both the inexperience and worthlessness of some schoolmasters, they yet entrust their sons to them; some overcome by flattery, others to gratify friends who solicit their favours; acting just as if anybody ill in body, passing over the experienced physician, should, to gratify his friend, call him in, and so throw away his life; or as if to gratify one's friend one should reject the best pilot and choose him instead. Zeus and all the gods! can anyone bearing the sacred name of father put obliging a petitioner before obtaining the best education for his sons? Were they not then wise words that the time-honoured Socrates used to utter, and say that he would proclaim, if he could, climbing up to the highest part of the city, "Men, what can you be thinking of, who move heaven and earth to make money, while you bestow next to no attention on the sons you are going to leave that money to?"12 I would add to this that such fathers act very similarly to a person who should be very careful about his shoe but care nothing about his foot. Many persons also are so niggardly about their children, and indifferent to their interests, that for the sake of a paltry saving, they prefer worthless teachers for their children, practising a vile economy at the expense of their children's ignorance. Apropos of this, Aristippus on one occasion rebuked an empty-headed parent neatly and wittily. For being asked how much money a parent ought to pay for his son's education, he answered, "A thousand drachmæ." And he replying, "Hercules, what a price! I could buy a slave for as much;" Aristippus answered, "You shall have two slaves then, your son and the slave you buy."13 And is it not altogether strange that you accustom your son to take his food in his right hand, and chide him if he offers his left, whereas you care very little about his hearing good and sound discourses? I will tell you what happens to such admirable fathers, when they have educated and brought up their sons so badly: when the sons grow to man's estate, they disregard a sober and well-ordered life, and rush headlong into disorderly and low vices; then at the last the parents are sorry they have neglected their education, bemoaning bitterly when it is too late their sons' debasement. For some of them keep flatterers and parasites in their retinue—an accursed set of wretches, the defilers and pest of youth; others keep mistresses and common prostitutes, wanton and costly; others waste their money in eating; others come to grief through dice and revelling; some even go in for bolder profligacy, being whoremongers and defilers of the marriage bed,14 who would madly pursue their darling vice if it cost them their lives. Had they associated with some philosopher, they would not have lowered themselves by such practices, but would have remembered the precept of Diogenes, whose advice sounds rather low, but is really of excellent moral intent,15 "Go into a brothel, my lad, that you may see the little difference between vice and virtue."
§ viii. I say, then, to speak comprehensively (and I might be justly considered in so saying to speak as an oracle, not to be delivering a mere precept), that a good education and sound bringing-up is of the first and middle and last importance; and I declare it to be most instrumental and conducive to virtue and happiness. For all other human blessings compared to this are petty and insignificant. For noble birth is a great honour, but it is an advantage from our forefathers. And wealth is valuable, but it is the acquisition of fortune, who has often taken it away from those who had it, and brought it to those who little expected it; and much wealth is a sort of mark for villanous slaves and informers to shoot at to fill their own purses; and, what is a most important point, even the greatest villains have money sometimes. And glory is noble, but insecure. And beauty is highly desirable, but shortlived. And health is highly valuable, but soon impaired. And strength is desirable, but illness or age soon made sad inroads into it. And generally speaking, if anyone prides himself on his bodily strength, let him know that he is deficient in judgment. For how much inferior is the strength of a man to that of animals, as elephants, bulls, and lions! But education is of all our advantages the only one immortal and divine.[1q] And two of the most powerful agencies in man's nature are mind and reason. And mind governs reason, and reason obeys mind; and mind is irremovable by fortune, cannot be taken away by informers, cannot be destroyed by disease, cannot have inroads made into it by old age. For the mind alone flourishes in age; and while time takes away everything else, it adds wisdom to old age. Even war, that sweeps away everything else like a winter torrent, cannot take away education. And Stilpo, the Megarian, seems to me to have made a memorable answer when Demetrius enslaved Megara and rased it to the ground. On his asking whether Stilpo had lost anything, he replied, "Certainly not, for war can make no havoc of virtue." Corresponding and consonant to this is the answer of Socrates, who when asked, I think by Gorgias,16 if he had any conception as to the happiness of the King of Persia, replied, "I do not know his position in regard to virtue and education: for happiness lies in these, and not in adventitious advantages."
§ ix. And as I advise parents to think nothing more important than the education of their children, so I maintain that it must be a sound and healthy education, and that our sons must be kept as far as possible from vulgar twaddle. For what pleases the vulgar displeases the wise. I am borne out by the lines of Euripides, "Unskilled am I in the oratory that pleases the mob; but amongst the few that are my equals I am reckoned rather wise. For those who are little thought of by the wise, seem to hit the taste of the vulgar."17 And I have myself noticed that those who practise to speak acceptably and to the gratification of the masses promiscuously, for the most part become also profligate and lovers of pleasure in their lives. Naturally enough. For if in giving pleasure to others they neglect the noble, they would be hardly likely to put the lofty and sound above a life of luxury and pleasure, and to prefer moderation to delights. Yet what better advice could we give our sons than to follow this? or to what could we better exhort them to accustom themselves? For perfection is only attained by neither speaking nor acting at random—as the proverb says, Perfection is only attained by practice.18 Whereas extempore oratory is easy and facile, mere windbag, having neither beginning nor end. And besides their other shortcomings extempore speakers fall into great disproportion and repetition, whereas a well considered speech preserves its due proportions. It is recorded by tradition that Pericles, when called on by the people for a speech, frequently refused on the plea that he was unprepared. Similarly Demosthenes, his state-rival, when the Athenians called upon him for his advice, refused to give it, saying, "I am not prepared." But this you will say, perhaps, is mere tradition without authority. But in his speech against Midias he plainly sets forth the utility of preparation, for he says, "I do not deny, men of Athens, that I have prepared this speech to the best of my ability: for I should have been a poor creature if, after suffering so much at his hands, and even still suffering, I had neglected how to plead my case."19 Not that I would altogether reject extempore oratory, or its use in critical cases, but it should be used only as one would take medicine.20 Up, indeed, to man's estate I would have no extempore speaking, but when anyone's powers of speech are rooted and grounded, then, as emergencies call for it, I would allow his words to flow freely. For as those who have been for a long time in fetters stumble if unloosed, not being able to walk from being long used to their fetters, so those who for a long time have used compression in their words, if they are suddenly called upon to speak off-hand, retain the same character of expression. But to let mere lads speak extempore is to give rise to the acme of foolish talk. A wretched painter once showed Apelles, they say, a picture, and said, "I have just done it." Apelles replied, "Without your telling me, I should know it was painted quickly; I only wonder you haven't painted more such in the time." As then (for I now return from my digression), I advise to avoid stilted and bombastic language, so again do I urge to avoid a finical and petty style of speech; for tall talk is unpopular, and petty language makes no impression. And as the body ought to be not only sound but in good condition, so speech ought to be not only not feeble but vigorous. For a safe mediocrity is indeed praised, but a bold venturesomeness is also admired. I am also of the same opinion with regard to the disposition of the soul, which ought to be neither audacious nor timid and easily dejected: for the one ends in impudence and the other in servility; but to keep in all things the mean between extremes is artistic and proper. And, while I am still on this topic, I wish to give my opinion, that I regard a monotonous speech first as no small proof of want of taste, next as likely to generate disdain, and certain not to please long. For to harp on one string is always tiresome and brings satiety; whereas variety is pleasant always whether to the ear or eye.
§ x. Next our freeborn lad ought to go in for a course of what is called general knowledge, but a smattering of this will be sufficient, a taste as it were (for perfect knowledge of all subjects would be impossible); but he must seriously cultivate philosophy. I borrow an illustration to show my meaning: it is well to sail round many cities, but advantageous to live in the best. It was a witty remark of the philosopher Bion,21 that, as those suitors who could not seduce Penelope took up with her maids as a pis aller, so those who cannot attain philosophy wear themselves out in useless pursuits. Philosophy, therefore, ought to be regarded as the most important branch of study. For as regards the cure of the body, men have found two branches, medicine and exercise: the former of which gives health, and the latter good condition of body; but philosophy is the only cure for the maladies and disorders of the soul. For with her as ruler and guide we can know what is honourable, what is disgraceful; what is just, what unjust; generally speaking, what is to be sought after, what to be avoided; how we ought to behave to the gods, to parents, to elders, to the laws, to foreigners, to rulers, to friends, to women, to children, to slaves: viz., that we ought to worship the gods, honour parents, reverence elders, obey the laws, submit ourselves to rulers, love our friends, be chaste in our relations with women, kind to our children, and not to treat our slaves badly; and, what is of the greatest importance, to be neither over elated in prosperity nor over depressed in adversity,22 nor to be dissolute in pleasures, nor fierce and brutish in anger. These I regard as the principal blessings that philosophy teaches. For to enjoy prosperity nobly shows a man; and to enjoy it without exciting envy shows a moderate man; and to conquer the passions by reason argues a wise man; and it is not everybody who can keep his temper in control. And those who can unite political ability with philosophy I regard as perfect men, for I take them to attain two of the greatest blessings, serving the state in a public capacity, and living the calm and tranquil life of philosophy. For, as there are three kinds of life, the practical, the contemplative, and the life of enjoyment, and of these three the one devoted to enjoyment is a paltry and animal life, and the practical without philosophy an unlovely and harsh life, and the contemplative without the practical a useless life, so we must endeavour with all our power to combine public life with philosophy as far as circumstances will permit. Such was the life led by Pericles, by Archytas of Tarentum, by Dion of Syracuse, by Epaminondas the Theban, one of whom was a disciple of Plato (viz., Dion). And as to education, I do not know that I need dwell any more on it. But in addition to what I have said, it is useful, if not necessary, not to neglect to procure old books, and to make a collection of them, as is usual in agriculture. For the use of books is an instrument in education, and it is profitable in learning to go to the fountain head.
§ xi. Exercise also ought not to be neglected, but we ought to send our boys to the master of the gymnasium to train them duly, partly with a view to carrying the body well, partly with a view to strength. For good habit of body in boys is the foundation of a good old age. For as in fine weather we ought to lay up for winter, so in youth one ought to form good habits and live soberly so as to have a reserve stock of strength for old age. Yet ought we to husband the exertions of the body, so as not to be wearied out by them and rendered unfit for study. For, as Plato says,23
