by Plutarch
Plutarch’s Aemilius
By the time Plutarch came to this pairing he was well along in his project, and it shows in his artistry and confidence alike.11 The work begins with a formal and programmatic prologue. Two admirably balanced and thematically linked Lives follow, the subjects of which are both of them virtuous in the best Graeco-Roman sense of the term: each is an incorruptible and victorious warrior, and each wages war against opponents who, though mighty, deserve to fail because they are immoral.12 This is indeed one of the most elegant of all Plutarch’s pairings.
Plutarch’s introduction, in which he explains his reasons for carrying on with the writing of the Parallel Lives, naturally attracts attention:
I first set to work writing these Lives for the sake of others, but their composition has proved so congenial that I now persist in it for my own improvement. I am using history as if it were a mirror, in the reflection of which I am trying to adorn my own life, so to speak, by making its virtues resemble the ones displayed in my biographies. For me the experience is very much like actually spending time with these figures from the past and enjoying their companionship.
(ch. 1)
Here Plutarch fashions himself as the ideal reader of his own biographies, and in so doing makes clear the importance of their exemplarity in the reader’s – every reader’s – moral improvement. Admittedly, this is unsurprising stuff, but it is rendered arresting by its simile of the mirror and its fantasy of actually meeting and taking the measure of great figures from the past. The idea that ethical development can derive from making sensitive observations, of one’s self and of others, appears elsewhere in Plutarch, as does the mirror, whose utility for self-observation is obvious.13 Here, importantly, it is Plutarch’s Lives that constitute the mirror by means of which we are enabled to see ourselves in the actions of others. Plutarch goes on to stress his ‘constant historical research’ (ch. 1), the foundation for his biographical writing, and a reminder that it is Plutarch the reader of history whose discrimination and craft are responsible for the moral effect of his Parallel Lives.
In this pairing Plutarch sets together Aemilius and Timoleon of Corinth:
These men were alike not only in the excellence of their moral principles but also in the good fortune each enjoyed when it came to actual events, and they will make it hard for you to decide whether the greatest of their achievements were owed to their good luck [tyche] or their intelligence.
(ch. 1)
These Lives are perhaps the most laudatory of all Plutarch’s biographies: Plutarch includes these men among the ‘splendid paragons of the past’ (ch. 1), and the reader’s attention is explicitly focused on observing the true measure of each hero’s unquestioned greatness in order to make an accurate evaluation of the role of tyche, especially beneficent tyche, in his Life. The Polybian resonance of tyche, inescapable when Aemilius is the subject, is plainly at work here, and, as was the case for Polybius, Plutarch’s tyche will manifest itself in multiple guises, ranging from Providence to Nemesis to caprice. Both heroes are buffeted and benefited by them all.14
Throughout his Life, Aemilius is less a figure from history than a confection of traditional Roman virtues.15 He is incorruptible and unacquisitive, qualities elaborated in Plutarch’s recurring emphasis on the honourable poverty of his son-in-law Aelius Tubero (chs. 5, 28).16 Both as a statesman and a general he refuses to court popularity (chs. 2–3, 11, 38). In war, he is as prudent as he is masterful (chs. 13, 17–18), and in victory he is generous to the vanquished (chs. 6, 26, 28, 39). Devotion to traditional practices marks his scrupulous religiosity (chs. 3, 10, 17), and he puts the health of the republic ahead of his personal happiness (ch. 36). Most important of all, of course, is the discipline he exhibits when confronted by fortune, good or ill, wisdom he expounds in a series of speeches addressed first to Perseus (ch. 26), then to his sons and officers (ch. 27) and finally to the Roman people (ch. 36). Owing to his correct grasp of the workings of fortune, he is an inspiration to others and is able to steel himself against catastrophe.
He is also an admirable family man, whose family, in the end, is doomed (chs. 5–6, 10, 15, 22, 27, 35–6).17 In the opening chapters of this Life, Plutarch dilates on Aemilius’ sons and his fatherly devotion (e.g. ch. 7). He also presents the reader with Aemilius’ extended family, his sons-in-law, who, with his own children, are his strength in politics and in the war against Perseus (chs. 10, 22, 27–8). The Macedonian king also loved his children (ch. 26), but his personal failings brought ruin on his house as well as his kingdom, whereas the death of Aemilius’ own sons and the extinction at least of his line of the Aemilii Paulli are due simply to chance. And Aemilius bears this misfortune more nobly than Perseus does his, going so far as to identify his own loss as a guarantee for Rome’s good fortune (ch. 36).
Throughout this Life Plutarch underlines Aemilius’ virtue by way of its stark contrast with the character of Perseus. The king, although astoundingly rich, is stingy (chs. 12–13, 23) and, although leader of a mighty army, a coward (chs. 19, 23, 34). And in defeat he is so craven a poltroon that his cringing, Aemilius complains, threatens to undermine the glory of Rome’s conquest (ch. 26). Still, and typically, Aemilius pities him, and does what he can to help the fallen king (ch. 37), and if Perseus was beyond redemption, his son grew up to be a good and honourable servant of Rome (ch. 37). Perseus’ early successes in the war (ch. 9) are undeniably inconsistent with his behaviour after Aemilius appears on the scene, but that solecism was a long-established part of the Romans’ hostile representation of this king.18 And although Plutarch went to the trouble of reading an account of the war favourable to Perseus, he was not sufficiently persuaded by it to alter the standard Roman treatment of the man. Instead, Plutarch delicately balances Perseus’ personal weaknesses with the glamour and power of the Macedonian monarchy (e.g. ch. 13: ‘Perseus he [Aemilius] despised, but he was very impressed by his preparations and his army’). In this Life, Perseus is the bad guy, in nearly every sense of the phrase: his failings justify Rome’s conquest of Macedon and bring into relief the superiority of the Roman general who led him in triumph.
Aemilius and Timoleon
It has not gone unnoticed that Plutarch’s decision to pair Aemilius with Timoleon is an unexpected one.19 Timoleon was a Corinthian aristocrat who, at some point in the 360s BC, assassinated his brother, who had made himself tyrant. In 344, he travelled to Sicily, where he defeated Hicetas, the tyrant of Leontini, deposed Dionysius II, the tyrant of Syracuse, and expelled Carthage from the Greek regions of the island. Thereafter, he completed the job of eliminating tyranny from Sicily and gave Syracuse a new constitution.20 But Plutarch carefully integrates the two men’s careers. For instance, both find their true glory in mature accomplishments, both oppose unsavoury autocrats and both can be represented as men devoted to protecting Greeks from oppression by foreign powers.21
From this perspective, it is remarkable how Plutarch exerts himself to portray Aemilius as a man of Hellenic tendencies. To some degree, this was true of Polybius’ portrayal as well, but from the very start Plutarch is at pains to associate Aemilius with things Greek. His family, according to one view, could trace itself back to the son of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (ch. 2). The education of Aemilius’ sons, in its every particular, is Greek (ch. 6). And, in the aftermath of Pydna, Aemilius is not merely an admirer of Greek culture, he shows himself adept at hosting symposia and dinner parties in the correct Greek fashion (ch. 28). Elsewhere, Plutarch insists on the importance of a sound Greek education, especially a philosophical education, in attaining a consistently virtuous character.22 Even a paragon like Timoleon exhibited deficiency in his philosophical rigour (Timoleon 5). But Aemilius’ perfection could hardly be attributed to a fictitious Greek education: Plutarch’s commitment to historical truth would not allow that. Instead, Aemilius’ Hellenic proclivities had to be inferred from his conspicuous ethical superiority.
Aemilius’ Hellenic credentials are also burni
shed by his parallelism with Timoleon. In the Greek’s Life, Plutarch is keen to celebrate the true liberation of Greeks by a Greek who also defends Greek freedom from Carthaginian aggression.23 By contrast, no amount of special pleading could alter the reality that Aemilius’ victory at Pydna was the final step in Rome’s conquest of Greece, as Polybius had emphasized. The juxtaposition of the two biographies, however, lets Plutarch impose an equivalence on their achievements that adds the right sort of lustre to Aemilius’ campaign, as well as to the current state of Roman governance in the Greek east.
What, one may then ask, does Aemilius do for Timoleon? We have seen how this pairing focuses on the role of fortune in the life of each hero, an element of Aemilius’ Life that can only activate its Polybian antecedents. Tyche is many things in Plutarch’s Aemilius Paullus, but, always in the background when it is not in the foreground, is Polybius’ world-historical force, driving Aemilius and the Romans to their glorious destiny. It is through this atmosphere of Tyche’s dynamics that the reader comes to Timoleon, who, according to Plutarch, was likewise guided by a providential Tyche when he freed Sicily from tyranny. Timoleon’s connection to fortune was something Plutarch found in his sources, which were largely favourable.24 Interestingly, however, Polybius also had something to say about Timoleon, and it was far from flattering (12.23.4–6):
Timaeus25 honoured Timoleon, who appears not only never to have accomplished any great enterprise, but never even to have tried one. In his whole life he made only a single move, and that was not a very significant one when one compares the extent of the inhabited world: I speak of his voyage from his native city to Syracuse. In my opinion, Timaeus was convinced that if Timoleon, who sought fame in a mere saucer of a place such as Sicily, could be shown to be comparable to the most glorious heroes, then Timaeus himself, who had written only of the affairs of Italy and Sicily, would be worthy of comparison with those writers whose books had dealt with worldwide events and with universal history.
But in the environment of Plutarch’s pairing, his Timoleon benefits from his association with Aemilius. The providential forces that so conspicuously propelled Timoleon’s liberation of the Greeks of Sicily recall for the reader the world-historical impulse that brought Rome to greatness by way of the career of Aemilius Paullus. The freedom of the Greeks and the rise of Rome are thus borne by the same Providence.26
Sources
It is obvious that Plutarch depends upon Polybius in this Life. He was the obvious and authoritative source to consult. Unfortunately, for the events of 195 to 165 BC, which Polybius covered in Books 19–30, our text of Polybius is fragmentary, which often makes comparison impossible. Plutarch also used an account of the Pydna campaign written by Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, the son-in-law of Scipio Africanus and a future consul and censor, who at the time of this war was serving as a tribune of the soldiers (chs. 15–18, 21, 26). His account was valued by Plutarch because Nasica was an eyewitness of the campaign.27 Plutarch also used the otherwise unknown historian Poseidonius, also a contemporary and a participant in the war. He was the author of a history favourable to Perseus (chs. 19–21).28
It is not at all clear whether Plutarch consulted Livy (whose account of this period is sometimes fragmentary) for this Life. Of the observable similarities and differences between the two writers, none is conclusive on the matter. Nothing, of course, prevented his reading Livy, and it is likely that he did so.
Life of Aemilius Paullus1
[c. 228–160 BC]
1. I first set to work writing these Lives for the sake of others, but their composition has proved so congenial that I now persist in it for my own improvement. I am using history as if it were a mirror, in the reflection of which I am trying to adorn my own life, so to speak, by making its virtues resemble the ones displayed in my biographies. For me the experience is very much like actually spending time with these figures from the past and enjoying their companionship: whenever, by way of my historical research, I welcome into my home one of my biographical subjects, I scrutinize him carefully, in order to determine ‘his god-like aspect and magnificent size’.2 I then select from the events of his career what is noblest and most important to know. ‘Ah! Ah! What joy greater than this can one obtain?’3 Or more efficacious in improving our character?
Democritus insists that we must pray to be visited by auspicious apparitions, by which he means that we should desire that the images that appear to us out of our surroundings be wholesome and noble instead of base and unlucky.4 But in making this claim, Democritus insinuates into philosophy an opinion that is not simply false but is also conducive to boundless superstition. I, on the other hand, am always welcoming into my thoughts the records of the noblest and most illustrious of men. This is on account of my constant historical research and the deep familiarity with men of the past that comes from writing their biographies, which has prepared me to reject and repulse anything base or wicked or disgraceful cast at me in the course of my unavoidable dealings with contemporaries. Instead, I calmly and composedly shift my attention away from such provocations towards splendid paragons of the past. Two of these I have selected for you5 in writing this present work, which includes the Life of Timoleon of Corinth and the Life of Aemilius Paullus. These men were alike not only in the excellence of their moral principles but also in the good fortune each enjoyed when it came to actual events, and they will make it hard for you to decide whether the greatest of their achievements were owed to their good luck or their intelligence.
2. The house of the Aemilii, most authorities agree, was one of the ancient patrician families of Rome. Some of the writers who attribute the education of King Numa to Pythagoras claim that the first member of this house, the man who bequeathed to it the name Aemilius, was Mamercus, who was a son of the philosopher Pythagoras6 and was called Aemilius on account of the winning nature of his conversation as well as his overall charm.7 Now most of the men from this family who aspired after virtue – and gained greatness as a consequence of that – also enjoyed good fortune. Lucius Paullus8 was an exception, but even his defeat at Cannae demonstrated his intelligence and courage. For when he was unable to convince his colleague to avoid a pitched battle with the enemy, he took his part in the fighting despite his own reluctance to do so. When his colleague ran away, however, he took no part in that. Instead, although he had been exposed to mortal danger by the very man who had put the Romans at risk in the first place, Lucius stood his ground and perished in the struggle. Lucius Paullus had a daughter, Aemilia, who was the wife of the great Scipio,9 and a son, Aemilius Paullus, the subject of this biography.
When Aemilius Paullus was a young man, Rome was crowded with great men made famous by their glory and virtue. Nevertheless, he cut his own figure. He did not pursue the same studies as did the other distinguished young men of his day, nor did he orient his career along the same lines. He refused to practise forensic oratory, and as for winning mass popularity, which requires constant public salutations and handshaking and expressions of goodwill, all of which transform public figures into zealous servants of the multitude, Aemilius took no part in that.10 Which is not to say that he lacked the capacity for any of this, but rather that he deemed it a far greater thing to acquire a glorious reputation founded on courage and justice and trustworthiness. And in these qualities he quickly excelled his contemporaries.
3. This became apparent when he stood for the first of the curule magistracies, the aedileship, in an election in which he came ahead of twelve competitors11 – each of whom, it is reported, was later consul. And, when he was made one of the augurs12 (this is what the Romans call the priests who supervise and sustain the art of divination from the movements of birds and from signs in the sky), he so completely devoted himself to ancestral customs and so thoroughly comprehended the ancients’ scrupulosity where religion was concerned that he elevated this priesthood, which had been reduced to an office sought mostly for its honour and as an embellishment to one’s reputation, into an e
xalted art. In so doing he testified on behalf of those philosophers who define religion as the science of doing service to the gods.13 For he carried out his augural duties with skill and care, and at no time did he allow any other business to distract him from performing them properly. He omitted nothing from traditional practice, nor did he allow a single innovation. Instead, he was constantly at odds with his priestly colleagues, even over the smallest of points. It was his doctrine that, however mild one believed the gods to be and however disinclined to blame mortals for religious negligence, it was nevertheless harmful to the state to allow any disregard of ritual propriety, for no one initiates the destruction of a constitution by committing crime on a grand scale, but instead it is when men are careless in small matters that they subvert the security of more serious affairs.
He was similarly strict when it came to supervising and preserving traditional military conventions. When he was in command, he did not play the demagogue, nor did he strive to win his second military appointment while holding his first by gratifying his soldiers and treating them mildly, something most of his contemporaries did. Instead, like a priest presiding over some dread rite, he offered an exegesis of every military custom, and because he terrified anyone who was disobedient or violated military discipline, he managed to elevate his country’s morale. For in his view, conquering the enemy was almost incidental to the education of his fellow-citizens.
4. During the war with Antiochus the Great,14 when Rome’s leading generals were employed against him, a new war broke out in the west owing to serious disturbances in Spain. Aemilius, who was then a praetor, was put in charge of that war, but not with six sets of fasces15 (the number appropriate to a praetor); instead, he was allowed an additional six, which raised the dignity of his command to the level of a consul’s.16 Twice he defeated the barbarians in pitched battle and his forces killed nearly 30,000 of the enemy. He owed his success to the brilliance of his tactics, for he enabled his troops to achieve an easy victory when he crossed a certain river in order to place his army in a favourable position. He also subjugated 250 cities, which willingly opened their gates to him. When he returned to Rome he left behind a pacified and loyal province, not least because he had not exploited his command in order to enrich himself by even a single drachma. As a matter of fact, Aemilius was in most respects not an acquisitive man. At the same time, he was liberal and generous with his wealth. His assets, however, were not extensive, and when it was necessary, after his death, to restore his wife’s dowry, his remaining estate barely sufficed to do so.17