COSMIC ORDER AND HISTORY
It seems to me, then, that certain passages of these Dialogues might be considered good starting points for understanding why Plutarch felt it important to think in historical terms, and for understanding what advantage in particular could be derived from an overall rethinking of the history of Greek and Roman political and cultural experience, with a view to defining the future prospects that could be opened up in his own times. Returning to some ideas that I developed in a recent study,16 I believe I can show that in these three Dialogues Plutarch reveals, in addition to the specific points discussed therein, profound psychological distress due to the uncertainty regarding his place in time on the world’s stage, a sense of disorientation which furthermore is not just personal, but seems to be part of the entire cultural environment in which the dialogues take place.17 The situation of severe crisis faced by the Delphic oracle—this being the objective premise that, in the De defectu oraculorum, forms the starting point for a work which we might say is in three parts—appears to be a sign of a more general strain in the ideological structure supporting Greek civilization, which by then had merged with Rome.18 Here, this supporting structure reveals with increasing clearness the limits of its ability to maintain a sense of existential, individual, and collective security, so to speak, in the face of a cosmic order which at the same time was taking shape as a moving system of different worlds succeeding one after another, introducing continuous transformations into the precarious balance of contemporary life into which that civilization threw itself so irresponsibly. This multiplicity of worlds—as the enigmatic ξένος of the Red Sea had revealed to Cleombrotus, one of the speakers in the Dialogues—has a reference point and center of production: a “plain of truth” (πεδίον ἀληθείας), in which “the accounts, the forms, and the patterns of all things that have come to pass and of all that shall come to pass rest undisturbed; and round about them lies Eternity.”19 These elements make up the kaleidoscope of the worlds which continuously and momentarily join together, while eternity sends forth the breath (ἀπορροὴν) of time onto them.20 Thus, change is the sovereign law of the universe, and there is nothing riskier and more short-sighted than getting too comfortable in the reality that surrounds us, the stability of which is pure illusion: “the very instant when anything comes to pass, that is the end of it—of actions, words, experiences alike; for Time like an ever-flowing stream bears all things onward.”21 However, there is a way, according to Plutarch, to ensure ourselves of a mooring which could give meaning to our existence in this rush of constant change: the ability we have to remember the past and make predictions for the future.
Just as memory, which is a function of the soul, manages to carry out the incredible act of saving and preserving things of the past, better said that no longer exist, investing them with “semblance and being,” in the same way “it is no wonder that it. . . anticipates many things which have not yet come to pass, since these are more closely related to it, and with these it has much in common; for its attachments and associations are with the future, and it is quit of all that is past and ended, save only to remember it.”22 Memory of the past and prediction of the future are actually two sides of the same coin, as Plutarch (through Theon) explains in greater detail in the De E apud Delphos. Here he offers his interpretation of the mysterious E, one of the sacred symbols of Delphi, which to him is emblematic of the two faces of Apollo, the god of the sanctuary, who is turned toward that which will be and, in the same way, that which has been.
The god is a prophet, and the prophetic art concerns the future that is to result from things present and past. For there is nothing of which either the origin is without cause or the foreknowledge thereof without reason; but since all present events follow with close conjunction with past events, and all future events follow in close conjunction with present events, in accordance with a regular procedure which brings them to fulfilment from beginning to end, he who understands, in consonance with Nature, how to fathom the connexions and interrelations of the causes one with another knows and can declare “what now is, and in future shall be, and has been of aforetime”: τάτ’ ἐσσόμεναπρότ’ ἐόντα. (Il. 1.70).23
As I see it, in this direct reference to Homer, Plutarch formulates the true founding principle of his idea regarding the need for historical knowledge—a complex and socialized, so to speak, form of memory—and more specifically of his decision to devote himself to the research on the past that is the primary condition for attaining this knowledge. Historical knowledge provides an indispensable tool for orienting oneself in the present in view of the transformations which shall arise in the future, transformations which can be predicted in proportion to one’s ability to examine their premises and causes in the past. And Plutarch’s declarations in the De Pythiae oraculis regarding the universal state of well-being in which we live today—“There is, in fact, profound peace and tranquility; war has ceased, there are no wanderings of peoples, no civil strife, no despotisms, nor other maladies and ills in Greece requiring many unusual remedial forces”24—are not to be interpreted as an expression of a belief that this apparently optimal state of matters may last indefinitely; rather, these statements simply serve to explain in a consolatory way why the questions addressed to the oracle of Delphi are irrelevant compared to those which were once proposed: and this is, indeed, a clear sign of decline.25 To Plutarch, faith in the oracles should in any case be protected, as it was a guarantee of the ability to plan a future for a Greek world which was by then unified and integrated with the Roman world. The duty of educated men was to offer both worlds, through a modern reinterpretation of the reasons behind their great past, a sure point of reference in order to give to that future a meaning and a specific direction.
WHY BIOGRAPHY?
It is not a given that these philosophical and ideological principles, which can be deduced from a cross-analysis reading of the Delphic Dialogues, were active in Plutarch’s mind when he began writing history,26 though he likely had developed at least a basic core of these ideas when he began writing the twenty-three books of the Parallel Lives, that is at the beginning of Trajan’s reign.27 In any case, it seems difficult to deny that one of the most demanding theoretical passages of the Lives, the proem of Aemilius Paullus, which was likely composed during the central phase of writing the work, assumes that set of ideas at least in part.28 Here, Plutarch, in clarifying the nature of his activity as a historian who evokes great figures of the past, writes: “the study of history and the familiarity with it which my writings produce [τῇ περὶ τὴν ἱστορίανδιατριβῇ καὶ τῆςγραφῆςτῇ συνηθείᾳ], enables me, since I always cherish in my soul the records of the noblest and most estimable characters, to repel and put far from me whatever base, malicious or ignoble suggestion my enforced associations may intrude upon me, calmly and dispassionately turning my thoughts away from them to the fairest of my examples.”29 Plutarch here demonstrates his conception of historical inquiry as a tool serving to set the present in perspective, which is defined explicitly in terms which are anything but flattering: it is a present that finds its place in an alternative position, if not an opposing one, with respect to the superior examples of living which can be salvaged from the past, and which suggest ethical and political behaviors uncommon to the world in which he lives. The aim of this process is that which Plutarch himself describes in another “moral” writing, the De profectibus in virtute, in which he appreciates its effects on individual psychology:
For not only, as Alcibiades used to say, must the heart feel such anguish at the philosopher’s words that tears will flow; but more than that, the man who is truly making progress, comparing himself with the deeds and conduct of a good and perfect man, . . . is ready in the words of Simonides “To run like weanling colt beside its dam.” . . . With men of this sort it has already become a constant practice, on proceeding to any business, or on taking office, or encounterin
g any dispensation of Fortune, to set before their eyes good men of the present or of the past, and to reflect: “What would Plato have done in this case? What would have Epaminondas have said? How would Lycurgus have conducted himself, or Agesilaus?” And before such mirrors as these, figuratively speaking, they array themselves or readjust their habit, and either repress some of their more ignoble utterances, or resist the onset of some emotion.30
Similarly, in the proem of Pericles, when justifying his decision to continue writing the Lives, which highlight the positive characters of great figures, Plutarch declares that “the Good creates a stir of activity towards itself, and it implants at once in the spectator an active impulse.”31
Although this way of thinking is not a direct historiographical translation of the cosmological theories (with psychological implications) that we have seen formulated in the Delphic Dialogues, it is evident that these theories do, however, represent the background from which historiography derives its legitimacy and its effectiveness, especially in that it is articulated in biographical terms, that is, in reconstructing the history of lives. In the reflection on the reasons behind the greatness of each past figure, for the purpose of perfecting one’s ability to achieve ethical and political aims, the connection between past, present, and future is most immediately and convincingly presented. This is certainly an important reason for explaining, from a philosophical point of view, why Plutarch’s interest in historiography took form in biographical terms.32 But we should not underestimate the role exerted by the historical context in which Plutarch lived, that is, the fact that for nearly a century politics in the Mediterranean world had been dominated by a series of men endowed with an autocratic power: the Roman emperors. As Plutarch’s contemporary Tacitus (Ann. 4.32–33) and later Cassius Dio (53.19.3) would openly admit,33 this aspect required a reformulation in a markedly personalist sense of that pragmatic historiography espoused by Polybius: a reformulation which has been so aptly termed a “biostructuring” of history.34 Thus, besides experimenting with Lives conceived individually, without any plan that might transcend them, like Aratus or Artaxerxes (and the others, which were lost), it comes as no surprise that Plutarch’s historical writing was primarily engaged in using biography as a tool for constructing a true narration of a unified historical period—such as the history of the early Roman Empire—achieved by ordering the Lives of the emperors from Augustus to Vitellius. Although only Galba and Otho have survived of this series, and it is difficult to judge the character and overall value of the work, there is no doubt that, as Christopher Jones has written, Plutarch is “the first author in Greek or Latin known to have written a series of imperial lives”;35 therefore he can be considered the first writer responsible for “formalizing in terms of historiographical expression the recognition of the decisive importance that the individual personality had by then taken on in unravelling historical events.”36 Only after Plutarch could we have such works as the De vita Caesarum by Suetonius or, despite all the differences involved, the Life of Apollonius of Tyana or the Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus.
PARALLELISM
Plutarch’s next and final step in perfecting the technique of biographical composition would be the conception and creation of the Parallel Lives: a much more complex and ambitious project, in which there would be numerous, and considerable, elements of distinction compared to the project of the imperial lives, despite maintaining the idea of a “biographical system” of historical writing.37 We have already referred to how interest in the figures’ ethical and political aspects came now to the forefront, along with all that this implies in terms of connection to a more general historical and cosmological concept. But we must immediately add two elements of even greater importance that belong more to the method used in investigation and historical writing: firstly the above-mentioned open character of the work, that is, its lack of a predefined diachronic sequence—an aim that is achieved by the very fact of the separate publication of what Plutarch calls the “books” (βιβλία) of the work, that is, the individual pairs;38 and secondly, its proceeding by pairs of lives, that is, in a parallelistic manner (Plutarch himself uses the expression “parallel lives” at times to indicate the element that he considers perhaps most characteristic of his biographical writing).39 Thus, we ought now to draw our attention to the analysis of these two elements; and we begin with the latter, the parallelistic structure, which is the most immediately evident element. It is clear that Plutarch conceives of parallelism in the sense of constructing pairs of figures, specifically a Greek and a Roman figure set side by side: indeed, in several cases Plutarch informs the reader that, once he has decided to dedicate a Life to a given figure, whether Greek or Roman, he then sets about determining the other figure to set at his side in the other political or cultural sphere.40 However, nowhere in the surviving Lives can we track down an explanation for the reason behind this compositional technique; therefore it has been rightly suggested that such a necessary explanation must have featured at the start of the only pair that was lost, Epaminondas and Scipio, which for the same reason has been assumed to have been the first of the series to be conceived and published. In any case, it seems reasonable to think that this idea of parallelism between the men of Greece and Rome can only represent the achievement of a process of reciprocal acculturation between the two worlds, which had begun at a time well before Plutarch.41 In fact, this acculturation had already generated, in Cicero’s historical vision, the idea that the Greeks had originally conceived of a system of values—subsequently received by the Romans—that thus became the common heritage of both peoples (but which could also be extended to others, through paideia);42 and it had also generated, in the vision of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the historian of archaic Rome, the idea of the Romans having a Greek origin, and therefore of a fundamental affinity between the two cultures.43 It is obvious that in giving this idea a sort of formal recognition, to the extent that it was converted into the guiding principle of his historical enterprise, Plutarch aimed also at reinforcing the sense of a Greek cultural identity, as distinguished from the Roman cultural identity, and even superior to it.44
An important role in Plutarch’s thought was most certainly played by the principle that in order to construct a more effective ethical message it is useful to compare different experiences; this principle is most explicitly formulated at the beginning of De mulierum virtutibus.45 But the application of this epistemological tool is complicated by the idea of a special parallelism between Greece and Rome: indeed, the affinity between the two cultural worlds called for a particularly sophisticated investigation on the part of anyone wishing to learn from diversity, with a view to achieving its proclaimed ethical and political aims.46 In the end, under these conditions, if one aspires to highlight the variety of human behaviors in order to define their virtuous (to various extents) character, there is one real aspect one can play on: the diversity of historical context in which the protagonists of each pair expressed their shared ethical and political values. Furthermore, as we shall soon see, this contextual diversity seems to be built upon a vision of the history of what could be called the two general subjects of the work—Greece and Rome—in terms of a politically identical, or at least highly similar, rise-and-fall pattern, repeating itself after a number of centuries. Recently, Christopher Pelling pointed out how completing the project of the Parallel Lives achieved, though in an apparently unorganized way, a specific aim: it retraced—“biostructurally,” to reuse his apt definition—the whole of this dual history, which lent itself to being transformed into a sort of ethical and political education system for the elite of Plutarch’s time.47 In fact, the project broke down the diachronic sequence of the two parallel rise-and-fall patterns, and put them back together according to themes. Thus, the primary aim in each pair is to focus on one or more of the two protagonists’ behavioral traits, compared with each other so as to highlight, above all, the way in which they succeeded in facing the conditions i
mposed by their respective historical contexts. Let us come now to the second element to which we have referred: the open character of the project. Plutarch effectively creates, on an originally unlimited timeline cut short only by his death,48 a series of themed explorations which go hand in hand with the publication of the individual books (or rather, pairs of lives) in which the work unfolds. This sequence was not determined ab initio; rather, it was developed by making internal connections which Plutarch sometimes explains. However, he always allows himself the option of preparing the material for several pairs simultaneously (as is clear in the cases of the history of Athens in the fifth century or of the history of Rome during the civil wars), and publishing them later in the order in which each reached maturity.49 Only gradually do we discover the unifying design guiding the overall composition of the work. Given this method of working, we can also recognize a heuristically useful aspect of the underlying parallelistic structure: in making his next transition, Plutarch has two options—choosing either the Greek or the Roman figure from the previously described pair—and once the choice is made, he then identifies another figure who shares some quality with the one chosen (see, for example, his transition to Romulus from Numa). All that remains at this point is for him to find a suitable parallel for this newly identified figure.
The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic Page 50