Part 2

But what Plutarch can this age produce, to immortalize a life so noble? May some excellent historian at length be found, some writer not unworthy of his subject; but may his employment be long deferred! May many happy years continue you to this nation and your own; may your praises be celebrated late, that we may enjoy you living rather than adore you dead! And since yet there is not risen up amongst us any historian who is equal to so great an undertaking, let us hope that Providence has not assigned the workman, because his employment is to be long delayed; because it has reserved your Grace for farther proofs of your unwearied duty, and a farther enjoyment of your fortune; in which, though no man has been less envied, because no other has more nobly used it, yet some droppings of the age’s venom have been shed upon you. The supporters of the crown are placed too near it, to be exempted from the storm which was breaking over it. It is true, you stood involved in your own virtue, and the malice of your libellers could not sink through all those folds to reach you. Your innocence has defended you from their attacks, and your pen has so nobly vindicated that innocence, that it stands in need of no other second. The difference is as plainly seen betwixt sophistry and truth, as it is betwixt the style of a gentleman and the clumsy stiffness of a pedant. Of all historians, God deliver us from bigots; and of all bigots, from our sectaries! Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understandings are warped with enthusiasm; for they judge all actions, and their causes, by their own perverse principles, and a crooked line can never be the measure of a straight one. Mr Hobbes was used to say,—that a man was always against reason, when reason was against a man:—so these authors are for obscuring truth, because truth would discover them. They are not historians of an action, but lawyers of a party; they are retained by their principles, and bribed by their interests; their narrations are an opening of their cause; and in the front of their histories there ought to be written the prologue of a pleading,—“I am for the plaintiff,” or “I am for the defendant.”

We have already seen large volumes of state collections, and church legends, stuffed with detected forgeries in some parts, and gaping with omissions of truth in others; not penned, I suppose, with so vain a hope as to cheat posterity, but to advance some design in the present age; for these legerdemain authors are for telling stories to keep their trick undiscovered, and to make their conveyance the more clean. What calumny your Grace may expect from such writers, is already evident: but it will fare with them as it does with ill painters; a picture so unlike in all its features and proportions, reflects not on the original, but on the artist; for malice will make a piece more unresembling than ignorance; and he who studies the life, yet bungles, may draw some faint imitation of it, but he who purposely avoids nature, must fall into grotesque, and make no likeness. For my own part, I am of the former sort, and therefore presume not to offer my unskilfulness for so excellent a design as is your illustrious life. To pray for its prosperity and continuance is my duty, as it is my ambition to appear on all occasions,

Your Grace’s most obedient and devoted servant,

JOHN DRYDEN.

THE LIFE OF PLUTARCH.

I know not by what fate it comes to pass, that historians, who give immortality to others, are so ill requited by posterity, that their actions and their fortunes are usually forgotten; neither themselves encouraged while they live, nor their memory preserved entire to future ages. It is the ingratitude of mankind to their greatest benefactors, that they who teach us wisdom by the surest ways, (setting before us what we ought to shun or to pursue, by the examples of the most famous men whom they record, and by the experience of their faults and virtues,) should generally live poor and unregarded; as if they were born only for the public, and had no interest in their own well-being, but were to be lighted up like tapers, and to waste themselves for the benefit of others. But this is a complaint too general, and the custom has been too long established to be remedied; neither does it wholly reach our author. He was born in an age which was sensible of his virtue, and found a Trajan to reward him, as Aristotle did an Alexander. But the historians who succeeded him, have either been too envious, or too careless of his reputation; none of them, not even his own countrymen, having given us any particular account of him; or if they have, yet their works are not transmitted to us: so that we are forced to glean from Plutarch what he has scattered in his writings concerning himself and his original; which (excepting that little memorial that Suidas, and some few others, have left concerning him,) is all we can collect relating to this great philosopher and historian.

He was born at Chæronea, a small city of Bæotia, in Greece, between Attica and Phosis, and reaching to both seas. The climate not much befriended by the heavens, for the air is thick and foggy; and consequently the inhabitants partaking of its influence, gross feeders and fat-witted, brawny and unthinking,—just the constitution of heroes, cut out for the executive and brutal business of war; but so stupid in the designing part, that in all the revolutions of Greece they were never masters, but only in those few years when they were led by Epaminondas, or Pelopidas. Yet this foggy air, this country of fat wethers, as Juvenal calls it, produced three wits, which were comparable to any three Athenians; Pindar, Epaminondas, and our Plutarch; to whom we may add a fourth, Sextus Chæronensis, the preceptor of the learned Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the nephew of our author.

Chæronea, if we may give credit to Pausanias, in the ninth book of his description of Greece, was anciently called Arnè, from Arnè, the daughter of Æolus; but being situated to the west of Parnassus in that lowland country, the natural unwholesomeness of the air was augmented by the evening vapours cast upon it from that mountain, which our late travellers describe to be full of moisture and marshy ground inclosed in the inequality of its ascents; and being also exposed to the winds which blew from that quarter, the town was perpetually unhealthful; for which reason, says my author, Chæron, the son of Apollo and Thero, made it be rebuilt, and turned it towards the rising sun, from whence the town became healthful, and consequently populous; in memory of which benefit it afterwards retained his name. But as etymologies are uncertain, and the Greeks, above all nations, given to fabulous derivations of names, especially when they tend to the honour of their country, I think we may be reasonably content to take the denomination of the town from its delightful or cheerful standing, as the word Chæron sufficiently implies.

But to lose no time in these grammatical etymologies, which are commonly uncertain guesses, it is agreed that Plutarch was here born; the year uncertain; but without dispute in the reign of Claudius.

Joh. Gerrard Vossius has assigned his birth in the latter end of that Emperor; some other writers of his life have left it undecided whether then, or in the beginning of Nero’s empire; but the most accurate Rualdus (as I find it in the Paris edition of Plutarch’s Works) has manifestly proved him to be born in the middle time of Claudius, or somewhat lower; for Plutarch, in the inscription at Delphos, (of which more hereafter,) remembers, that Ammonius, his master, disputed with him and his brother Lamprias concerning it, when Nero made his progress into Greece, which was in his twelfth year; and the question disputed could not be managed with so much learning as it was, by mere boys; therefore he was then sixteen, or rather eighteen years of age.

Xylander has observed, that Plutarch himself, in the Life of Pericles, and that of Antony, has mentioned both Nero and Domitian as his contemporaries. He has also left it on record in his Symposiacks, that his family was ancient in Chæronea, and that for many descents, they had borne the most considerable offices in that petty commonwealth; the chiefest of which was known by the name of Archon amongst the Grecians, by that of Prætor Urbis among the Romans, and the dignity and power was not much different from that of our lord mayor of London. His great-grandfather, Nicarchus, perhaps enjoyed that office in the division of the empire betwixt Augustus Cæsar and Mark Antony; and when the civil wars ensued betwixt them, Chæronea was so hardly used by Antony’s lieutenant or commissary there, that all the citizens, without exception, were servilely employed to carry on their shoulders a certain proportion of corn from Chæronea to the coast over against the island of Antycira, with the scourge held over them, if at any time they were remiss. Which duty, after once performing, being enjoined the second time with the same severity, just as they were preparing for their journey, the welcome news arrived that Mark Antony had lost the battle of Actium;[5] whereupon both the officers and soldiers belonging to him in Chæronea immediately fled for their own safety; and the provisions, thus collected, were distributed among the inhabitants of the city.

This Nicarchus, the great-grandfather of Plutarch, among other sons, had Lamprias, a man eminent for his learning, and a philosopher, of whom Plutarch has made frequent mention in his Symposiacks, or Table Conversations; and amongst the rest there is this observation of him,—that he disputed best, and unravelled the difficulties of philosophy with most success, when he was at supper, and well warmed with wine. These table entertainments were part of the education of those times, their discourses being commonly the canvassing and solution of some question, either philosophical or philological, always instructive, and usually pleasant; for the cups went round with the debate, and men were merry and wise together, according to the proverb. The father of Plutarch is also mentioned in those discourses, whom our author represents as arguing of several points in philosophy; but his name is no where to be found in any part of the works remaining to us. But yet he speaks of him as a man not ignorant in learning and poetry, as may appear by what he says, when he is introduced disputing in the Symposiacks; where also his prudence and humanity are commended in this following relation: “Being yet very young,” says Plutarch, “I was joined in commission with another in an embassy to the Proconsul, and my colleague, falling sick, was forced to stay behind; so that the whole business was transacted by me alone. At my return, when I was to give account to the commonwealth of my proceedings, my father, rising from his seat, openly enjoined me not to name myself in the singular number,—_I did thus, or thus I said to the Proconsul_,—but, _thus we did, and thus we said_, always associating my companion with me, though absent in the management.” This was done to observe, as I suppose, the point of good manners with his colleague; that of respect to the government of the city, who had commissioned both, to avoid envy; and perhaps more especially, to take off the forwardness of a pert young minister, commonly too apt to overvalue his own services, and to quote himself on every inconsiderable occasion.

The father of Plutarch had many children besides him; Timon and Lamprias, his brothers, were bred up with him, all three instructed in the liberal sciences, and in all parts of philosophy. It is manifest from our author, that they lived together in great friendliness, and in great veneration to their grandfather and father. What affection Plutarch bore in particular to his brother Timon, may be gathered from these words of his: “As for myself, though fortune on several occasions has been favourable to me, I have no obligation so great to her as the kindness and entire friendship which my brother Timon has always borne, and still bears me; and this is so evident, that it cannot but be noted by every one of our acquaintance.” Lamprias, the youngest of the three, is introduced by him in his “Morals,” as one of a sweet and pleasant conversation, inclined to mirth and raillery; or, as we say in English, a well-humoured man, and a good companion.

The whole family being thus addicted to philosophy, it is no wonder if our author was initiated betimes in study, to which he was naturally inclined; in pursuit of which he was so happy to fall into good hands at first, being recommended to the care of Ammonius, an Egyptian, who, having taught philosophy with great reputation at Alexandria, and from thence travelling into Greece, settled himself at last in Athens, where he was well received, and generally respected. At the end of Themistocles his life, Plutarch relates, that being young, he was a pensioner in the house of this Ammonius; and in his Symposiacks he brings him in disputing with his scholars, and giving them instruction: for the custom of those times was very much different from these of ours, where the greatest part of our youth is spent in learning the words of dead languages. The Grecians, who thought all barbarians but themselves, despised the use of foreign tongues; so that the first elements of their breeding was the knowledge of nature, and the accommodation of that knowledge, by moral precepts, to the service of the public, and the private offices of virtue: the masters employing one part of their time in reading to, and discoursing with, their scholars, and the rest in appointing them their several exercises either in oratory or philosophy, and setting them to declaim and to dispute amongst themselves. By this liberal sort of education, study was so far from being a burden to them, that in a short time it became a habit; and philosophical questions and criticisms of humanity were their usual recreations at their meals. Boys lived then as the better sort of men do now; and their conversation was so well-bred and manly, that they did not plunge out of their depth into the world, when they grew up, but slid easily into it, and found no alteration in their company. Amongst the rest, the reading and quotations of poets were not forgotten at their suppers, and in their walks; but Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles, were the entertainment of their hours of freedom. Rods and ferulas were not used by Ammonius, as being properly the punishment of slaves, and not the correction of ingenuous freeborn men; at least to be only exercised by parents, who had the power of life and death over their own children; as appears by the example of this Ammonius, thus related by our author:

“Our master,” says he, “one time perceiving, at his afternoon lecture, that some of his scholars had eaten more largely than became the moderation of students, immediately commanded one of his freedmen to take his own son, and scourge him in our sight: because, said the philosopher, my young gentleman could not eat his dinner without poignant sauce, or vinegar; and at the same time he cast his eye on all of us; so that every criminal was given to understand, that he had a share in the reprehension, and that the punishment was as well deserved by all the rest, had the philosopher not known that it exceeded his commission to inflict it.”

Plutarch, therefore, having the assistance of such a master, in few years advanced to admiration in knowledge; and that without first travelling into foreign parts, or acquiring any foreign tongue; though the Roman language at that time was not only vulgar in Rome itself, but generally through the extent of that vast empire, and in Greece, which was a member of it, as our author has remarked towards the end of his Platonic Questions. For, like a true philosopher, who minded things, not words, he strove not even to cultivate his mother tongue with any great exactness; and himself confesses, in the beginning of Demosthenes his life, that during his abode in Italy, and at Rome, he had neither the leisure to study, nor so much as to exercise the Roman language, (I suppose he means to write in it, rather than to speak it,) as well by reason of the affairs he managed, as that he might acquit himself to those who were desirous to be instructed by him in philosophy: insomuch, that till the declination of his age, he began not to be conversant in Latin books; in reading of which it happened somewhat oddly to him, that he learnt not the knowledge of things by words, but by the understanding and use he had of things, attained to the knowledge of words which signified them: just as Adam (setting aside Divine illumination) called the creatures by their proper names, by first understanding of their natures. But for the delicacies of the tongue, the turns of the expressions, the figures and connections of words, in which consist the beauty of that language, he plainly tells us, that though he much admired them, yet they required too great labour for a man in age, and plunged in business, to attain perfectly; which compliment I should be willing to believe from a philosopher, if I did not consider that Dion Cassius, nay even Herodian and Appian after him, as well as Polybius before him, by writing the Roman History in the Greek language, had shewn as manifest a contempt of Latin, in respect of the other, as Frenchmen now do of English, which they disdain to speak while they live among us; but, with great advantage to their trivial conceptions, drawing the discourse into their own language, have learned to despise our better thoughts, which must come deformed and lame in conversation to them, as being transmitted in a tongue of which we are not masters. This is to arrogate a superiority in nature over us, as undoubtedly the Grecians did over their conquerors, by establishing their language for a standard; it being become so much a mode to speak and write Greek in Tully’s time, that with some indignation I have read his Epistles to Atticus, in which he desires to have his own consulship written by his friend in the Grecian language, which he afterwards performed himself; a vain attempt, in my opinion, for any man to endeavour to excel in a tongue which he was not born to speak. This, though it be digression, yet deserves to be considered at more leisure; for the honour of our wit and writings, which are of a more solid make than that of our neighbours, is concerned in it.

But to return to Plutarch. As it was his good fortune to be moulded first by masters the most excellent in their kind, so it was his own virtue to suck in with an incredible desire, and earnest application of mind, their wise instructions; and it was also his prudence so to manage his health by moderation of diet and bodily exercise, as to preserve his parts without decay to a great old age; to be lively and vigorous to the last, and to preserve himself to his own enjoyments, and to the profit of mankind: which was not difficult for him to perform, having received from nature a constitution capable of labour, and from the domestic example of his parents a sparing sobriety of diet, a temperance in other pleasures, and, above all, an habitude of commanding his passions in order to his health. Thus principled and grounded, he considered with himself, that a larger communication with learned men was necessary for his accomplishment; and therefore, having a soul insatiable of knowledge, and being ambitious to excel in all kinds of science, he took up a resolution to travel. Egypt was at that time, as formerly it had been, famous for learning; and probably the mysteriousness of their doctrine might tempt him, as it had done Pythagoras and others, to converse with the priesthood of that country, which appears to have been particularly his business by the treatise of “Isis and Osiris,” which he has left us; in which he shews himself not meanly versed in the ancient theology and philosophy of those wise men. From Egypt returning into Greece, he visited in his way all the academies or schools of the several philosophers, and gathered from them many of those observations with which he has enriched posterity.

Besides this, he applied himself with extreme diligence to collect not only all books which were excellent in their kind, and already published, but also all sayings and discourses of wise men, which he had heard in conversation, or which he had received from others by tradition; as likewise the records and public instruments preserved in cities which he had visited in his travels, and which he afterwards scattered through his works. To which purpose he took a particular journey to Sparta, to search the archives of that famous commonwealth, to understand thoroughly the model of their ancient government, their legislators, their kings, and their Ephori; digesting all their memorable deeds and sayings with so much care, that he has not omitted those even of their women, or their private soldiers; together with their customs, their decrees, their ceremonies, and the manner of their public and private living, both in peace and war. The same methods he also took in divers other commonwealths, as his Lives, and his Greek and Roman Questions, sufficiently testify. Without these helps, it had been impossible for him to leave in writing so many particular observations of men and manners, and as impossible to have gathered them without conversation and commerce with the learned antiquaries of his time. To these he added a curious collection of ancient statues, medals, inscriptions, and paintings, as also of proverbial sayings, epigrams, epitaphs, apophthegms, and other ornaments of history, that he might leave nothing unswept behind him. And as he was continually in company with men of learning, in all professions, so his memory was always on the stretch to receive and lodge their discourses; and his judgment perpetually employed in separating his notions, and distinguishing which were fit to be preserved, and which to be rejected.