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Remarks on Plutarch's De Vitando Aere Alieno

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

D. A. Russell
D. A. Russell
Affiliation:
St John's College, Oxford
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Extract

It is a common, and irritating, practice of Plutarch's to begin his prooemium with a comparison or a contrast. Perhaps the same move may be appropriate for an essay in the interpretation of an author to whom Professor Dodds, forty years ago, wrote one of the most charming and penetrating introductions. We might put it like this: to be in debt is indeed bad, dangerous and corrupting; but to acknowledge debts of learning and friendship in the manner this volume intends, is both καλόν and ἡδύ.

De vitando aere alieno is a vigorous and lively discourse. Style and subject mark it as somewhat out of Plutarch's usual line. It raises a swarm of problems. Is it genuine? Is it complete? Does it reflect a real crisis? The preliminary to any answer to these, and similar, questions seems to me to be an analysis of the speech as it stands, an attempt to show its connections of thought. This is all I shall try to do here.

The thesis ὅτι οὐ δεῖ δανείζεσθαι involves two distinct propositions: that borrowing is a bad thing (A); and that there are ways of avoiding it (B). To look at it in this way brings it into line with the moral failings that Plutarch discusses in treatises like πϵρὶ φιλοπλουτίας or πϵρὶ δυσωπίας where the principal heads of the subject are naturally the attack on the vice and the suggestions for cure. Now both these basic propositions readily admit amplification. Proposition A can be enlarged by any means that paints the picture in darker colours, for example by representing the debtor as a damned soul (828F, 830F) or as a drowning man (831D). Proposition B leads at once to the hackneyed topics of the renunciation of luxury and the true freedom of the self-sufficient life. Plutarch did, I think, conceive of his subject under these heads. Given his moral preoccupation, this was almost inevitable. And in fact he treats the two themes turn and turn about, and we can detect the passage from one to the other, even where it is masked by the syntactical structure

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 93 , November 1973 , pp. 163 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1973

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References

1 ‘A Portrait of a Greek Gentleman’, Greece and Rome vi (1933), 97–107. In what follows, I refer often to the page and line of Hubert's Teubner text (Moralia v 1, 1957), and I shall not as a rule repeat illustrative material which is to be found there. See also my Plutarch (Duckworth, 1973), 28–31.

2 See now Ingenkamp, H. G., Plutarchs Schriften über die Heilung der Seele, Göttingen 1971Google Scholar.

3 Sympos. 181D. For ἔδει… νυνὶ δέ or the like, cf. Moralia 465D, 686D, 1129E.

4 Cf. Cercidas 4.10 Powell also Chrys, J.. hom. 56.6Google Scholarin Matth. (7.574B): for ῥύπος in connection with usury.

5 The distinction seems to be that between ‘pledge’ and ‘hypothec’, as understood by students of classical Attic law: Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens, i 258 ffGoogle Scholar.

6 Comp. Nic. Crass. suggests we should read πολλὴν for πολλῆς at 133.16, and perhaps also ίλαρᾶς καὶ ἐπιτίμου.

7 Leben, Schriften und Philosophie des Plutarch, 1869, i 180 ff.

8 Cf. the imagery in Philo, , quod omnis probus 151Google Scholar, where those who take sanctuary in ἄσυλοι τόποι are contrasted with those whose refuge is the secure fortress of ἀρετή.

9 κερασφόρα is difficult; it is perhaps possible that it means ‘ornamented with ivory’, and this would suit the context well: cf. Plaut, . Aulularia 167 ffGoogle Scholar. dotes dapsilis, clamores, imperia, eburata vehicla, pallas, purpuram …

10 For ἐπευωνίζοντα, cf. Demosth. 23.201

11 ἐντυγχάνειν suggests unfair intervention. Cf. Mor. 493B ἀνεντεύκτοις, 530A ἔντευξιν ἀπῶσαι.

12 Hom. in ps. xiv, 109D Garnier.

13 Unless indeed it is ἅπασι that is wrong and it should be changed to ἅπαντες.

14 Cf. ἀφανιζόμενος 831 E.

15 Cf. e.g. Isaeus 7.35.

16 Reading οὐδ' at 134.11.

17 For the form of the thought, compare Aesch. Ag. 1629 with Fraenkel's note.

18 We should mentally supply τὸ βιβλίον: cf. Sen. de ben. 7.10.5 patrimoni…liber.

19 Cf. Dio Chrys. 10.10.

20 Dio Chrys. 25.5 ἐκεῑθεν (sc. Tenedo) shows that the παραπλέων may be a merchant in a small way, but does not help us to give a precise sense to πλέων.

21 Babut, D., Plutarque et le stoïcisme, 54 ffGoogle Scholar.

22 Cf. Aesch, . Choeph. 585 ffGoogle Scholar. Poetic colour is strong throughout this passage.

23 In 138.18 von Arnim's correction could be bettered; read

24 In 139.5 is to be preferred to Castiglioni's because we do not try to seem free, but to be free—only, of course, it is an illusory freedom.

25 Elsewhere in Plutarch (637A, 870B), οὐρανοπετής means ‘fallen from heaven’ and carries an ironical tinge. Here it seems to be thought of as ‘flying in the sky’, as though it was from πέτομαι rather than πίπτω; Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, s.v., cites some passages where this meaning is appropriate.

26 De Avondzom des Heidendoms 3 (1924), 492 ff.

27 Another repetition (131.16 ff. ~ 139–7 ) may also indicate incomplete finish.

28 Cf. Arnim, von, Dio von Prusa, 172 ffGoogle Scholar.

29 A picturesque account based on Plutarch may be found in Gréard, O., La morale de Plutarque, 190–3Google Scholar.

30 Tac. Ann. 3.40; Cassius Dio 61.2.1.

31 Plaut, . Mostellaria 658Google Scholar, cf. 626 and the whole scene.

32 Menandri Sententiae, ed. S. Jaekel, p. 92: cf. also Publilius Syrus A11.