Moralia

Can a philosophy that fails in a family quarrel or at the money-lender's door be worth anything in the lecture hall? Plutarch bets that a Platonist proves his learning in ordinary life or not at all.

Small vices are the real examination, so Plutarch gives whole treatises to the control of anger, to borrowing money, to being a busybody, to talkativeness, to compliancy, the weakness of being unable to refuse, and to praising oneself without giving offence. Beside them stand questions about learning itself: how the young should listen to poetry, how to listen to lectures, how a person can tell whether they are making progress in virtue. The subjects are homely on purpose. A learned man who still cannot hold his tongue or his temper has, by that standard, not yet learned anything.

• anger
• self-control
• moderation
• wealth
• virtue
• practical wisdom
• education

What can philosophy say to a mother whose two-year-old has died, or to someone sent away from their city? Plutarch wrote consolation as a husband and father, not only as a teacher.

When their daughter Timoxena died at the age of two, Plutarch wrote to console his wife, and the letter survives among these treatises. Around it stand others on the same ground: on exile, on fortune, on tranquillity of mind, on whether vice alone is enough to make a person unhappy. Grief here is not a topic set for a school exercise but something the writer was living through with the person he addressed. The titles circle one question: how much of a good life lies in a person's own keeping, and how much belongs to chance.

• grief
• death
• fortune
• happiness

Who in a person's life is really on their side, and how would they know? Plutarch treats marriage, brotherhood and friendship as places where character is tested every day.

The closest relations get the most practical treatises. There is advice to a bride and groom, a treatise on brotherly love for the quarrel between brothers, another on affection for one's children, and a dialogue on love. Friendship is taken from three sides at once: how to tell a flatterer from a friend, whether it is wise to have many friends, and how a person can profit even from their enemies. Read together, the titles make a pair of puzzles: the flatterer who looks like a friend, and the enemy who can be of more use than one.

• friendship
• marriage
• reputation

Should a philosopher keep clear of rulers, or seek them out? Plutarch wrote precepts for statesmen and argued, in a title of its own, that a philosopher ought to converse with the powerful.

The political treatises lean toward engagement: precepts of statecraft, whether an old man should still engage in politics, advice to an uneducated ruler, and a treatise whose title says outright that a philosopher ought to converse with men in power. Another asks whether 'live unnoticed' is a wise precept at all. Beside the advice stands a gallery of examples: the ancient customs and sayings of the Spartans, the sayings of Spartan women, the bravery of women, and whether Alexander's success came from fortune or from virtue. Politics is taught the way character is, through what particular people said and did.

• political power
• leadership
• rhetoric
• justice
• war
• courage

What does a priest of Apollo owe the truth when the god's own oracle changes its ways? Plutarch served at Delphi and still asked why the Pythia no longer answered in verse.

As a priest of Apollo at Delphi, Plutarch wrote about his own sanctuary from the inside: on the E at Delphi, on the obsolescence of oracles, on why the Pythia, the god's prophetess, no longer gave her answers in verse. The same questioning turns to religion more widely, in treatises on superstition, on the delays of divine vengeance, on the sign of Socrates, on Isis and Osiris. It turns outward to nature too: to the face that appears in the orb of the moon, to whether land or sea animals are cleverer, and to whether beasts are rational. The priest is the one asking.

• religion
• divine providence
• cosmology
• natural philosophy
• causation
• soul
• poetry

Can a philosophy be refuted by showing that no one could live by it? Plutarch took the charge an Epicurean had levelled at every other school and turned it back on the Epicureans, then on the Stoics.

Colotes, a pupil of Epicurus, had dedicated a book to King Ptolemy arguing that no one could even live by the teachings of the other philosophers. More than three centuries later Plutarch answered it point by point, and in a second treatise argued that Epicurus's own doctrine makes a pleasant life impossible. The Stoics received the same treatment: Chrysippus, the third head of their school, is charged with contradicting himself, and further treatises set Stoic doctrine against common conceptions and against the poets. The polemic belongs to the ethics. A doctrine is tested by whether it can be lived and whether it agrees with itself.

• stoicism
• pleasure
• reason