Plutarch the Multiculturalist: Is West always Best? by Christopher Pelling University of Oxford [email protected] Abstract Is Plutarch a multiculturalist, recognising the value of non-Greek cultures along with Greek? Does he even go as far as Antiphon in the fifth century and deny any firm dividing line between barbarian and Greek? There are some traces of this, particularly an awareness that all may recognise the same gods; the Romans in particular may share some underlying traits with the Greeks while also showing differences. But Alexander the Great, even if the On the Virtue or Fortune of Alexander essays present him as unifying East and West, does so by imposing Greek values; the Life shows little interest in his learning anything from eastern values and philosophy. The alien culture to inspire most respect is that of Egypt, and the Isis and Osiris in particular accepts that there is much wisdom that Greeks share with Egyptians. Key-Words: Multiculturalism, Polarities, Racism, Alexander, Gymnoso- phists, Egypt, Syncretism. lutarch, we feel, is one of life in all its manifestations, yet of us. He would be deliberately avoiding the unseemly and thoroughly at home trying to present the best side of his subjects’2: one can just see him in the in a convivial con fe ­ bar late at night, surrounded by acolytes P1 rence setting , this ‘un der stand ing and of a much younger generation, gently intellectually curious person, someone pleased by our interest and admiration, who is serious but not stuffy, aware occasionally putting us right on so­ 1 As so many of us felt ourselves at home amid the breathtaking scenery and warm hospitality of Banff. I have tried to preserve the feel of this genial occasion by keeping some of the informality of my original delivery. My second paragraph in particular prompted some lively audience participation. 2 STADTER, 1988, p. 292. PLOUTARCHOS, n.s., 13 (2016) 33-52 ISSN 0258-655X 34 CHRISTOPHER PELLING mething, but always doing so with new experience and a new conversation, gentle tact and making sure that no­one that readiness to accept that wonder is really misbehaved and the party went so important and may always be there with a civilised swing. This is surely around the next corner…. Yes, he the second most attractive personality would fit in pretty well as well. of classical antiquity. And a lot of his Herodotus, indeed, will be a lurking moral views, even if sometimes on the presence in a lot of what follows: for pompous side, are pretty attractive too. it is so tempting to want both Plutarch That is even true on gender issues: we and Herodotus to be attractive on racial may get impatient with debating whether issues as well, people who are prepared heterosexual or homosexual love is the to find virtue and admirability wherever better in Amatorius, but equally I dare they may be. After all, Antiphon in the say most of us would be on the side he fifth century could say that clearly favours when Ismenodora wants to marry young Bacchon: well, why not? we are equally adapted by natu­ re to be both Greek and barba­ Yes, this is the character I would second­ rian… in all this, there is no firm most like to be like. dividing line between barbarian Second­most? Who then could beat and Greek: we all breathe the him? Not Socrates, surely: no, I have same air through our mouths and enough people edging away from me in noses, we all laugh when we are happy and cry when we are sad, bars already. Thucydides? Oh, lighten we take in sounds through our up. Pindar? Nobody could understand hearing, we see with the same a word I said. Cicero? Nobody else rays of light, we work with our would ever get a word in. Caesar? Can’t hands, we walk with our feet (fr. understand why I seem to be making 44B D–K)3. people so nervous. Aristotle? There are It was not impossible to think in five types of reason why one wouldn’t that way, though we should also notice want to be Aristotle…, one of them that exactly what Antiphon says—not we we would have to deal with the young are all the same, but we are all equally Alexander, who was surely a tough adapted to be the same, which is not pupil. No, the one I would put ahead quite the same thing. It still seems that is Herodotus, for very much the same Antiphon is insisting that the distinction reasons – that unflagging curiosity, between Greek and barbarian is a matter that strong projection of an amiable of νόμος rather than φύσις, very much personality who is always eager for a what Aristotle famously denied. 3 As supplemented by POxy 3647: see PENDRICK, 2002, ad loc. ISSN 0258-655X PLOUTARCHOS, n.s., 13 (2016) 33-52 Plutarch the Multiculturalist: Is West always Best? 35 It is not difficult to find Herodotus where Darius’ predecessor Cambyses making his audience think critically had indeed been showing himself about such distinctions. The familiar a ‘madman’—that ‘madman’ who locus classicus is Darius’ seminar on would scoff. He had mocked Egyptian cultural relativism in Book 3: the king religious practices so spectacularly that asked some Greek visitors whether they he even killed the Apis bull, an animal would eat their dead fathers, and met that the Egyptians held particularly with shock and horror; then he asked sacred (3.29). This is a point in some Indians whether they would be the narrative when Greek listeners prepared to cremate them, and met with and readers might feel particularly a similar response. If he had wished, superior at the expense of those brutal Herodotus could have made this an domineering Persians; yet it is here that example to show how primitive those we see this other Persian king, Darius, Indians were in comparison with the showing himself much more sensitive morally sophisticated Greeks, and how to cultural differences than the Greeks Darius was not much better if he failed in the story, and presumably than many to realise that; but in fact the conclusion of the audience, who would largely drawn is very different. have shared that horror at the Indian So these practices have beco­ practices. It is the Persian who emerges me enshrined as customs just as as the man with cultural insight, not they are, and I think Pindar was the Greek, and nothing could make it right to have said in his poem that plainer that these foreigners—even custom is king of all. (Herodotus these tyrannical Persian foreigners— 3.38.4, tr. Waterfield) are not all the same. That sets any Herodotus is clearly on Darius’ side, complacent Greek readers or listeners for that was surely Darius’ point too in back on their heels. staging his demonstration. The story Can we find anything of the same in shows how all peoples think their own Plutarch? Yes, sometimes we can. The customs best, and (as Herodotus has end of Isis and Osiris is very respectful just made explicit) ‘only a madman’ to Egyptian ideas about religion (and would scoff at what others do (3.38.2). we might remember that Plutarch’s Just as important is the narrative most revered teacher was the Egyptian subtlety of the context. Herodotus could Ammonius)4: the gods are the common have put this in many different places, possession of all humanity, and they do but in fact puts it at the end of a sequence not differ among Greeks and barbarians 4 JONES, 1967; SWAIN, 1997, pp. 182­4; OPSOMER, 2009; KLOTZ, 2014, pp. 214­7; STADTER, 2015, pp. 193­5. PLOUTARCHOS, n.s., 13 (2016) 33-52 ISSN 0258-655X 36 CHRISTOPHER PELLING (377C­E, cf. below); everyone has similar to the balance in Edith Hall’s trail­ the same initial knowledge of them blazing Inventing the Barbarian of 1989, and honour for them, even if different not about Plutarch at all but concentrating peoples use different names (377D); on Greek tragedy, with lots of glances and the greatest and most beneficial of across to Herodotus (and Hartog, though humans have become gods, as ‘we have Hall’s and Hartog’s emphases are rather come to think, not regarding different different)7: four chapters, about fifty ones as belonging to different peoples, pages each, on polarities which are not some Greek and some barbarian and almost universally denigratory about some northern and some southern, but barbarians; then an epilogue, half the common to all just as sun and moon are length of the other chapters, on ‘The common to all’ (377F)—not far, then, polarity deconstructed’. Since then there from the sort of argument that Antiphon has been something of an industry in was using. But then we can look also at deconstructing the polarity a good deal all those passages collected so well by more, in both tragedy and Herodotus. Thomas Schmidt, and discussed before Some of that scholarly action has him by Tasos Nikolaidis5. Schmidt’s been in the direction of regarding distribution of material is particularly Herodotus and particularly Aeschylus’ interesting: five lengthy chapters on Persians as foundational texts not basically negative characteristics— just of ‘Orientalism’, as Edward Saïd savagery, over-confidence (θρασύτης), represented them, but also of the critique wealth and luxury, numerousness—not of Orientalism, at least occasionally perhaps negative in itself, but almost making readers and listeners uneasy always bringing out the superiority of the about any West­is­best complacency smaller numbers that defeated them— and providing them with some material and simple worthlessness (φαυλότης); that could challenge those prejudices as then a relatively short chapter on ‘positive well as some that could feed them.