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LIMB TORN from LIMB: MYSTICISM and the YOUNG PLUTARCH We CHAPTER FIVE LIMB TORN FROM LIMB: MYSTICISM AND THE YOUNG PLUTARCH We can now turn to a subject which has broader implications for the general flow of Plutarch's philosophical and religious con­ ceptions. This is the nature of his early religious ideas and of the surroundings in which they originated. The general view prevalent today is that Plutarch was influenced by the Academy to accept a rather thoroughgoing scepticism and rationalism, but that in later life he rejected this in order to defend many traditional religious practices and beliefs which we would today regard as superstitious. In this view, by the time he became a priest of Delphi he had virtually reversed all his earlier positions, thus adopting a mentality inconsistent with his earlier ideas and earlier W eltanschauung, a W eltanschauung irrecognizable in his later works.1 In contrast to this view, it will be argued here that the young Plutarch was something quite different: idealistic, altruistic, contemptuous of cold logic, leaning toward the softer mentality of the philosophical mysticism to be found in Greek culture­ Empedoclean, Pythagorean, Orphic, and Platonic-rather than to the harder thinking of scientific discussion for which the physikoi were noted. This view is not entirely original since it is hinted at by Ziegler on one occasion, and by Helmbold in his introduction to the De esu carnium, but it has never been developed as one of the indispensable elements in understanding the growth of Plutarch's 1 Hirzel, Plutarch, pp. 8-10, and Flaceliere, especially, "Plutarque et la Pythie," REG, 56 (1943), 72-II1, are primarily responsible for the promul­ gation of this view. For Hirzel there were two focal points in Plutarch's life: at Athens he learned scepticism; at Delphi "religioser Tiefsinn und Hang zur Mystik." Flaceliere goes so far as to make Plutarch a sort of Thomas Aquinas: "il en vint a sentir plus 'theologien' encore que 'philosophe' et sans renier a la philosophie a ne plus voir en elle que !'humble servante de la theologie, ancilla theologiae" (p. II 1) . Flaceliere is here referring to a phrase which appears in a description of Cleombrotos in De defectu oraculorum. This seems particularly inapt, since Cleombrotos is immediately ridiculed (410b), and Flaceliere puts this particular dialogue in Plutarch's philosophical rather than theological period. For Plutarch's youth see Jones, Plutarch and Rome, pp. 1-64. 66 MYSTICISM AND THE YOUNG PLUTARCH religious philosophy. On the other hand, a very simplistic hypoth­ esis has been unquestionably accepted, with not a voice raised in protest against it. The school that maintains a rationalistic, sceptical, anti-super­ stitious Plutarch in youth stakes everything on De superstitione. Yet, it should be pointed out that even here he is no friend of atheism or Epicureanism. Atheism is constantly condemned as a vice, equal to that of superstition, and at the beginning of the essay he claims that the atomicatic theory of the universe (cx.-r6µ.ouc:; -.~c:; ote:-rot~ x.ott x.e:vov cx.pxcxc:; dvot~ 't"WV 0/\WV) is a "false hypothesis," the only good of it being that it does not cause the same sort of "throbbing pain" as superstition (i:64f). But is this the only essay we have written by the young Plutarch? Why has this essay alone been chosen to represent his youthful views and all the others neglected? The answer is that it supported the dominant assumptions of :r9th Century German scholars who were interested in the new theory of development, and like many an old ship, it has been kept in service long past its time of usefulness. There is another picture of the young Plutarch which has been largely suppressed. We can begin with the vignette he gives of himself in De E apud Delphos where he describes himself as an ardent youth about to enter the Academy, which was then under the direction of Ammonios, and in which he gives a fairly long speech as one of the characters of the dialogue. 2 He describes 2 In his article for the Bude Congres, "Le platonisme de Plutarque," pp. 519-30, H. Dorrie argued that Plutarch's Platonism is a deviate Platon­ ism out of the mainstream of Middle Platonism, that he never belonged to the Academy-though he probably received his philosophical formation there and then left immediately after, and that it is possible that neither he nor Ammonios were ever members of the Academy. Dorrie's heretical view · was sharply opposed by two Plutarchists present, Flaceliere and Cuvigny, pp. 529-30, who question whether Middle Platonism ever demanded such orthodoxy as Dorrie suggests. Besides Plutarch's testimony in De E about his entrance into the Academy, at the end of Themistocles he records that the town of Magnesia set up benefices for the descendants of Themist­ ocles, and that a recipient of these was Themistocles of Athens, "an intimate and friend of mine in the school of Ammonios the philosopher." Our know­ ledge about Ammonios is excellently treated by C. P. Jones, "The Teacher of Plutarch," Harv. Stud., 71 (1966), pp. 205-13, who regards Ammonios as an Alexandrian-something which seems mysterious due to his holding of the post of strategos at Athens. It seems inconceivable that Plutarch should have claimed either that he or Ammonios were in the Academy if in fact they were not, and certainly no ancient authority queried their .
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