The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Plutarch, The Morals, vol. 3 [1878] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. 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Author: Plutarch Translator: William W. Goodwin About This Title: Vol. 3 of a massive 5 volume work in which Plutarch muses on all manner of topics ranging from virtue and vice, friendship, flattery, the nature of love, stoic philosophy, fate, to the nature of government. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1213 Online Library of Liberty: The Morals, vol. 3 About Liberty Fund: Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Copyright Information: The text is in the public domain. Fair Use Statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 3 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1213 Online Library of Liberty: The Morals, vol. 3 Table Of Contents Plutarch’s Morals. Whether ’twere Rightly Said, Live Concealed. An Abstract of a Comparison Betwixt Aristophanes and Menander. Of Banishment, Or Flying One’s Country. Of Brotherly Love. Wherefore the Pythian Priestess Now Ceases to Deliver Her Oracles In Verse. Of Those Sentiments Concerning Nature With Which Philosophers Were Delighted. Book I. Book II. Book III. Book IV. Book V. A Breviate of a Discourse, Showing That the Stoics Speak Greater Improbabilities Than the Poets. Plutarch’s Symposiacs. Book I. Book II. Book III. Book IV. Book V. Book VI. Book VII. Book VIII. Book IX. Of Moral Virtue. Plutarch’s Natural Questions. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1213 Online Library of Liberty: The Morals, vol. 3 [Back to Table of Contents] PLUTARCH’S MORALS. WHETHER ’TWERE RIGHTLY SAID, LIVE CONCEALED. 1.It is sure, he that said it had no mind to live concealed, for he spoke it out of a design of being taken notice of for his very saying it, as if he saw deeper into things than every vulgar eye, and of purchasing to himself a reputation, how unjustly soever, by inveigling others into obscurity and retirement. But the poet says right: I hate the man who makes pretence to wit, Yet in his own concerns waives using it.* For they tell us of one Philoxenus the son of Eryxis, and Gnatho the Sicilian, who were so over greedy after any dainties set before them, that they would blow their nose in the dish, whereby, turning the stomachs of the other guests, they themselves went away fuller crammed with the rarities. Thus fares it with all those whose appetite is always lusting and insatiate after glory. They bespatter the repute of others, as their rivals in honor, that they themselves may advance smoothly to it and without a rub. They do like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead, still so managing the strokes of the oar that the vessel may make on to its port. So these men who recommend to us such kind of precepts row hard after glory, but with their face another way. To what purpose else need this have been said? — why committed to writing and handed down to posterity? Would he live incognito to his contemporaries, who is so eager to be known to succeeding ages? 2. But besides, doth not the thing itself sound ill, to bid you keep all your lifetime out of the world’s eye, as if you had rifled the sepulchres of the dead, or done such like detestable villany which you should hide for? What! is it grown a crime to live, unless you can keep all others from knowing you do so? For my part, I should pronounce that even an ill-liver ought not to withdraw himself from the converse of others. No; let him be known, let him be reclaimed, let him repent; so that, if you have any stock of virtue, let it not lie unemployed, or if you have been viciously bent, do not by flying the means continue unreclaimed and uncured. Point me out therefore and distinguish me the man to whom you adopt this admonition. If to one devoid of sense, goodness, or wit, it is like one that should caution a person under a fever or raving madness not to let it be known where he is, for fear the physicians should find him, but rather to skulk in some dark corner, where he and his diseases may escape discovery. So you who labor under that pernicious, that scarce curable disease, wickedness, are by parity of reason bid to conceal your vices, your envyings, your superstitions, like some disorderly or feverous pulse, for fear of falling into the hands of them who might prescribe well to you and set you to rights again. Whereas, alas! in the days of remote antiquity, men exhibited the sick to public view, when every charitable passenger who had labored himself under the like malady, or had experienced a remedy on them that did, communicated to the diseased all the receipts he knew; thus, say they, skill in physic was patched up by multiplied experiments, and grew to a mighty art. At the same rate ought all the infirmities of a dissolute life, all PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 5 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1213 Online Library of Liberty: The Morals, vol. 3 the irregular passions of the soul, to be laid open to the view of all, and undergo the touch of every skilful hand, that all who examine into the temper may be able to prescribe accordingly. For instance, doth anger transport you? The advice in that case is, Shun the occasions of it. Doth jealousy torment you? Take this or that course. Art thou love-sick? It hath been my own case and infirmity to be so too; but I saw the folly of it, I repented, I grew wiser. But for those that lie, denying, hiding, mincing, and palliating their vices, it makes them but take the deeper dye, it rivets their faults into them. 3. Again, if on the other hand this advice be calculated for the owners of worth and virtue, if they must be condemned to privacy and live unknown to the world, you do in effect bid Epaminondas lay down his arms, you bid Lycurgus rescind his laws, you bid Thrasybulus spare the tyrants, in a word, you bid Pythagoras forbear his instructions, and Socrates his reasonings and discourses; nay, you lay injunctions chiefly upon yourself, Epicurus, not to maintain that epistolary correspondence with your Asiatic friends, not to entertain your Egyptian visitants, not to be tutor to the youth of Lampsacus, not to present and send about your books to women as well as men, out of an ostentation of some wisdom in yourself more than vulgar, not to leave such particular directions about your funeral. And in fine, to what purpose, Epicurus, did you keep a public table? Why that concourse of friends, that resort of fair young men, at your doors? Why so many thousand lines so elaborately composed and writ upon Metrodorus, Aristobulus, and Chaeredemus, that death itself might not rob us of them; if virtue must be doomed to oblivion, art to idleness and inactivity, philosophy to silence, and all a man’s happiness must be forgotten? 4. But if indeed, in the state of life we are under, you will needs seclude us from all knowledge and acquaintance with the world (as men shut light from their entertainments and drinking-bouts, for which they set the night apart), let it be only such who make it the whole business of life to heap pleasure upon pleasure; let such live recluses all their days.