Plutarch's Romane Questions / With dissertations on Italian cults, myths, taboos, man-worship, aryan marriage, sympathetic magic and the eating of beans

Plutarch's Romane Questions. Translated A.D. 1603 by Philemon Holland, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Now again edited by Frank Byron Jebons, M.A., Classical Tutor to the University of Durham With Dissertations on Italian Cults, Myths, Taboos, Man- Worship, Aryan Marriage Sympathetic Magic and the Eating of Beans
LONDON. MDCCCXCII. PUBLISHED BY DAVID NUTT IN THE STRAND
That this, like the rest of Plutarch's reasons, is fanciful, may not be denied, but would not be worth mentioning, were it not that here we have, implicit, the reason why no modern translation could ever vie with Philemon Holland's version of the Romane Questions . It is not merely because Philemon's antiquated English harmonises with Plutarch's antiquated speculation, and by that harmony disposes the reader's mind favourably towards it; but in Philemon's day, England, like the other countries of Western Europe, was discovering that all that is worth knowing is in Greek. The universal respect felt for Greek in those days, even by schoolmasters (Holland was himself Head-master of Coventry Free School), is still apparent to those who read this translation. But things are now so changed that the English language of to-day cannot provide a seemly garb for Plutarch's ancient reasonings. To say in modern English that five is the odd number most connected with marriage, is to expose the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers to modern ridicule. But when Philemon says, Now among al odde numbers it seemeth that Cinque is most nuptial, even the irreverent modern cannot fail to feel that Cinque was an eminently respectable character, whose views were strictly honourable and a bright example to other odde numbers. Again, Philemon's insertion of the words it seemeth makes for reverence. The insertion is not apologetic; nor does it intimate that the translator hesitates to subscribe to so strange a statement. Rather, it summons the reader to give closer attention to the words which are about to follow—words of wisdom such as is to be found nowhere else but only in the fountain of all knowledge, Greek. Insertions and amplifications are indeed characteristic of Philemon as a translator. But, though his style is florid, it is lucid; his amplifications make the meaning clearer to the English reader, and, as a rule, only state explicitly what is really implied in the original. Sometimes ( e.g. , towards the end of R. Q. 6) he does enlarge on the text beyond all measure; sometimes, again, defective scholarship leads him to ascribe things to Plutarch which Plutarch never said ( e.g. , in R. Q. 5, ταῦτα τρόπον τινὰ τοῖς Ἑλληνικοις ἔοικεν does not mean this may seeme in some sort to have beene derived from the Greeks ); and sometimes he is mistaken as to the meaning of a word ( e.g. , ἔνοχος in R. Q. 5). On the other hand, where the text is corrupt, he sees and says what the meaning really is; and Hearne's verdict that Holland had an admirable knack in translating books does not go beyond the mark. Indeed, it does not do justice to Philemon, for it hardly prepares us to learn that, in the infancy of the study of Greek in England, Philemon threw off, among other trifles, translations of all the Moralia of Plutarch, the whole of Livy, the enormous Natural History of Pliny, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus, the Cyropædia of Xenophon, and Camden's Britannia . Southey is more just to the assiduous labours of a life of study carried to the age of eighty-five, when he calls Philemon the best of the Hollands. But the most discerning criticism of Holland, as translator generall in his age (Fuller), is contained in Owen's epigram on Holland's translation of the Natural History , that he was both plenior and planior than Plinius.