[1]. The reproof might ostensibly be general, but its particular application was readily felt. Musonius, we are told by Epictetus, made all his hearers feel ‘as if some one had been talking to him about them’.
[2]. See Concerning Busybodies, 522 E.
[3]. Over and above his resemblances to Macaulay as a writer of essays and biographical history, there is a distinct similarity between their conversational tastes. We can imagine a Plutarch fully at home with Macaulay at one of those astonishing early Victorian breakfast-parties where a man might be asked if he ‘knew his Popes’, and where he might be endured while he recited them. Plutarch’s Table-Talk, like his Dinner-Party of the Seven Sages, reveals for contemporary Greek society the same deliberate cult of intellectual conversation sharpened by challenge and debate. In such conversation he must himself have played a conspicuous part. Nevertheless, it may fairly be gathered that the Greek or Graeco-Roman interlocutors in the reign of Trajan were the more ingenuously athirst for reciprocal enlightenment, however dubiously we may regard the value of the information or misinformation actually gained. Nor is it easy to believe that Plutarch would have thought it etiquette to indulge in the protracted monologues to which the more modern society submitted with such grace as it best could.
[4]. e.g. in his De repugnantiis Stoicorum and his Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum. Yet, as Mahaffy says, ‘it would be hard to say whether the number of Stoic dogmas which he rejects exceeds that which he quotes with approval’ (The Greek World under Roman Sway, pp. 300 sqq.).
[5]. Volkmann names in particular Clement of Alexandria and Basil.
[6]. This does not mean that he had no friends among the rhetorical teachers (the contrary is shown by his reference to ‘our Niger’ in praec. san., § 16), but only that he distrusted the type. He refused to approve of a fluent and polished style as an end in itself. Pliny describes how the amazingly voluble Isaeus would offer his audience a choice of subject and allow it to dictate the side which he should take. He would then rise and demonstrate his extemporizing powers with much show of rhetorical ornament.
[7]. Volkmann says of the Lives, ‘Das Werthvolle an ihnen sind nicht die historischen Details, die er giebt, sondern die eingestreuten Reflexionen, die ethischen Betrachtungen, das Eingehen auf individuelle Stimmungen und Leidenschaften der grossen Männer.’
[8]. Aulicis tantum scripsit, non doctis, says Scaliger.
[9]. Volkmann guesses that it is ein Produkt der späteren Sophistik. If so, we may congratulate the Sophist on his perfect reproduction of Plutarch’s style and of his non-sophistic tone.
[10]. Bacon’s Essay Of Followers and Friends owes almost nothing to Plutarch beyond the title. We do, however, find him borrowing the words ‘for there is no such Flatterer as a Man’s selfe’.