Chapter 5 - Plutarch As a Polemicist

Summary

Plutarch is well known as a generally even-tempered expositor of the great tapestry of Greek history, literature, and philosophy, and a benign counselor on questions of ethical conduct and social mores, but there is another side to him, that of the accomplished polemicist, primarily in the area of philosophy, but also concerning his predecessors in the craft of history, and on occasion the poets as well. In all of Plutarch’s polemics, we can discern common threads. While historians (especially Herodotus) and poets are criticized primarily for their flawed socioethical views, the Stoics, Epicureans, and even Plutarch’s predecessors in the Platonic tradition have the inconsistencies in their positions relentlessly skewered, and the most absurd consequences of their misguided arguments teased out. This essay surveys a selection of Plutarch’s critiques of previous historians, then casts a brief glance at his censure of the poets, before turning to an examination of his polemics against rival philosophical schools, and lastly rival views within the Platonist tradition.