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Plutarch's adaptation of his source-material

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

C. B. R. Pelling
C. B. R. Pelling
Affiliation:
University College, Oxford
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Extract

In an earlier article, I argued that six of the Roman Lives—Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Brutus, and Antony—were prepared as a single project, and rest upon the same store of source-material. If this is so, it affords a unique opportunity to investigate Plutarch's techniques. There are substantial variations among these six versions, both crude inconsistencies of fact and subtler differences of interpretation. It no longer seems adequate to assume that these are simply inherited from differing source-material; they must arise from Plutarch's individual literary methods. Their analysis should therefore illuminate those methods. How much licence did Plutarch allow himself in rewriting and manipulating detail for artistic ends? And what considerations would lead him to vary his treatment in these ways?

In the first part of this paper, I examine the literary devices which Plutarch employed in streamlining his material: conflation of similar items, chronological compression and dislocation, fabrication of circumstantial detail, and the like. In the second, I turn to the differences of interpretation and emphasis among these Lives. These suggest some wider conclusions concerning Plutarch's biographical practice, which are developed in the final section: in particular, the very different aims, interests, and conventions which are followed in different Lives, and the flexible nature of this biographical genre.

Type
Research Article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 100 , 1980 , pp. 127 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1980

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References

I am most grateful to Mr D. A. Russell, Dr J. L. Moles and Mr R. H. A. Jenkyns for their helpful criticisms of this paper.

1 ‘Plutarch's method of work in the Roman Lives’, JHS xcix (1979) 74–96 (cited in what follows as Method).

2 Caes. 14.2 and Cato 32–3 form a similar case, which I discuss at Method 77 (with n. 21). Caesar treats two bills together; Cato has to distinguish them, as Plutarch there wishes to trace Cato's reactions to both. (In this paper, Cato refers to the Cato minor.)

3 For similar conflations, cf. e.g. Ant. 5.8, conflating at least two meetings of the senate in early 49 (Plutarch knows better at Caes. 30–1); Ant. 14.3, with Method 77; Caes. 30.6, where the outburst of ‘Lentulus’ combines two remarks made by Marcellus, , Pomp. 58.6Google Scholar and 10 (below, p. 140); and Cic. 15.4–5, combining (i) the two reports from Etruria and (ii) the tumultus decree and the s.u.c. Note also that in Coriolanus he appears to combine details of the battles of Regillus and of the Naevian meadow: Russell, , JRS liii (1963) 23–4Google Scholar.

4 Similar instances are collected in Sherwin-White, A. N., CQ xxvii (1977) 177–8Google Scholar; cf. also Carney, T. J., JHS lxxx (1960) 26–7Google Scholar, for similar cases in Marius.

5 The debate concerned the grant of stipendium for Caesar's troops. It presumably took place after Luca, but before the debate on the consular provinces in (?) June: cf. Cic. prov. cons. 28. Plutarch's notice of Cato's absence is often regarded as a blunder: so e.g. Garzetti ad loc, and Luibheid, C., CPh lxv (1970) 89Google Scholar n. 13. But Cato seems to have returned from Cyprus at almost exactly this time, in spring or early summer, 56 (Oost, S. I., CPh 1 (1955) 107—8Google Scholar). There is no reason to think that he reached Rome before the stipendium debate, and Plutarch's version can stand.

6 See now Ward, A. M., AJAH ii (1977) 26–36Google Scholar (correcting CPh lxx [1975] 267–8). Suet. Div.Iul. puts the pirate episode after the Dolabella trial, and this is confirmed by the precise reference of Vell. ii 42.3. Caesar there refers the matter to the proconsul of Bithynia and Asia, who seems to be called Iuncus or Iunius Iuncus (both emendations are due to Nipperdey: Iunium cum codd.). This can only be the Ἴουγκος of Caes. 2.6, who apparently held this unique combination of provinces for the first part of 74. (See Ward, AJAH art. cit.; Broughton, , MRR ii 98, 100Google Scholar; Magie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton 1950) 1126–7, 1204.)Google Scholar Caesar was held by the pirates for 38 days: his capture should therefore be late 75 or 74.

7 Suet. Div. Iul. 4 again places this after the Dolabella trial, connecting it with the pirate adventure. If that connexion is historical, the date should again be 75/4.

8 Strasburger, H., Caesars Eintritt in die Geschichte (Munich 1938) 72–3Google Scholar. Strasburger demonstrates the uniform nature of the tradition for Caesar's early years.

9 Meier, Ch., Hist. x (1961) 69–79Google Scholar.—Such displacements are very frequent. For further examples, cf. e.g. Ant. 12.6 and Caes. 60.6, discussed at Method 86 n. 88; Ant. 21, where material from the Second Philippic is delayed to a point after Cicero's, death (Method 90)Google Scholar; Pomp. 64.5, where Plutarch displaces the arrival of Labienus in order to include him in his survey of Pompey's, new supporters (contrast Caes. 34.5)Google Scholar; Caes. 11.5–6 and 32.9, using material which the source apparently attached to Caesar's, quaestorship (cf. Suet. Div. Iul. 7–8)Google Scholar; Pomp. 48.9–12, where the amoibaia material is brought forward from 56 B.C. (cf. Dio xxxix 19, Cic. Q.fr. ii 3.2), as Plutarch wishes to connect it with events two years earlier; and apparently several displacements in his account of senate-meetings before the outbreak of war (see excursus, p. 139 f.).

10 For instances of this, cf. Method 77; for transfers, Method 79 n. 41. Add Brut. 24.7, where the watchword ‘Apollo’ at Philippi is transferred from Antony to Brutus.

11 JRS liii (1963) 21–8, esp. 23–5. For similar instances in Marius, cf. Carney, , JHS lxxx (1960) 28–9Google Scholar; in mul. virt., Stadter, P. A., Plutarch's Historical Methods (Cambridge Mass. 1965) 138–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Method 90, with n. 120.

13 Method 89–90.

14 The suggestion that Antony should be approached comes awkwardly after his subservient antics at the Lupercalia; disturbingly little is made of the astonishing item of Antony's knowledge of the plot; the ‘renewed discussions’ at 13.3 are also clumsy; and it is odd that Trebonius is not named in the final sentence (ἐνίους: cf. Method 79 n. 41).

15 Cf. Method 84 n. 69, 89 with n. 108. The contact with Appian's, Celtica suggests that Plutarch drew his account from the Pollio-source: Method 84–5Google Scholar.

16 Especially Gelzer, , RE viii A (1912) 998Google Scholar, and Thevenot, E., Les Éduens n'ont pas trahi (Coll. Latomus 1950) 132Google Scholar, 151.

17 Method 90.

18 A further ‘fabrication of a context’ seems to be Brut. 19, where Plutarch alone attests a senate-meeting for 18th March, 44. He appears to have introduced this separate session in order to include disparate material from a secondary source: Method 86 n. 90.

19 Method 91–6.

20 I defend and elaborate this interpretation of the Caesar passage in a forthcoming article in RhM.

21 Cato's foresight is stressed at Cato 31.7, 33.5, 35.7, 42.6, 43.9, 45.7, 49.1–2, 51.4–5, 52.1–3; it is given a divine tinge at 35.7, 42.6, and 43.3, and is contrasted with Pompey's blindness at 43.9, 49.1–2, and 52.3.

22 Caesar (28.2, 29.5, 33.5) and Cato (49.1, 52.4) make related points much less extravagantly; in neither Life does Plutarch think this Italian joy worth mentioning. To judge from Appian (B.C. ii 28.107–8), Pollio did not make much of it.

23 Pomp. 57.6 stresses that it was his ϵὐλαβϵία which had earlier guided his ϵὐτυχήματα to safety. Plutarch presumably has in mind such instances as 8.5, 13.2–3, 13.9, 19.8, 21.5–7, 22.4, 26.1, 27.3, 33.5, 36.3, 40.8–9, 43.3; cf. also 2.10, 20.8, 39.2, 42.4.

24 Especially the scenes of Pompey's death, 78–80; Plutarch's technique is there extremely visual, describing events from the viewpoint of Cornelia and the rest of Pompey's followers, still at sea.—The Italian reception is also intended to evoke the procession of ch. 45, a previous turning-point of Pompey's life.

25 Esp. 21.3, 21.8, 41.4, 42.12, 46.2, 50.3, 53.8–10, 57.6, 73.8, 74.5–6, 75.1–2, 75.5, 82(2).1.

26 Talk of ‘tragic influence’ is of course facile and problematic. Sensitivity to the ‘tragic’ elements of the human condition has never been confined to one genre of literature, nor any single art-form, nor even to art itself. Truly ‘tragic’ elements in a writer spring from his humane sensibilities and sympathies; literary allusiveness is secondary. (When the stylistic elements become primary, we are close to ‘tragic history’ in the debased Hellenistic sense.) I here suggest only that, in Plutarch's best writing, his tragic sensibilities are given literary depth and resonance by the adoption of motifs from Tragedy, the literary genre. Cf. esp. de Lacy, P., AJP lxxiii (1952) 359–71Google Scholar; note also the cautious remarks of Russell, , Plutarch (London 1973) 123Google Scholar, and Wardman, A. E., Plutarch's Lives (London 1974) 168–79Google Scholar.

27 In using terms such as ‘triumvirate’ or ‘independent agent’, I do not suggest that these categories are appropriate for illuminating historical fact; I do suggest that it was in categories such as these that Plutarch approached and understood the period.—I omit the earlier Cicero from this analysis; the later Lives are better informed on the fifties than Cic., and we need not assume that Plutarch then had the same view of events. Cic. in fact represents Clodius as largely independent, with his hostility to Cicero dating from the Bona Dea affair. That emphasis suits the Life's interest in Cicero's private affairs, especially gossip relating to Terentia (e.g. 20.3, 29.2–4, 30.4, 41.2–3). The triumvirs are at first friendly to Cicero, and their feelings change only when Caesar is offended over his offered legatio (30.4–5). Caesar then ‘strengthens’ Clodius, and dissuades Pompey from helping Cicero. There is no more extensive deal between the triumvirs and Clodius, only this casual backing for Cicero's exile.

28 So S. I. Oost (n. 5) 109 n. 3: ‘Plut. Cat. min. 34 surely can only mean that the triumvirate was behind the silencing of Cato’.

29 Though the Caesar version is closer to that of Cicero (n. 27), and may be a simplification of that Life's account.

30 For an instance of this, cf. Method 77.

31 There is of course considerable historical acumen in Plutarch's portrayal: ‘nosti hominis tarditatem et taciturnitatem’ (Cic. fam. i 5b.2), and cf. e.g. Gelzer, , Pompeius 2 (Munich 1959) 158–9Google Scholar, 170–1, 175. Gelzer (164) also finds it useful to contrast Pompey's phlegmatic conduct of politics with ‘die alte Energie’ on campaigns. But such matters are beyond the scope of this paper.

32 Esp. 49, 54, 55.12, 61.1: contrast the Life's earlier stress on his ϕιλαρχία, esp. 30.7–8. Pompey of course wants to retain his pre-eminent position (53.9–10), but the nearest approach to desire for a specific ἀρχή is the hint of 54.8, where he thanks Cato for his support.

33 The other Lives reflect the dilatoriness and indecision at the outset of the war (Caes. 33.4–6 and, less strongly, Cato 52.4, 53.3); but there is no similar attempt to prepare this theme in the accounts of the fifties. The psychological depth of Pompey contrasts with the crude passage at Cato 49.1, where in 52 B.C. Pompey ἦν ὄκνου καὶ μελλήσεως ἀτόλμου πρὸς τὸ κωλύειν καὶ ἐπιχειρεῖν ὑπόπλεως.

34 Pomp. 64 treats the forces which Pompey gathered during 49 B.C., and Plutarch's argument seems intended to justify the strategy of leaving Italy. Some praised Pompey's departure, though Caesar and Cicero uttered dismissive remarks (63.1–2); but Caesar showed in his actions that he particularly feared τὸν χρόνον (63.3–4); ἐν δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ μεγάλη συνέστη Πομπηΐῳ δύναμις (64.1). The strength which Pompey now acquired contrasts forcefully with his initial weakness (57.6–9, 60.6–8). Plutarch's approval of the strategy seems clear; though, in a different train of thought, he later criticises the decision to abandon Rome (Comparison 83[3].6–8, cf. 61.6–7).

35 At 84(4).6 the θέατρον image is also woven into the texture of the athletic imagery which pervades the Life (cf. esp. 8.7, 17.2, 20.2, 41.2, 51.2, 66.4, 84[4] passim): Pharsalus is ‘the stadium and theatre for the contest’; ‘no herald called Pompey to come and fight, if he would not leave the crown for another’. A good example both of the systematic elaboration of Plutarch's imagery, and of the interaction of different systems. For the ‘theatre’ motif, we might compare the theatrical imagery in another Life rich in tragedy, the Antony: Dtr. 53.10, Ant. 29.4, 45.4, 54.5. Antony here echoes and develops the imagery of Demetrius: cf. de Lacy (n. 26) 371.

36 Galba 2.5, Fab. 16.6.

37 On the Nicias passage, cf. Wardman, , CQ xxi (1971) 257–61Google Scholar, and op. cit. (n. 26) 154–7. For the interest in ἦθος, cf. esp. Pomp. 8.6–7, Demosth. 11.7; for Plutarch's terminology, Russell, , G&R xiii (1966) 139–54Google Scholar.

38 Cf esp. Per. 1–2, Aem. I.

39 Dtr. I, cf. Cim. 2.2–5.

40 Personal life: Pomp. 18.3, 40.8–9, 53.2. Administration: 39.4–6, cf. 27.6–7, 28.5–7. More praise: 10.10–14, 20.6–8, 49.14. Criticism: esp. 10.3–5, 29, 30.8, 38.1, 40.6, 44.4–5, 46.3, 47.8, 53.9–10, 55.6–10, 67.7–10. And the Comparison, as always, is rich in praise and blame.

41 28.5, man as naturally responsive to kindness; 29.5, the culpable ϕιλοτιμία of Achilles; 53.10, Fortune cannot meet the demands of human nature, for greed is insatiable; 70, blindness and greed; 73.11, ϕϵῦ τοῖσι γϵνναίοισιν ὡς ἅπαν καλόν.

42 Campaigns: Cato 8.2–3, 9.5–10, 12.1. Administration: 16–18, 21.3 ff., 35–8, 44, 48.8–10. Candidatures: 8.4–5, 20–21, 42.3–4, 49.2–6. Rebuff: 50.

43 Cato 58.5, 59.4–8, 65.2, 65.6–7, 70.6–7.

44 2.1–5, 13, 35.4–6, 57.

45 Brother: 3.8–10, 8.1, 11.1–8, 15.4. Women: 24.4–25.13, 30.3–10, 52.5–9; cf. 73.2–4, on the sexual predilections of Cato's son. Drink: 6.1–4, but cf. the rejection of the slander at 44.2.

46 31–3; cf. Method 95.

47 7.3, 52.7–9, on married life; 9.10, on ‘true virtue’; 44.12–14, on justice; 46.8, on senseless extravagance; 50.3, on the wise man's constancy.

48 Cf. Steidle, W., Sueton und die antike Biographie (Munich 1951) 13–24Google Scholar, echoed by Brutscher, C., Analysen zu Suetons Divus Julius u. d. Parallelüberlieferung (Bern/Stuttgart 1958) 27–31Google Scholar, 89–91; Garzetti's comm. on Caesar, xliii–xlix.

49 I discuss the precise interpretation of this sentence in the forthcoming RhM article.

50 The pedestrian Dio xli 17.2–3 makes the same point more crudely.

51 Here, once again, there are elements of tragedy: cf. Method 79. As so often, a major Shakespearian theme may be seen as a brilliant elaboration of a Plutarchean idea.

52 Cf. Method 78.

53 Thus Caesar's meddlings in Rome are ‘demagogy’ (20.2): the unprecedented fifteen-day supplicatio was largely the response to ἡ πρὸς ἐκϵῖνον ϵὔνοια τῶν πολλῶν (21.2); the reaction of τὸ πλῆθος to Favonius' outburst is traced (21.8–9); the popular emotions at Julia's death are emphasised (23.7). Other Lives differ: see n. 55.

54 I have said something of this at Method 78–9, and tried to show that this reading involved some reworking of material.

55 For instance, Pompey is more interested in Pompey's relations with the senate (above, pp. 133–5). Thus Pomp. 51.1–3 gives no stress to the demos in its account of Caesar's urban machinations: it is there ‘aediles, praetors, consuls, and their wives’ who are stressed. The Pompey account of Luca closes with Pompey's clash with Marcellinus (51); the parallel Caes. 21 ends by stressing the reaction of the demos. Pompey gives no hint that the demos theme is important for an understanding of the period, and there are other places where it cuts away references to the people: Cato, for instance, has more of the popular, as well as the senatorial, opposition to Pompey (e.g. Cato 42.3–4, 42.7, 43.6–7). Cato itself has material which would be a great embarrassment to the tidy account of Caesar, particularly some popular enthusiasm for Cato himself and the optimate cause (e.g. 44.12–14, and the passages mentioned above). That again suits the emphasis of Cato, for the popular reaction reflects Plutarch's own enthusiasm for Cato. Once again, Plutarch has in each Life selected the political analysis to suit his interests and themes.—For the different emphases of Brutus and Caesar in describing Caesar's death, cf. Method 78–9.

56 Cf. e.g. Caes. 8.2, where Plutarch suppresses the ἐπιστόλιον ἀκόλαστον brought to Caesar during the Catilinarian debate: contrast Cato 24.1–3, Brut. 5.2–4. Caes. 49.10 makes little of Caesar's affair with Cleopatra; and the initial mention of Nicomedes (1.7) is very tame. Contrast such passages as Sull. 2.2–7, Pomp. 2.5–10, Cim. 4.6–10, Crass. 1.2 ff.

57 But there are a few: esp. 17, and e.g. 38, 49.7–8.

58 Plutarch does make something of this (34.7, 48.3–4, 54.5, 57.4–6), but might easily have made more.

59 Contrast Plutarch's, disapproval of vulgar demagogy at Cato 46.8Google Scholar, 49.6, Aem. 2.6, praec.reip.ger. 802d al., Brut. 10.6; of extravagance and debt at praec.reip.ger. 802d, 821 f, 822c–823e, and de uitando aere alieno.

60 Cf. 14.16–17, 29.5, 48.5, 56.8–9. Note 54.6, a much more measured description of Caesar's, Anticato than the vituperative Cato 11.7–8Google Scholar, 36.5, 54.2.

61 Ant. 35.2–4, 53–4, 56.4, 57.4–5, 59.3, 72.3. Other ancient accounts make far less of Octavia, and this theme seems to be Plutarch's own elaboration.

62 Antony: 4, 9.5–9, 24.9–12, 43.3–6. Cleopatra: esp. 27.3–5, 29.1–7. Fulvia: 10.5–10. Octavia: cf. 54.3–5. Timon: 70.

63 E.g. dress and demeanour, 4.1–5, 17.3–6; dream, 16.7; comment on Megarian, bouleuterion, 23.3Google Scholar; comment on the repeated tribute, 24.7–9; detail of the feasts, 28; fishing anecdote, 29.5–7; dice and fighting cocks, 33; etc.

64 Dtr. I, esp. 1.6.

65 9.5–9, 21.1–3, cf. 56.8; 6.6–7, 15.4–5, 24.5–10.

66 Russell (n. 26) 142.

67 Russell (n. 26) 135.

68 93(6).4. What little ethical colouring there is in the narrative is favourable to Antony: 67.9–10, 75.3.

69 The Life is correspondingly rich in theatrical imagery: see n. 35.

70 ‘This Life is, to a large extent, the story not of one man but of two, Brutus and Cassius’, Wardman, (n. 26) 174Google Scholar. The complexities of this Life are well analysed in Moles', J. L. dissertation, A Commentary on Plutarch's Life of Brutus (D. Phil, thesis Oxford 1979)Google Scholar.

71 Chiron iv (1974) 306–11. Further references, both to ancient sources and to secondary literature, may be found in Raaflaub's paper.

72 Caes. 30.5 has τῶν πϵρὶ Ἀντώνιον, but this seems the later Greek usage, equivalent merely to ‘Antony’: cf. Holden, on Them. 7.6Google Scholar, Hamilton, on Alex. 41.5Google Scholar. Antony is certainly already tribune at the time of the Caesar debate (30.3).

73 Though there may well be further confusion (or conflation) here. Raaflaub (309) may be right to suspect that Plutarch's notice in Pompey combines Caesar's terms of 1 Jan. 49 with the occasion, some weeks earlier, of Ant. 5.3–4.

74 Pompey (the one Life which refers to the 1 Dec. 50 debate, when the triple sequence of votes certainly took place) in fact gives this sequence least clearly. There Plutarch mentions only two votes, first that Caesar should disarm, secondly that both should do so; and he makes Curio introduce both motions, suppressing the role of the consuls. But Pompey does correctly have 22 senators oppose the final motion; Antony and Caesar have all those present support ‘Antony’.

75 Caesar conflates the two apophthegmata, and gives them to Lentulus (30.6); Pompey keeps them separate (58.6, 10), and assigns them to Marcellus. See above, p. 129.

76 So Raaflaub 308–9. Dio xli 3.1 is a poor witness, but he confirms the uestis mutatio for the 1 Jan. 49 context: Raaflaub (n. 71) 307.—Ed. Meyer, , Caesars Monarchie 3 (Stuttgart/Berlin 1922) 284Google Scholar n. 1, assumed that the Caesar-Antony and Pompey versions were doublets, and this has been the general view: contra, Holmes, T. R., Roman Republic (Oxford 1923) ii 330Google Scholar n. 2.

77 Raaflaub (n. 71) 307.

78 The device of the false rumour (60.1–2), followed by the truth (60.2ff.). False rumours are important in Pompey: above, p. 131, 133 f. The importance of the tribunes' flight in Caesar and Antony explains a fact which puzzled Raaflaub (307), that Antony's proposal (in Caes.-Ant.) failed while Curio's (in Pomp.) succeeded. Curio's ploy must be successful, for Plutarch there wishes to pass to an exulting sequel, the joy with which the demos greeted him (58.9). Antony's proposal must fail, for the sequel there is the humiliating flight.