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Alexander Hamilton's Notes on Plutarch in His Pay Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2011

Philip Stadter
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Abstract

Alexander Hamilton's notes to his reading of two pairs of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, Theseus-Romulus and Lycurgus-Numa, probably made in the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge, reveal his early attention to the rewards of founding a new state, the natures and advantages of different political institutions, and economic, social, military, and cultural practices. They furnish a valuable testament to Hamilton's early intellectual development. He focuses on monarchy and the danger of tyranny and on the institutions by which states had limited the power of monarchs and of the popular will: the senate at Rome and the gerousia and later the ephors at Sparta. Hamilton admires Numa's use of religion to nourish civil society, while his interest in the Spartans' treatment of their helots is a testimony to his early concern about the problem of slavery.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , Spring 2011 , pp. 199 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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References

1 For recent work on Hamilton's life, see Chernow, Ron, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin Books, 2004)Google Scholar and Brookhiser, Richard, Alexander Hamilton, American (New York: Free Press, 1999)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Prof. Michael Lienesch and the anonymous referees for many constructive suggestions.

2 See in general Reinhold, Meyer, ed., The Classick Pages: Classical Reading of Eighteenth-Century Americans (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1975)Google Scholar, chap. 3 (“The Incomparable Plutarch”), and, more generally, Richard, Carl J., The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 Franklin, Benjamin, The Autobiography, and Other Writings, ed. Lemisch, L. Jesse (New York: New American Library, 1961), 26Google Scholar; John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 24, 1789, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, quoted in McCullough, David, John Adams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 409Google Scholar. In a letter from The Hague Adams lamented, “my breakfasts don't relish, for want of a little Plutarch, with the coffee” (Adams, John to Adams, John Quincy, May 28, 1784, in Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 5, ed. Ryerson, R. A. et al. [Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1993], 334)Google Scholar. Abigail Adams was reading Plutarch in Leiden in 1786: “I tarried at home and read Plutarch's Lives.” She may have been reading Galba and Otho, as she complains of reading the lives of the Roman emperors, “most of which exhibit tyranny, cruelty, devastation, and horror,” unless she is thinking either of the civil war lives or of Suetonius (Adams, Abigail to Smith, Abigail, August 15, 1786, in Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 7, ed. Hogan, M. A. et al. [Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2005], 319Google Scholar). John Adams's library contained a five-volume set of the Lives in Greek and Latin (London, 1723–29) and the French translation of the Lives by Dacier (Paris, 1778).

4 Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and Jay, John, The Federalist, ed. Hall, T. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Plutarch is not cited, but the story comes from him.

5 See Adair, Douglass, “A Note on Certain of Hamilton's Pseudonyms,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 12 (April 1955): 282–97Google Scholar. Adair lists the Plutarchan pseudonyms Phocion (1784), Tully (1794), Camillus (1795), and Pericles (1803) in addition to the Publius of The Federalist. The 1787 letters signed “Caesar” once attributed to Hamilton were written by John Lamb (see Brookhiser, Alexander Hamilton, 191).

6 Brookhiser, Alexander Hamilton, 40, calls attention to Hamilton's polemic attacks on Samuel Chase in fall 1778, signed “Publius.” The name Publius derives from Publius Valerius Publicola, celebrated in a life by Plutarch (found in the same volume as the four annotated in the pay book) for resistance to the return of the tyrant Tarquin, for setting the new republic on a firm foundation, and for his goodwill toward the populace. The letters against Chase are the earliest evidence that Hamilton continued reading beyond the four lives recorded in the pay book. The lives of Solon and Publicola immediately followed upon those four in the edition Hamilton was reading.

7 The popularity of Addison's Cato, based on Plutarch's Life of Cato of Utica, is perhaps the clearest indication of how one life could stimulate antityrannical fervor. As Caesar stood for every irresponsible monarch, Cato could represent the ideal republican, despite Plutarch's own criticisms of his policies. Benezet's letter to Franklin (see note 51 below) is another. Adair, “Hamilton's Pseudonyms,” gives a strongly psychological reading of Hamilton's pseudonyms Phocion, Tully (Cicero), Camillus, and Pericles. He thinks that they reflect Hamilton's idea of himself, noting that they were all men who despised the mob that they dedicated their lives to save and who suffered at the hands of the populace, although their value was recognized afterwards. Hamilton's assertion, reported in a letter by Jefferson, that Julius Caesar was “the greatest man who ever lived,” leads Adair to see a relentless ambition as the explanation of his later policy. This view is challenged by Owens, Mackubin T. Jr. (“A Further Note on Certain of Hamilton's Pseudonyms: The ‘Love of Fame’ and the Uses of Plutarch,” Journal of the Early Republic 4, no. 3 [1984]: 275–86)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who notes two further pseudonyms taken from Plutarch's Marius, Catullus and Metellus, used in essays of 1792. These men defended the republic against Marius's populist maneuvers, without any desire for monarchical power.

8 Hamilton's, writings are collected in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Syrett, Harold C. et al. , 27 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–87)Google Scholar (hereafter PAH). The pay book notes are found at PAH 1:373–412, the notes on Plutarch at 1:391–407. The editor's notes give the pages of the Plutarch edition referred to by Hamilton. See also Panagopoulos, E. P., Alexander Hamilton's Pay Book (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1961)Google Scholar, an edition with notes that especially treat the first three sections; Panagopoulos, , “Hamilton's Notes in his Pay Book of the New York State Artillery Company,” American Historical Review 62 (1957): 310–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 110–12; and Stourzh, Gerald, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), 179Google Scholar, 261 nn. 20–21, 267 n. 112.

9 Hamilton's notes on Theseus are at PAH 1:391–93, on Romulus at 393–96, on Lycurgus at 396–404, and on Numa at 404–7. The notes on Numa are truncated at Numa 17, nine chapters from the end of the life and the Comparison that follows.

10 Postlethwayt, Malachy, Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, Translated from the French … with Large Additions and Improvements … to Which All Traders Are Subject, 2 vols. (London: John and Paul Knapton, 1751–55)Google Scholar.

11 PAH 1:390, citing Demosthenes, Philippic 1.39 and 44.

12 Throughout, parenthetical references in the text should be understood to be to PAH, vol. 1, unless otherwise indicated. In quotations of Hamilton's notes, the spelling is that of PAH, as are the line counts for Hamilton's excerpts, when given.

13 Dryden, John, Plutarch's Lives, in six volumes: translated from the Greek. With Notes, Explanatory and Critical, from Dacier and others. To which is prefix'd the Life of Plutarch, Written by Dryden (London: J. and R. Tonson, 1758)Google Scholar. The first volume contained the lives of Theseus, Romulus, Lycurgus, Numa, Solon, Publicola, Camillus, and Themistocles, with a Comparison for each pair except the last, for which Dacier wrote a substitute (370–82). For convenience's sake, I ascribe all the notes in the commentary to Dacier. André Dacier was elected to both the Academy of Inscriptions and the Académie française in 1695; he produced editions of Pompeius Festus and Valerius Flaccus as well as translations of Horace, Sophocles's Electra and Oedipus at Colonus, Aristotle's Poetics, Epictetus, and Hippocrates, in addition to Plutarch's Lives. His wife, Anne Lefèvre Dacier, was a scholar and translator in her own right. For André, see Farnham, Fern, Madame Dacier: Scholar and Humanist (Monterey, CA: Angel Press, 1976)Google Scholar and Santangelo, Giovanni Saverio, Madame Dacier, una filologa nella “crisi” (1672–1720) (Rome: Bulzoni, 1984), 55–76Google Scholar, 140–76 and the index, s.v. “Dacier, André.”

14 Despite this casual heading, Hamilton frequently enters the page numbers of his Plutarch edition in the margins of the pay book, an indication that he expected to return to these lives.

15 His entry on Procrustes (PAH 1:391) seems to be the only one in the section on Theseus that draws upon Dacier's full but rather abstruse notes on the many figures named in the life (for Procrustes, see Dryden, Plutarch's Lives 1:11 n. 2). Other “singular” items that he notes from the Theseus, the most mythological life, are the oracle that speaks of a pregnant woman as a “mystic vessel,” the Athenian payment of tribute to Minos, Theseus's institution of the Delian and Isthmian games, Castor and Pollux at Athens, and the Athenian sacrifice to Neptune.

16 Note the uncertainty expressed at Plut. Thes. 1–2, Rom. 1–3, Lyc. 1–2, Num. 1, and elsewhere.

17 On the importance of the two categories of founder and lawgiver in this period, see Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton, 178–79. The emphasis is already present in Francis Bacon, Essay 55, “On honor and reputation.” See also James Madison's references in Federalist, No. 38.

18 Hamilton does not remark the extraordinary honors that Plutarch records were paid to Lycurgus at Sparta after his death (Lyc. 31), which might have been expected to interest him.

19 Notably in Addison's Cato, which was often read and performed—even at Valley Forge (see n. 7 above and Reinhold, The Classick Pages, 147–48).

20 It is unlikely that Plutarch intended this interpretation. Even though writing under the shadow of the Roman emperor, Plutarch always insisted on the responsibilities of the monarch toward his people. Note that a part of Hamilton's quote from Plutarch has been lost with a missing page or pages, so the full extent of this quote is uncertain.

21 See Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 142–45, 259.

22 Hamilton's margin records that he began his notes on Numa at pp. 155–56 of Dryden (i.e., from the end of Num. 2 to the first part of 4), that is, the interregnum after Romulus's death, followed by popular outcry for a king and the embassy that persuaded Numa to accept the kingship. The notes then leap ahead to Numa's response on p. 160 (Num. 5) and his use of religion to civilize the Romans (Num. 8). Although a new marginal note indicates p. 157, the excerpt on the subject, “Numa (says Plutarch) … submissive by superstition” (PAH 1:405) is in fact from p. 164 (Num. 8). The immediately following excerpt, “It is not improbable … a mutual communication,” returns to pp. 157–58. (This excerpt is not distinguished from the preceding one in PAH. Hamilton alters the first words slightly from the 1758 edition's “Nor is it improbable.”) A third excerpt follows on divine inspiration of lawgivers (pp. 159–60).

23 Aristotle seems a mistake for Plato here. The 1758 commentary on this passage (Dryden, Lives 1:110 n. 7) is quite long, beginning with Plato and the three branches of government and ending with Aristotle faulting the rules governing the gerousia. Hamilton's mistake may have arisen from a hasty reading of this note.

24 See the account of his speech at the Constitutional Convention at Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 233–34.

25 Roman senators also served for life, although Plutarch does not mention it.

26 See Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 232.

27 PAH 1:398. At another point, Hamilton quoted Dacier's commentary (Dryden, Lives 1:140 n. 8) reporting that Xenophon (at Lac. Pol. 4.3) had said that the ephors regularly appointed three men to choose the three hundred best in the city, as prelude to Plutarch's anecdote of Pedaritus (Padaretus in Hamilton) (PAH 1:402; Lyc. 25). The ephors are also mentioned in passing in the long excerpt on the krypteia (PAH 1:403; Lyc. 28).

28 Compare the observations that twenty-five workers were required to support one hundred people “in all the necessities of life,” and that it took three acres to feed one man, cited by Brookhiser, Alexander Hamilton, 43, referring to PAH 1:385.

29 Data available at http://merrill.olm.net/mdocs/pop/colonies/colonies.htm.

30 Hamilton himself had famously faced down a mob in New York in 1775, at the beginning of the Revolution (see Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 63–64; Brookhiser, Alexander Hamilton, 25).

31 See notably his Report on Manufactures of 1791, with Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 374–79.

32 This entry is not from Dacier's commentary at Dryden, Lives 1:147 n. 3, which speaks of Lysander's victories and their effect, but does not mention the Persian gold, avarice, and luxury found in Hamilton's entry. Plutarch expresses a criticism of Lysander's introduction of money into Sparta similar to Hamilton's at Lysander 17.

33 Later, as treasury secretary, Hamilton was to be bedeviled by greedy friends eager to profit from inside knowledge, especially William Duer, and he himself would be accused of profiting from his post, although he died insolvent (see Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 293–94, 358–61, 379–84, 425–28, 488–89, 724).

34 Plutarch, Camillus 32, in the same first volume of the 1758 edition that Hamilton was reading (Dryden, Lives 1:357). Plutarch does not suggest a trick or deception by Camillus, and Dacier has no note. Nor is the point discussed by Dacier in his “Comparison of Themistocles and Camillus” (370–82), or in the notice of Cicero, De divinatione 1.30. The rediscovery is not mentioned in Livy's account of the restoration of Rome in book 5 or other historical sources.

35 Some years later, in 1791, Hamilton himself would have a scandalous affair with a younger married woman, Maria Reynolds, though that relationship had nothing to do with begetting children, but highlights the abyss between sexual mores in ancient Sparta and eighteenth-century Philadelphia (see Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 364–70).

36 Panagopoulos, “Hamilton's Notes,” 318; Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 112. Chernow refers to Hamilton's notes on the Lupercalia (PAH 1:395) and on Lycurgus's rules on women's education and marriage (PAH 1:399–400), connecting them, rather gratuitously, with Hamilton's later involvement in “the first great sex scandal in American politics.”

37 There is no note on the Phaedra story in the 1758 edition, nor any mention of Euripides's Hippolytus or Racine's Phèdre.

38 E.g., the whipping of young matrons at the Roman Lupercalia to encourage fertility or the naked dances of the Spartan girls (PAH 1:395 and 399; Rom. 21 and Lyc. 14).

39 Dacier's commentary recalls that Xenophon had defended the practice as being nonsexual—like a father or brother (Dryden, Lives 1:128 n. 5).

40 Hamilton's entry naming the goddess Diana Taurica, not Orthia, and speaking of human sacrifice, is derived from Dacier's note (ibid., 130 n. 7).

41 For Hamilton's strong antislavery beliefs, see Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 32–33, 121, 210–16, 238–39, 580. In 1796 he attacked Jefferson as a slaveowner in his Phocion essays (ibid., 512–13).

42 For Theseus, see note 15 above; those in Romulus focus on the peculiar traditions and rituals of Roman mythical history and religion. One set of entries (PAH 1:393; Rom. 2, 4, 5, and 9) refers to the phallus in Tarchetius's hearth, milk libations to Rumilia, Hercules, and Larentia (quoting six lines), and Plutarch's praise of the vulture (quoting another three lines). They are supplemented further on by notes on the feasts of the Matronalia, Carmentalia, and Lupercalia (including its odd ritual whipping of young married women), the Vestals, Roman augury and the lituus, and the justifications for divorce (PAH 1:394–95; Rom. 21 and 22).

43 On Hamilton's own religion, which combined a rejection of superstition and much organized religion with a horror of atheism, see Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 659–60 and index, s.v. “Hamilton, Alexander, religious beliefs and behavior of,” and Brookhiser, Alexander Hamilton, 203–4. After the death of his son Philip in 1801, he seems to have become more devout, if only to ward off melancholy.

44 Hamilton states that targets were “deposited in different temples, the true one in that of Minerva near her statue.” This information is neither in Plutarch nor in Dacier's notes.

45 Hamilton incorporates information from Dacier's notes (Dryden, Lives 1:180 nn. 3–4) on the purpose of the two last-named cults.

46 See his letter to James Bayard, April 1802, in PAH 25:605, and Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 659, who denounces it as “an execrable idea.”

47 Dryden, Lives 1:78 n. 4.

48 PAH 1:395–96; Rom. 28. The notice on Hesiod is taken from the 1758 edition (Dryden, Lives 1:92 n. 7), but the references to Plato, Shaftesbury, and Pope reflect Hamilton's own reading. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), wrote a number of philosophical works on morals and religion. Alexander Pope's poem Essay on Man (1732), which was influenced by Shaftesbury's The Moralist, contains the lines, “Vast chain of being! which from God began; / Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, / Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see” (Epistle 1.8). Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 24, 34, and 38 gives evidence of Hamilton's having read and imitated Pope before leaving St. Croix for America.

49 Hamilton to John Dickinson, March 29, 1802, in PAH 25:583, cited by Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 660.

50 Hamilton was also on the lookout for basic factual information. The marginal note “Every generation consists of thirty years an olympiad of forty” at PAH 1:405 n. 101 derives from Dacier's commentary (Dryden, Lives 1:153 n. 1): “Every age or generation consisted of thirty years.” Dacier goes on to discuss Olympiads, giving the equation 34 Olympiads equals 136 years. Clearly Hamilton's “forty” is a slip for “four.”

51 Comp. Lyc. Num. 4.1. Plutarch's account of Numa is reflected in an unpublished letter by Anthony Benezet, a Quaker in Philadelphia, to Benjamin Franklin, May 8, 1783, which urges that he work for peace, citing the wonderful effect of Numa's peaceful disposition on Rome and Italy, and hoping for the same and more so (since we have Christianity) if the Germans and French would be peaceful. This letter is in the digital edition of the Franklin papers, available at www.franklinpapers.org.

52 I have not directly inspected the pay book to ascertain whether a missing page is responsible for this truncated record. Neither PAH nor Panagopoulos's edition mentions the possibility of a missing page.

53 Plutarch's Parallel Lives were dedicated to his younger friend Sosius Senecio, a close associate of the emperor Trajan, twice consul, and a commander on the Dacian frontier, while his Rules for Politicians was dedicated to an ambitious young aristocrat, eager to begin a career in politics. See Jones, C. P., Plutarch and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 43Google Scholar and 54–57.

54 Plutarch addressed an educated and politically active audience of both Romans and Greeks, many of whom were in the upper ranks of the imperial administration. See Stadter, Philip A., “Plutarch's Lives and Their Roman Readers,” in Greek Romans and Roman Greeks: Studies in Cultural Interaction, ed. Ostenfeld, E. N. (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2002), 123–35Google Scholar.

55 On Plutarch's purposes see Duff, T., Plutarch's Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar and Pelling, Christopher, “The Moralism of Plutarch's Lives,” in Plutarch and History (London: Classical Press of Wales, 2002), 237–51Google Scholar.