NOTES

TO AN UNEDUCATED LEADER

  1.   Plutarch is quoting from a lost tragedy by Euripides.

  2.   Plutarch is referring to bronze statues, which were cast over a clay core. Part or all of this core often remained inside the finished statue.

  3.   For the kings of Persia, Ahuramazda was the god of justice and their patron deity. The Greeks equated him with their Zeus.

  4.   From a lost tragedy of unknown title by Euripides.

  5.   Plutarch names three famous sculptors: Phidias created large-scale statues of Athena at Athens and Zeus at Olympia; Polyclitus of Argos created the Doryphorus, or Spearbearer; Myron of Eleutherae created the Discobolus, or Discus Thrower.

  6.   Excerpted from Homer, Odyssey 19.109, 111.

  7.   Cleitus was one of Alexander’s officers. While both men were drunk at a celebration, Cleitus criticized Alexander for disrespecting Macedonians and favoring Persians. Enraged, Alexander killed him.

  8.   Zeus as king of the gods stands as a model for kings in general. Anaxarchus argues that Justice and Right do a king’s bidding.

  9.   Works and Days 256.

10.   Homer, Iliad 10.183–184.

11.   After the victory of Julius Caesar’s forces at the Battle of Thapsus, near Utica, Cato committed suicide rather than allow himself to be captured and then pardoned by Caesar.

12.   In his Life of Aratus (26), Plutarch tells the same anecdote about Aristippus, who was tyrant of Argos during the third century BCE. He even adds the detail that Aristippus slept “in a state of agitation and fear” despite having secured the door to his upper room. Perhaps Plutarch intended to write Aristippus here for Aristodemus, who is otherwise unknown.

13.   The contrast between the philosophically educated, benevolent king and the self-serving tyrant was a commonplace of Greek political thought. The most famous exposition is Plato’s argument in the Republic for the philosopher-king as the ideal ruler.

14.   The notion of the pedestal is inspired by the famous passage in Plato’s Phaedrus (253d−254e), where Plato compares the human soul to a chariot pulled by two horses. The charioteer represents Reason, while the horses are the Spirit, which responds to commands from Reason, and the Appetites, which are very hard to control. Plato writes that when the charioteer sees someone who is beautiful, he desires not that particular instance of beauty but instead is reminded of “the real essence of beauty,” which he then observes “standing alongside self-control upon a holy pedestal.”

15.   From Laws (716a), where Plato is suggesting that the deity is the beginning and the end of all things.

16.   Plutarch is referring again to the Platonic notion of an absolute beauty, which is in its essence beautiful, rather than merely possessing a beautiful appearance. Following Plato, Plutarch is conceiving of beauty in ethical terms and so I have translated Plutarch’s phrase “the most beautiful of things” as “the absolute standard of goodness.”

17.   Specifically, the sarissa, an especially long Macedonian spear.

18.   Homer, Iliad 19.242.

19.   In this third example, Plutarch brings the discussion back to the problem of political leadership, since confiscation of property was a penalty imposed upon criminals, and one which might be abused by a tyrannical leader.

20.   Plutarch’s comparison between sight and hearing is based on the theory of extramission, which held that seeing occurs when a ray of light emitted from the eye encounters an external object.

21.   Plutarch is probably referring to Scipio Aemilianus, whom he uses as an example several times in his political essays.

HOW TO BE A GOOD LEADER

  1.   Homer, Iliad 9.55–56. Homer regularly refers to the Greeks as Achaeans.

  2.   Homer, Iliad 9.443.

  3.   Plutarch is quoting lines from an unknown poem. The Greek text is uncertain and the meaning obscure.

  4.   The speaker’s platform, from which politicians addressed the citizen-assembly, was viewed by Plutarch as the focus of political life.

  5.   When Tiberius Gracchus was tribune of the plebs in Rome (133 BCE), his popular legislation led to conflict with the senate and eventually to his death by mob violence. His brother Gaius later carried on his program (also as tribune of the plebs 123–122 BCE), pursuing an even more aggressive agenda. When he failed to enact his full program and lost political office, he resorted to armed conflict and was killed.

  6.   As in his essay To an Uneducated Leader, Plutarch makes “absolute goodness” the basis of wise political leadership.

  7.   According to Plutarch’s Lives of Cleon and Alcibiades, the Athenians in fact tolerated these antics.

  8.   After winning an important victory against the Spartans, Epaminondas was attacked in court back home in Thebes by rivals jealous of his success.

  9.   Miltiades was often given credit for winning the Battle of Marathon, where the Athenians defeated the Persians in 490 BCE. Plutarch’s point is that Themistocles vowed not to rest until he had done something equally significant.

10.   Considered by the Romans to be a gesture that undermined a man’s masculinity.

11.   The talent was a large sum of money.

12.   Homer, Iliad 9.441.

13.   Hesiod, Theogony 80. Calliope, whose name means “beautiful-voiced,” was the muse of epic poetry.

14.   Thucydides 2.65.

15.   Not Thucydides the historian, but like Cimon and Ephialtes, a politician contemporary with Pericles.

16.   Pericles promoted a policy of non-engagement at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, which ensured that Athens did not suffer a military defeat. Following his death just after the war started, other politicians pursued a more aggressive and expansionist policy, including the ill-fated campaign in Sicily.

17.   Aristophanes, Knights 137. The Cycloborus was a loud, rushing river near Athens.

18.   Pindar, Olympian 6.4.

19.   Adapted from Homer, Odyssey 10.495.

20.   Since the consuls in Rome were elected annually and typically could not run for reelection, Afranius had to wait only one year for the next election cycle, when Pompey’s preferred candidates would not be running.

21.   Plutarch returns again to his theme that the best politician is a lover of absolute goodness.

22.   That is, Sulla was showing young Pompey the respect typically reserved for more senior men.

23.   The “Eagle and the Wren” is presumably one of Aesop’s fables but is unknown except for this reference.

24.   Plato, Laws 762e.

25.   This verse appears twice in the comedies of Aristophanes, Wasps 1033 and Peace 756.

26.   Probably a reference to Cato the Younger, whom Plutarch pairs with Phocion in one book of his Parallel Lives.

27.   All three men were considered enemies of Rome and were killed in battle or executed.

28.   Homer, Iliad 17.171.

29.   Homer, Iliad 7.358.

30.   As a person of means, Antisthenes would normally have had a servant do his shopping.

31.   That is, the festivals at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and the Isthmus of Corinth.

32.   A mix of boxing and wrestling.

33.   We would say “suit up,” but the Greeks competed naked in athletic contests, and so they stripped for action.

34.   The so-called sacred anchor was the largest of a ship’s several anchors and was held in reserve, to be used only in extreme circumstances. Proverbially, to cast the sacred anchor meant to exercise one’s last hope in a difficult situation.

35.   Sophocles, Women of Trachis 1058.

36.   Menemachus, the addressee of this essay, was likely a citizen of Sardis, which in ancient times was the capital of the independent kingdom of Lydia and dominated many Greek cities.

37.   In the Greek theater, the actors’ lines were written in various poetic meters.

38.   For a year following the Peloponnesian War, the democracy at Athens was replaced by thirty tyrants who ruled jointly and persecuted their political opponents. When the democracy was restored, an amnesty was declared for those who had supported the tyrants’ government.

39.   Athens was supporting the city of Miletus (in modern Turkey) when it was captured by the Persians in 494 BCE. Phrynichus produced his play soon after, and the Athenians fined him for reminding them of such a troubling event.

40.   Alexander destroyed Thebes in 335 BCE, after it revolted against Macedonian control. Cassander, who ruled in Macedonia following Alexander’s death, rebuilt the citadel in 316 BCE.

41.   Harpalus was Alexander’s treasurer. After misspending funds, he took refuge in Athens (in 324 BCE), where he was arrested but later escaped, raising the suspicion that some Athenians had accepted bribes from him.

42.   Augustus captured Alexandria in Egypt in 30 BCE, during his war with Mark Antony. Arius Didymus of Alexandria was a philosopher who became his adviser.

43.   This refers to the Roman practice of greeting powerful people at their houses in the hope of receiving political and other favors.

44.   Plutarch is adapting Euripides, Phoenician Women 524–525.

45.   In many Greek cities, citizens were divided into political units called tribes.

46.   Adapted from Homer, Iliad 17.156–158.

47.   Scipio Aemilianus and Lucius Mummius both served as censor in 142 BCE.

48.   When Diomedes is sent to spy on the Trojans (Homer, Iliad 10.227–253), he selects as his partner Odysseus, who is known for the agility of his mind, and passes over other Greek heroes who were great fighters like himself.

49.   Geryon was a mythological giant who possessed a triple body.

50.   In the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Hercules is left behind and so Jason and his men, the Argonauts, lack the physical strength necessary to steal the fleece. Medea, a witch and the daughter of the king who possesses the fleece, falls in love with Jason and uses her magical powers to help him accomplish his mission.

51.   Homer, Odyssey 5.350.

52.   Plato, Republic 416e.

53.   Two famous statues. Plutarch is returning to a point he made in To an Uneducated Leader.

54.   Two gulfs on the coast of Libya were named Syrtis.

55.   Plutarch’s point is that honors should not be awarded too early in a politician’s career for doing well in minor offices.

56.   Athletes who competed in sporting events sponsored by religious sites in Greece won crowns.

SHOULD AN OLD MAN ENGAGE IN POLITICS?

  1.   That is, people look for an excuse not to compete.

  2.   In an ancient board game similar to checkers, there was a set of pieces called sacred, and these pieces would be moved last. To make the sacred move, which meant to do something last, was proverbial in Plutarch’s day.

  3.   As Plutarch conceives of the soul, the practical and divine elements were more beneficial than the emotions and the physical impulses and could lead to an enlightened way of living, but they were also harder to develop and preserve.

  4.   In his history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides reports the oration spoken by Pericles to memorialize the fallen Athenian soldiers after the first year of the war (2.35–46). That speech includes the statement quoted here.

  5.   From Euripides’s play Phoenician Women (1688). Antigone asks this question of her father Oedipus after he has blinded himself and so become powerless as a leader. Oedipus answers, “He has been destroyed.”

  6.   Here Plutarch refers to learning through on the job training in politics, a theme that he addresses more fully below and in the essay How to Be a Good Leader.

  7.   Alcibiades and Pytheas were Athenian politicians known for being active and influential while still relatively young.

  8.   That is, the Peloponnesian War against Sparta.

  9.   This passage comes from Xenophon’s encomium of the Spartan king (Agesilaus 11.15).

10.   Oedipus at Colonus 668–673. Sophocles wrote this play near the end of his life; it was produced posthumously by his grandson.

11.   Plutarch continues the comparison between actors, who competed in performances at religious festivals, and politicians, who compete in public service. There was a religious component to public life, which allows Plutarch to consider the politicians’ work sacred.

12.   The Paralus was a state vessel used by the Athenians for official business. Demosthenes wrote a speech against his political opponent Meidias for assaulting him during a festival.

13.   As punishment for killing a man unjustly, Zeus sentenced Hercules to spend one year as a slave to Omphale, Queen of Lydia. Plutarch here describes life in her court as luxurious and soft, in contrast to the more focused and hard life that Hercules had lived while performing his twelve labors. One of those labors was to kill the Nemean lion, and afterward Hercules wore the lion’s skin as a sign of his triumph. The aulos, an ancient wind instrument often compared to the oboe, is also a symbol of softness: the Athenians thought that its music relaxed self-control, and for this reason Plato banned it from his Republic.

14.   Plutarch here refers to the three basic appetites for food, drink, and sex (that is, Aphrodite) which humans experience because our souls exist in physical bodies. He often contrasts those appetites with Reason, which in a philosophically trained person gains control over them.

15.   As one method of bathing, the Greeks would apply oil to their bodies and then scrape them clean.

16.   At Phaedrus 246b, Plato introduces the charioteer that drives a pair of winged horses as a metaphor for the human soul. Euripides mentions golden wings attached to the back of one of his characters in a lost play.

17.   Plutarch refers to the ship believed to have been used by the mythological Athenian king Theseus when he sailed to Crete to kill the Minotaur. The Athenians are said to have used it for sacred voyages to the island of Delos, and to have preserved it into the fourth century BCE by constantly replacing rotted wood. “The Ship of Theseus” has become a philosophical problem about identity: how much wood can be replaced before the ship is no longer the same one that belonged to Theseus?

18.   Plutarch is quoting a fragment from a poem of Pindar. Aglaea is one of the Graces.

19.   The things listed here are all responsibilities performed by civic leaders.

20.   That is, after sailing through rough seas, not taking advantage of the calm seas.

21.   That is, in a public space, like the modern café.

22.   The fathers of Achilles and Odysseus.

23.   Plutarch is quoting from a lost play by Sophocles.

24.   Euripides, Orestes 258.

25.   The joke seems to be that the old man, because he lived alone, was depending on his neighbors for help, and so his getting married will relieve them of the burden. But the saying may also imply that an old man’s wedding becomes a source of amusement for his neighbors.

26.   That is, the Epicureans. Plutarch wrote essays critical of Epicurean doctrine, including what he called their “apolitical life.”

27.   Homer, Iliad 8.453.

28.   Homer, Iliad 19.165.

29.   Homer, Iliad 2.53.

30.   Plutarch actually writes gerousia, or “council of old men,” the Greek equivalent of the Latin senatus, which is derived from the word senex, or “old man.”

31.   A geras (“gift of honor”) would normally be granted by a king.

32.   That is, Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks at Troy. The quotation that follows is from Homer, Iliad 2.372.

33.   From the lost play Antiope by Euripides.

34.   All these men were noted for the longevity of their careers.

35.   Elsewhere Plutarch criticizes men who marry only for the sake of acquiring a dowry or producing children and then dissolve the marriage once it has served its purpose.

36.   The sons of Tyndareus were Castor and Polydeuces (or Pollux), also known as the Dioscuri. They were thought to be present in the glowing light that is caused by electrical discharge and appears in the rigging of ships during thunderstorms. Now known as St. Elmo’s fire, to the ancients this light was a sign of divine protection and the end of rough weather.

37.   The raging god is Dionysus, god of wine, and the sober god is Poseidon, god of the sea, or in this case, water.

38.   In his treatise on politics, Aristotle famously claimed that human beings are by nature political animals (Politics 1253a).

39.   Plutarch relates this anecdote in his Life of Phocion (24), with the added remark that the idea of men up to sixty years old being led into war by an eighty-year-old general cooled the Athenians’ enthusiasm for battle. Plutarch’s point here is that the elderly Phocion was still holding the generalship, but that he relied on wisdom rather than physical strength to lead the city.

40.   Attalus II was king of Pergamum in Asia Minor. The Philopoemen mentioned here was one of his court officials, not the Greek general that Plutarch uses as an example elsewhere in this essay.

41.   In Rome, a freedman was a former slave, who often remained in service after being granted freedom.

42.   A character in Greek myth, Tithonus was granted the gift of immortality but not agelessness, and so he lived forever but nonetheless grew old.

43.   Homer, Iliad 16.9.

44.   Plutarch served as a priest of Pythian Apollo at Delphi. The Pythiad was the four-year interval between festivals at Delphi, as the Olympiad was the four-year interval at Olympia.

45.   Greeks would sing to the accompaniment of the lyre, and so the idea is that an older person who can no longer reach the high notes will set the high-pitched lyre aside.

46.   Euripides, Hercules 268–269.

47.   Homer, Iliad 22.71.

48.   Euripides, Bacchae 66.

49.   Plutarch refers again to the geras (“gift of honor”) that he claimed was etymologically related to gerontes (“old men”) in section 10.

50.   Homer, Iliad 9.55–57. In this part of the story, the Greek army is being pressed by the Trojans and the Greek leader, Agamemnon, proposes retreat. Diomedes responds with a rousing call to fight on. In the quotation, Nestor compliments Diomedes but says, in a polite way, that his courageous enthusiasm has not solved the problem. As Plutarch’s readers would have remembered, Nestor goes on to say, “But come, I, who claim to be older than you, will declare and explain everything.”

51.   This Timotheus was a lyre player and poet, while the Timotheus mentioned above was an Athenian general.

52.   Homer, Iliad 9.443.

53.   Lawgivers, such as Lycurgus in Sparta or Solon in Athens, were held in especially high regard, and the laws and customs attributed to them were sometimes treated with the authority of a constitution in a modern state.

54.   Literally, “walking around” and by extension, to “walk and conduct discourse.” The Greek verb is peripatein, which gives us the adjective “peripatetic,” a common epithet of Aristotle’s school of philosophy.

55.   The popular assembly would sometimes meet in a city’s theater.

56.   During the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans criticized their king Agis for not subduing the city of Argos and threatened to raze his house and fine him unless he produced some major success to compensate. Agis’s attempt to avoid punishment was the impetus for his rash military action in Arcadia.