Plutarch's Morals
office there has been no funeral oration, but all the dead have been
buried in their fathers' sepulchres." Wittily also did Crates parody the
lines,
"Eating and wantonness and love's delights
Are all I value,"
with
"Learning and those grand things the Muses teach one
Are all I value."
Such self-praise is good and useful and teaches people to admire and
love what is valuable and expedient instead of what is vain and
superfluous. Let so much suffice on the question proposed.
Sec. XVIII. It remains to me now to point out, what our subject next
demands and calls for, how everyone may avoid unseasonable self-praise.
For there is a wonderful incentive to talking about oneself in
self-love, which is frequently strongly implanted in those who seem to
have only moderate aspirations for fame. For as it is one of the rules
to preserve good health to avoid altogether places where sickness is, or
to exercise the greatest precaution if one must go there, so talking
about oneself has its slippery times and places that draw it on on any
pretext. For first, when others are praised, as I said before, ambition
makes people talk about themselves, and a certain desire and impulse for
fame which is hard to check bites and tickles that ambition, especially
if the other person is praised for the same things or less important
things than the hearer thinks he is a proficient in. For as hungry
people have their appetite more inflamed and sharpened by seeing others
eat, so the praise of one's neighbours makes those who eagerly desire
fame to blaze out into jealousy.
Sec. XIX. In the second place the narration of things done successfully and
to people's mind entices many unawares to boasting and bragging in their
joy; for falling into conversation about their victories, or success in
state affairs, or their words or deeds commended by great men, they
cannot keep themselves within bounds. With this kind of self-laudation
you may see that soldiers and sailors are most taken. To be in this
state of mind also frequently happens to those who have returned from
important posts and responsible duties, for in their mention of
illustrious men and men of royal rank they insert the encomiums they
have passed on themselves, and do not so much think they are praising
themselves as merely repeating the praises of others about themselves.
Others think their hearers do not detect them at all of self-praise,
when they recount the greeting and welcome and kindness they have
received from kings and emperors, but only imagine them to be
enumerating the courtesy and kindliness of those great personages. So we
must be very much on our guard in praising others to free ourselves from
all suspicion of self-love and self-recommendation, and not to seem to
be really praising ourselves "under pretext of Patroclus."[801]
Sec. XX. Moreover that kind of conversation that mainly consists of
censuring and running down others is dangerous as giving opportunity for
self-laudation to those who pine for fame. A fault into which old men
especially fall, when they are led to scold others and censure their bad
ways and faulty actions, and so extol themselves as being remarkably the
opposite. In old men we must allow all this, especially if to age they
add reputation and merit, for such fault-finding is not without use, and
inspires those who are rebuked with both emulation and love of
honour.[802] But all other persons must especially avoid and fear that
roundabout kind of self-praise. For since generally speaking censuring
one's neighbours is disagreeable and barely tolerable and requires great
wariness, he that mixes up his own praise with blame of another, and
hunts for fame by defaming another, is altogether tiresome and inspires
disgust, for he seems to wish to get credit through trying to prove
others unworthy of credit.
Sec. XXI. Furthermore, as those that are naturally prone and inclined to
laughter must be especially on their guard against tickling and
touching, such as excites that propensity by contact with the smoothest
parts of the body, so those that have a great passion for reputation
ought to be especially advised to abstain from praising themselves when
they are praised by others. For a person ought to blush when praised,
and not to be past blushing from impudence, and ought to check those who
extol him too highly, and not to rebuke them for praising him too
little; though very many people do so, themselves prompting and
reminding their praisers of others of their own acts and virtues, till
by their own praise they spoil the effect of the praise that others give
them. For some tickle and puff themselves up by self-praise, while
others, malignantly holding out the small bait of eulogy, provoke others
to talk about themselves, while others again ask questions and put
inquiries, as was done to the soldier in Menander, merely to poke fun at
him;
"'How did you get this wound?' 'Sir, by a javelin.'
'How in the name of Heaven?' 'I was on
A scaling ladder fastened to a wall.'
I show my wound to them in serious earnest,
But they for their part only mock at me."
Sec. XXII. As regards all these points then we must be on our guard as much
as possible not to launch out into praise of ourselves, or yield to it
in consequence of questions put to us to draw us. And the best caution
and security against this is to pay attention to others who praise
themselves, and to consider how disagreeable and objectionable the
practice is to everybody, and that no other conversation is so offensive
and tiring. For though we cannot say that we suffer any other evil at
the hands of those who praise themselves, yet being naturally bored by
the practice, and avoiding it, we are anxious to get rid of them and
breathe again; insomuch that even the flatterer and parasite and needy
person in his distress finds the rich man or satrap or king praising
himself hard to bear and wellnigh intolerable; and they say that having
to listen to all this is paying a very large shot to their
entertainment, like the fellow in Menander;
"To hear their foolish[803] saws, and soldier talk,
Such as this cursed braggart bellows forth,
Kills me; I get lean even at their feasts."
For as we may use this language not only about soldiers or men who have
newly become rich,[804] who spin us a long yarn of their great and grand
doings, being puffed up with pride and talking big about themselves; if
we remember that the censure of others always follows our self-praise,
and that the end of this vain-glory is a bad repute, and that, as
Demosthenes says,[805] the result will be that we shall only tire our
hearers, and not be thought what we profess ourselves to be, we shall
cease talking about ourselves, unless by so doing we can bestow great
benefit on ourselves or our hearers.
[768] Pindar, "Olymp." ix. 57, 58.
[769] Mentioned by Pausanias, iii. 12; viii. 50.
[770] "Memorabilia," ii. l. 31.
[771] Reading as Wyttenbach suggests, [Greek: malista de
hotan legetai ta allo pepragmena] _sq._
[772] Thucydides, ii. 60.
[773] See Pausanias, ix. 14, 15.
[774] Homer, "Iliad," iv. 405.
[775] Homer, "Iliad," iv. 370, 371.
[776] Diomede.
[777] Sophocles, "Trachiniae," 442.
[778] Homer, "Iliad," xvi. 847, 848. Plutarch only
quotes the first line. I have added the second for the
English reader, as necessary for the sense.
[779] Homer, "Iliad," i. 128, 129.
[780] "Iliad," ix. 328.
[781] "Iliad," xvi. 70, 71. [782] So Wyttenbach.
[783] Demosthenes, "De Corona," p. 260.
[784] "De Corona," p. 307.
[785] After Wyttenbach.
[786] After Wyttenbach.
[787] That is, laughing-stock. A play on the word Gelon.
[788] Homer, "Iliad," xxii. 379. He speaks of Hector.
[789] Others take it "as fortune's favourite."
[790] Words of Demosthenes, "De Corona," p. 325.
Plutarch condenses them.
[791] Homer, "Odyssey," xvi. 187.
[792] Titles of the Ptolemies, Philadelphus Philometor,
Euergetes.
[793] Homer, "Iliad," xxiii. 673.
[794] Ibid. 670.
[795] Homer, "Odyssey," xii. 192-194.
[796] Ibid. ix. 228, 229.
[797] Fragments from the "Philoctetes" of Euripides.
[798] Homer, "Iliad," i. 260, 261.
[799] Homer, "Iliad," vi. 127.
[800] Homer, "Odyssey," xii. 209-212.
[801] An allusion to Homer, "Iliad," xix. 302.
[802] Adopting the reading of Duebner.
[803] Adopting the reading of Salmasius.
[804] _Nouveaux riches, novi homines_.
[805] Demosthenes, "De Corona," p. 270.
ON THOSE WHO ARE PUNISHED BY THE
DEITY LATE.
_A discussion between Patrocleas, Plutarch, Timon, and
Olympicus._
Sec. I. When Epicurus had made these remarks, Quintus, and before any of us
who were at the end of the porch[806] could reply, he went off abruptly.
And we, marvelling somewhat at his rudeness, stood still silently but
looked at one another, and then turned and pursued our walk as before.
And Patrocleas was the first to speak. "Are we," said he, "to leave the
question unanswered, or are we to reply to his argument in his absence
as if he were present?" Then said Timon, "Because he went off the moment
he had thrown his missile at us, it would not be good surely to leave it
sticking in us; for we are told that Brasidas plucked the javelin that
had been thrown at him out of his body, and with it killed the hurler of
it; but there is of course no need for us to avenge ourselves so on
those that have launched on us an absurd or false argument, it will be
enough to dislodge the notion before it gets fixed in us." Then said I,
"Which of his words has moved you most? For the fellow seemed to rampage
about, in his anger and abusive language, with a long disconnected and
rambling rhapsody drawn from all sources, and at the same time inveighed
against Providence."
Sec. II. Then said Patrocleas, "The slowness and delay of the deity in
punishing the wicked used to seem[807] to me a very dreadful thing, but
now in consequence of his speech I come as it were new and fresh to the
notion. Yet long ago I was vexed when I heard that line of Euripides,
"He does delay, such is the Deity
In nature."[808]
For indeed it is not fitting that the deity should be slow in anything,
and least of all in the punishment of the wicked, seeing that they are
not slow or sluggish in doing evil, but are hurried by their passions
into crime at headlong speed. Moreover, as Thucydides[809] says, when
punishment follows as closely as possible upon wrong-doing, it blocks up
the road at once for those who would follow up their villainy if it were
successful. For no debt so much as that of justice paid behind time
damps the hopes and dejects the mind of the wronged person, and
aggravates the audacity and daring of the wrong-doer; whereas the
punishment that follows crime immediately not only checks future
outbreaks but is also the greatest possible comfort to the injured. And
so I am often troubled when I consider that remark of Bias, who told, it
seems, a bad man that he was not afraid that he would escape punishment,
but that he would not live to see it. For how did the Messenians who
were killed long before derive any benefit from the punishment of
Aristocrates? For he had been guilty of treason at the battle of _The
Great Trench_, but had reigned over the Arcadians for more than twenty
years without being found out, but afterwards was detected and paid the
penalty, but they were no longer alive.[810] Or what consolation was
brought to the people of Orchomenus, who lost their sons and friends and
relatives in consequence of the treason of Lyciscus, by the disease