Gryllus is a most amusing dialogue, in which Circe, Odysseus and a talking pig take part. Odysseus wishes that all the human beings that have been changed by the sorceress into bestial forms should be restored; but the pig argues that in moral virtues, such as true bravery, chastity, temperance and general simplicity of life and contentment, animals are very far superior to man.
Whether Land Animals or Water Animals are the Cleverer is a rather long dialogue on the intelligence of ants, bees, elephants, spiders, dogs, &c., on the one hand, and the crocodile, the dolphin, the tunny and many kinds of fish, on the other. This is a good essay, much in the style of Aristotle’s History of Animals.
On Flesh-eating, in two orations, discusses the origin of the practice, viz. necessity, and makes a touching appeal to man not to destroy life for mere gluttony (§ 4). This is a short but very sensible and interesting argument. Questions on Plato are ten in number, each heading subdivided into several speculative replies. The subjects are for the most part metaphysical; the essay is not long, but it concerns Platonists only. Whether Water or Fire is more Useful is also short; after discussing the uses of both elements it decides in favour of the latter, since nothing can exceed in importance the warmth of life and the light of the sun. On Primary Cold is a physical speculation on the true nature and origin of the quality antithetical to heat. Physical Reasons (Quaestiones Naturales) are replies to inquiries as to why certain facts or phenomena occur, e.g. “Why is salt the only flavour not in fruits?” “Why do fishing-nets rot in winter more than in summer?” “Why does pouring oil on the sea produce a calm?” On the Opinions accepted by the Philosophers (spurious), in five books, is a valuable compendium of the views of the Ionic school and the Stoics on the phenomena of the universe and of life. On the Ill-nature of Herodotus is a well-known critique of the historian for his unfairness, not only to the Boeotians and Lacedaemonians, but to the Corinthians and other Greek states. It is easy to say that this essay "neither requires nor merits refutation”; but Plutarch knew history, and he writes like one who thoroughly understands the charges which he brings against the historian. The Lives of the Ten Orators from Antiphon to Dinarchus (now considered spurious) are biogaphies of various lengths, compiled, doubtless, from materials now lost.
Two rather long essays, Should a Man engage in Politics when he is no longer Young, and Precepts for Governing (πολιτικὰ παραγγέλματα), are interspersed with valuable quotations. In favour of the former view the administrations of Pericles, of Agesilaus, of Augustus, are cited (§ 2), and the preference of older men for the pleasures of doing good over the pleasures of the senses (§ 5). In the latter, the true use of eloquence is discussed, and a contrast drawn between the brilliant and risky and the slow and safe policy (§ 10). The choice of friends, and the caution against enmities, the dangers of love, of gain and of ambition, with many topics of the like kind, are sensibly advanced and illustrated by examples. (F. A. P.; J. M. M.)
Bibliography.—Editio princeps, by H. Stephanus (1572); other complete editions by J. J. Reiske (1774–1782), J. G. Hutten (1791–1804), T. Dohner and F. Dubner (1846–1855). Of the Lives, there are editions by A. Coray (1809–1814), C. Sintenis (1839–1846; ed. min., 1874–1881), and of many separate lives by Siefert-Blass, Sintenis-Fuhr, Holden, Hardy and others. There are many English translations, of which the most popular is that by John and William Langhorne; also the old French) version by Jacques Amyot (1559) from which Sir Thomas North’s (1579) was made, newly edited by G. Wyndham (1895); many of the Roman lives have been translated, with notes, by George Long. The Moralia has been edited by D. Wyttenbach (1795–1830), and G. N. Bernardakes (1888–1896). The old English translation by Philemon Holland (1603) has been revised by C. W. King and A. R. Shilleto in Bohn’s Classical Library (1882–1888), and a ater translation by various hands (London, 1684–1694), edited by W. W. Goodwin with introduction by R. W. Emerson, has been republished at Cambridge, Massachusetts (1874–1878). Mention may also be made of P. Holland’s Romane Questions, edited with introductory dissertations by F. B. Jevons (1892); Roman Problems, with essay on “Roman Worship and Belief,” by G. C. Allen (1904); De la Musique, ed. H. Weil and Th. Reinach (1900); J. Oakesmith, The Religion of Plutarch as expounded in his Ethics (1902); Archbishop Trench, A Popular Introduction to Plutarch (1873); O. Gréard, De la Morale de Plutarque (1866); R. Volkmann, Leben, Schriften und Philosophie des Plutarch (1869). The earlier literature of Plutarch is very extensive, for which W. Engelmann, Scriptores graeci (1881), may be consulted.
PLUTARCH, of Athens (c. 350–430), Greek philosopher, head of the Neoplatonist school at Athens at the beginning of the 5th Century, was the son of Nestorius and father of Hierius and Asclepigenia, who were his colleagues in the school. The origin of Neoplatonism in Athens is not known, but Plutarch and his followers (the “Platonic Succession”) claim to be the disciples of Iamblichus, and through him of Porphyry and Plotinus. Plutarch’s main principle was that the study of Aristotle must precede that of Plato, and that the student should be taught to realize primarily the fundamental points of agreement between them. With this object he wrote a commentary on the De anima which was the most important contribution to Aristotelian literature since the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias. His example was followed by Syrianus and others of the school. This critical spirit reached its greatest height in Proclus, the ablest exponent of this latter-day syncretism. Plutarch was versed in all the theurgic traditions of the school, and believed in the possibility of attaining to communion with the Deity by the medium of the theurgic rites. Unlike the Alexandrists and the early Renaissance writers, he maintained that the soul which is bound up in the body by the ties of imagination and sensation does not perish with the corporeal media of sensation. In psychology, while believing that Reason is the basis and foundation of all consciousness, he interposed between sensation and thought the faculty of Imagination, which, as distinct from both, is the activity of the soul under the stimulus of unceasing sensation. In other words, it provides the raw material for the operation of Reason. Reason is present in children as an inoperative potentiality, in adults as working upon the data of sensation and imagination, and, in its pure activity, it is the transcendental or pure intelligence of God.
See Marinus, Vita Procli, 6, 12; Zeller’s History of Greek Philosophy; Bouillet, Ennéades de Plotin, ii. 667–668; Windelband, History of Philosophy (trans. J. H. Tufts, p. 225).
PLUTO (Πλούτων), in Greek mythology, the god of the lower world. His oldest name was Hades, Aides or Aïdoneus, “the Unseen.” He was the son of Cronus and Rhea, and brother of Zeus and Poseidon. Having deposed Cronus, the brothers cast lots for the kingdoms of the heaven, the sea, and the infernal regions. The last, afterwards known as Hades from their ruler, fell to Pluto. Here he ruled with his wife Persephone over the other powers below and over the dead. He is stern and pitiless, deaf to prayer or flattery, and sacrifice to him is of no avail; only the music of Orpheus prevailed upon him to restore his wife Eurydice. His helmet, given him by the Cyclopes after their release from Tartarus, rendered him invisible (like the Tarn—or Nebelkappe of German mythology). He is hated and feared by gods and men, who, afraid to utter his name, both in daily life and on solemn occasions make use of euphemistic epithets: Polydectes (the receiver of many), Clymenus (the Illustrious), Eubulus (the giver of good counsel). Later, owing to his connexion with Persephone and under the influence of the Eleusinian mysteries, the idea of his character underwent a radical change. Instead of the life-hating god of death, he became a beneficent god, the bestower of grain, minerals, and other blessings produced in the depths of the earth. In this aspect he was called Pluto, the “giver of wealth” (a name that first occurs in the Attic poets of the 5th century), and at most of the centres of his cult he was so worshipped; at Elis alone he was Hades, the god of the dead. The plants sacred to him were the cypress and narcissus; black victims were sacrificed to him, not white, like those offered to the other gods. In art he was represented like Zeus and Poseidon; his features are gloomy, his hair falls over his forehead; his attributes are a sceptre and Cerberus; he carries the key of the world below (cf. the epithet πυλάρτης, “keeper of the gate”), and is frequently in company with Persephone. He is sometimes represented as an agricultural god, carrying a cornu copiae and a two-pronged fork. Amongst the Romans Hades was usually called Dis pater (the “wealthy father”) and Orcus, although the name Pluto is often used. Orcus, however, was rather the actual slayer, the angel of death, while Father Dis was the ruler of the dead. The Etruscan god of death was represented as a savage old man with wings and a hammer; at the gladiatorial games of Rome a man masked after this fashion removed the corpses from the arena. In Romanesque folk-lore Orcus (possibly English “ogre,” q.v.) has passed into a forest-elf, a black, hairy, man-eating monster, upon whose house children lost in the woods are apt to stumble, and who sometimes shows himself kindly and helpful.
The “house of Hades” was a dreadful abode deep down in the earth, and the god was invoked by rapping on the ground. According
