Title Pages Plutarch: Demosthenes and Cicero Andrew Lintott Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780199699711 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199699711.001.0001 Title Pages (p.i) Clarendon Ancient History Series (p.iii) Plutarch: Demosthenes and Cicero General Editors BRIAN BOSWORTH MIRIAM GRIFFIN DAVID WHITEHEAD SUSAN TREGGIARI JOHN MARINCOLA (p.ii) The aim of the CLARENDON ANCIENT HISTORY SERIES is to provide authoritative translations, introductions, and commentaries to a wide range of Greek and Latin texts studied by ancient historians. The books will be of interest to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates. (p.iv) Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Page 1 of 2 Title Pages Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Andrew Lintott 2013 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–969971–1 (Hbk.) ISBN 978–0–19–969972–8 (Pbk.) Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Page 2 of 2 For my former pupils Plutarch: Demosthenes and Cicero Andrew Lintott Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780199699711 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199699711.001.0001 (p.v) For my former pupils Page 1 of 1 Preface Plutarch: Demosthenes and Cicero Andrew Lintott Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780199699711 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199699711.001.0001 (p.vi) (p.vii) Preface The origin of this edition will be evident to those who know my previous work. In Cicero as Evidence I studied Cicero largely in the light of his own writings and those of his contemporaries. It was appropriate to move on to the later tradition about him and here Plutarch’s biography was central. However, it rapidly became clear to me that I could not do justice to Plutarch without consideration of the parallel Life of Demosthenes: Plutarch’s views about the great Greek orator helped to form his approach to Cicero and are helpful to us in understanding the ethical values which he applied to his subjects generally. Moreover, Plutarch himself was struck by the resemblance of the careers of these two unmilitary men, who found themselves leaders in fights for political freedom, and did his best to enhance this. My study of the Demosthenes owes much to the great work of Douglas MacDowell, sadly no longer with us. I have also benefitted from the work of another editor of the Cicero, John Moles, and from the forthcoming edition of the Caesar by Christopher Pelling, who has kindly allowed me to see it before publication. Unfortunately, I did not know of the forthcoming new biography of Demosthenes by Ian Worthington before this book was delivered to the publishers. I am exceedingly grateful to the Oxford University Press for accepting this work in their Clarendon Ancient History series and for the help which I have received from my editors, Miriam Griffin and Susan Treggiari, from David Whitehead, and from members of the Press, especially Hilary O’Shea and Taryn Campbell. Andrew Lintott January 2012 Page 1 of 1 Abbreviations Plutarch: Demosthenes and Cicero Andrew Lintott Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780199699711 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199699711.001.0001 (p.x) (p.xi) Abbreviations In references to ancient texts I follow in principle the system of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. I omit the author, where this is clear, in references to works by Demosthenes and Cicero and in references to works by Plutarch. So, e.g., ‘Dem. 21. 6’ refers to a passage in Plutarch’s biography, whereas ‘Dem. 21. 6’ is to the orator’s speech against Meidias. Abbreviations of periodicals in general follow the system of L’Année Philologique. ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Festschrift J. Vogt, ed. H. Temporini and W. Haase (Berlin and New York, 1972– ) APF J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 B.C. (Oxford, 1971) CAF T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, 3 vols (Leipzig, 1880–8) CAH Cambridge Ancient History CE A. Lintott, Cicero as Evidence: A Historian’s Companion (Oxford, 2008) CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum CRR A. Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford, 1999) FD Fouilles de Delphes FGH Page 1 of 3 Abbreviations F. Jacoby et al., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 4 parts (Berlin and Leiden, 1923– ) FHG Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum Harding P. Harding, From the End of the Peloponnesian War to the Battle of Ipsus (Translated Documents of Greece and Rome 2; Cambridge, 1985) HRR H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae, 2nd edn, 2 vols (repr. Stuttgart, 1993) IG Inscriptiones Graecae ILLRP A. Degrassi, Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Florence, 1965) ILS H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 2nd edn (Berlin, 1954) Inscr.Ital. Inscriptiones Italiae JRLR A. Lintott, Judicial Reform and Land Reform in the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 1992) (p.xii) LGPN P. M. Fraser, E. Matthews, and T. Corsten, A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (Oxford, 1987– ) LTUR E. M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae, 6 vols (Rome, 1993–9) Moles J. L. Moles, Plutarch: The Life of Cicero (Warminster, 1988) MRR T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, i and ii, 2nd edn (New York, 1960), iii (Atlanta, GA, 1986) ORF H. Malcovati, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, 4th edn, 2 vols (Turin, 1976–9) PAA J. S. Traill, Persons of Ancient Athens (Toronto, 1994–) Pelling, Caesar C. Pelling, Plutarch: Caesar (Oxford, 2012) PIR Prosopographia Imperii Romani Page 2 of 3 Abbreviations Puccioni G. Puccioni, M. Tulli Ciceronis Orationum Deperditarum Fragmenta (Milan, 1963) RDGE R. K. Sherk, Roman Documents from the Greek East: Senatus Consulta and Epistulae to the Age of Augustus (Baltimore, 1969) RE Pauly–Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft Rhodes–Osborne P. J. Rhodes and Robin Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404– 323 BC (Oxford, 2003) RRC M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1974) RS M. H. Crawford (ed.), Roman Statutes, 2 vols (London, 1996) Syll 3 W. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3rd edn, 4 vols (Leipzig, 1915–24; repr. Hildesheim, 1960) TGF A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1926) VRR A. W. Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1999) Page 3 of 3 Introduction Plutarch: Demosthenes and Cicero Andrew Lintott Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780199699711 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199699711.001.0001 Introduction Andrew Lintott DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199699711.003.0001 Abstract and Keywords This introductory chapter begins with an overview Plutarch's works, particularly the one by which he is best known today, Parallel Lives. The Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero are an unusual pair in being devoted to two unmilitary men who were either absent from battlefields or inadequate on them, and whose political lives ended in failure in face of the force majeure of armies. The chapter then discusses the themes of these lives, the shape of the narratives, and sources from which Plutarch drew. Keywords:   Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Demosthenes, Cicero The Context of the Work and its Audience Plutarch (c. AD 45–120) was a member of the local elite of Chaironeia in Boeotia and also of the aristocracy of Greece (then the Roman province of Achaea) inasmuch as he held a priesthood at Delphi. Educated in the Platonic tradition at Athens, he taught philosophy both at home and in Italy and combined this, as many Greek intellectuals did during the period of Roman domination, with representing the interests of his homeland with the imperial authorities [Dem. 2. 2], in the course of which he was granted Roman citizenship. Apart from the works by which he is best known today, the Parallel Lives, he wrote a great number of rhetorical pieces, essays, and dialogues, primarily on practical moral philosophy and matters of antiquarian interest. Biographical and autobiographical prose works had been written in Greek since the fourth century BC, sometimes as a form of political apologia, and the Romans began to follow this example from the late second century BC onwards. Page 1 of 15 Introduction What makes Plutarch’s Lives stand out are the ethical and aesthetic premises on which they are constructed. Plutarch set out to evaluate his subjects according to the moral principles he derived from philosophy. This involved doing justice to a man’s faults but not so disproportionately as to overbalance the account and distort the resulting image. He compared himself to a portrait-painter who should neither ignore nor overemphasize the blemishes on his subjects’ appearance [Cim. 2. 3–4]. Similarly, he points out at the beginning of his Life of Alexander [1. 1–3] that he is writing Lives, not Histories: this excused him from giving exhaustive narratives of the well-known exploits of his subject; rather, some minor action or remark might be more revealing of character than (p.2) slaughters on the battlefield or sieges. Here he compared himself to an artist once again, this time a sculptor, who concentrates on the face and the eyes, because these are the most telling clues to personality. He wrote this, the fifth of his Parallel Lives [Dem. 3. 1] in his old age [Dem. 2], apparently not long after returning to his home town from one of his many visits to Italy [Dem. 2. 2; 31. 1].1 It is dedicated to one of his Roman patrons, Q. Sosius Senecio [Dem. 1. 1; 31. 7], consul in AD 99 and 107, a man from the core of the aristocracy surrounding the emperor Trajan, to whom Plutarch also dedicated his Table Talk (Quaestiones conviviales) [Mor. 612e, cf. 666d, 734e]. Senecio has been plausibly argued to be the subject of a, now acephalous, career inscription, previously ascribed to Licinius Sura [ILS 1022; Jones (1970)]. He was a correspondent of the younger Pliny [Ep. 4. 4]; he married the daughter of Sextus Iulius Frontinus, consul for the third time in AD 100, whose career had prospered under the preceding Flavian dynasty and who wrote on aqueducts, stratagems, and probably land-surveying. His daughter Sosia Polla married Pompeius Falco, consul under Trajan and governor of a number of provinces under Trajan and Hadrian, including Britain.2 Plutarch’s comparison of leading Greeks and Romans is clearly intended for a readership which includes Romans and others educated in the Greek language as well as native Greeks. As one would expect, Plutarch includes brief explanations of technicalities of the Latin language and of Roman society for the benefit of his Greek readers [e.g. Cic. 1. 4; 2. 1; 7. 6; 16. 3; 17. 4; 29. 5]. He expects them, however, to understand basic features, such as the magistracies, the equestrian order, and the law-courts, and obvious features of the topography of Rome, such as the Capitol, Sacred Way, and Campus Martius. Similarly, he assumes his Roman readers know enough about Athens not to require an explanation of the Areopagus council and its relationship in 324 BC to the dikasterion (the chief democratic panel of jurors sitting as a body) [Dem. 26. 1– 2], and to understand the general shape of Athenian and Macedonian history. The dikasterion was by then a thing of the past, but many Romans were regular visitors or residents in Athens and some were even Athenian citizens and members of the Areopagus. When commenting on (p.3) Demosthenes’ achievement in securing the alliance with Thebes in 338, Plutarch does digress Page 2 of 15 Introduction briefly on the importance of Thebes in fourth-century-BC history and the chequered story of its relations with Athens [Dem. 17. 5–6], but this may be more to emphasize the scale of Demosthenes’ achievement in 338 BC than to remedy any ignorance in his readers. The Themes of these Lives The work is unusual among the Parallel Lives in being devoted to two unmilitary men, who were either absent from battlefields or inadequate on them, and whose political lives ended in failure in face of the force majeure of armies. Their importance lay in their excellence as orators. For both Cicero himself [e.g. Orator 104] and Plutarch’s Roman contemporary, the younger Pliny [Ep. 9. 26. 8], Demosthenes was the supreme orator, while in Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus [25. 3] Cicero holds the corresponding place to Demosthenes among Roman orators, and for Quintilian he was simply the outstanding one [e.g. 3. 1. 20; 5. 11. 17]. There had been changes in fashion in rhetoric at Rome, however, underlined by Tacitus [e.g. Dial. 15; 22–3; 36–41], which reflected the changes in Roman political culture and society. Rhetoric had been adapted to speaking before a small and cultivated audience—the emperor and his council, the senate, or a jury-court—and to the time-limits placed on orations. Rotund phraseology and the grandeur of long and complex periods had given way to epigrammatic brevity and brilliance derived from striking vocabulary, often of poetic origin. This was well-known to Plutarch [Cic. 2. 5]. Something similar had happened in Greece [Tac. Dial. 15. 3], but here there was a difference. Plutarch himself refers to those who claim to ‘Demosthenize’ [Cic. 24. 6] and we find in the oratory of another contemporary, Dio of Prusa, the imitation of classical Greek oratory which was to be a feature of the so-called Second Sophistic for more than a hundred years from this time.3 Plutarch, nevertheless, rejects at the start any attempt to compare his subjects technically as orators, citing as a deterring precedent a (p.4) work by Caecilius of Kaleacte [Dem. 3. 1–2]. He has previously explained his limitations in understanding Latin, arising from a lack of proper study: he learnt Latin by knowing in advance what a text was likely to mean, on the basis of previous knowledge of what it was describing, and hence could not appreciate the elements that contributed to its beauty [Dem. 2. 3–4]. Accordingly, Plutarch claims that his comparison will be based on the orators’ actions and policies [Dem. 3. 1]. Nonetheless, he cannot leave out the technical elements entirely, and here he pays more attention to Demosthenes than to Cicero. It is true that we find discussions of the influence of actors on the oratorical delivery of both the orators [Dem. 7; Cic. 5. 4–6] and their use of humour [Dem. 11. 5–7; Cic. 5. 6; 7. 6–8; 25–7; 50 (Comp. 1). 4]. On the other hand, while describing Demosthenes’ education, Plutarch alludes to the way he eliminated excessive complexity from his style [Dem. 6. 3–4; cf. 8. 4]—the sort of comment he could not venture about Cicero. Page 3 of 15