16
Any scholars writing on this topic in 1950 would have known exactly what to do: they would have concentrated on the so-called synkriseis (in the plural), the brief comparative epilogues which conclude almost all the pairs, and would have discussed how central these were to Plutarch’s concerns; they might even still have thought it necessary to defend them against attacks on their authenticity. We owe it to Hartmut Erbse that discussion of synkrisis now focuses on wider and more interesting questions. In 1956 he made a strong case for regarding synkrisis as a basic part of Plutarch’s techniques:1 a Life’s leading themes are often greatly influenced by its pair, both in the selection of material and in its presentation and interpretation. Erbse’s own analysis of Demosthenes–Cicero illustrated this point very clearly, and since then several scholars have taken Erbse’s hint, drawing interesting conclusions about other pairs.2 In a subject as large as this it is indeed natural to concentrate on one or two pairs, and in this chapter I will do the same. But, of course, one problem is that it is so difficult to generalize about the Lives. Synkrisis is certainly vital to Plutarch’s technique in some pairs; yet it is not difficult to find others where our understanding of one Life is not especially enhanced by its pair: works like Lysander–Sulla, for instance, or Phocion–Cato Minor ; or Agesilaus–Pompey; or even Alexander– Caesar.3 In that last pair something is made of the comparison – we do for instance have the young Caesar inspired by reading about Alexander (Caes. 11.5–6), almost, as Syme puts it, as if he knew he would be matched with Alexander in Plutarch’s parallel Lives 150 years later;4 then he immediately thrusts forward ‘to the outer Ocean’, forcing his way to the bounds of the inhabited world in language redolent of Alexander (12.1, cf. 22.6, 23.2); but surely the comparison is distinctly less emphasized than we might have expected, given Alexander’s importance as a model for Roman statesmen, and the importance of the theme of ‘monarchy’ in explaining Caesar’s fall.
In this chapter I shall concentrate on some pairs where comparison is clearly important, and I shall try to draw attention to the varying ways in which Plutarch exploits synkrisis to deepen our understanding. I shall also speculate a little on the reasons why in three pairs – Aemilius–Timoleon, Sertorius–Eumenes, and Coriolanus–Alcibiades – Plutarch reverses his normal order, discussing the Roman before the Greek. But I shall also suggest that the epilogues themselves are often distinctly less impressive and illuminating than they are now sometimes thought to be, even in pairs where the basic comparative technique is indeed important.5
First, a pair where we should naturally expect comparison to be important, the only pair where Plutarch discusses two contemporaries – Philopoemen and Flamininus.6 The continuity of themes through the pair is perfectly clear. ‘Philopoemen’s faults arose through philonikia, Flamininus’ through philotimia , says Plutarch in the first chapter of the epilogue (Flam. 22(1).4), and he has done his best to characterize the two figures with these two neighbouring traits. He introduces Philopoemen’s philonikia strongly at Phil. 3.1 – and though he in fact has few opportunities to stress Philopoemen’s philonikia in the narrative itself, which offers little real support for this leading characteristic,7 he at least does what he can. For instance, at 17.7 Plutarch criticizes him for contentiousness, when he is so eager that he, rather than Flamininus and the Romans, should be the one to restore the Spartan exiles.8 Yet that episode also brings out how neighbouring the qualities of philonikia and philotimia are: it has so much in common with various actions of Flamininus which Plutarch attributes to philotimia, in particular his anxiety to retain his Greek command rather than allow any successor to step in and gain all the credit.9
Yet for most of the Life Flamininus is devoting his philotimia to a more laudable end, freeing the Greeks and then leading them to peace and harmony. It is interesting that Plutarch does not romanticize this liberation in the manner of many writers; he brings out very clearly that such freedom was a matter of political necessity for the Romans; and Flamininus’ motive is this desire for honour, not anything more altruistic or sentimental.10 It is no coincidence that Plutarch then dwells on the honours, including divine honours, which the Greeks paid him (and, incidentally, on his chagrin when the Aetolians did not pay him enough, or when Philopoemen himself seemed to Flamininus to be winning more than his fair share of the acclaim).11 He had always been philotimos, and these are the answering timai.
The themes of freedom, and of Greece, are themselves further links between the two Lives. Philopoemen fights for liberty (his series of wars against tyrants is particularly stressed),12 and is ‘the last of the Greeks’, reviving Greece’s glory long after its time;13 but it is then Flamininus who gives the Greeks their liberty, at that unforgettable scene at the Isthmian Games (Flam. 10–11). Plutarch, like Polybius 18.44–6 (who is presumably his main source) and Livy 33.33.5–7, stops to recreate the thoughts of those present at that great occasion: and the differences of emphasis among the three authors are clear. Polybius and Livy concentrate on the Romans – their greatness of spirit, their clemency, their altruism. Plutarch focuses more on Greece than on Rome:
They thought about Greece and all the wars it had fought for freedom; and now it had come almost without blood and without grief through the championship of another people, this finest and most enviable of prizes... Men like Agesilaus, Lysander, Nicias, and Alcibiades had been great warriors, but had not known how to use their victories to noble and glorious ends; if one discounted Marathon, Salamis,Plataea, and Thermopylae, and Cimon’s victories at the Eurymedon and in Cyprus, all Greece’s wars had been fought internally for slavery, every trophy had been alsoa disaster and reproach for Greece, which had generally been overthrown by its leaders’ evil ways and philonikia.
(11.3–6).
Then he turns, rather briefly, to the Romans, these foreigners who had finally brought Greece their freedom, ‘liberating them from their harsh despots and tyrants’. That stress on philonikia is most interesting, for that is of course the word for Philopoemen;14 and indeed that final phrase ‘liberating them from harsh despots and tyrants’ in many ways suits the emphases of Philopoemen rather than Flamininus (for Flamininus conspicuously failed to carry through the war against the Spartan tyrant Nabis, 13.1–4). Plutarch will return to some of the themes of this chapter in the epilogue, where he will stress that Philopoemen’s battles were themselves ‘against other Greeks’; ‘Philopoemen killed more Greeks as general of the Achaeans than Flamininus killed Macedonians when fighting for Greece’ (Flam. 22(1).3), and so on. Plutarch is clearly developing a theme throughout the pair, stressing the uncomfortable consequences for Greece of such contentiousness, even when it is found in so admirable a man as Philopoe-men; its more healthy equivalent was Flamininus’ philotimia, at least when he devoted it to winning the Greeks their freedom and their peace.15
So far Plutarch’s own justification for his comparative technique, as he brings it out for instance at Virtues of Women 243b–d,16 seems to work very well: even when two great men are similar, their qualities may show significant variations, and dwelling on the differences can help us to understand important aspects of those individuals more clearly. Here we can draw more interesting conclusions by seeing how much difference the usually slight distinction between philotimia and philonikia really made. And so far the moralism seems rather crude: philotimia and Flamininus seem much better and worthy of imitation than philonikia and Philopoemen. But in the epilogue Plutarch himself does not state that contrast in anything like so unqualified a fashion, and other aspects of his treatment of Flamininus make one pause.17 It is characteristic of Plutarch, in his best work, to bring out how the same qualities contribute both to a man’s greatness and to his flaws: for instance, the elder Cato’s antihellenism, his attitude to wealth, his austerity, his lack of compromise; or Antony’s warmth, his spontaneity, his soldierliness, and his fundamental simplicity. So it is here with Flamininus, and Plutarch shows us the weakness as well as the strength of that philotimia.
That emerges most strongly in his final execution of Hannibal. Plutarch does give some space to the justifications which might be given (21.7–13), but seems rather clearly to disapprove:
Flamininus’ natural philotimia won credit, as long as it had sufficient scope in the wars I have described... But when he gave up his command he was criticized, as one who could not restrain his intense lust for glory even when the rest of his life did not allow for action. In this way he became hateful to most people because of his violence against Hannibal.
(20.1–3).
And Plutarch goes on to give an elaborate and vivid description of Hannibal’s death (20.4–11) – surprisingly elaborate, as this seems to be in danger of unbalancing the Life (he has nothing at all to say of Flamininus’ own death, for instance). Perhaps he is just making the most of whatever material he can to fill out an unsatisfactory gap in his sources, who clearly had little to say of Flamininus’ old age; but one suspects there is more to it than that. For the description of Hannibal’s death has some clear and interesting parallels with the end of Philopoemen, where Plutarch gives a similarly lavish account of Philopoemen’s own last days (18–21). Philopoemen, like Hannibal, seemed set for a peaceful old age; but his character would not let him rest, and when already in his seventies and in poor health he set off on a new campaign against the Messenians. He was captured, and kept prisoner in an underground cave (19.4): just as Hannibal met his end in underground caves, again carefully described (Flam. 20.7–8). Philopoemen, like Hannibal, was beset by a relentless and unforgiving personal foe; in both cases Plutarch dwells on the last words, as the hero takes the fatal chalice; and in both cases the killers meet with strong criticism from their own countrymen for such lack of magnanimity to a great adversary (Phil. 21.1–2, Flam. 21.1–6).
It does not look as if these parallels can be coincidental. Once again, Plutarch is surely encouraging us to compare Philopoemen and Flamininus in their leading characteristics, and trace the consequences: and here the moral implications are rather different. Flamininus’ philotimia inflicts on another the sort of final undignified humiliation which Philopoemen’s philonikia brings on himself. In both cases, it is a sort of patriotism that drives them on, Philopoemen against the Messenians and Flamininus against Hannibal; their philonikia (or philotimia) will not let them rest even in old age, and in each case leads them to this final humiliation, suffered in the one case, inflicted in the other. Earlier Flamininus’ philotimia brought great gifts to a great people, the Greeks, and consequent credit to himself; now it is killing a great person and disgracing himself. The pattern is a very neat one, and again brings out how close is the unity of the pair.
One last point before we leave Philopoemen and Flamininus. We can see that comparison underlies the whole narrative in the way Erbse suggested, guiding the characterization and the emphases and helping us to grasp important points more clearly; but the epilogue itself is contributing little to this. Some points – like the contrast between philotimia and philonikia, or the different degrees of benefit to Greece – are indeed formulated clearly there: others are not. There is not very much on freedom, for instance, or on vindictiveness, or on the similarities between the two men’s philotimia and philonikia. One finds several unexpected remarks and slants as well. The epilogue makes much of anger, a theme which has not been especially insistent in the narrative: when Philopoemen destroyed the Spartan educational system, that is now seen to be an act of anger (Flam. 22(1).6) – but that was not very clear in the narrative at Phil. 16, where Plutarch rather set out the rational justification for so extreme a step. Philopoemen’s fatal campaign against the Messenians is now presented as another act of anger (22(1).7), again in a way which was not brought out clearly in the narrative at Phil. 18. Themes which were morally complex in the narrative – Philopoemen’s taste for monomachy, or his seizures of authority, or his pressing for freedom-fighting even in extreme circumstances – now emerge much more simply in 24(3). Often in these epilogues, even in cases such as this where synkrisis is clearly important to the pair as a whole, it is hard to resist the impression that Plutarch is extemporizing,18 making points which had not been in the front of his mind when he was composing the narrative.
We find the same sort of thing elsewhere. Quite often, anecdotes are included in epilogues that were omitted from the narrative: the most striking example is the story in the Comparison of Nicias and Crassus which he admits ‘escaped my notice when I was composing the narrative’, a story of Crassus striking a certain L. Annalius in the senate (Crass. 35(2).3). Erbse suggested that all such cases were in fact deliberate omissions from the narrative:19 that suggestion is convincing in some cases (including in fact one case in the Phil.–Flam. epilogue, Flam. 23(2).6), but less convincing in others.20 We also find many cases where stories seem to be interpreted rather differently in the epilogue from the narrative. A famous case comes in Coriolanus, where Plutarch twice mentions a story of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, alleging that Coriolanus sent a message to the Roman magistrates falsely accusing the Volscians of plotting an assault on the Romans at the games.21 In the narrative (Cor. 26.2) he appears to reject the story as out of keeping with Coriolanus’ simple nobility; but he seems to accept it in the epilogue (Alc. 41(2).4), as a striking illustration of the lengths to which Coriolanus’ anger drove him. We should not try to explain away the weakness of these epilogues: even though comparison is often important, the epilogues are not always a particularly impressive aspect of it.
The same thing emerges if we turn to Demetrius–Antony, my second main example.22 Again, the epilogue itself is disappointingly weak. Perhaps we should not particularly stress the point that its whole emphasis is uncomfortably trivial after the grandeur of the closing narrative – for instance, the concluding point that ‘Antony took himself off in a cowardly, pitiful, and dishonourable way, but at least (unlike Demetrius) did not allow the enemy to take him’ (93(6).4). Such moralism is indeed crude, it indeed seems childish to be preoccupied with ordering the two men in this and other categories – but this is a feature of Plutarch’s moralism which must simply be accepted.23 Most centuries have found such moralism less uncomfortable and alien than our own.
It is more worrying that important themes of the pair remain untouched. There is nothing, for instance, on the two men’s response to their fluctuating fortunes, though (as we shall see) that is really quite important; flattery, too, is a crucial topic in both Lives – in Antony the flatterers are Cleopatra and her court, while Demetrius was corrupted by the excessive honours voted him on several occasions by the Athenians.24 Demetrius’ fortunes are indeed closely reflected in his relations with the Athenians, who receive his favour with enthusiasm but come to suffer terribly:25 that theme too recurs in Antony, in a more muted way.26 And the epilogue also again shows considerable discord with the narrative. To take just one or two instances: in the epilogue he stresses that Demetrius was the more generous of the two, but that is largely inspired by his nobility to enemy dead (89(2) ); Antony’s notorious ‘donations of Alexandria’ (Ant. 54) may be culpable, but they certainly complicate the picture. Demetrius’ killing of the Macedonian regent Alexander was treated very differently in the narrative: there, at Demetr. 36, there was a clear implication that Alexander was himself plotting to murder Demetrius, who was therefore acting in self-defence (esp. 36.12); but in the epilogue that charge seems to be ‘false’, merely fabricated by Demetrius to give a dishonest justification for the murder (92(5).3). Once again in fact this epilogue seems too much of an afterthought, and its low intellectual level is clear.
Still, one can perhaps understand why these epilogues should sometimes seem disappointing. In them Plutarch likes to make his points, especially his moral points, fairly simply, switching swiftly from one hero to the other; yet in his successful pairings the real implications of the comparison may resist formulation in simple terms, as for instance in Philopoemen and Flamininus. In the epilogues, too, as Erbse points out,27 Plutarch generally dwells on the differences, just as he does in both Philopoemen–Flamininus and Demetrius–Antony. In a successful pairing the similarities may be the more striking points, and he tends to allow these to emerge implicitly from the narrative. He usually gives an outline of the points of contact in the prologue: thus Demetrius and Antony
both liked love and drink, they were soldierly, generous, extravagant, and hybristic. Their fortunes showed corresponding similarities. All through their lives both won great successes and great failures, conquered and lost great tracts, unexpectedly failed and recovered beyond their hopes, and then one died in his enemies’ hands, the other very close to this.
(Demetr. 1.8).
But, just as within an individual Life he often introduces a hero’s traits crudely and refines them as he goes on – Alcibiades’ ‘ambition and desire to be first in the state’, for instance28 – so within a pair he is reluctant to enumerate all the similarities at the outset, again preferring to deepen the suggestions as the narrative proceeds. It would have been clodhopping to dwell on the importance of Athens or of flatterers in the prologue, where he is eager to move on to the story; yet the themes are so basic to the narrative that it would be difficult to formulate sharp differences at the end. The points are clear enough not to need explicit articulation.
Plutarch’s imagery helps to bring out the continuity of the two Lives. A recurrent feature of both is imagery of the theatre. The flatterer Aristodemus hailed Antigonus as ‘king’, setting a fashion which corrupted the rulers’ minds and behaviour ‘as if they were tragic actors’, changing their manner with the dress of their new role (Demetr. 18.5); Lysimachus remarked of Lamia, Demetrius’ famous courtesan, that he had never before seen a whore on the tragic stage (25.9); we return from Lamia to the campaign of Ipsus ‘as if from a comedy to a tragedy’ (28.1); Demetrius pardons the Athenians in a speech in the theatre, entering like a tragic actor (34.4); the Macedonians commented that Pyrrhus alone was a worthy successor to Alexander, while Demetrius and the rest were only actors imitating the man’s pomp and majesty (41.5) – ‘and indeed there was a genuine tragedy of Demetrius’ in his theatrically extravagant dress, especially a cloak carrying an image of the universe (41.6–8), which he later put aside ‘like an actor, no longer a king’ (44.9). His funeral finally was ‘tragic and theatrical’ (53.1); and ‘now that the Macedonian drama is complete, it is time to bring on that of Rome’ (53.10).29 The primary reference of much of this is to what we might call Demetrius’ ‘theatricality’, the glamorous dress, spectacle and pretension; but the air of ‘tragedy’ is also important, for such display portends the final catastrophe. The ‘Roman drama’ of Antony less insistently continues the theme. Antony wears his tragic mask for Rome, his comic for Alexandria (29.4); on campaign a crucial tactic ‘looks theatrical’ (rather oddly, 45.4); the Alexandrian donations appear ‘tragic, arrogant, full of hatred for Rome’ (54.5); and finally he ‘takes himself off’ (the last words of the pair, 93(6).4). Demetrius has established the pattern, and we know that such glamour presages disaster. The Roman drama plays itself to a similar conclusion.30
Another feature is the two Lives’ sequence of maritime tableaux. Demetrius’ immense warships, built for use as well as display, are lavishly described (43.5–7); his fleet is a marvellous sight even to his enemies (20.7–8); when the Athenians are suffering from famine, they watch as Demetrius’ ships fight off a relieving fleet (33.7–8); the Life ends with the slow homeward procession of his funeral barge (53). His ships had reflected and contributed to his greatness, and such a naval display is an appropriate final ceremony. Antony’s ship-tableaux are more suggestive. Under Caesar, he wins a spectacular naval success, and Plutarch dwells on it (7). The finest display is of course Cleopatra’s barge, with all its magnificence (26): yet there are some suggestive echoes of Demetrius’ funeral barge, and one already senses what catastrophe Cleopatra may bring. Another elaborate naval banquet, this time on Sextus Pompey’s ship, seals Antony’s share of the world – but with Octavia as his bride (32); when a rift threatens, the fleets gather once more off Misenum, ‘a remarkable sight’ (35.5) – and now it is Octavia who deflects the danger: but Antony immediately leaves her for the east, and for Cleopatra. It is finally by sea that Antony blindly insists on fighting at Actium (62, 63, 64.2–4); after defeat he can only sit alone at the prow, a marvellous tableau (67.1); and at Alexandria the last naval scene is a fiasco, when Antony’s fleet surrenders without a fight (76.1–2). The ship-scenes mark crises which at first end in glamour and success, but finally bear catastrophe and disgrace: and Cleopatra is as central to Antony’s fall as she was to his splendour. Once again the two Lives show a continuous technique. Demetrius establishes such naval tableaux as an index of greatness and failure, Antony exploits that index elaborately.
The comparison also explains some of Plutarch’s choice of material. In Demetrius he emphasizes that Demetrius’ excesses never compromised his military efficiency (2.3, 19.4–10), and the point recurs in the epilogue (90(3) ). The stress is presumably designed to contrast with Antony, who loses his crucial campaign for love; but the emphasis sits uneasily with the narrative itself. At 9.5–7, for instance, Demetrius secretly meets the beautiful Cratesipolis, and makes an undignified escape when surprised by his enemies; later the Macedonian army refuses to go on toiling to keep Demetrius in luxury (44.8). Antony is then unusually full on Antony’s father (1), presumably influenced by the large role played by Antigonus in Demetrius; and Plutarch can introduce the notion of ‘contending for Caesar’s succession’ more casually because of our familiarity with the struggles of the Diadochi of Alexander (16.3). But he does not overdo the technique. In Demetrius, for instance, both the courtesan Lamia and Demetrius’ principal wife Phila are prominent, but Plutarch does not develop and contrast the characters as he does with Cleopatra and Octavia; and the theme of divine imitation is much more stressed in Antony than in Demetrius. He certainly has no time for the trivial, coincidental similarity. For instance, Lamia’s famous banquet (Demetr. 27.3) could have been elaborated as parallel to Cleopatra’s (26.6–7); Seleucus’ entertainment (Demetr. 32.1–3) shares features with the dinners of Antony, Octavian, and Sextus (Ant. 31–2); Demetrius’ army (Demetr. 46–47.1), like Antony’s (50), suffers great losses in a Median campaign. It is not clear whether Plutarch intends us to notice such casual parallels, but he does not explicitly emphasize them.
There are nevertheless times when memories of Demetrius genuinely enrich the narrative. After the reverse of Mutina in early 43 BC Plutarch writes of Antony’s resilience to changes of fortune:
He was naturally at his best in adversity, and it was then that he came closest to being a good man. When men are brought down by an overpowering catastrophe,it is common enough for them to recognize what virtue really is: but it is indeed rare for people in adversity to live up to their ideals and avoid behaviour they would condemn. Many are so weakened that they give in to their accustomed ways all the more, and their resolve is shattered.
(17.4)
The mutability of fortune is much more familiar from Demetrius than from Antony itself, particularly at that point of the Life, where we have seen much of Antony’s veering character but little of his veering fortunes. Demetrius has also accustomed us to a great man’s resilience in such adversity – but he hardly ‘recognized what virtue really is’, as became clear when he collapsed to his ‘accustomed ways’ in his disgraceful alcoholic death (Demetr. 52, where Plutarch’s disapproving language is very strong). Antony can be set against that pattern. Here at Mutina and again in Parthia he will assert himself nobly in adversity, and indeed show a virtue far superior to Demetrius’. But at Actium he too will collapse, and his ‘accustomed ways’ will fatally assert themselves – in his case, love for Cleopatra. In Antony’s case there is more interest in his mental struggle: he indeed always ‘recognizes what virtue really is’, and at the end he will know his shame. But, try though he may, the pattern established by Demetrius and recalled in this passage will be inescapable, and Antony too will fall.
This technique recurs in several pairs. All Plutarch’s heroes are naturally individuals, but still the first Life often reflects an important normal pattern, the second Life exploits it with an interesting variation; and this can help to explain why in three pairs (Aemilius–Timoleon, Sertorius–Eumenes, and Coriolanus–Alcibiades) the normal order of the heroes is reversed, and Plutarch takes the Roman before the Greek. Aemilius points the familiar moral that Fortune – and Fortune is very important in this pair31 – may strike a man at the height of his prosperity; this is then reinforced by the stress on the fall of Perseus in Aemilius and that of Dionysius towards the beginning of Timoleon (13–15). That draws attention to the singularity of Timoleon’s own good fortune in his final years, which Plutarch can now naturally describe in peculiarly lyrical tones.32 Sertorius displays the way in which hardship can corrupt a man’s character, if his virtue is not solidly based (10.6, cf. 25.6). Eumenes then appears all the more admirable for his constancy and dignity during a more complex career (cf. Eum. 9.2). Coriolanus–Alcibiades, too, fits this pattern: Coriolanus is a much more straightforward figure than Alcibiades, and his story is more straightforward too.33
Even when the Greek as usual comes first, a similar technique can sometimes be seen. From Pericles we know the ways of demagogues, the fickleness of the people, and the sort of leadership they demand. That clarifies the dangers Fabius runs by exercising his dictatorship in the way he does. Agis and Cleomenes are more straightforward radical idealists than the Gracchi, whose motives are complicated by their ambition; but Ag.–Cl. does provide a straightforward model of the opposition which such radical programmes will inspire, and the extreme measures to which the idealist is forced: in Gracch. we see a subtler version of the same sequence. Brutus is a more remarkable tyrannicide than Dion;34 Aristides’ fairness is less complex and qualified than the elder Cato’s; and so on.35
Demetrius, then, establishes the pattern of mutability of fortune. Tyche, eutychia, and metabole are key words,36 and Plutarch digresses elaborately on Fortune at Demetr. 35. His narrative technique makes the point more subtly, for several times he epitomizes the fluctuation by deliberately rapid movement from one startling vicissitude to the next (33, 39, 43, 48). Fortune raises Demetrius and Fortune casts him down: there is comparatively little interest in his character as a causal force. He is a spectacular man to whom things happen.37 It is fundamentally military disaster which brings him down, and as we have seen Plutarch tries to bring out that his excesses did not affect his campaigns. Still, it is not coincidence that Plutarch juxtaposes his most elaborate description of Demetrius’ outrages (23–7) with the disaster of Ipsus (28–9), even if the outrages do not cause such disaster. We know that a man with such flaws and ‘tragic’ ostentation will suffer catastrophe, rather as in tragedy we often know that a hybristic character will fall, whether or not the hybris causes his fate. Persons with such vices do not prosper: the pattern is simple and familiar.
Demetrius is really a comparatively straightforward figure. He does not particularly struggle against his vices: and indeed, until his alcoholic final days, there is little psychological interest in him at all. Antony is deeper, just as Cleopatra is more subtle than the Athenian flatterers who had corrupted Demetrius. (The moral criticism of Demetrius is correspondingly cruder and more insistent than of Antony: Plutarch can simply denounce Demetrius – esp. 42.8–11, 52 – in a way which his intense involvement with Antony would make inappropriate.) Antony tries to tear himself away and assert himself as a general, and he intermittently succeeds. There is no simple decline in Antony as there was in Demetrius, and unlike Demetrius he retains almost to the last his capacity to lead and inspire his men. He preserves a nobility and a stature which Demetrius lacks; he struggles against his fate, and we feel for his mental torment. Eventually he succumbs, and this time the downfall is clearly owed to his own character: in Antony, the role played by Fortune is slight.38
Even in the traits which link the men closely, differences are therefore felt – differences which resisted formulation in the simple terms appropriate to the concluding synkrisis itself. Demetrius establishes a clear, simple, and familiar paradigm of what happens to a brilliant but corrupted hero. In Antony we see the tension in the man himself, struggling to break away from that familiar pattern. It is a large part of his tragedy that he falls as completely as Demetrius: he cannot escape. His frailty eventually presages catastrophe as surely as Demetrius’ more straightforward vice: but it is a much more complex case, and a much more complex story.
In rather the same way Coriolanus paints an unsophisticated soldier who, when he becomes a renegade, ultimately destroys himself; its pair Alcibiades then presents a complex man with much more flair, charm, and (importantly for Plutarch) education, who nevertheless falls into a tellingly similar pattern. Alcibiades’ relationship with the demos is distinctly warmer and more complicated than Coriolanus’ – but eventually he cannot really manage them any more than Coriolanus could, and cannot avoid re-enacting his more flamboyant version of the other man’s fate. One can again see why Plutarch chose to reverse his normal order, and take the simpler story of Coriolanus first.39
In both cases, we again have, on a much larger scale, an initial crude presentation (Demetrius, Coriolanus) which is then developed and refined (Antony, Alcibiades). This is a familiar technique in ancient literature. One thinks of how Herodotus begins by stating a very simple picture of a tyrant’s strengths and weaknesses in Book 1, then sets the more complex cases of Darius and Xerxes against that pattern; or how Thucydides introduces Themistocles as a simple paradigm of how the Athenians treat their great men just as he is introducing the more complicated case of Pericles (1.135–8); or even how Virgil begins the Aeneid by stating Rome’s mission in simple and glorious tones, which will later be deepened and qualified – or how he later introduces Hercules and Cacus as a clear example of justified furor ridding the world of a monstrous threat (Aen. 8.185–275), then encourages us to measure the more complex case of Aeneas’ killing of Turnus against that very simple pattern, and wonder how far it corresponds.40
I should certainly not wish to suggest that Plutarch adopts the technique in all his pairings: indeed, we have seen how varied his technique can be. But I do suggest that this is often an important technique, and one to which we are perhaps less sensitive than we ought to be.
Postscript (2001)
This 1986 paper now seems very dated. At the time there was still not much interest in synkrisis; I emphasized the importance of Erbse 1956, but that paper had little impact for a long time. It was Stadter 1975 on Pericles–Fabius, a paper which in hindsight I should have stressed more, which set more of the pattern for future work, showing in detail how the themes of each of the two Lives are influenced by those of its the pair. By the time my own paper was written Stadter 1983–4 had extended that idea to Themistocles–Camillus, and there had also been some brief but suggestive remarks by Geiger on the importance of comparison to the structural rhythm of Aemilius–Timoleon (1981, 104 = Scardigli 1995, 189–90). But it still seemed much bolder then that it does now to argue for thoroughgoing synkrisis in a pair, and that may explain a certain defensiveness in the way I framed the argument (cf. Preface, pp. x–xi). Since then the approach has become much less controversial, and a whole series of treatments have extended it to other pairs.41 Commentaries too now regularly include sections on the importance of the pairing.42 True, historians culling material from a particular Life only rarely turn their eye to its pair, but even this is improving: Bosworth 1992 shows how relevant that approach can be for a historian interested in Eumenes, for instance.
My defensiveness in 1986 showed itself particularly in two qualifications: first, that there were some pairs where comparison was not really very important; secondly, that the comparative epilogues themselves were not the most interesting aspect of synkrisis, and were often frankly not very good. As for the first of those concessions, it is ironic that the examples I took – Lysander–Sulla, Phocion–Cato Minor, Agesilaus–Pompey, and Alexander–Caesar – have all now been the subject of studies, some of them my own, which have stressed, precisely, the importance of synkrisis.43
The second point has provoked more interesting debate. My disparaging approach was not out of tune with other treatments of the time; Moles 1988, 25, launched an uncompromisingly forceful attack on the concluding synkrisis of Demosthenes–Cicero, and Stadter 1989, xxxii, – not a scholar to be insensitive to synkrisis – remarked on the ‘rather pedestrian’ nature of the Pericles–Fabius epilogue: ‘As often in these comparisons,’ he added, ‘Plutarch’s muse seems to leave him here.’ My own disparagement has not gone without distinguished supporters, but scholarship has moved on, and it has not gone without dissent either.44
In 1986 it seemed natural to disparage the epilogues because they did not pick up themes from the narrative; it now seems more interesting to speculate on why they do not pick up those themes (I indeed did some of this even here, p. 354), and to regard narrative and epilogue as complementing one another in subtler ways. The epilogues may be inviting us to reassess what we have heard, skilfully insinuating another possible slant or viewpoint. I adopt this approach in my treatment of Thes.–Rom. in chs.7 and8, and more generally in treating terminal rhythm in ch. 17.45 Duff 1999, 243–86, develops this idea of constructive dissonance and destabilization in a much more elaborate way. I am now broadly in sympathy with these critical strategies. If I feel less universal enthusiasm for the epilogues than Duff does, this is simply because I find that technique more successful and thought-provoking in some cases than in others. ‘Reassessment’ is all very well, but some of these epilogues disquietingly gear down rather than up, trivializing the narrative’s suggestions on both an ethical and an interpretative level, thought-diminishing rather than thoughtprovoking. But I concede that there can be point even in terminal remarks which seem unequal to the moral complexities which have preceded (p. 239).
This critical approach is relevant to another question I addressed unsympathetically in 1986, the new material or new slants which the epilogues sometimes introduce.46 Such dissonance then seemed to me clearly an embarrassment; it seems to Duff a sophistication. Duff (1999, 257–83) stresses particularly that the rhetoric and rhythm of the synkriseis often requires ‘ammunition’ (257) to be used in a different way; the need for some equality between the two figures47 may require some moral straining in favour of or against one of them; and in particular the moral criticism tends to be harsher and less indulgent than in the narrative (on this see also ch. 17 below), so that matter treated generously or omitted in the narrative may be used more censoriously here. That approach works well in most cases, but there remain some where it is more difficult to explain, not why material should be included or treated negatively in the epilogue, but why it was omitted or treated differently in the narrative. One is the omission from Nicias of the capture of Melos (Thuc. 3.51: above, p. 164 n. 19), which becomes important in the epilogue at Crass. 36(3).5: there are good reasons for its inclusion there (Duff 1999, 272), but it is hard to see why the narrative omitted it. I am not sure that I was wrong to speak of ‘afterthoughts’ in this paper (p. 354) and at Pelling 1988, 20, nor to say (p. 353) that ‘it is hard to resist the impression that Plutarch is extemporizing, making points which had not been in the front of his mind when he was composing the narrative’.
I should now, however, put more weight on this ‘impression that Plutarch is extemporizing’ as a matter of self-presentation, a deliberate impression, one fostering a particular atmosphere of relaxed, almost conversational engagement between narrator and narratee. It conveys the idea that such retrospects may often allow alternative perspectives, as new questions come to mind and new recollections spring from the writer’s well-stocked memory (p. 42 n. 142). If he admits that this memory has been fallible (Crass. 35(2).3) that suits the indulgent atmosphere too. This coheres with the points I make at pp. 274–5 about narrator–narratee complicity: the reader may sometimes choose to disagree on the final verdict, but is assumed to be thoroughly engaged in the exercise, convinced of its value, and sympathetically indulgent to the narrator and his intellectual strategies, including his diffidence and his acknowledgement of provisionality and possible human error.
If Plutarch is playing for such indulgence in his ideal narratee, I am sorry that in 1986 I was insufficiently attuned to give it to him.
Notes
1 Erbse 1956.
2 Cf. esp. Stadter 1975 (on Per.–Fab.) and 1983–4, 358–9 (on Them.–Cam.); Geiger 1981, 104 = Scardigli 1995, 189–90; Bucher-Isler 1972, 74–8. For more recent work see below, nn. 41–2.
3 On this extraordinarily imprudent remark see Preface x–xi, pp. 359–60 and n. 43.
4 Syme 1985, 1. On this passage see also p. 257.
5 This is another statement which now seems too brash: see pp. 360–1.
6 I reused some of this material, with some elaboration, in Pelling 1989, 208–14, and explored it further in Pelling 1997a, 125–35. My focus there was more to relate the characterization of Philopoemen to the way Plutarch treats his limited and over-military education (Phil. 3): that echoes themes which I have developed in the previous two chapters (pp. 309–10, 340–1), and return to at pp. 400–3.
7 Walsh 1992, 210–11.
8 More on this at pp. 242–7.
9 Flam. 7.2, 13.2: cf. pp. 219, 242–3, and Pelling 1997a, 299–304. For the similarities of philotimia to philonikia cf. Swain 1988, 344.
10 Cf. esp. Flam. 2.3–5, 5.1–2, 12.6; Badian 1970, 53–7.
11 Flam. 12.8–10, 13.3–9 (cf. Phil. 15.1–3); Flam. 16.5–17.2.
12 Phil. 8.3, 10, 12.2, 12.4–6, 16.5.
13 Cf. esp. Phil. 1.5–7, 17, 18.2, 21.10–12, Flam. 23(2).1–2, 24(3).4.
14 I draw out further implications from this philonikia–theme at p. 182 (Phil.–Flam. as a pair which therefore treats the cities as well as the individuals) and pp. 243–7 (a contemporary resonance for Plutarch’s own time, but one which is left oblique). On the suggestions of philonikia – probably both love of victory and love of quarrels – see p. 347 n. 24.
15On this theme cf. Swain 1988, 340 and n. 17, 343–5, Walsh 1992, 219–21, and for the ways in which Plutarch does and does not explore Flamininus’ philotimia, Pelling 1997a, 249–58.
16Cf. also Phoc. 3.6–8. For discussion of the Virtues ofWomen passage and others where Plutarch advocates comparison as a moral and intellectual exercise, cf. Stadter 1965,9–12, Swain 1992b, 105–6, Desideri 1992, 4475–8, and Duff 1999, 247–8.
17 Walsh 1992 seems to me to overstate the negative aspects of Philopoemen’s characterization, just as he understates Plutarch’s reservations about Flamininus; the moral he draws – ‘What Greece needs now, Plutarch seems to be saying, are politicians who are the opposite of Philopoemen and like Flamininus’, 217 – seems to me over-simple, as ch. 10 will have made clear. I discuss this more fully at Pelling 1997a, 139–47 and 309–8, and argue that the moral evaluation is more balanced: so also Swain 1988, 345–7.
18 So I wrote in 1986, and so I still think: but see p. 361 for the different way I should now like this ‘extemporization’ to be taken.
19 Erbse 1956, 416–19.
20 In 1986 I added that I did not find it especially convincing for the Crassus case. I now find it more so: cf. p. 42 n. 142 and p. 361.
21 Russell 1963, 21 = Scardigli 1995, 358–9.
22 I reused some of this material in the introduction to my commentary, Pelling 1988, 18–26, but elaborated it there in several ways.
23 Russell 1973, 142.
24 Cf. esp. Ant. 24.9–12, 53.8–11; Demetr. 10–13, 23.4–6, 24.9–12, 26.
25 Demetr. 8–13, 17–18, 22–4, 27.1–3, 30, 33–4, 40.7–8, 42.2.
26 Ant. 23.2–4, 33.6–34.1, 62.1 (Greece in general), 68.6–8, 72.1. Cf. Sulla 43(5).5, where Athens is important in another comparison.
27 Erbse 1956, esp. 401–2.
28 Cf. p. 293 on Lysander and pp. 310–11 on Alcibiades.
29 For the theatrical imagery of Demetrius cf. de Lacy 1952, 371; Pelling 1988, 21–2. Continuity of theatrical imagery can also be found through Philopoemen–Flamininus: Phil. 11.1–4, 15.1, Flam. 7.6, 10.3, 10.7, 11.3, 12.4, 13.3, 19.8: Pelling 1997a, 219 n. 92, 287–8, 301. That links with the ‘crowning’ which is so important in the epilogue (24(3).5: above, p. 274), for theatres, sometimes, were where crowns were awarded.
30 For more on Plutarch and tragedy, and the complex methodological issues the question raises, cf. pp. 98 and 111 n. 27; also pp. 130–1 on Nicias, 187, 197–204 on Theseus and Antony, 296 on Lysander, and ch. 18 on Coriolanus.
31 For Fortune in Aem.–Tim. cf. Swain 1989d and Desideri 1989.
32 The reading of Desideri 1989 has something in common with this: esp. 205–11, on the themes of virtue and fortune in Aem.–Tim., then ‘Timoleonte è un caso più difficile...’ (209).
33 Cf. p. 344. I do not think the Cor.–Alc. ordering is just a question of chronology (thus Russell 1966a, 38 n. 8 = Scardigli 1995, 192 n. 8): nor does Duff 1999, 206 n. 3.Cf. p. 408 n. 12 below.
34 Erbse 1956, 416.
35 This idea of ‘theme and variation’ has met with some approval: e.g. Swain 1990a, 145 = Scardigli 1995, 263 and 1992a, 315 on Cim.–Luc.; Swain 1990b, 200 on Phocion–Cato Minor ; Stadter 1992, 42, 47 and n. 30 on Lys.–Sulla; Ingenkamp 1992, 4306–19, on Gracch. (p. 229 n. 43, above); Duff 1999, 205–6, 250, 302.
36 5.6, 19.4, 25.5, 28.1, 31.6, 32.7, 37.3, 38.1, 38.8, 41.8, 45, 47.3–6, 48.4, 49.5, 50.1, 50.6, 51.1, 52.1.
37 Plutarch might have related the Athenians’ desertion of Demetrius (30) much more closely to his outrages (23–4, 27.1–3). Plutarch’s Pompey is another ‘man to whom things happen’: above pp. 100–2 and Pelling, forthcoming (b).
38 Brenk 1977, 160–1, contrasting Ant. 36 with On the Fortune of the Romans 319f.
39 Duff 1999, 205–40 gives a much more elaborate account of the Coriolanus–Alcibiades pair, but agrees (205–6) on the technique of placing the more elaborate case of Alcibiades against the simple Coriolanus paradigm. Cf. also my comments on their speaking styles in the previous chapter, pp. 342–6.
40 Cf. esp. Buchheit 1963, 116–33, though the conclusions he draws seem to me simplistic.
41 Cf. esp. Larmour 1988 on Thes.–Rom. and 1992 on Them.–Cam.; Swain 1988 and Walsh 1992 on Phil.–Flam., along with my own further remarks in Pelling 1997a, 87–94, 289–91, and esp. 325–31 on the formal epilogue; Swain 1989d and Desideri 1989 on Aem.–Tim.; Stadter 1992 on Lys.–Sulla; Bosworth 1992 on Sert.–Eum.; Georgiadou 1992 on Pel.–Marc.; Harrison 1995 on Demetr.–Ant. and Ages.–Pomp.; Powell 1999, 399–401 on Ag.–CL–Gracchi; Pelling, forthcoming (b) on Ag.–CL–Gracchi and Ages.–Pomp. Among general treatments are Frazier 1987, Valgiglio 1992, 4022–6, Swain 1992b, Desideri 1992b, Boulogne 1994, 62–71, and Nikolaidis, forthcoming. The outstanding treatment now is that of Duff 1999: synkrisis is central to that book’s concerns, and as well as a chapter on ‘Synkrisis and the Synkriseis in the Parallel Lives’ (243–86) he has detailed studies of Pyrrh.–Mar., Phocion–Cato Minor, Lys.–Sulla, and Cor.–Alc.
42 Commentaries: Moles 1988, 19–26, on Dem.–Cic.; Pelling 1988, 18–26, on Demetr.– Ant.; Stadter 1989, xxx–xxxii, on Per.–Fab.; Konrad 1994, xxxi–xxxiii, on Sert.–Eum.; Heftner 1995, 19–22, and Shipley 1997, 9–24, on Ages.–Pomp.; Georgiadou 1997, 29–32, on Pel.–Marc.; and many of the volumes in the Rizzoli and Lorenzo Valla series (full bibliography at Duff 1999, 250 n. 25).
43 On Lys.–Sulla, Stadter 1992 and Duff 1999, 161–204; on Phoc.–Cato Minor, Duff 1999, 131–60; on Ages.–Pomp., Harrison 1995, Shipley 1997, 9–23 (admittedly stressing divergences more than similarities, but that is a purpose of synkrisis too), Heftner 1995, 19–22, Duff 1999, 275–8, and Pelling, forthcoming (b); on Alex.–Caes., Mossman 1988, 92 = Scardigli 1995, 226–7; above, p. 257, and below, pp. 378–82.
44 Support: Rosenmeyer 1992, 227 n. 42, Ingenkamp 1992, 341, Mossman 1994, 60. Dissent: esp. Larmour 1992, 4156, 4159–62, Swain 1992b (implicitly), Duff 1999, 257, and Nikolaidis, forthcoming.
45 In ch. 17 I also adopt this approach in addressing a further question raised by Erbse, why four pairs (Phocion–Cato Minor, Alex.–Caes., Them.–Cam., and Pyrrh.–Mar.) do not have formal epilogues: in the 1986 paper I grazed that topic in an indecisive paragraph which I have here suppressed.
46 For further cases of reinterpretation and new material in the epilogues see below, pp. 376–7 and n. 58; Pelling 1988, 20, Larmour 1992, 4160–2, Konrad 1994, xxxii, and now especially Duff 1999, 257–83.
47 On this presumption of equality cf. also Swain 1992b; Nikolaidis, forthcoming; and below, p. 386 n. 64.