17
Closure in biography may seem straightforward. This form of historical writing might even evade the constant worry of those who stress the textuality of history, the role of the writer in imposing beginning and end points that are essentially factitious, simplifying a messy continuum.1 Human life does have a clear beginning and it does come to a full stop, and that would seem to be that:2 death is surely the place to end.
Yet in Plutarch it is more complicated. For one thing, his artistic unit is not the individual Life, it is the pair: the end of a single Life is a temporary resting point, no more. And even the second Life of a pair does not conclude it, for it is usually3 followed by a comparative epilogue, picking up a selection of themes and comparing the two characters. Just as all the lines of a Life may seem to be brought together, the whole pair moves into a new register in these epilogues, and the way the themes are revisited will emerge as interesting and bold.
Other people’s deaths
Is death the end? Often it is; but it is striking how often a Life ends with someone else’s death, not the principal’s. Thus Caesar ends with the death of Brutus,4 and Crassus with that of King Orodes. More than a quarter of Plutarch’s forty-six Parallel Lives fit this pattern: the other examples are Numa, Lucullus, Marcellus, Pelopidas, Agesilaus, Demosthenes, Brutus, Camillus, Marius, and Cato Minor. There are five further cases where deaths are hinted at rather than described, or where another person’s death provides the last significant incident, though not the ending itself: Eumenes, Coriolanus, Pompey, Sertorius, and Flamininus.5
These make an interesting set of cases. Several of them deal with a sort of posthumous vengeance, tracing the way in which a man’s killers met their end: Crassus, Eumenes, Demosthenes, Pelopidas, Pompey, and most elaborately Caesar, a case to which I shall return.6 Or the point may rather be a telling contrast with the principal: Tullus Hostilius caught religion in his old age, but it was a poor equivalent of Numa’s genuine religious feeling, and Tullus was duly blasted by a thunderbolt. Then there are cases of what we might call the completion of the principal’s own death, instances where a second individual found his or her own destiny so entwined that the two deaths were almost inseparable: Porcia, wife of Brutus, swallowing the coals to share his death; or Cato’s son and his follower, who both found an appropriate death at Philippi, where Cato’s cause finally died too; the death of Sertorius’ associates, or of the son of Marius at Sulla’s hands. In Flamininus it is the completion of the life rather than of the death: Flamininus hounded down the aged Hannibal in a way that rounded off Flamininus’ own career, marking an unsettling culmination of his aggressive ‘love of honour’, philotimia.7 All this needs to be put in a wider setting, and we will find that many of the other Lives fit into the same categories. Such ‘completion of the death’ is especially interesting: another person’s death is not the only way in which that can be marked, as we shall see. But this listing already suggests two preliminary points.
First and obviously, Plutarch’s readiness to carry on the story some way beyond his principal’s death. Antony is the most spectacular example among the other Lives, with ten chapters devoted to Cleopatra’s last days when Antony is already dead. There are good reasons for such an expansion:8 this is another case where two deaths have become entwined, and the two lovers’ stories have become one (so much so that Antony’s death is not even directly stated, but only implied in a participial phrase at 78.1). Plutarch has no rules for ending a Life, and he can carry on the story until it reaches several different sorts of rest. Statistics are here suggestive. The Parallel Lives average forty-five Teubner lines devoted to posthumous material, between one-and-a-half and two pages. That is something like 4% of the Lives’ total bulk. And that is quite a lot: a representative sifting of modern biographies would show a much smaller figure. In Plutarch, the average conceals quite a large spread. Camillus has nothing at all; five Lives have more than one hundred lines, Antony, Romulus (boosted by an apotheosis), Pelopidas, Caesar, and Lycurgus. There seems to be an attempt to keep a balance between paired Lives, and also between ends and beginnings. Thus Camillus has nothing before the hero’s birth as well as nothing after his death; and Solon–Poplicola makes an interesting example, a pair that could easily have had some expansion at both beginnings (on historical background) and both ends (on aftermath or family), but in fact has very little in any of the four places. Then there is Agis–Cleomenes–Gracchi, the elaborate double pair, which has similar amounts of posthumous material in all four Lives (44, 61, 62, and 62 lines) and develops similar themes across the four cases – their countrymen coming to miss them, their noble womenfolk, some shared deaths, the continuing struggle, the emergence of adversaries in their true colours. In this chapter I shall take several pairs, rather than Lives, as test cases: if one Life is posthumously interesting, its pair tends to be posthumously interesting as well.9
The second preliminary point is rather different. It will already be clear that the Lives exploit closural devices familiar from other genres: Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s work on English lyric poetry has here already acquired the status of a classic.10 Death is a prime example of a motif that conveys a closural feel, but other ‘natural’ ends are also frequent, especially in poetry and the novel: dusks, departures, journey’s ends, winters, old age, and so on. Thus the ending of Sertorius, which dwells not only on the deaths of the man’s old associates but also on one person who ‘grew old in penury’, may look doubly appropriate. Other devices explored by Smith include some self-referential authorial intrusion; then also, less predictably, a closing generalization (an ‘unqualified assertion’, and one not always the most obvious or natural to draw from the preceding work) or an arresting vignette of one sort or another. I now pass to considering some ways in which the other closural devices recur in Plutarch’s work.11
Terminal devices and terminal restfulness
First, the authorial intrusion.12 It may be a straightforward self-referential transition, particularly when Plutarch moves over to the concluding synkrisis: ‘These, then, are the things that seemed to us worth recording among the traditions concerning Marcellus and Pelopidas’ (Marc. 31(1).1); ‘So, Sosius, you have the life of Demosthenes on the basis of what we have read or heard’ (Dem. 31.7).13 Or, though surprisingly rarely, it can be a cross-reference to another work, something that is a feature of many a cycle of modern novels (and of scholarly articles): ‘The details are given in my Life of Scipio’ (Gracch. 21.9) or ‘in my Life of Timoleon’ (Dion 58.10).14 It can be a reference to a tradition, an honour, or just a family that extends down ‘to our own day’, as in Themistocles, Antony, Aristides, or (outside the Parallel Lives) Aratus. I shall return to these in a moment.
There is also a subtler form of authorial intrusion. One pervasive characterization within Plutarch’s Lives is easy to miss, and that is his characterization of himself.15 Self-characterization as well as self-reference is relevant here, that projection of the generous, perpetually interested and curious, ethically concerned but sympathetic, learned and knowledgeable, sometimes bumbling scholar with a taste for a good story and a warm feeling for humanity.16 Many of these endings leave a particularly strong impression of Plutarch the man. We often see authorial generosity toward a hero in defeat, or the desire to find some sort of compensation for his death: such features evidently fit the self-projection as a figure of sympathetic humanity. We may also notice how often Plutarch ends a Life with a parade of scholarship, presenting himself as a figure of learned detachment.17 In Aristides, for instance, he accumulates the evidence for Aristides’ poverty by quoting Demetrius of Phalerum three times, Callisthenes, Hieronymus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus, Aristotle (with a cautious note on authenticity), and Panaetius; other, less spectacular examples are found in Theseus, Romulus, Solon, Themistocles, Brutus, Lysander, and Sulla. In several of these Lives, especially Aristides and Solon, the closing scholarship matches and mirrors a similar parade in the opening chapters;18 and we again notice a tendency to find similar phenomena in paired Lives (Theseus and Romulus, Lysander and Sulla).
Some of these parades figure in the more pedantic and scholarly Lives, such as Theseus, Romulus, and even Solon. Plutarch works particularly hard to make these figures on the borders of myth look like the stuff of authentic, rationalized history (Thes. 1.5, ‘to purge them of the mythical and make them look like history’),19 and a list of scholarly authorities here makes the whole enterprise look more sober and respectable. But it is also notable how often such parades conclude very different sorts of Lives, works that have revelled in the dramatic, the vivid, and the immediate: Themistocles, Brutus, Lysander, Sulla. In such cases it is rather a stepping back from an exciting story, one that has sometimes been told in admiring tones (Aristides) but more often with moral disquiet (Lysander, Sulla), to move into a register of judicious and knowledgeable detachment. Such a tone is then appropriate for a new start and a new level of engagement, perhaps for the second Life, perhaps for the moral summing-up of the synkritic epilogue.
The ‘summarizing vignette’ is another category where Plutarch aligns with the patterns familiar from other genres: Peden, for instance has brought out how frequently Catullus closes poems in that way,20 and the last chapter of Herodotus would be another example (though not a straightforward one).21 In Plutarch such anecdotal vignettes often capture something important. Take Philopoemen, for example. When Corinth fell, an unnamed Roman wanted to destroy all Philopoemen’s statues and other memorials, but Mummius and the Roman envoys refused to allow him: their respect for Philopoemen’s virtue was too great, even in an enemy. In Lysander we find several such vignettes. After his stormy final years, Plutarch now stresses the respect felt by the Spartans when they discovered his poverty. Then an anecdote reprises several of the Life’s themes: Agesilaus wanted to reveal a document showing Lysander’s revolutionary plans, but the wise Lacratidas said that it was better to let his plans die with him. The final note is one of more respect, with the Spartans fining the men who wished to marry Lysander’s daughters but gave up their suits when they discovered their poverty. Cicero also has two anecdotal vignettes:
I gather that many years later Augustus was visiting one of his grandsons. The boy had a book of Cicero in his hands and, terrified of his grandfather, tried to hide it under his cloak. Augustus noticed this and, taking the book from him, stood there and read a great part of it. Then he handed it back to the young man with the words: ‘A learned man, my child, a learned man and a lover of his country.’
Directly after Antony’s final defeat, when Octavian was consul himself, he chose Cicero’s son to be his colleague. It was thus in his consulship that the senate took down all the statues of Antony, cancelled all the other honours that had been given to him, and decreed that in the future no member of the family should bear the name of Marcus. In this way Heaven entrusted to the family of Cicero the final acts in the punishment of Antony.22
(Cic. 49.5–6)
These three instances have different styles, but they also have something in common. I have called them summarizing vignettes, but that is not quite right: in each case they recall the tumult and passions of the man’s life – Philopoemen’s honourable battles with Rome, Lysander’s revolutionary ideas and his rift with his countrymen, Cicero as victim of both Octavian and Antony; but in each case the point is now the sense of rest, the passion spent, the respect of the old antagonists, the end of the struggles rather than the continuation.23 So it is rather a modifying vignette, just as in other authors and genres we often find a modifying generalization.24 That also recalls some of the instances in our preliminary listing of Lives, those which ended with someone else’s death. Here we find some of the same categories. It may be the posthumous revenge, as in Cicero, with his son’s revenge on Antony. But in all three of these new cases there is also something of the ‘completion of the death’, with the stress on the magnanimous respect of old antagonists (Mummius, the Spartans, Augustus), and the feeling that with the death of the principal the issues died too.25 These are not endings that pose questions, that cast in doubt the man’s greatness, that point to struggles that outlive the principals: these are endings that are calm, that close themes down, that point respite after conflict. It is all restful: quite skilful, not difficult, not – so far – very challenging.
We can add some other restful, reassuring elements. Let us take another typical category of posthumous material, the tracing down of the fortunes of the family. Sometimes it is mainly for interest’s sake: in Themistocles, for instance, whose descendant and namesake was one of Plutarch’s schoolfriends (Them. 32.6);26 and perhaps Marcellus, suitably lugubrious and morbid as the name of the younger Marcellus might be (Marc. 30.10–11). But even in these cases, the respect enjoyed by a man’s descendants also underlines the generous appreciation paid by posterity to the man, however qualified the impression we may just have received of his final years. Such notices can be more suggestive, even if they are not specially elaborate. Take Cato Maior. So much of that Life has centred on the way in which Cato managed his own household. There have been reservations, especially on his attitude to his slaves;27 but at least he has been enlightened about his own children, always trying to get home for bath time, and giving great care to their proper education. He even wrote the Origines for their benefit (ch. 20). It is a pleasing continuation of that idea to have the younger Cato coming out so satisfactorily a few generations later, at least as he is briefly presented here (27.7).28
Antony is the most interesting case. The Life had started with an interest in heredity, with an anecdote about Antony’s prodigal father. Now, after the finest death scene of all, we have something of a false closure.
So died Cleopatra. She had lived for 39 years; of those 22 had been as queen, and more than 14 as joint ruler with Antony. As for Antony, some say that he was 56,some 53. Antony’s statues were taken down; Cleopatra’s remained standing, for Archibius, one of her friends, had given 2,000 talents to Octavian to save them from sharing the fate of those of Antony.
(Ant. 86.8–9)
But the Life does not in fact end there. We still have a chapter to come, and it is a very enterprising one, tracing Antony’s own descendants through five generations and subtly suggesting how many of the same themes come back with them: heredity once again, just as in that first chapter. Finally we reach Nero, ‘who reigned in our own day and killed his mother and almost destroyed the Roman empire with his frenzy and lunacy:29 he was descended from Antony in the fifth generation’. The links between Antony and Nero are evidently more than casual. Like father, like son, and like great-great-great-grandson, too: the parallel with the two Catos is an interesting one. But there are also parallels with those other Lives which feature posthumous vengeance. Antony’s family won in the end, and Octavian was eventually succeeded by Antony’s descendants. Contrast the end of Cicero, with that different emphasis – Cicero’s son as consul at the time when the senate decreed the destruction of Antony’s statues and the prohibition on the name Marcus in Antony’s family. If Plutarch had so chosen, Antony too could have finished on that item, which would have marked a completion of the death in a different way. But that would be too ungenerous, too annihilating for Antony’s own Life. This wider perspective of the five generations is more thought-provoking, and even for Antony it allows the reflection that defeat was not total.
One feature may not seem to fit. This may be a more generous ending toward Antony himself, but it is scarcely generous to Nero: ‘He reigned in our own day and killed his mother and almost destroyed the Roman empire with his frenzy and lunacy.’ The moralism is particularly crude and blunt, and it grates after the closing chapters, where Plutarch has become so dramatically involved in the death scenes. There has earlier been moralism of this dismissive stamp, but largely in the first third of the Life, and the moralism has recently been more subtle and muted. True, this cruder moralism here focuses on Nero rather than Antony; but Nero, too, is afforded rather more sympathy elsewhere in Plutarch’s work – after all, he did liberate Greece.30 But again the change in moral register is pointed, and it prepares for the similarly blunt moralism of the following synkritic epilogue. I have already suggested that the typical parades of scholarship, apart from presenting Plutarch as a learned researcher, are also helpful in shifting the tone in preparation for the more detached estimates of the epilogue. This is something of the same technique, except that in Demetrius–Antony the moral tone of the synkrisis is not at all detached. It ends, for instance, with shrill disapproval of the manner of Antony’s death, something we should not have inferred from the narrative itself.31 This final chapter of Antony, with its shift toward moral disapproval, marks a stepping back of a different sort from the dramatic involvement and sympathy of the death scenes; it is once again a transitional device.
New perspectives?
Some of these features – the posthumous revenge, the respect of the antagonist, the notion that defeat is not total – are reminiscent of a technique familiar from tragedy: for tragedy, too, typically offers some ‘restitution’ or ‘compensation’ in a closing scene – a posthumous honour, perhaps, or a festival, something to satisfy our feeling for humanity.32 Of course, we have to be careful how we put this. In Plutarch and in tragedy, it evidently does not make everything all right, it is not as bland as all that. It is cold comfort for Hippolytus, for instance, to think of the virgins of Troezen offering hair-offerings before their marriage,33 just as it is not that reassuring a thought that Antony’s final compensation will almost lead to the destruction of the Roman world.
When we think of the ends of tragedies, it is more the differences than the similarities that strike us. For instance, it is familiar to find discordant tensions at the end of a play: at the end of Medea, audience members may find it unsettling to reflect on what they have been brought to sympathize with earlier in the play, and certainly feel uncomfortable that Athens, of all places, will now play host to the child-killing murderess.34 That is a different degree of discomfort from anything we might feel at the end of Antony. We might compare Sophocles, too – all those plays that end with discordant strands:35 Oedipus at Colonus, with the loyal daughters trudging back to Thebes to discover what they will find there; Trachiniae, with Hyllus forced to marry Iole, and ‘all this is nothing but Zeus’; Philoctetes, and the ethically sensitive young Neoptolemus warned to ‘respect the gods’ as he sets off back to Troy, where Priam and the altar await him – and perhaps Heracles’ epiphany only adds to the disquiet. Here again we have to be careful how we put it. These new strands evidently do not deconstruct the whole earlier texture of the play; but we are still presented with thought-provoking new perspectives, with a feeling of open questions and of the provisionality of any response. Tragedies, or at least many tragedies, do not have the same taste for the comfortable resting-point as we have been tracing in Plutarch.
In historiography, too, we sometimes find the radically new perspective, though this is seldom so uncomfortable as in tragedy. The end of Dio 56 is one example, with its redirection of our attitude to Augustus;36 the various emotional strands at the end of Livy 22 are also interestingly disconcerting. There is even a case for considering Annals 6.51 in this context, given how strangely that final summary sits with Tacitus’ own earlier narrative.37 In Herodotus’ final chapter too there are multiple strands of thought: several of those strands problematize any straightforward polarity of Greek and barbarian, East and West.38 Particularly illuminating here is a different case, the end of Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum; with it we shall take the first of our extended examples, Cimon–Lucullus.
Terminal generosity: Cimon-Lucullus
First, the closure of the Bellum Iugurthinum.
At the same time our generals Q. Caepio and Cn. Mallius fought badly39 against the Gauls. All Italy had been quivering in terror. At the time, and to our own day, the Romans have felt that all else is prey to their valour, but that they fight with the Gauls not for glory but for survival. Still, after news arrived that the African war was finished and that Jugurtha was being brought to Rome in chains, Marius was elected consul in absentia, and Gaul was assigned as his province. As consul he celebrated a triumph, very gloriously, on January 1. And at that time all the city’s hopes and resources rested with him.
(lug. 114)
That is a marvellous end, especially as Marius and Sulla have been brought so close together in the closing narrative, and especially as the corresponding initial frame (5) has made the suggestion of the coming civil war explicit.40
It is also very different from Plutarch’s technique. Plutarch can certainly use a final chapter to set his story in a wider historical perspective, but he tends not to use that perspective to cast new or ironic or qualifying shadows in the manner of Jugurtha. Contrast the end of Cimon.
After his death no Greek general was to win another brilliant success against the barbarians. Instead, a succession of demagogues and warmongers arose, who proceeded to turn the Greek states against one another, and nobody could be found to separate or reconcile them before they met in the headlong collision of war. In this way the Persians gained a breathing space, but the power of Greece was incalculably weakened. It was not until several generations afterwards that Agesilaus carried the Greek arms into Asia and fought a brief campaign against the king’s generals along the Ionian coast. Yet even he achieved nothing of great consequence before he was overwhelmed in his turn by a flood of dissensions and disturbances within Greece and a second empire was swept from his grasp. In the end he had to return, leaving the tax-gatherers of the Persian Empire still collecting tribute among the allied and friendly cities, whereas not one of these functionaries, nor even so much as a Persian horse, was to be seen within fifty miles of the sea, so long as Cimon was general.
(Cim. 19.3–4)
And then the posthumous honours for Cimon.
The similarity and the contrast with Jugurtha are both clear. The Jugurtha passage has the effect of putting the African war in its place, even perhaps of rather diminishing it; the real struggle is only just beginning. We are reminded of the great storms ahead for Rome, especially civil storms, and the transience of this present collaboration of Marius and Sulla. The Cimon passage, too, introduces reflections that could easily have diminished Cimon’s achievement: it could have become an ‘all in vain’ passage – Cimon’s work did not come to much, his successes were soon wiped out by a flood of a different sort of history, by those internal Grecian wrangles that not even Cimon had been able to prevent. Yet, clearly, that is not the tone at all. The failures of his successors do not diminish his achievement, they heighten it: they project the gloom against which Cimon’s brilliance stands out. The closing sentences of our two passages bring the point out. Plutarch’s transition to the honours is natural after such enthusiasm for Cimon; in the last sentence of the Jugurtha, the ‘hopes’ founded on Marius sound a quizzical and ironic note.
So subsequent failures in Plutarch highlight success, and do nothing to undermine it. It is the same effect as at the end of Philopoemen, mentioned earlier.41 There we have the flash forward to subsequent Roman respect, but its context – Mummius, the destruction of Corinth, the Roman takeover – could again have served to underline the ‘all in vain’ suggestion; within a generation Rome could afford to pay that sort of bland respect, because the cause he had fought for had died. But once again that is not the effect. The hint of subsequent reversals does not diminish Philopoemen; instead, it underlines how great was his achievement, when so much of the tide was running against him.42 There are cases where Plutarch goes even further to avoid the ‘all in vain’ suggestions: the ends of Nicias or Demosthenes, for instance, where ‘all in vain’ would not be too far to seek, but again we find the generous mode instead. Nicias had always known it would end in tears, Demosthenes had always known the dangers of the venal sycophant: less ‘all in vain’ than ‘I told you so’.43 The main exception is Aratus,44 where we do have a foresnap of how his unsatisfactory son wrecked everything and his cause was lost. The tone there is genuinely much more negative than in the otherwise closely similar Philopoemen. Aratus is a self-standing Life, outside the series of parallels, and therefore does not have a synkrisis to follow.45 That may be significant: I shall return to this.
If comparison is important, we ought to consider Lucullus, the pair of Cimon. In some ways at least, Lucullus was very much Plutarch’s sort of person: a public man, who accepted the responsibility of the talented to serve the states, but also a man of intellect and culture, who would feel the pull of a quieter, more civilized style of life. He belongs with Epaminondas, Scipio Aemilianus, Pelopidas, Marcellus, and Cicero. It was men like these to whom Plutarch turned first when he came to write the Parallel Lives, and all of these figured in the first five pairs of the series.
In Lucullus’ case, the pull eventually became too great, and his final years were spent in torpor, luxury, and excess: too old, he thought, for statesmanship, he lived the life of the glutton and the roué instead. Or so, at least, people claimed. This drift into retirement was naturally essential to any moral evaluation, and Plutarch was in a difficult position. His own view was clear: even in old age, an able man has no right to turn his back on public life; a drift into torpor and luxury is the most undignified retirement of all. That is set out clearly in Should an Old Man Engage in Politics? In that moral essay Lucullus himself serves as a powerful example – and a wholly negative one (785f–6a, 792b–c).
Yet too strident a disapproval would sit uncomfortably in this Life. That was partly for reasons particular to the pair. Plutarch begins by mentioning a specific debt of his home town Chaeronea to Lucullus (Cimon 1–2). There had been a scandal when the commander of the local Roman garrison was sexually harassing a local boy, and it had ended with the murder of the commander and his entourage. Lucullus had stepped in to exonerate the town: now this Life should be a grateful tribute in recompense. But there are more general reasons, too. Plutarch favours ethical generosity in treating human weakness, for reasons he sets out in the introduction to this very pair: one should not suppress human frailties, but like a portrait-painter one should not overemphasize them either (Cimon 2.3–4). We have also seen that he does not like to end a Life on an uncomfortable note. Quiet, respectful repose is rather the appropriate terminal register.
The way he handled the problem is interesting. The pairing with Cimon itself helps: Cimon, too, had a shady private life, and the scandal in his case was a good deal less respectable than in the case of Lucullus – incest with his looseliving sister, a series of affairs, not to mention lack of education. All that in the first chapter of the narrative of Cimon (4): it is an astonishing way to begin a basically sympathetic portrait, but one that immediately establishes private lapses as a typical concomitant of public achievement. Then the treatment of Lucullus’ retirement itself is a good deal less strident than the tones of Should an Old Man Engage in Politics? might lead us to expect. Plutarch does not conceal it: indeed, some six chapters are devoted to it (38–43). As he had said at Cimon 2, one should not suppress such things. Nor does he play down the moral issue. His disapproval of the banqueting is especially clear (ch. 40), and the section is introduced by a long debate where the case for and against such retirement is aired (38.2–5). Yet the balance of that chapter is still generous. Much more space is given to excuse than to denunciation, and the criticisms are devalued by giving them to biased rivals. ‘Here he was, abandoning himself to this life of pleasure and extravagance: did he not realize that he was too old for dissipation, not for politics or command?’ But that is what ‘the supporters of Pompey and Crassus’ said (38.5). It is what Plutarch had said, too, in the moral essay, but he does not say it here.46
Hellenism also helps. Plutarch is always generous to lovers of Greece and Greeks: here he has prepared the theme earlier, with specific acts of generosity to Greeks, as well as with a general emphasis on Lucullus’ civilized justice in dealing with subject states and individuals.47 Now it is Greek visitors he is regaling at his mansion in 41.2 (the story does not depend on it, and Plutarch did not need to say so); the scholars who visit his library at 42.1–2 are again, naturally, Greeks: his house is a ‘genuine home from home for the visitors to Rome, a pavilion of Greek culture’. Then Plutarch stresses his interest in Greek philosophy (42.3–4). This passage, like that on the libraries, has no particular connection with his retirement, and it uses material relating to a much earlier period of his life. But Plutarch prefers to delay the points to here, and the effect is to distract attention from the torpor and the gluttony and to redirect it toward the culture and the scholarship. This is a civilized retreat, not a selfindulgent wallow. That indeed is how the opening chapter had proleptically introduced the motif. ‘When he grew older this [his culture and education] became a type of retirement after a life full of rivalry and contests; he allowed his intellect to find rest and leisure in philosophy, and cultivated the contemplative side of his mind, curtailing his ambition and granting it a timely demise after his struggle with Pompey’ (1.6). We now revisit the theme in much the same terms, and the ring composition is of a simple kind.
The final illness, too, tells a story, but here the ring is subtler, and is part of a wider pattern of thematic recall.
Cornelius Nepos claims that it was not age or disease that took away his mind, but it was caused by drugs, administered by one of his freedmen called Callisthenes. The drugs (says Nepos) were given him to win his affections for Callisthenes, for this was supposed to be their effect; but in fact they weakened and destroyed his intellect,so that even before his death his brother Marcus had to take over his property to administer.
(Luc. 43.2)
A sad end, though one that is partly and typically retrieved by the popular affection shown at the funeral (43.3). But it is also an end that recalls many of the man’s best qualities. The brotherly closeness is one thing; that is the note on which Plutarch ends the Life at 43.4, just as he had included it in the first chapter (1.8–9). The tale also recalls some of that story of Chaeronea that had begun the pair, an erotic liaison of superior and inferior that goes murderously wrong.48 In several ways we have come full circle, and the closing chapters recall the opening, not merely of Lucullus itself (the brother), but also of Cimon and of the pair (the sexual liaison).49 But that is only part of the recollective pattern, for ‘Callisthenes’, the misguided freedman, is surely a Greek. The philhellenism, so stressed throughout, has gone awry.50 Any form of repetition, particularly if it has some variation suggestive of finality, can be a force for closure: that is emphasized by Smith.51 This sort of flashback mirroring is therefore particularly suitable for the end of a Life, and it is an unsurprising trait of Plutarch’s writing to recall a hero’s glorious moments as he declines and dies.52 This is not the clearest case, but there is something of that here.
In Lucullus, then, we have a more extended example of terminal generosity, even after a Life that has opened up most serious moral problems. It is striking that a large proportion of such delicate moral issues tends to be opened up towards the end of Lives – Flamininus hounding down Hannibal, Pompey forsaking the duties of a commander by giving in to pressure to fight at Pharsalus, Lysander turning into a revolutionary, Fabius resenting Scipio, Philopoemen destroying the Spartan educational system, Brutus maltreating an ally, Theseus raping Helen, and so on. The questions are opened, but Plutarch feels the need to close them down before the Life finishes. We have seen how final chapters tend to be unproblematic, and Lucullus is now a clearer case of how Plutarch may work for several chapters to end his Life with a friendly, sympathetic envoi.
Perhaps we do not find that very surprising: we, too, do not like to be rude about the recently departed. But the modern analogy may be misleading. Perhaps we would be wise to appeal to the influence of funeral rhetoric in explaining the ancient phenomenon,53 not to a shared cross-cultural human sensibility and feeling of propriety.
Terminal synkrisis: the questions reopened
If we move on to the synkritic epilogues themselves, we find one reason why we should not appeal to that simple feeling of propriety, for Plutarch is very ready to introduce perspectives that swiftly qualify that terminal generosity. In Life after Life, the synkritic chapters do raise the awkward moral questions; the ends may have closed the issues down, but the synkriseis open them straight up again. In the case of Cimon and Lucullus, the first question of the epilogue broaches the contrast with Cimon, the man who died at the peak of energetic activity, not drifting into excess. That is not atypical: take Dion and Brutus. I have argued elsewhere that Brutus in particular tends to avoid moral problematic.54 That is true of the Life, but it is certainly not true of the epilogue. Should Brutus have turned against Caesar, when Caesar had done so much for him? That was conventionally the great moral issue about Brutus,55 and in the Life Plutarch sidesteps it; but he confronts it squarely in the synkrisis. The comparison with Dion poses the question, whose tyrannicide was the purer? However alien we find that mode of comparison, it gives the question immediacy and bite. And did Caesar deserve to be killed at all? There was a view that Caesar was the least harmful remedy for the ailing state, and Plutarch airs it here56 – but again in the synkrisis, not in the Life itself, where the tyrannicide had been cloaked in unquestioned respectability.
Other epilogues, too, raise awkward moral questions that the Lives themselves had elided. Aristides had painted its hero’s famed poverty in admiring tones, whereas Cato Maior had been appreciative of Cato’s old-fashioned diligence in caring for his home; it is the epilogue that brings the two themes together, and makes each of them seem more morally ambivalent.57 The same is true of Crassus’ extravagant military aspirations, which the synkrisis discusses more thoughtfully than the Life does; elsewhere new doubts are expressed, on Cleomenes’ revolutionary tactics, for instance, or on the circumstances of several deaths – Antony, Eumenes, Nicias, and Philopoemen.58 Elsewhere the moral questions are not new ones, but nonetheless counter the restfulness of the end of the narrative. Thus Demosthenes–Cicero reopens the awkward questions of earlier parts of Cicero – the badly timed witticisms, the self-praise, the undignified and unconstructive behaviour in exile, the unprincipled fostering of Octavian;59 Theseus–Romulus reminds us of Theseus’ rapes, the forgetfulness that killed Aegeus, and the deaths of Hippolytus and Remus. There are times, too, when particular actions are recoloured in the synkriseis, and usually the principal’s motives come out worse than in the corresponding narrative. In Coriolanus itself, Plutarch rejects a story that Coriolanus sent a disastrously deceptive message to the Roman magistrates (26.2); in the epilogue, he accepts it, and puts it down to the man’s extreme anger (Alc. 41(2).4).60 In Demetrius, the Macedonian regent Alexander seemed to be plotting to kill Demetrius, and Demetrius struck him down in self-defence (Demetr. 36, esp. 36.12); in the synkrisis, the charge of Alexander’s plotting appears to be ‘false’, a disingenuous fabrication of Demetrius himself (Ant. 92(5).4).61 Such inconcinnities do not show Plutarch at his best, but they do reflect the wider sense in which the synkriseis are less morally generous than the narrative.62
Today’s response to the synkriseis tends to be one of impatience. We do not find the nursery moralism attractive, and the whole principle of comparison seems artificial. Carelessness and superficiality are not far to seek.63 But another way of looking at it would be to see these chapters as reopening these issues which the closing chapters have closed. The modern, or postmodern, taste is for aperture rather than closure; if we could only stomach the questions that Plutarch finds it so natural to ask, we might join all those generations who have found the synkritic chapters admirable. They do raise thought-provoking moral issues, and they usually leave the fundamental comparative questions – who is the better man, whose was the greater achievement – open in the fullest sense, or at least declare a draw.64
Terminal irregularity: pairs without epilogues
There are four pairs that lack a concluding formal synkrisis – Phocion–Cato Minor, Themistocles–Camillus, Pyrrhus–Marius, and Alexander–Caesar. It used to be assumed that they had been lost, but Erbse (1956) argued that Plutarch deliberately omitted synkriseis for those pairs;65 he suggested that the similarities were either so great (Phocion–Cato Minor) or so slight (e.g., Pyrrhus–Marius) that there was nothing very illuminating to say. That particular explanation is not cogent: similar problems did not stop Plutarch writing synkriseis elsewhere.66 But Erbse may still have been on the right lines, and our present angle, relating this to the closures of the respective Lives, might be more productive.
Certainly, in each of these pairs the second Life has a striking end. Phocion and Cato Minor are linked by the Socratic elements in each man’s death, though the comparison is not straightforward.67 Cato cannot finally manage the calm and dignity of Socrates or Phocion: he cannot even deliver the death blow very well because he has just injured his hand striking a slave, and the final agonized struggles are not pleasant or serene. But it is clear that this final scene of the Cato is peculiarly dramatic, even given Plutarch’s general capacity to surpass himself at the end; one can understand if he was reluctant to compromise so fine an ending with a formal synkrisis, and preferred to leave it as it is, especially as the implicit comparison with the dying Phocion is so loud. Some of the material he might have used is transposed into the introduction to Phocion, where he has an unusual amount to say about the Roman as well as the Greek.
Then there is Pyrrhus–Marius. We earlier noticed Plutarch’s taste for the favourable ending, avoiding terminal disquiet in the Life even if he goes on to raise it in the synkrisis, and there are few exceptions to this ‘friendly farewell’. One disquieting end was that of Aratus, mentioned earlier: no synkrisis there, for that is outside the series of Parallel Lives. There are perhaps two other exceptions, and one of them is indeed Marius.68 That ends without sympathy for Marius, so undignified in his final ambition, and then with the even worse younger Marius, who himself fell in battle against Sulla a few years later. Thus what is exceptional in one way again turns out to be exceptional in another: Plutarch’s usual terminal rhythm could not have worked here.
Themistocles–Camillus is exceptional in a different way. Camillus is the one Life that is the nil case at either end,69 and both its terminus and its beginning are the most perfunctory of them all. Admittedly, it is not clear to a modern audience why that should have excluded a synkrisis; we might rather have expected it to make a different sort of rounding off more desirable. But our own tastes may be an unreliable guide. We should simply notice that the absence of a synkrisis is again found in combination with an ending that is irregular in a quite different way.70
What about Alexander–Caesar, our last example? No one can doubt that Caesar ends marvellously – perhaps the finest ending of them all. It bears extended quotation.
Caesar died at the age of fifty-six, outliving Pompey by a little more than four years. He had sought dominion and power all his days, and after facing so many dangers he had finally achieved them. And the only benefit he reaped was their empty name, and the perils of fame amid his envious fellow citizens.
His great guardian spirit, which had watched over him in life, continued to avenge his murder, pursuing and tracking his killers over every land and sea, until not one remained, but everyone had been punished who had had any contact with the killing in thought or in execution. The most remarkable human event concerned Cassius, who after his defeat at Philippi killed himself with the very dagger he had used against Caesar. As for the supernatural, there was the great comet that shone brilliantly for seven nights after Caesar’s death, then disappeared; and also the dimming of the sun’s rays. For that entire year the sun rose pale, with no radiation, and its heat came to earth only faintly and ineffectually, so that the air hung dark and thick on the earth because of the lack of radiance to penetrate it. The crops consequently never matured, but shrivelled and withered away when they were only half-ripe because of the coldness of the air.
More than anything else, it was the phantom that appeared to Brutus which gave a particularly clear sign that Caesar’s killing had been unwelcome to the gods. It happened like this. Brutus was about to transport the army from Abydus to the other continent: it was night-time, and he was resting as usual in his tent. He was not asleep, but deep in thought about the future. They say that this man needed less sleep than any other general in history, and spent many hours awake and alone. He thought he heard a noise by the door, and looked toward the lamp, which was already burning low. He saw a terrifying apparition of a man, a giant in size and menacing to look at. At first he was frightened, but then he saw that the apparition was doing and saying nothing, but just standing silently by the bed. Brutus asked him who he was. The phantom replied: ‘Your evil genius, Brutus. You will meet me at Philippi.’ For the moment Brutus calmly replied ‘I will meet you there’, and the phantom immediately went away.
In the following months Brutus faced Antony and the young Caesar in battle at Philippi. In the first battle he defeated and forced back the detachment stationed opposite himself, and drove on to destroy Caesar’s camp. When he was about to fight the second battle the phantom visited him again at night. It said nothing, but Brutus recognized his fate, and plunged into danger in the battle. Yet he did not die fighting. After the rout he took refuge on a rocky prominence, and forced his breast against his naked sword, with a friend, they say, adding weight to the blow. So he met his death.
(Caes. 69)
And perhaps I should leave it there, just commenting on the fineness of the ending: no wonder Plutarch was content to leave it there too. Still, we can also adopt the same approach as with Phocion–Cato Minor, and wonder if there is some implicit comparison with Alexander here, which is as thoughtprovoking as any formal synkrisis – to us, indeed, with our distaste for the formal comparisons, distinctly more interesting. The point could be summarized as the relation in the two Lives between the religious and the secular, or (better) the supernatural and the down-to-earth and human. This apparition does not come wholly from the blue; the pair has done something to prepare the way.
First, Alexander. That Life also has a finely wrought ending: death has been in the air for some time. The replies of the Gymnosophistae were decidedly morbid (Alex. 64); just before that point his horse Bucephalas71 and his dog had both died, and he had extravagantly founded cities to commemorate both (61). He himself was wounded all but fatally (63.12), just before (expressively) coming to the bounds of his conquest and turning back. Then we have other deaths – memorably Hephaestion, with Alexander playing Achilles to his Patroclus;72 that Homeric reminiscence has its own suggestions, and we know that Alexander’s own death, like Achilles’, cannot be far away. First we meet Calanus, the suicidal Indian sage (69), who builds his own pyre and bids the Macedonians farewell. His parting words are powerful ones. ‘He will see Alexander soon, at Babylon’ (69.6): the closeness to Caesars ‘You will meet me at Philippi’ is clear. The most moving aspect is the taut, emotional response to all this. The atmosphere is bizarre, with Alexander himself dismayed and gloomy at the omens and the deaths, but responding with strained, extreme passion – his grief, his drinking bouts, his terror, his rage. It seems an unreal world, except that we know that death is near, a death that is very real; so are the dangers to people like Cassander (74.2–6). Alexander had begun as a pupil of Aristotle, in particular learning medicine (8). The difference between the clean and healthy Greek atmosphere of the beginning and the fevered hypochondria of the end, deep in an alien world, is beautifully conceived and executed.
One thing is continuous from beginning to end – Alexander’s divine aspiration. The end of Alexander has been lost, but I have argued that we have a fragment from it:73
It is said that, as Alexander realized his life was departing, he wanted to drown himself secretly in the Euphrates: his object was to disappear and leave behind the story that he had now returned to the gods, just as he had come from them. But Roxane realized what was in his mind, so they say, and stopped the plan; Alexander said to her with a groan, ‘so you envied me, wife, the fame of apotheosis and immortality’.
The passage expressly recalls the beginning of the Life – ‘He had now returned to the gods, just as he had come from them! That is the ‘story’ that Alexander now wants to ‘leave behind him’ – but Plutarch’s early narrative had left a different impression. Chapters 2–3 raised the possibility of divine birth, but the end of each section was there rationalistic and deflating. Plutarch discussed whether Olympias had been visited by a snake: he aired several possibilities, but gave most emphasis to the most rationalistic, the version that Olympias simply practised cultic snake-handling. He also included the story that Olympias confided a divine secret to Alexander, but again ended with an alternative and less supernatural version, with Olympias bursting out, ‘Won’t Alexander stop slandering me before Hera?’ The Life includes other Hammon material as well, but Plutarch remains largely detached and noncommittal. Our new fragment fits perfectly. Alexander is pathetically foiled, and the divine aspirations are deflated yet again, here by his wife as initially by his mother.
In Caesar, death is again in the air, but it is all dealt with in a much more political and pragmatic way.74 Caesar is politically forced, by the pressure of rule, to use unsatisfactory friends (esp. Caes. 51);75 they make him unpopular; the forces of opposition are gathering. There are omens (especially at 63), more omens than in Alexander, and Shakespeare was to find them useful for Julius Caesar. Even Plutarch’s Caesar is a little disturbed, but he is still inclined to minimize them. What he finds unsettling is Calpurnia’s reaction rather than the omens themselves (63.11), and it is a point about people rather than about the firmament. Here it is not Plutarch who is doing the deflating, but Caesar himself; Alexander unduly deflated the religious register, Caesar is dangerously playing it down. True, Calpurnia finally persuades him to change his mind; but Decimus Brutus readily persuades him back, partly with, once again, the political argument, 64.5: What will the senate think? How will his friends be able to deny that this is a matter of tyrant and slaves? The political atmosphere is already too fraught for him to frustrate them like this. Caesar goes, and he dies.
The death itself is in the main realistic and human;76 then its first sequel, the lynching of Cinna the poet, again points to the force and violence of the human passions. That takes us to 69.1, which is phrased so as to sound strongly closural:
Caesar died at the age of fifty-six, outliving Pompey by a little more than four years. He had sought dominion and power all his days, and after facing so many dangers he had finally achieved them. And the only benefit he reaped was their empty name, and the perils of fame amid his envious fellow citizens.
Yet that closure is a false one. Rather as we saw with the similar false closure in Antony, there are still themes unfinished; and here the themes touch on something more than human. The omens have already suggested that there is something more in the air; that is also stated by the element in the death scene that was not strictly human and rationalistic, the place where it all happened:77
All that [the story of Artemidorus, and his failure to force his way through to Caesar with news of the conspiracy] might simply be the result of coincidence, but it is harder to explain the place where the senate had gathered on that day, the scene of the murder and the violence. For it had a statue of Pompey lying on the floor, and the whole building had been dedicated by Pompey as one of the additional decorations to his theatre. That gave an indication that there was some heavenly power directing events and guiding the plot into action at this very spot. Indeed, there is a story that Cassius looked at the statue of Pompey before they attacked, and called him silently to his aid, even though Cassius was sympathetic to the teachings of Epicurus; but it would seem that, in this critical and terrifying moment, a type of frenzied emotional transport drove out those earlier rational calculations... He fell by the pedestal on which Pompey’s statue had stood, perhaps by chance, perhaps dragged there by the assassins. It was drenched in streams of blood, so that it appeared that Pompey himself had presided over the vengeance inflicted on his enemy, lying there beneath his feet, still writhing convulsively from his many wounds.
(Caes. 66.1–3, 12–13)
Here, too, Plutarch is careful to keep the focus heavily on the human side: the effect on Cassius is phrased in naturalistic and psychological terms; and it only ‘appeared’ that Pompey presided over the death, when in fact this was a matter either of chance or of the conspirators’ engineering. But the language remains clear: ‘that gave an indication that there was some heavenly power directing events’; and that supernatural register eventually asserts itself in that final chapter, after the false closure, with the demonic apparition. Alexander may have aspired to play a divine game, but it is Caesar who ultimately plays it.
I do not suggest that there is a crude or straightforward conclusion to draw from this. It is surely not that ‘the divine ultimately took more thought for Caesar, so Caesar must have been greater than Alexander’, even though Plutarch is more inclined than we are to phrase questions in this ‘Who is the greater?’ mode. It may even be that the final intrusion of the supernatural is a sort of commentary on the whole pair. However much anyone – Olympias, Roxane, Plutarch himself, Caesar – tries to evade a divine involvement, there will still be some supernatural accompaniment and concern with events so momentous as these, and men so great. But there is no need to pin down the suggestions in that way either. We can surely be content to leave the end as it is, open and thought-provoking. This is certainly a case where we find a new perspective and a new set of reflections, an exception to Plutarch’s usual preference for avoiding such terminal redirection. There is a sense of rest as well, with the posthumous vengeance and the concluding death, but it is still rare to have so arresting a new perspective so close to the end. Again, this is not the usual closing rhythm; again, a closing formal synkrisis could not have fulfilled its usual role; again, the implicit comparison with Alexander could have struck Plutarch as enough, and not to be compromised by a lamer, formal equivalent.
Envoi
Aristotle knew that the events of a single life were not enough to give a work unity (Poetics 8.1451a16–19); he also asked whether the end of a life might be too soon to allow an adequate judgement on its happiness (Eth. Nic. 1.10–11, 1100a10–1101b9). Cradle to grave may not be enough. That is doubly true of Plutarch, where a pair has two cradles and two graves, and the themes need much finer modulation. That modulation does not always follow the same pattern, for Plutarch does not write to formulas. But the synkritic framework is used thoughtfully and pervasively; and the variations in his style of closure are intimately related to those of his comparative technique.
Notes
1 Bibliography on this point could be equally endless; perhaps most influential has been White, especially 1973, 1978, and 1987. Mink 1987, esp. 47–48, 68–72, and 136–37 emphasizes the linkage of ending and explanation, as a story’s configuration becomes clear retrospectively: cf. also Fusillo 1997, 223. On particular endings in classical historiography, cf. recently D. Fowler 1989, 116–17; Henderson 1989; Kennedy 1991, 177; and the various papers in Roberts, Dunn and Fowler 1997, where this chapter itself first appeared. The ending of Herodotus continues to be particularly absorbing: cf. Boedeker 1988, Herington 1991, Moles 1996, Dewald 1997, and Pelling 1997f.
2 Cf. Nuttall 1992, 201.
3 There are four exceptions, which are considered below.
4 The last word is in fact άπέθανεν, ‘died’: similarly in Crassus, Cato Minor, Marius, Camillus, and Flamininus (if we treat the transitional sentence as part of the synkrisis; see next n.).
5 Thus Flamininus gives its closing chapters to the death of Hannibal, then notices Flamininus’ own demise in a brief sentence of transition (Flam. 21.15): ‘We have not discovered any further political or military achievement of Flamininus, but he met with a peaceful death: so it is time to consider the comparison.’ This is conventionally printed as part of the Life; it might equally be regarded as the first sentence of the synkrisis. As e.g. with Demetr. 53.10 and Gracch. 1.1, such questions and divisions are artificial.
6 See pp. 378–9, where the closing chapter is quoted.
7 Cf. pp. 350–3 and Pelling 1997a, 249–58.
8 Cf. Pelling 1988, esp. 16–17; D. Fowler 1989, 116. Duff 1999, 137 n. 25, collects other examples where Lives carry the story some way past death.
9 On comparison and its importance see ch. 16 and the works quoted there.
10 Smith 1968; for fuller bibliography, cf. esp. D. Fowler 1989 and Roberts, Dunn and Fowler 1997.
11 As we shall see, they recur throughout the Parallel Lives, and also in the self-standing works Aratus and Artaxerxes; but not, interestingly, in Otho, though Galba has a strong enough closure. That is further confirmation that the Lives of the Caesars was conceived as a continuous series (cf. p. 188): the reader is not expected to stop at the end of Otho, and it looks as if Otho 18.3–4 could equally have been considered as the opening of Vitellius.
12 I discuss this tendency to terminal (and proemial) self-presentation more in ch. 12, esp. pp. 269–70.
13 Cf. Cic. 50(1).1, with a very similar formulation leading into the pair’s synkrisis. That has the effect of ringing and marking off the whole of Cicero, and also of drawing atten- tion to Plutarch’s own role as researcher: cf. below. For further self-referential transitions, cf. Flam. 21.15 (see above, note 5); Lys. 30.8; Demetr. 53.10; Alc. 40(1).1; Popl. 24(1).1. For the modern tendency to terminal self-reference, D. Fowler 1989, 109–13; for ancient instances, notice Xenophon’s conclusions to Hellenica (discussed in Pelling 1999, 327–8), Cyropaedia, and Lacedaimonion politeia; also Fusillo 1997, 212–13.
14 Also Cato Min. 73.6; Cor. 39.11. For modern novel-series, cf. Torgovnick 1981, 13–14, 23. The end of Crime and Punishment is a striking example. An interesting variation is the terminal suggestion that another story is beginning, which could be the subject of a second work (ibid.).
15 Stadter 1988, 292, and 1989, xlii, has written perceptively on this.
16 Or, in Stadter’s formulation: ‘The feeling of being in contact with an understanding and intellectually curious person, someone who is serious yet not stuffy, aware of life in all its manifestations, yet deliberately avoiding the unseemly and trying to present the best side of his subjects’ (1988, 292). Stadter was writing in particular about the proems; they are mirrored in this respect by the conclusions. I say more about this in chs. 10 and 12.
17 Cf. n. 13 above. Livy, too, sometimes ends books in this way (Books 4, 7, 8, 30, 37, 39). I here put this point in terms of the relation of the author (or implied author) to the material, or more precisely in the projection of this relation to the implied audience, a matter in Genette’s terms of ‘voice’ (Genette 1980, 31–2, 211–62). It could equally be phrased in terms of the emotional engagement encouraged in the narratees. Such an assumed harmony between authorial and audience engagement is not unusual, though it is not universal either; but in Plutarch the harmony is unusually close and complete. That reflects the persuasive and rhetorical charm whereby he assumes the same moral standpoint in his audience as in himself, something that in its turn helps to make his further moral inferences more acceptable. Stadter (1988, 293) again has some perceptive remarks. – Or so I said in 1997. In ch. 12 I discuss some cases where a dissonant, ‘cross- grained’ narratee is envisaged (pp. 272, 276–7); that may seem to contradict what I said in this note. But the awareness that others may be dissonant can also have the effect of cementing the bond with the regular, consonant, sympathetic narratee.
18 On the proems of Aristides and Solon, see Stadter 1988, 287–8; on Aristides, Pelling 1990, 22–3.
19 In ch. 7 I say more about Theseus’ proem, its project of ‘rationalization’, and the diffident rather than pedantically confident self-characterization suggested by the string of quotations.
20 Peden 1987; cf. Schrijvers 1973, 154, on Horace.
21 On the end of Herodotus see works cited in n. 1.
22 Notice the summarizing ‘in this way...’: some dozen of the other Lives end similarly. Cf. P. Fowler on Lucretian epiphonemata, 1997, 116, 120. For further points about the Cicero anecdotes, especially their elaboration of earlier themes in the Life and the pair,see Moles 1988, 200–1.
23 This does not exclude the possibility that the issues might reappear in later genera- tions, including Plutarch’s own: in particular, the tensions between Greek contentious- ness and Roman oppressiveness (Philopoemen) and between philosophical culture and autocratic domination (Cicero) would both have contemporary resonance. I explore the first of those aspects in ch. 10. Lysander is interesting here too. The effect on Sparta of the wealth he imported has been stressed earlier (esp. 2.6 and 17–18: see pp. 292–5 and Pelling, forthcoming (b) ). That theme might have returned explicitly in the final chapter, but it does not; the impression, at least the surface impression, of the closure is rather that danger has been set aside and rifts have been healed, with an emphasis on private penury rather than public wealth.
24 Cf. Smith 1968, index s.v. ‘terminal modification’. This category seems to prove particularly illuminating for ancient texts: cf. Nagle 1983 and Reeve 1984.
25 There is an eloquent contrast here with Lycurgus, one of the Lives with the greatest bulk of posthumous material. His achievement did not die with his death, which indeed he engineers to safeguard his achievement; the final story therefore needs to be taken down to Agis and Lysander. This, too, is a ‘completion of the death’, but in the case of Lycurgus it takes centuries. Cf. also Tim. 39.7.
26 At pp. 269–70 I also comment on the way this conveys an intimation of the intel- lectual milieu which Plutarch and his friends share, a world in which the past still counts.
27 Above, pp. 200–1, and Pelling 1989, 214–15.
28 This interest in Cato’s descendants mirrors that in his ancestors at Cato Mai. 1.1–3: cf. Antony, discussed at pp. 369–70 and Pelling 1988, 10, 117, and 325.
29 This assumes the reading έπιμανως (Solanus, Jones) rather than έπιφανως at 87.8. For more detailed commentary on the closure, cf. Pelling 1988, 322–7.
30 God’s Slowness to Punish 567a; cf. Jones 1971, 16–19, 120; Russell 1973, 2–3; for a different view, Brenk 1987a and 1992, 43, 56–75.
31 Ant. 93(6); cf. Pelling 1988, 19–26, 325.
32 Stinton 1975; cf. Moles 1988, 24, 200; Pelling 1988, 323. I am not implying that such emotional ‘restitution’ is the only, or even the main, reason for including such aitia.
33 Eur. Hipp. 1422–30. Nor does it make things more reassuring that Artemis herself seems to sense no inappropriateness there; nor (in one sense) is there any, for Artemis presides over the virginity-to-marriage transition as surely as she presides over chastity itself. Hippolytus has been one-sided not merely in following Artemis so exclusively and rejecting Aphrodite, but also in picking and choosing among aspects of Artemis herself.
34 Cf. esp. Eur. Medea 847–50. In Pelling 1997c, 220–2 and 2000, 198–203, I try to disentangle more strands in the possible range of audience reactions to Medea.
35 Cf. esp. Roberts 1987 and 1988.
36 Cf. the exhaustive discussion of Manuwald 1979, 131–6, and for a different approach Pelling 1982b, 224–5 and Rich 1989, 104–8.
37 See Woodman 1989, though I am unconvinced by his attempt to minimize the discordance between obituary and narrative. A version of the view of Koestermann (1963, 1:38), rejected by Woodman, is more attractive: different parts of Tacitus’ narrative suggest to the reader different, and not straightforwardly reconcilable, explanatory strands. I say more about this in Pelling 1997d, 122–3 n. 25; Woodman 1998, 241 says more too.
38 See esp. Dewald 1997 and Pelling 1997f.
39 male pugnatum: the important combination of a moral register (‘badly’) with one of success and failure is hard to capture in English, but is important to the passage’s suggestions.
40 On the end of the Jugurtha and its function within the work, see esp. Levene 1992; on spes in Sallust, so often illusory or frustrated, see Scanlon 1987, esp. 1, 40, 61 on the final sentence. The end of Catiline is also forward-looking and thought-provoking, though in slightly different ways: cf. P. Fowler 1997, 134.
41 Above, pp. 368–9.
42 The end of Pericles is similar. We are given a hint of the way the war will go, the abandonment of his advice, the rise of the demagogues. But there is nothing of the ‘all in vain’ here; this is simply a pointer to how much Athens would come to miss him. This is terminal laudation once again, not terminal redirection.
43 Nic. 30.3, Dem. 31.6.
44 And to an extent Marius and Alcibiades: cf. p. 378 and below, n. 68. Demetr. 53.8–9 might also belong here, with its survey of the generations until Macedon fell to Rome; but the principal point here is to aid the transition to the ‘Roman drama’ of Antony, 53.10, and the tone is not specially charged.
45 Here and elsewhere, its moralism is also cruder than that of the Parallel Lives. The Life is written for the impressionable sons of his friend Polycrates, and filial imitation is a suggestive theme: cf. p. 291.
46 On this terminal generosity to Lucullus see also Swain 1990a, 144 = Scardigli 1995,261–2; Swain 1992a, 312–14; Duff 1999, 260–1. On this particular exchange of gibes between Pompey and Lucullus, cf. pp. 73–4 above.
47 Generosity to Greeks: 18, 29.3–5, 33.4 (cf. Swain 1990a, 143 = Scardigli 1995, 260, and 1992a, 314); Murena, Plutarch emphasizes, was ham-fisted in comparison, 19.8–9. General justice: 4.1, 7.1–3, 20, 23.1–3, 24.6–7. Contrast Tigranes, whose friction with Greeks is stressed only here (21.3–5, 22), not for instance in Pompey.
48 Cim. 1–2.
49 On similar rings in the novel, cf. Fusillo 1997; but biography is naturally more wistful, with the earlier themes re-emerging in death rather than in a restitution of initial order.
50 Compare the way in which ‘Philologus’ plays a crucial role in the demise of the philhellene Cicero: Cic. 48.2, with Moles 1988, 200 and Pelling 1989, 222.
51 Smith 1968, esp. 31, 42–4, 48–9, 155–66.
52 For clearer cases, cf. the closures of Pelopidas and Marcellus: Pelling 1989, 207–8.
53 Cf. especially Dihle 1987.
54 Pelling 1989, 222–8.
55 Cf. esp. Rawson 1986, and see above, p. 254.
56 Brut. 55(2).2; similar praise at Ant. 6.7. Cf. pp. 258–9, 324.
57 Especially at Cato Mai. 30(3)–31(4): above, pp. 200–1, 275 and 312.
58 Crassus’ aspirations: Crass. 37(4). Cleomenes’ tactics: Gracch. 44(4).2–3, 45(5).2; deaths: Ant. 93(6).4 (discussed above), Eum. 21(2).7–8, Crass. 38(5).4, Flam. 22(1).7. Cf. above, pp. 351–2, 360–1 and 363 n. 46; Pelling 1988, 20.
59 Cf. Moles 1988, 200, on Cic. 49.3–6 and the following synkrisis.
60 Russell 1963, 21 = Scardigli 1995, 358–9: cf. p. 353.
61 Pelling 1988, 20.
62 Duff 1999, 263–83 discusses this ‘closural dissonance’ in much more detail: he too stresses that it often takes the form of less generosity in epilogue than in narrative. See my remarks above at pp. 360–1.
63 Cf. the criticisms which I formulated in ch. 16. As I acknowledge at p. 360, I may well have put the point too strongly in that essay’s 1986 form; this passage in the 1997 paper was intended as a correction.
64 The verdict is left open explicitly at Luc. 46(3).6, and implicitly in most of the other cases. Even in pairs where the rhythm of the argument seems to tilt the scales toward one man or the other, this is not made explicit, and the issues are usually made to seem finely balanced: Theseus–Romulus, Aristides–Cato Maior, Pericles–Fabius, Dion–Brutus, Aemilius Paulus–Timoleon. A draw seems suggested by those summaries which give each man the advantage in a particular area; Sulla 43(5).6, Flam. 24(3).5, and Gracch. 45(5).7. The clearest exception seems Solon–Poplicola, where Poplicola, oddly enough, seems to emerge as the winner: Duff 1999, 260. Some equality between the subjects of comparison was in fact an expectation of ancient rhetorical theory: cf. Swain 1992b, adducing Theon Prog. 2.112.20 ff. Sp., and Hermogenes Prog. 19.14–19 Rabe, and Duff 1999, 257–62.
65 For Erbse, Green 1978, 23 n. 118 and (with qualifications, and for very different reasons than Erbse’s own) van der Valk 1982, 306–7 and 329. Against, Larmour 1992, 4175–7, Swain 1992b, 111 and on balance Duff 1999, 253–5. Duff considers the argu- ment which I put in this paper, but is concerned that it works less well for Them.–Cam. than for the other three pairs.
66 Cf. Wardman 1974, 207; Larmour 1992, 4176.
67 On this see now Duff 1999, 131–60, esp. 143–4 on the deaths.
68 ‘Perhaps two exceptions’: the other I had in mind was Alcibiades, which in 1997 I limply added was ‘a genuine exception’. I now think that the last chapter of Alcibiades is much too ambiguous to be cast as simply negative: cf. Pelling 1996, lvi–lvii (written after the 1997 paper though it appeared before it); Duff 1999, 239–40.
69 See above, p. 366. Notice also that there is no transitional sentence between the Lives.
70 A sceptic might retort that the terminal abruptness of Camillus could equally suggest that a more leisurely ending has dropped out of the manuscript tradition. But the precise phrasing of the final words – ‘Camillus’ death grieved the Romans more than those of all the others who at that time, and in that plague, met their deaths’ – fits a regular closural pattern: cf. pp. 365–6. Further, in view of the usual symmetry between the beginning and the end of Lives, the irregularly abrupt beginning of Camillus lends support to an equal irregularity at the end.
71 Given the prominence of Bucephalas and the Achillean suggestions that are beginning to crowd into the Life, it may not be fanciful here to think of Achilles’ horse Pedasus, the mortal animal who keeps pace with his divine companions (Il. 16.152–4), but whose death comes to prefigure Patroclus’ at Il. 16.467–9.
72 Cf. Mossman 1988.
73 In Zonaras 4.14 p. 304: cf. Pelling 1973.
74 Cf. Mossman 1988, 92 = Scardigli 1995, 226; Pelling 1997e.
75 More on the forces destroying Caesar at p. 258 and in Pelling 1997e.
76 Cf pp. 184–5, where I discuss the contact and contrast with the death of Romulus at Rom. 27–8.
77 Cf. Mossman 1991, 117–18.