4

Plutarch’s adaptation of his source-material

In chapter 1 I argued that six of the Roman Lives – Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cato Minor, Brutus, and Antony – were prepared as a single project, and rest upon the same store of source-material. If this is so, it affords a unique opportunity to investigate Plutarch’s techniques. There are substantial variations among these six versions, both crude inconsistencies of fact and subtler differences of interpretation. It no longer seems adequate to assume that these are simply inherited from differing source-material; they must arise from Plutarch’s individual literary methods. Their analysis should therefore illuminate those methods. How much licence did Plutarch allow himself in rewriting and manipulating detail for artistic ends? And what considerations would lead him to vary his treatment in these ways?

In the first part of this chapter, I shall examine the literary devices which Plutarch employed in streamlining his material: conflation of similar items, chronological compression and dislocation, fabrication of circumstantial detail, and the like. In the second, I turn to the differences of interpretation and emphasis among these Lives. These suggest some wider conclusions concerning Plutarch’s biographical practice, which are developed in the final section: in particular, the very different aims, interests, and conventions which are followed in different Lives, and the flexible nature of this biographical genre.

I. Compositional devices

I start with some devices for abridging the narrative: first, various forms of simplification.

A characteristic technique here is the conflation of similar items. (i) At Caes. 7.7 Plutarch found it tedious to distinguish the three final senatorial debates on the Catilinarians. He was, after all, concerned with Caesar’s role, and that was confined to the final session. He thus gives the impression that the culprits were exposed (3rd Dec.), and their punishment decided (5th Dec.), at the same debate. But he certainly knew that the sittings of 3rd and 5th Dec. were distinct (cf. the earlier Cicero, 19.1–4 and 20.4–21.5), and he seems also to have known of the sitting of the 4th (Crass. 13.3).

(ii) At Cato Min. 43 Plutarch clearly distinguishes the lex Trebonia of 55 BC, giving Crassus and Pompey their provinces, from the subsequent lex Licinia Pompeia, which continued Caesar in Gaul. In that Life Plutarch needs to keep the bills separate, for they brought different reactions from Cato:¹ he publicly opposed the lex Trebonia, whereas the lex Licinia Pompeia provoked his personal appeal to Pompey, warning him of the dangers which Caesar threatened. Pompey 52.4 makes much less of this: ‘then they introduced laws through Trebonius the tribune’ (ἒπειτα νóμους διὰ Tρεβωνίου δημαρχουντος είσέφερον...), giving commands to Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey. Pompey thus associates Trebonius with all three commands; in Cato Plutarch links him with the grant to Crassus and Pompey, but correctly omits him from the continuation of Caesar’s command. Pompey groups all three commands together, naming Caesar first; Cato gives the correct sequence, with Caesar’s command being granted after the other two. Crass. 15.7 similarly takes all three commands together, though Plutarch does not there mention Trebonius.²

Similar is Plutarch’s technique of chronological compression, the portrayal of distinct events as closely linked in time. When two items were linked causally or thematically, it would have been clumsy to point to a long interval between them; hence Plutarch often connects such events in a way which suggests chronological closeness. There are many examples, and only two need be mentioned here.³ (i) At Cato Min. 51 he treats Cato’s proposal to surrender Caesar to the Germans. He tells the same story, with less detail, at Caes. 22.4–5. In Caesar he places the item in its correct chronological position, the year 55; Cato delays it to the context of the outbreak of the civil war, where it can conveniently be linked with Cato’s further attacks on Caesar’s command. The vague sentence at Cato Min. 51.6 conceals a time-lag of five years: ‘nothing was passed, but it was simply said that it would be a good thing for a successor to be appointed to Caesar’ (ἐκυρώθη μὲν οὐ̑ν οὐδέν, άλλ’ έλέχθη μóνον ὂτι καλως ἒχει διάδοχον Kαίσαρι δοθηνάί). (ii) At Caes. 21.8 Plutarch explains why Cato was absent from a debate in spring, 56 BC:⁴ ‘for they [the triumvirs] had deliberately spirited him away to Cyprus’ (ὲπίτηδες γὰρ αυτον εἰς Kὺπρον άπεδιοπομπήσαντο). That naturally suggests a tactic to safeguard this specific piece of legislation, and one would conclude that Cato had only recently departed. In fact, Plutarch knew that Cato had been despatched during Clodius’ tribunate, 58 BC (Pomp. 48.9, Cato Min. 34, and the earlier Cic. 34.2). But, as those passages show, Plutarch thought that Cato’s removal was designed to protect any legislation which the dynasts might introduce. Here he again wrote as if this logical link corresponded to a chronological closeness.

Such telescoping is similar to simple chronological displacement; and this brings us to techniques which, without necessarily abridging the narrative, serve to organize it in a more elegant or suggestive manner. Displacements may serve to organize into logical compartments, or to give smooth transitions: (i) At Pompey 62.1 Plutarch briefly tells the story of Caesar and the tribune Metellus: Metellus refused to allow Caesar to open the treasury, and Caesar bluntly threatened him with death. In Pompey the story is placed before Caesar’s pursuit of Pompey to Brundisium (62.2 is explicit on the chronological sequence). The same story is told at greater length at Caesar 35, and there Plutarch puts it in its correct chronological place, after Pompey has fled from Brundisium and Caesar has returned to Rome. Caesar can afford to be accurate: its narrative is here controlled by Caesar’s own movements, and the episode fits neatly into the narrative shift from Brundisium to Spain (36). Pompey organizes its narrative around Pompey’s person, and it is there convenient to group together all Italian events and place them before Brundisium. Pompey’s embarkation then moves the narrative decisively to the East.

(ii) The early chapters of Caesar show a more elaborate reordering. It is convenient to group together Caesar’s early foreign adventures: the trip to Nicomedes (1.7), the pirate adventure (1.8–2.7), the study in Rhodes (3). The return to Rome (4.1) can then restore the reader to an uninterrupted treatment of domestic politics. But two separate antedatings were necessary to produce this. Plutarch associates the pirate adventure with the trip to Nicomedes (80/79); a later date, in 74 or early 73, is certain.⁵ The journey to Rhodes is then dated ‘when Sulla’s power was already on the wane’ (της Σύλλα δυνάμεως ἢδη μαραινομένης), i.e. presumably in 79/8; in fact, a date of 76 or later is very probable.⁶ Both episodes therefore belong after the Dolabella and Antonius trials, datable to 77/6, which Plutarch treats in ch. 4. He doubtless knew the true sequence, for Suetonius’ account, clearly resting on similar source-material,⁷ is correct. But Plutarch’s arrangement is more elegant, and it has one further effect. Caesar’s rhetorical successes at Rome are now placed after the study in Rhodes, and it is natural to infer that they are the result of that teaching: a theme which alike suits Plutarch’s Hellenism and his interest in education. (We might compare the emphasis on Cicero’s Greek teachers at Cic. 3–4.)

(iii) This last instance suggests that displacements may also make, or reinforce, a causal or logical point; this, too, is frequent. Cato Min. 30.9–10 puts great stress on Cato’s rejection of a marriage-connection with Pompey: in this Life, it is that which began the train of events which led to war. When, immediately afterwards, Plutarch comes to the affairs of 59 BC, he places Pompey’s betrothal to Julia at the beginning of the account (31.6). This emphasizes the point, but is another displacement: Caes. 14.7 and Pomp. 47.10 put this later, and a date in spring or early summer is confirmed by Cic. Att. 2.17(37).1 (‘that sudden marriage connection’).⁸

I pass to a different form of displacement, the transfer of an item from one character to another: this is an extreme form of a technique often visible elsewhere, the suppression of the role of a complicating extra character.⁹ (i) At Ant. 5.10 Antony and Cassius are given the speech to Caesar’s troops before the crossing of the Rubicon; at Caes. 31.3 Plutarch says that Caesar incited the troops himself. Comparison with Appian BC 2.33.133 and Caesar BC 1.7 suggests that the Caesar version accurately reproduces the source. (ii) At Pomp. 58.6 Marcellus is given a proposal which Plutarch knows to be Scipio’s, and a remark (Caesar as a ‘bandit’, ληστής) which he elsewhere gives to Lentulus (Caes. 30.4, 6). This last instance seems only one of several such transfers in the accounts of the outbreak of war: see pp. 107–8 below.

We have so far been concerned with ways in which Plutarch has streamlined his narrative. The effect has usually been to abbreviate his source-material, or at least to arrange it in as simple and elegant a manner as possible, avoiding duplications, side-tracks, or distracting explanations. The opposite technique is also visible: the expansion of inadequate material, normally by the fabrication of circumstantial detail. Russell’s analysis of Coriolanus has demonstrated how much licence Plutarch allowed himself in introducing such inventions.¹⁰ The present group of Lives do not lend themselves so conveniently to this investigation: when one Life has more detail than another, it is rare that we can be certain that it is the leaner, not the fuller, account which accurately reproduces the source. But some instances of fabrication seem adequately clear. (i) At Caes. 9.2–10.11 Plutarch tells of Clodius and the Bona Dea. He had already told this story in Cicero (28–9), and there are great similarities between the two versions: it is likely that he based the Caesar account on his earlier version.¹¹ But Caesar does have many picturesque details absent from Cicero. The doors of the house are open; the maid runs off to fetch Pompeia; Clodius is too nervous to stay where he is left; Aurelia’s maid is playful – ‘ “Come on,” she said, “join in the fun”, and it was very much one woman talking to another; Clodius demurred, and she pulled him out from the shadows’ (ὠς δή γυνή γυναίκα παίζειν προύκαλείτο καί μή βουλóμενον εις τò μέσον είλκε...). Aurelia is formidable and decisive; the wives return and gossip to their husbands, and it is the menfolk who cry out for vengeance. Yet none of this new detail is very substantial, and the main lines of the account remain unmistakably close to the Cicero version. Plutarch may have had good information for this new detail, but it is much more likely that he is using his imagination to supplement an unsatisfactorily spare original.

(ii) In ch. 1 I discussed Plutarch’s use of the Second Philippic in the early chapters of Antony, and tried to show how he has revised that material to bring out points important to the Life: for instance, Antony’s susceptibility to the wiles of others.¹² We can also see him supplementing the Philippic with circumstantial detail for which it is hard to believe that he has any independent authority. Ant. 9.6 has Antony vomiting on his tribunal, an item in which the Philippic had revelled (63): Plutarch adds, discreetly, ‘with one of his friends holding out his toga to catch it’ (for this seems to be the force of the ὑπο-in ὑποσχóντος τò ίμάτιον).¹³ Ant. 11 has the squabbles between Antony and Dolabella, and clearly rests on Phil. 2.79–84; again, circumstantial detail is added (e.g. ‘for the moment Caesar departed, ashamed at their bad behaviour. Afterwards he came forward and announced...’). The unexpected night-time return of Antony to Fulvia is similarly elaborated (Phil. 2.77–8 ~ Ant. 10.8–9, with Pelling 1988, 192). Finally, Ant. 13 repays examination. Antony has just failed in his clumsy attempt to crown Caesar at the Lupercalia. That episode strengthened the conspirators’ hand, and they considered approaching possible allies. Some suggested inviting Antony, but Trebonius opposed this: he mentioned an earlier occasion on which he had himself sounded Antony. His remarks again seem based on the Second Philippic (34): ‘it is well-known that you entered upon this plan at Narbo with C. Trebonius; and, because of this complicity, we saw you called aside by Trebonius when Caesar was being killed’ (...quem et Narbone hoc consilium cum C. Trebonio cepisse notissimum est et ob eius consili societatem cum interficeretur Caesar, tum te a Trebonio uidimus seuocari). In Plutarch, the passage is transformed. Antony now shares a tent with Trebonius as his travel-companion; Trebonius broaches the subject ‘in a delicate and cautious sort of way’ (άτρέμα πως καί μετ’ εὐλαβείας); and Plutarch stresses what was a very easy inference, that Antony neither joined the plot nor revealed it to Caesar. The details give the anecdote conviction and interest, but they are again not very substantial. They are much more likely to come from Plutarch’s imagination than from any independent authority.

This instance brings us to a final category, which we may call the fabrication of a context: the devices by which Plutarch sought to incorporate additional details, often those which sat awkwardly with his principal version. (i) The whole context in Ant. 13 is interesting. This is a poor piece of narrative, and the Trebonius item fits uneasily into its context.¹⁴ The explanation of the awkwardness is clear enough: Plutarch is fitting the item from the Philippic into the framework drawn from his main Pollio-source, and the joints creak. The main source had described the conspirators’ approaches to possible allies (App. BC 2.113.473–124.475, Brut. 11–12, etc.): this was the best peg he could find for Trebonius’ sounding of Antony, and he inserted the item here. But the insertion involved fabrication of detail. The Philippic mentioned the Narbo conversation and Trebonius’ distraction of Antony on the Ides; that is all. Neither the Philippic nor any other source confirms that the conspirators now considered sounding Antony, nor that Trebonius told his colleagues of his earlier conversation. Those items seem to be Plutarch’s fabrication, as he developed a context for the startling item of Antony’s knowledge of the plot.

(ii) The battle with Vercingetorix, shortly before Alesia, provides a second example. As we saw in ch. 1 (p. 18), Caes. 26.7–8 comments on the ferocity of the battle: ‘in the early stages it looked as if Caesar was having the worse of it, and the Arverni still display a small sword hung in one of their shrines as a spoil from Caesar’ (ἒδοξε δὲ κατ’ άρχάς τι καί σφαληναι. καί δεικνύουσίν Ἀρβέρνοι ξιφίδιον προς ίερᾡ κρεμάμενον, ὡς δη Kαίσαρος λάφυρον). Caesar himself smiled at the sight of this dagger, and would not allow it to be removed. Plutarch’s narrative of the Gallic Wars is mostly drawn from Caesar’s Commentarii, even though he probably did not know Caesar’s work at first hand.¹⁵ But Caesar’s account of this battle (BG 7.66–7) does not include the sword anecdote, nor does it suggest that the Romans at first had the worse of the fighting. Hence some have assumed that Plutarch’s notice goes back to an early and independent authority.¹⁶ But the sword item must be derived from a source (perhaps an oral source) much nearer to Plutarch’s own day: note the present ‘they display’ (δεικνυούσιν).¹⁷ That anecdote was hard to reconcile with Caesar’s own version, which left no room for such a ‘spoil’. Plutarch needed to find a stage in the battle when ‘it looked as if Caesar was having the worse of it’, and it was natural to put this ‘in the early stages’. The revision of his material again arises from the need to find a context for a disparate item.¹⁸

So much for the compositional devices. We should not, of course, assume that their employment was always a wholly conscious process. Sometimes, doubtless, Plutarch did revise his narrative in the most calculated manner, struggling to reshape the source-material before his eyes. At other times, the flow of his narrative would carry him on more quickly, and it seems that he sometimes relied on his memory.¹⁹ Conflation, compression, and imaginative embroidery would then arise easily and unconsciously: such is the nature of story-telling.

II. Differences of interpretation

The most straightforward differences of interpretation among these Lives concern the motivation of actions. For instance, Pomp. 57.7 tells of the rumours spread in Italy in 50 BC, when Caesar returned to Pompey the troops he had borrowed three years earlier. These were brought by Appius Claudius, who encouraged Pompey to believe that, if it came to war, Caesar’s troops would immediately desert to the republican side. Here there is no suggestion that Appius had been bribed by Caesar to do this: he is simply mistaken, reflecting the false Italian confidence which the context in Pompey is stressing. Caes. 29.5 has the same item, though Appius is not here named; but here there is a clear hint that ‘those who had brought these troops to Pompey’ deliberately spread false rumours, and were acting in Caesar’s service.²⁰ That fits the themes of the Caesar context, which is making much of Caesar’s ubiquitous corruption. Pollio may have mentioned both possible explanations, for the parallel passage in Appian has the men acting ‘either through ignorance or because they had been bribed’ (εἲθ’ ὑπ’ άγνοίας εἲτε διεφθαρμένοι, 2.30.117). In each Life Plutarch selected the interpretation which suited the run of his argument.

A more elaborate variation concerns Pompey himself during the fifties: how alert was he to the dangers which Caesar threatened? Different Lives give different answers. Cato stresses Pompey’s blindness to the menace: that is not surprising, for in that Life he provides the foil to Cato’s own mantic foresight.²¹ At 43.10, for instance, Cato ‘often warned Pompey’ of the danger: ‘Pompey heard these things often, but paid no attention and let things slide; it was because he believed in his own good luck and power, and therefore could not believe that Caesar had changed’ . It is only after the consulship of 52 BC that Pompey becomes alert, and wistfully recalls Cato’s wisdom (49.1–2) – but even then he is ‘full of hesitation and timid delay when it came to making any attempt to prevent it’ (ὄκνού κάί μέλλησέως άτολμού προς το κωλύέίν κάί έπίχείρείν ύποπλέως). Caesar passes quickly over the politics of the fifties, but its summaries seem to reflect the same analysis: here, too, Pompey is blind. ‘For the entire time of his campaign’ Caesar deceived him, and he did not notice the growth of Caesar’s political strength (20.3); as war approached, he had ‘recently’ come to fear Caesar, having until then despised him (28.2).

Pompey itself has a different, more subtle analysis. There, too, Pompey is certainly outsmarted (51.1): he does not possess Caesar’s grasp of urban politics, and ‘clever as he was, Caesar outmanoeuvred Pompey right in the middle of the people and the most vital of affairs – and they (or ‘he’) did not notice’ . But Pompey here realizes the danger earlier, even if he does not meet it. By the time of Crassus’ death, he too ‘is oiling his hands and rubbing them in the dust’  53.9); in those years ‘he thought that Caesar would not abandon his power, and so sought to protect himself with the city magistracies, but took no other fresh step; nor did he want to give the impression of distrust, but rather of turning a blind eye to what was going on and choosing to overlook it’ (τοτέ δέ το Plutarch goes on to narrate the events of 54 BC. In other words, Pompey’s alertness to the danger is put several years earlier than in Cato, and his neglect is now a matter of conscious policy rather than political blindness. It is then only in the last months before the war, with his joyful reception in the cities of Italy, that he genuinely comes to misjudge the danger: he then lays aside caution, and comes to unqualified disdain of Caesar’s strength (57.5–6). This enthusiasm of the Italian cities is consequently given extraordinary emphasis: ‘this, so they say, was as important as anything in causing the war’ (ούδένος μέντοί τούτο λέγέτάί  This whole reading is quite individual to Pompey, and no other Life gives such emphasis to that moment.²²

The different emphasis here is partly to be explained by biographical relevance, for the complexity of Pompey’s changing views is naturally most apposite in his own Life; equally naturally the other versions may simplify. But there is more to it than this. His alertness to the menace suits the Life’s stress on his caution, εύλάβεια;²³ it also contributes to the tragic texture of the second half of the Life. The outbreak of war is presaged by this joy in Italy, an elegant contrast to the bleakness which will be Pompey’s fate: this ‘most beautiful and brilliant sight’, θέαμα κάλλιστον...καί λαμπρóτατον, will eventually yield to the very different tableaux of the final chapters.²⁴ ‘Garlands and flowers’ now introduce the events which lead to Pompey’s fall, and, as Pompey has recast matters, they also causally contribute to that fall. A false confidence is produced in Pompey, and he casts off that caution which has hitherto protected him. He is now utterly vulnerable to Tυχη, ‘Fortune’, another of the Life’s major themes.²⁵ Some of this could be formally stated in Aristotelian terms²⁶ – the hamartia, the events following ‘unexpectedly but because of one another’ (cf. Poetics 1452a4), and so on; but there is no need to labour the point. The tragic elements are manifest.²⁷

There is a further aspect to Pompey’s tragedy, and this may be introduced by another question of interpretation, Plutarch’s treatment of Clodius. Was he acting independently, or was he a triumviral agent? In particular, the exile of Cicero, which is treated in several Lives: was that simply, or largely, Clodius’ own desire, or was it a matter of triumviral policy? There is no clear and consistent answer, but the differences among the Lives are illuminating.²⁸

Pompey does imply some arrangement between Clodius and Pompey, but in this Life, surprisingly, Clodius seems the dominant partner. Pompey needs support to defend his eastern acta (46.7), and is forced to flee to ‘demagogues and youths’: ‘the most hateful and audacious of these was Clodius, who took Pompey up and hurled him down before the mob. He had Pompey rolling around in the forum in a most unworthy way; he carted him around and used him to validate all that he was proposing and saying to play to the crowd and flatter them’  βεβαιωτη̑, 46.8). He even demanded and obtained a reward, the sacrifice of Cicero, as if he were doing him service rather than bringing him shame. ‘As if’ he were doing him service – but all these demagogic acts are done on Clodius’ initiative, who uses Pompey merely as a ‘validator’, βεβαιωτης. Nor has Pompey any wish of his own for Cicero’s exile; it is solely Clodius’ pressure which achieves this. The analysis represents Pompey as more powerful than Clodius, and Pompey’s backing is needed to secure what Clodius desires. But the moving and active spirit is clearly Clodius, not Pompey. By ch. 48, Clodius is quite out of hand. He has cast out Cicero, he has sent Cato to Cyprus, and he then turns on Pompey himself. In this Life he is, most certainly, an independent agent.

Cato is rather different. Here Clodius serves the interests of the triumvirs, and receives the exile of Cicero as his part of the bargain: ‘to get Cicero’s exile as his reward, he directed his whole political line to fit in with what they wanted’  33.6). In Pompey (48.9) Plutarch made Cato’s mission to Cyprus the work of Clodius himself (‘.and he sent Cato under the pretext of a governorship to Cyprus’), and that mission even worked against Pompey’s interest. Cato 34.3 agrees that this was Clodius’ idea, but the context (33.6, 34.1) again makes it clear that he was serving the policy of the triumvirs.²⁹ The exile of Cicero remains the result of Clodius’ pressure rather than the dynasts’, but that is all. Later in the fifties, Clodius temporarily detaches himself – but he soon ‘slips back to Pompey’  This is a much more subservient figure than the Clodius of Pompey.

The brief notice of Caesar 14.17 is different again. This time only Cicero’s exile is in point, and there is no mention of any other services. But here, and here alone, Cicero’s exile is not only the wish of Clodius: Plutarch’s language suggests that Caesar wanted this as much as Clodius. ‘The most shameful measure of all during Caesar’s consulship was the election of Clodius as tribune, the man who had treated him so outrageously in the affair of his wife and the secret ceremonies. He was elected to destroy Cicero (έπί τη Kικέρωνος καταλύσει), and Caesar did not leave for his campaign until, in company with Clodius, he had crushed Cicero and forced him out of Italy.’ Again, there is no hint of this reading in Pompey or Cato?³⁰

It is not hard to see why Caesar and Cato take the lines they do. Caesar is denouncing the acts of 59 BC, and the disapproval has a crescendo: Clodius’ election, especially shameful after the Bona Dea affair, marks the climax. It is natural to blacken Caesar still further by suggesting that Cicero’s exile, too, was his doing. Cato controls a great deal of its narrative by polarising the struggles of the fifties: Cato is always the champion of the republic, the triumvirs (especially Pompey and Caesar) are always the threat.³¹ It is natural to fit Clodius, too, into this scheme.

The Pompey rewriting is more interesting. The Life has just begun an important new movement. 46.1–4 has stressed that Pompey’s earlier career enjoyed success to match Alexander: how fortunate, if he had died now! For the future brought him envy in his successes, and irretrievable disaster. He came to use his power unjustly for others, and gave them strength while reducing his own glory: ‘without noticing it, he was destroyed by the strength and magnitude of his own power’  46.3). For Caesar rose through Pompey’s strength to challenge the city, and eventually he destroyed Pompey himself.

Clodius is then introduced (46.8), and, thanks to Plutarch’s rewriting, he plays out in miniature much of what is to come. Pompey gives strength to Clodius, and is the ‘validator’ of his measures; but Clodius ‘uses’ Pompey (46.8), as shortly Caesar will ‘use’ him (47.8), for sheer demagogy. This weakens Pompey’s reputation (e.g. καταισχύνων, ‘bringing shame on him’, 46.8), and finally the strength given to Clodius is used against Pompey himself (48.9–12). Pompey himself is slow to see what is happening (48.8; cf. ‘he did not notice it’, έλαθε, in 46.3). Here there is a more specific foreshadowing of later events, for Pompey is too wrapped up in his marriage with Julia to notice the political currents (48.8), and this is what leaves him vulnerable to Clodius. Just so will he neglect affairs later in the fifties, first with Julia (53.1) and then with Cornelia (55.3–4; cf. 2.10). With Clodius, events do not go too far; with the help of the senate, Pompey can retrieve his position. Against Caesar, too, he will need the senate’s help, and he will return to their side. But Caesar will not be so manageable.

The treatment of Clodius is one of several passages in the Life which bring out Pompey’s passivity. In the politics of the fifties, he is seldom in control: it is extraordinary how little in the Life’s narrative is initiated by Pompey himself. We hear a good deal of his advisers, both good and bad (49.4, 54.5, 54.9, 57.7–8); his friends, too, are emphasized, excusing his blunders (47.8), discussing his policy with him (49.3), or giving some indication of his wishes (54.4). He himself reveals little; he is a man to whom things happen.³² Commands are voted to him; he is not said to press for them, or even to desire them.³³ When pressed, he may answer questions (47.6–7, 51.7–8, 60.6, 60.8) – but normally his answers reveal a further lack of sureness, and he has little dignity or control. After the outbreak of war, no-one allowed Pompey to think for himself; all men rushed to him and filled him with their own transient emotions and fears. ‘Contrary counsels would prevail even at different moments of the same day’  for Pompey was the prey to every false rumour. Hurriedly, he left the city to its fate. For ten years, we have seen this indecisive man, one who is out of his depth in the political currents: he is a general lost in politics (a theme introduced earlier in the Life, 23.3–6, and one which is a favourite of Plutarch, ch. 15). It is, indeed, only on campaign that he acts with his old briskness and success. His cura annonae (50) shows a different, stronger Pompey than the man we have just seen humiliated by Clodius; his swift departure from Brundisium (62) shows him a match for Caesar, again different from the man who has just been the feeble victim of others’ emotions (61). In Rome and at peace, he is fully himself only with his wives Julia and then Cornelia, who themselves distract him from public affairs. It is a powerful and sympathetic psychological portrait, and the other Lives’ accounts of the fifties have little hint of it.³⁴

Pompey’s lack of decision is reflected in the Life’s treatment of his motives, and here again there is a difference of interpretation between Pompey and the other Lives. Caesar and Cato stress his calculated ambitions in the years from 54 to 52 BC. Caes. 28.7 is explicit: ‘Pompey himself was putting on a respectable show of reluctance, but in fact doing more than anyone or anything else to get himself appointed dictator’  while Cato’s speech at Cato 45.7 shows his usual foresight, ‘.. .it is clear that he is using anarchy to court a monarchy for himself’  Pollio seems to have had something to say about this, for Appian has a similar passage (BC 2.19.71, 20.73). But such calculation is foreign to the Pompey, and that Life cuts the analysis away: simply ‘he allowed anarchy to develop in the city’ , he let it happen – though he himself has just been said to rely on the city’s archai, ‘magistracies’, not on anarchia (54.2). There is no suggestion of any conscious plotting. And, as we saw earlier, Pompey’s view of Caesar in Gaul is similar: he realizes the danger, and yet he does nothing. He is, indeed, a man to whom things happen, and he lets them.

In all this there is a pervasive contrast with Caesar. Pompey is politically inert; Caesar is always at work, even when men do not realize. His furtive, awful cleverness (δεινóτης) undermines Roman politics, even when he is absent in Gaul (51.1); he shows a deviousness quite alien to Pompey’s simple and generous nature (cf. 49.14). Caesar’s flair for urban politics quite outwits Pompey (‘.outmanoeuvring Pompey right in the middle of the people and the most vital of affairs’, 51.1, cf. p. 97). This contrast is again a peculiarity of the Pompey (though this is a matter of technique rather than interpretation). In Caesar Pompey is certainly outwitted (20.3), but that Life concentrates more on the similarities than the differences of the pair. Both aim at ‘monarchy’ (28.5–7), and both aim to destroy the other (28.1). Pompey has something of this (53.9–10, cf. 67.2, 67.4–5), but states it less sharply: the points of contact are here less emphatic than those of contrast.

More important is the preparation which all this affords for the tragedy of Pharsalus. When the war begins, Pompey again seems to have regained his stature. His strategy of leaving Italy is correct: Plutarch elaborately defends it.³⁵ The army admires him, and he inspires all with his own vigour (64.3). At Dyrrhachium, he outmanoeuvres Caesar, and forces him into all manner of hardship; meanwhile ‘every wind blows’ for Pompey, bringing provisions, reinforcements, and funds (65.6–7). His strategy of delay, avoiding a pitched battle, is again evidently correct (66.1); Plutarch defends it in the comparative epilogue (84(4).6). All this is consonant with Pompey’s history of decisive generalship and consistent victory. But now, fatally, his two worlds of politics and warfare are coming together. Even in this critical campaign, his political failings are felt, and they destroy him. He is brought down by his inability to lead or persuade his senatorial lieutenants. In politics, he has never been able to manage men like these, and he cannot manage them now. He still sees things more clearly than they do (66.6), but he cannot resist them. He abandons the task of a general, and, conscious of the folly, leads his army to its fate: the moment inspires Plutarch to great eloquence, 67.7–10 and 84(4). His political unsureness becomes his decisive failing, and leaves him vulnerable to Fortune. He has no control, and events bear him inexorably to his fall.

We are, once again, close to tragedy; and Plutarch’s style and imagery adopt an appropriate tone. The Caesarian troops take their positions ‘like a chorus’ (ωσπέρ χορος, 68.7) – and indeed the startling ch. 70, where participants reflect on human blindness and greed, is very much in the manner of a choral ode. Pharsalus itself is later said to be the ‘theatre’ (84(4).6) – a theatre which Pompey should have avoided.³⁶ It is a theatre where the armies play out events to an inevitable conclusion. The Pompeian dandies are no match for Caesar’s veterans (69.4–5, 71.7–8). The empty luxury found in Pompey’s camp closes the account of the battle (72.5–6), elegantly returning to the vital theme, the manic optimism of Pompey’s staff: ‘it was thus that they went to war, destroyed by their hopes, weighed down by stupid over-confidence (ουτω τάίς  And Pompey the Great, now ‘most like a madman, one whose wits were destroyed’  an Andromache (Iliad 6.389, 22.460) more than a Hector or an Achilles, is involved inescapably in their fate.

III. Biographical theory and practice

Plutarch introduces the pair Alexander and Caesar with one of his clearest programmatic statements. The reader of those two Lives should not expect a detailed narrative of all the well-known historical events. ‘For it is not histories we are writing, but Lives. Nor is it always his most famous actions which reveal a man’s good or bad qualities: a clearer insight into a man’s character is often given by a small matter, a word or a jest, than by engagements where thousands die, or by the greatest of pitched battles, or by the sieges of cities’ (Alex. 1.1–2).³⁷ The point recurs elsewhere: Plutarch feels no responsibility to give a continuous history of events, which the reader can find elsewhere.³⁸ His interest is character, ethos. Compare the first chapter of Nicias: Plutarch is ‘not as stupid as Timaeus, who tried to rival Thucydides’: he has merely tried to collect some less familiar material. ‘Nor is this an accumulation of useless erudition; I am conveying material that is helpful for grasping the man’s nature and character’ ³⁹ Why this interest in character? Plutarch’s answer is again clear: he hopes that his readers might be led by examples of virtue to become better people themselves.⁴⁰ He hopes that a few examples of wickedness, carefully introduced, may deter his audience from evil.⁴¹ And he has himself tried to become a better man for his biographical studies, ‘using history like a mirror, and somehow improving and moulding my own life in imitation of their virtues’ (Aem. 1.1). The theory is clear and consistent. Biography will often concentrate on personal details, and may abbreviate its historical narrative; its concern will be the portrayal of character, and its ultimate purpose will be protreptic and moral.

That is the theory; and the practice often closely corresponds. Pompey itself is one example. Everything centres on Pompey’s own character, on motifs such as the tension between home life and public affairs or between politics and warfare; on the strengths and weaknesses which bring success and then defeat. The explanations of such matters are sought in Pompey’s own personality, and there is no attempt to relate them to any wider historical background. It is also a moralistic Life, in the sense that Pompey’s good qualities – the orderliness and good sense of his personal life, for instance, or his diligent provincial administration – receive due praise; political unscrupulousness seldom escapes censure.⁴² Passing morals are intrusively pointed, the most striking example being the ‘choric’ reflections before Pharsalus.⁴³ And the insight into the vulnerability of a great man carries an awareness of human fragility which is ‘moralistic’ in another sense, one more concerned to point a truth of human existence than to exhort or to deter (see ch. 10).⁴⁴

Cato Minor is also close to the theory. The Life underlines Cato’s unbending and upright character, ‘not flexible, not susceptible, but firm in everything’ (ηθος...άτρέπτον κάί άπάθές κάί βέβάίον έν πάσίν, 1.3). Cato’s austere and energetic demeanour on campaign, his ostentatiously just administration, his immaculate conduct as a candidate for office, his magnanimity in accepting a personal defeat – these are the points which are stressed.⁴⁵ The tradition richly illustrated Cato’s courageous resistance to unscrupulous and violent opponents: Plutarch revels in it. There were a few bad points, too, and Plutarch, true to his theory, observes them carefully: his unbending opposition to Pompey’s agents was perilous, although well-intentioned (26.5); his unpretentious dress and demeanour detracted from his dignity as praetor (44.1); his divorce and remarriage of Marcia was questionable (52.8). But the general picture is positive. The climax is reached with Cato’s last days. He is determined on suicide, but his first thought is for the safety of the people of Utica (58.5, 59.4–8, 65.2, 65.6–7, 70.6–7). They doubt the wisdom of resisting Caesar, but even they come to understand and marvel at the constancy of Cato’s virtue (64.3).

‘Small matters’, too, receive the stress which the Alexander prologue suggests. The Life is studded with anecdotes: the infant Cato’s meeting with Poppaedius Silo, the triumphant entry of Demetrius into Antioch, the circumstances in which Cato received Ptolemy, the complicated snub of Juba.⁴⁶ Cato’s quarrel with Munatius is described at length (37), and Plutarch concludes in language very reminiscent of the Alexander prologue: ‘I have treated this episode at length because I think that this, no less than his great and public deeds, reveals and illustrates his character’ (37.10). This is indeed a very ‘personal’ Life. Cato’s love for his brother is emphasized; the difficulties of his womenfolk are a recurrent theme; his fondness for drink is not concealed.⁴⁷ There is little interest in the historical background: he can relate the formation of the first triumvirate without even mentioning Crassus.⁴⁸ Cato’s resistance to the dynasts is not brought into any political scheme, and he is one man working on his own. The controlling interest is ethical, not political, and passing ethical truths are duly pointed.⁴⁹

Cato, then, and Pompey are all Plutarch’s theory could demand: personal, moralistic, non-historical. They are also not very typical. Consider, for instance, Caesar. Plutarch there generates a great interest in the historical background, and is particularly careful to keep the theme of the coming tyranny before our eyes.⁵⁰ The early chapters introduce the theme. 3.2–4 digresses to mention the later period in Caesar’s life when, ‘striving to become first in power and in armed conflict’, he allowed the highest rank of eloquence to escape him.⁵¹ Abusive political opponents charge him with challenging the state and aiming at tyranny (4.8, 6.3, 6.6); but the people encourage his ambitions, and promise their support (5.8–9, 6.9). Later in the Life, little touches show Plutarch’s careful emphasis. At 29.5 the rumour spreads in Italy that Caesar’s men are likely to desert: ‘that’s how unpopular (they said) he has become with them because of all those campaigns, and that’s how frightened and suspicious they are of his monarchic ideas’  The parallel passage in Pompey (57.7) does not mention ‘monarchy’; nor, to judge from Appian (BC 2.30.116), did Pollio make much of this. At Caes. 30.1 Caesar accuses the optimates of building Pompey’s tyranny while they destroy Caesar himself; the parallel Pompey 58.5 does not mention ‘tyranny’. The affair with Metellus (Caes. 35.6–11) is also brought into the scheme, and oratio recta brings out a vital point: ‘You are my property,’ Caesar says, ‘you and all the others I have captured who took sides against me’  Plutarch does not need to labour the point:⁵² these are the words of a tyrant. Such hints thoroughly prepare the way for the final chapters. Caesar’s rule became ‘an acknowledged tyranny’ (57.1), and yet the pressures of that rule forced him to his death.⁵³ He had spent his life in seeking absolute power, and saw only its name, and the perils of its reputation (69.1).⁵⁴

Caesar became tyrant: Plutarch asks himself how it happened. His answer is again clear and emphatic. From the beginning, Caesar is the champion of the demos. They support him, and he rises; he loses their favour, and he falls. Early in his life, it is the people who encourage him to become first in the state (6.9). He fosters them with shows and games, and they seek ‘new commands and new honours’ with which to repay him (5.9). This generosity to the demos indeed purchases the greatest of prizes cheaply (5.8, cf. 4.8), and the optimates are quite deceived (4.6–9, 5.8). The theme continues through the Life: even the brief notices of the politics of the fifties are underpinned by references to the demos.⁵⁵ It is when Caesar loses this popular support that his fortunes waver, and the reactions of the demos are important in explaining his fall, but, after his death, the popular fervour again erupts.⁵⁶

This demos–tyrannis analysis dominates Caesar, and it is essentially a historical interest. Other Lives occasionally differ in detail from this analysis,⁵⁷ and, more important, they are simply less interested in offering any such explanation of events. This interest leads in Caesar to the suppression of themes and emphases which elsewhere typify Plutarch’s work. Caesar’s own ethos, for instance, remains rather shadowy: there is none of the psychological interest of Pompey, and there are few personalia of the type we see in either Pompey or Cato. Pompey’s home life was stressed in his Life, and Cato’s womenfolk in his; here there is very little on Caesar’s three or four marriages. And Caesar’s personal, especially sexual, habits might afford vast scope for a biographer: one need only glance at Suetonius’ Divus Iulius. Plutarch welcomes such material elsewhere, but here he suppresses it.⁵⁸ Even Cleopatra is treated rather perfunctorily (49.1–3). There are indeed remarkably few of those ‘small matters which illustrate a man’s character’ which the preface to Alexander–Caesar had promised.⁵⁹

Nor is it a very moralistic Life: we can indeed see Plutarch avoiding points he elsewhere thinks important to an estimate of Caesar. In other Lives he gives Caesar credit, the ‘gentlest of doctors’ for the evils of his generation (Ant. 6.7, Brut. 55(2).2): not a word of this in Caesar itself.⁶⁰ Little stress is given to Caesar’s ‘reasonableness’ (έπίέίκέίά) in the Civil Wars:⁶¹ for instance, his generous treatment of the troops of Afranius and Petreius is stressed at Pomp. 65.3, but omitted at Caes. 36.2. Nor does Plutarch make negative moral points. There is no explicit disapproval for Caesar’s vulgar demagogy, or his extravagance, or his debts.⁶² The moralist does occasionally show through, but these hints are sparse, and seldom important.⁶³

But Caesar is no more typical than Cato. Consider another Life, the Antony. In many ways this is closer to Plutarch’s theory. There is certainly little interest in the history, and the struggle of Antony and Octavian is not related to any wider background. The origins of the war of Actium are described in terms of antagonistic personalities: in particular, the antagonism of Cleopatra and Octavia.⁶⁴ The battle itself is narrated very hazily, and all centres on the personal demeanour of Antony and Cleopatra. It is, indeed, a very personal Life. The narrative often stops for powerful characterizing surveys: not just of Antony, but also of Cleopatra, of Fulvia, of Octavia, even of the incidental Timon of Athens.⁶⁵ A fund of anecdotes illustrate Antony’s character, ‘boastful, whinnying, full of empty prancing and inconsistent ambition’ (κομπωδη κάί φρύάγμάτίάν οντά κάί κένού γάύρίάμάτος κάί φίλοτίμίάς άνωμάλού μέστον, 2.8). His luxurious private life is a dominant motif, and ‘small matters’ figure as prominently as the Alexander preface would suggest.⁶⁶ The Life is also at times extremely moralistic and value-laden, as indeed the introduction to Demetrius and Antony leads us to expect.⁶⁷ Antony’s private luxury is criticized; so is his autocratic behaviour in public.⁶⁸ The proscriptions are strongly stigmatized (19–20). The final Comparison is heavy with ‘crude and prudish’ moralism.⁶⁹ And it is tempting to characterize the entire Life as ‘basically.. .a simple cautionary tale’.⁷⁰

Yet it is perhaps not so simple. Most of these instances have been drawn from the first third of the Life, before the entrance of Cleopatra (25.1). Cleopatra herself is introduced as Antony’s ‘final evil’ (τέλέύτάίον κάκον) – but the story is immediately seized by a new narrative and descriptive vigour, and the nature of Plutarch’s moralism becomes rather different. There are no more intrusive moralizing remarks; no more explicit denunciations of the actions he describes. Antony and Cleopatra vie with each other in the extravagance of their entertainment (26–8); Plutarch might have done more than mildly rebuke Antony for time-wasting (28.1, cf. 30.1). Cleopatra is the mistress of every type of ‘flattery’ (κολάκέίά, 29.1), and contrasts tellingly with Octavia’s ‘gravity’ or ‘dignity’ (σεμνοτης, 31.4, 53.5); but it is an essentially artistic contrast, and no explicit moral is drawn. Cleopatra and Antony behave disgracefully at Actium, ‘betraying’ the whole army (cf. 68.5). Plutarch makes little ethical capital of it: contrast his remarks on Pompey’s behaviour at Pharsalus (Pomp. 67.7–10). By the end of the narrative, the interests of writer and audience are far from crude moralism. Octavian is allowed no praise for what could be seen as noble conduct towards Cleopatra (82.2, 84.3, 86.7); and it is indeed a surprise, when we come to the comparative epilogue, to discover that Plutarch disapproved of the manner of Antony’s death.⁷¹ Praise and blame are alike irrelevant to the narrative: Plutarch, like his readers, is quite carried away by the vigour and splendour of the death-scenes.

Plutarch is here doing more than pointing the fate of the flatterer, or noting the effects of the corruption of passion. His concern is the tragic depiction of a noble and brilliant nature, a man torn by psychological struggle and cruelly undone by his flaws – by his weakness of will, by his susceptibility to others, by his sad and conscious submission to his own lowest traits. There is moralism here, certainly, just as there is usually moralism in tragedy; but it is a subtle and muted type of moralism. It is the moralism of a sympathetic insight into human frailty; the moralism which, like the tragic aspects of Pompey, points a truth of human nature. We are some way from the ethical colouring of Cato, with its explicit protreptic and censure.

One further point is important. Antony disappears from the narrative at 78.1 (his death is mentioned only in a passing participial clause). The last ten chapters are all Cleopatra’s. Plutarch often concludes a Life with a brief death-notice, giving the hero’s age when he died and summarizing his achievement. Here there are two heroes, and they are given a joint notice (86.8–9). In the last analysis, Antony fits Plutarch’s biographical theory only a little better than Caesar. Its moralism soon becomes more subtle and less strident, as it is overlaid by the interest in literary artistry; and, by the end, it is not really a biography at all, or at least not a simple one. By now two lives have become one, and their story – their tragedy – has become one as well.⁷²

A writer’s programmatic statements can sometimes be a poor guide to his work, and some Lives fit Plutarch’s theory better than others. Any account of the Lives must bring out their versatility. It must find room for Caesar, which is not straightforwardly moralistic or personal but is certainly historical. It must include Lives which break away from the constrictions of a single man’s Life, as Antony moves its attention to Cleopatra, or as Brutus often divides its interest between Brutus and Cassius.⁷³ It must find room for different types of moral interest: the explicit praise and blame of Cato, or the subtler and more tragic insights of Antony. Other Lives again – Crassus, perhaps, or Sertorius – are simply less ambitious and less richly textured. This biographical genre is an extremely flexible one, and admits works of very different patterns.

It is arguable that these different emphases go deeper, and illuminate more puzzling aspects of Plutarch’s work. He is, indeed, a curiously varied writer. Sometimes he is impressively critical of his sources, sometimes he seems absurdly credulous. His historical judgements are sometimes insightful, sometimes strangely unsophisticated. His characterization often impresses with its perceptiveness; it sometimes irritates with its triviality. His style and imagery are usually sober and restrained, but occasionally florid, extravagant, even melodramatic. Might such irregularities be related to the different directions and interests of the Lives? That inquiry would indeed be delicate and complicated; and yet, perhaps, it would have its rewards.⁷⁴

Excursus

The most bewildering example of Plutarch’s simplifications and displacements is seen in his accounts of the senatorial debates at the outset of the war: Caes. 30–1, Pomp. 58–9, and Ant. 5. The historical accuracy of these accounts has been thoroughly examined by Kurt Raaflaub,⁷⁵ and only a few points need be considered here.

The Pompey account mentions the debate of 1st Dec. 50, but omits that of 1st Jan. 49: Caesar and Antony have the 1st Jan. debate, but not that of 1st Dec. Plutarch seems quite clear that these are different sessions, in different years. Thus at Pomp. 59.2 he explicitly notes that Lentulus was consuldesignatus, and then at ch. 5 marks the moment when he assumed the consulship; at Caes. 30.6 and 31.2, Lentulus is consul throughout. In Pompey it is Curio (tribune until 9th Dec. 50) who proposes that both Caesar and Pompey should disarm: this proposal is historically well-attested for the 1st Dec. debate. But in Antony, and apparently in Caesar,⁷⁶ it is Antony, tribune from 10th Dec. onwards, who makes this proposal. No other ancient source suggests that this proposal was made on 1st Jan., nor that Antony put it forward at any time. Some features of the chronology seem to be distinguished in consequence of the Lives’ focus on different sessions. Curio’s enthusiastic reception by the demos follows the Pompey session (58.9), but precedes that in Caesar (30.2); the same is true of Antony’s insistence on reading a letter from Caesar to the demos (Pomp. 59.3–4, Caes. 30.3, Ant. 5.5).⁷⁷ It does seem probable that Plutarch, in selecting these different sessions for emphasis in the three Lives, was not simply confused. His choice was deliberate, and we shall examine his reasons in a moment.

Yet the course of the debates themselves is extraordinarily similar. All three Lives have the sequence of votes (though Pompey simplifies a little): first, those who wished Pompey to disarm; then those who wished this of Caesar; finally, those who preferred the disarmament of both.⁷⁸ Both Pompey and Caesar have similar apophthegmata of the presiding consul: Caesar as a ‘bandit’ (ληστης) and the need for arms rather than words.⁷⁹ In both cases, the senatorial reaction is to change their clothes as a mark of grief (Pomp. 59.1, Caes. 30.6). It is natural to suspect that these similarities arise from some deliberate conflation and displacement by Plutarch, and, in the case of the consular apophthegmata, some conscious displacement seems clear: in Caesar Lentulus is the consul, and he is given the remarks which in Pompey belong to Marcellus. It is likely enough, too, that the change of clothes belongs after the Caesar–Antony debate, in early January, while Pompey has displaced this to a month earlier.⁸⁰

What are we to make of the rest, and particularly the similar sequences of votes in the two sessions, and the similar role of the two tribunes? No doubt, as Raaflaub remarks, the two debates did cover similar ground, and no doubt the Caesarian tribunes were active in both.⁸¹ But it requires great faith to believe that the Caesar account is accurate, and that Antony genuinely revived Curio’s ploy a month later and gained a similar response. That is Raaflaub’s view; but what we have seen of Plutarch’s technique shows that this is a flimsy structure to build on his evidence. It is easier to assume that, for certain reasons, Plutarch chose to stress different debates in different Lives; but, once he had made this choice, he felt free to select the most spectacular items from either debate, and exploit them in the single context he had imposed. Such transfers and displacements are anyway visible here, as we have seen: he has surely done the same with Curio’s proposal and its fate. In Caesar and Antony he delays this to the new year, and this involved transferring it to the new year’s tribune, just as the apophthegmata needed to be transferred to the new year’s consul. Plutarch need have no historical basis for this, and provides no evidence for Antony’s true behaviour on 1st Jan.

Why, then, did Plutarch stress different sessions in the three Lives? First, both Antony and Caesar make much of the tribunes’ flight to Caesar’s camp (Caes. 31.2–3, Ant. 5.8–9): in both Lives, this flight gives the transition to the crossing of the Rubicon. (Pompey omits this flight, and Plutarch there prefers to link events by a different device.⁸²) The transfer of Curio’s proposal to Antony evidently tidies the sequence, and aids the focus on the tribunes of 49: not merely is their proposal rebuffed, they are even driven out of the senate-house and forced to the camp of Caesar. Secondly, Pompey makes much more of the republican opposition to Caesar, and particularly the relation of the optimate extremists with Pompey. In that Life the canvas is large enough to admit the role of Marcellus, Lentulus, and Cato; Caesar has only Lentulus. As Marcellus is given three speeches in Pompey (58.6, 58.10, 59.1), it is worthwhile to distinguish him from Lentulus; once that distinction is made, the marking of the separate consular years is no great cumbrance. Caesar conflates, and the concentration of all these events into a single consular year is a natural consequence. Thirdly, the suppression of the December debate in Caesar leaves, as the first events of the sequence, Curio’s enthusiastic reception by the demos, and Antony’s reading ‘against the consuls’ will’ (βίά των ύπάτων) of Caesar’s letter to the people: these are themes which cohere closely with that Life’s emphasis on the demos of Rome.

Notes

¹ Caes. 14.2 and Cato Min. 32–3 form a similar case (p. 4). Caesar treats two bills together, but Cato has to distinguish them, as Plutarch there wishes to trace Cato’s reactions to both.

² For similar conflations, cf. e.g. Ant. 5.8 (with Pelling 1988, 129), conflating at least two meetings of the senate in early 49 (Plutarch knows better at Caes. 30–1); Ant. 14.3, with p. 37 n. 90 and Pelling 1988, 152; Caes. 30.6, where the outburst of’Lentulus’ combines two remarks made by Marcellus, Pomp. 58.6 and 10 (pp. 107–8); and Cic. 15.5, combining (a) the two reports from Etruria and (b) the tumultus decree and the senatus consultum ultimum. Note also that in Coriolanus 3 he appears to combine details of the battles of Regillus and of the Naevian meadow: Russell 1963, 23–4 = Scardigli 1995, 362–3. For similar instances in Pericles see Stadter 1989, xlviii; in Cicero, Moles 1988, 37; in Sertorius, Konrad 1994, xl; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 283.

³ Similar instances are collected in Sherwin-White 1977, 177–8; for similar cases in Marius, cf. also Carney 1960, 26–7; in Cicero, Moles 1988, 37; in Pericles, Stadter 1989, xlviii; in Sertorius, Konrad 1994, xl; in Alcibiades, Frazier 1996, 25–7; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 283 and 406 n. 196; in Lysander and Alexander, Duff 1999, 313–14.

⁴ The debate concerned the grant of stipendium for Caesar’s troops. It presumably took place after Luca, but before the debate on the consular provinces in (?) June: cf. Cic. Prov. Cons. 28. Plutarch’s notice of Cato’s absence is often regarded as a blunder: so e.g. Garzetti 1954 ad loc., and Luibheld 1970, 89 n. 13. But Cato seems to have returned from Cyprus at almost exactly this time, in spring or early summer, 56 (Oost 1955, 107–8). There is no reason to think that he reached Rome before the stipendium debate, and Plutarch’s version can stand.

⁵ See now Ward 1977, 26–36, correcting Ward 1975, 267–8 and itself subsequently corrected in one important particular by Glew 1981, 128–9: cf. MRR ii. 98, 100 n. 6. Suet. Div. Iul. 4.1 puts the pirate episode after the Dolabella trial, and this is confirmed by the precise reference of Vell. 2.42.3. Caesar there refers the matter to the proconsul of Bithynia and Asia, who seems to be called Iuncus or Iunius Iuncus (both emendations are due to Nipperdey: Iunium cum codd.). This can only be the ‘Iuncus’ of Caes. 2.6, who apparently held this unique combination of provinces for a short period in winter 74–3. (On the chronology see Bennett 1961, 460–3; Glew 1981. Nicomedes’ death is now dated to late 74: coins show he was still alive in October. He bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, and Velleius implies that Iuncus administered it along with Asia for the rest of his term.) Caesar was held by the pirates for 38 days: his capture should therefore be late 74 or very early 73.

⁶ Suet. Div. Iul. 4 again places this after the Dolabella trial, connecting it with the pirate adventure. If that connection is historical, Caesar would probably have arrived at Rhodes in the early months of 73.

⁷ Strasburger 1938, 72–3. Strasburger adequately demonstrated the uniform nature of the tradition for Caesar’s early years, though his more detailed attempts to disentangle particular source-traditions are wild.

⁸ Meier 1961, 69–79. – Such displacements are very frequent. For further examples, cf. e.g. Ant. 12.6 and Caes. 60.6, discussed at p. 37 n. 88; Ant. 21, where material from the Second Philippic is delayed to a point after Cicero’s death (pp. 17–18 and Pelling 1988, 169); Pomp. 64.5, where Plutarch displaces the arrival of Labienus in order to include him in his survey of Pompey’s new supporters (contrast Caes. 34.5); Caes. 11.5–6 and 32.9, using material which the source apparently attached to Caesar’s quaestorship (cf. Suet. Div. Iul. 7–8 and Dio 37.52: see pp. 77, 257, and Pelling 1997b, 200–1); Pomp. 48.9–12, where the amoibaia material is brought forward from 56 BC (cf. Dio 39.19, Cic. Q. Fr. 2.3(7).2), as Plutarch wishes to connect it with events two years earlier; and apparently several displacements in his account of senate-meetings before the outbreak of war (pp. 107–8). For similar cases in Cicero see Moles 1988, 37; in Thes.–Rom., Larmour 1988, 272–3 and 1992, 4172; in Sertorius, Konrad 1994, xl; in Pompey, Heftner 1995, 18–19; in Pyrrhus and Agesilaus, Frazier 1996, 27–9; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 283–4; cf. also Stadter xlviii–ix and n. 47.

⁹ For instances of this, cf. p. 4; for transfers, pp. 7, 33 n. 41, 228 n. 22. At Brut. 24.7 the watchword ‘Apollo’ at Philippi is transferred from Antony to Brutus. For similar cases in Cicero, Moles 1988, 37; in Pericles and Aristides, Stadter 1989, xlix and n. 48; in Sertorius (at least suppressions, if not transfers), Konrad 1994, xl; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 284; in Nicias, below, pp. 120–1 and 135–6 n. 14; Pelling 2000, 48 and 107.

¹⁰ Russell 1963, esp. 23–5 = Scardigli 1995, 361–8. For similar instances in Marius, cf. Carney 1960, 28–9; in On the Virtues of Women, Stadter 1965, 138–9; in Cicero, Moles 1988, 36–8; in Thes.–Rom., Larmour 1988, 368, 373–5 and 1992, 4169, 4171, 4174; in Sertorius, Konrad 1994, xli; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 284 and 381 n. 109. For speculation about similar procedures in Nicias, below, pp. 120–1; in Pericles, Pelling 2000, 107.

¹¹ p. 18, with n. 119.

¹² pp. 17–18.

¹³ For this and other rewritings in the passage see Pelling 1988, 137–9.

¹⁴ The suggestion that Antony should be approached comes awkwardly after his subservient antics at the Lupercalia; disturbingly little is made of the astonishing item of Antony’s knowledge of the plot; the ‘renewed discussions’ at 13.3 are also clumsy; and it is odd that Trebonius is not named in the final sentence (‘some people’, ένίούς:

cf. p. 33 n. 41).

¹⁵ Cf. pp. 17, 35 n. 69. The contact with Appian’s Celtica suggests that Plutarch drew his account from the Pollio-source: pp. 12–13.

¹⁶ Especially Gelzer, R-E viiia. 998, and Thévenot 1960, 132, 151.

¹⁷ See pp. 18 and 40 n. 121.

¹⁸ A further ‘fabrication of a context’ seems to be Brut. 19.4–5, where Plutarch alone attests a senate-meeting for 18th March 44. He appears to have introduced this separate session in order to include disparate material from a secondary source: p. 37 n. 90 and Pelling 1988, 152. Further examples in Antony may be 33.2–t and 53.5–7: see Pelling

1988, 206–7, 246–7.

¹⁹ ch. 1, esp. pp. 20–2.

²⁰ I defend and elaborate this interpretation of the Caesar passage in Pelling 1984a,43–5.

²¹ Cato’s foresight is stressed at Cato Min. 31.7, 33.5, 35.7, 42.6, 43.9, 45.7, 49.1–2, 51.4–5, 52.1–3; it is given a divine tinge at 35.7, 42.6, 43.3, and 53.3, and is contrasted with Pompey’s blindness at 43.9, 49.1–2, and 52.3.

²² Caesar (28.2, 29.5, 33.5) and Cato Min. (49.3, 52.4) make related points much less extravagantly; in neither Life does Plutarch think this Italian joy worth mentioning. To judge from Appian (BC 2.28.107–8), Pollio did not make much of it. – On the alertness shown by Plutarch’s Pompey see also Hose 1994, 288–90, but he misses the differences here among the Lives.

²³ Pomp. 57.6 stresses that it was his ‘caution’, ευλάβείά, which had earlier guided to safety his strokes of good fortune, ευτυχημάτά. Plutarch presumably has in mind such instances as 8.5, 13.2–3, 13.9, 19.8, 21.5–7, 22.4, 26.1, 27.3, 33.5, 36.3, 40.8–9, 43.3; cf. also 2.10, 20.8, 39.2, 42.4.

²⁴ Especially the scenes of Pompey’s death, 78–80; Plutarch’s technique is there extremely visual, describing events from the viewpoint of Cornelia and the rest of Pompey’s followers, still at sea. – The Italian reception also evokes the procession of ch. 45, a previous turning-point of Pompey’s life.

²⁵ Esp. 21.3, 21.8, 41.4, 42.12, 46.2, 50.3, 53.8–10, 57.6, 73.8, 74.5–6, 75.1–2,75.5, 82(2).1.

²⁶ Which is not to say that Plutarch necessarily knew the Poetics: that question is difficult. Cf. Sandbach 1982, 208, 229 and Zadorojnyi 1997a, 172–3.

²⁷ Talk of ‘tragic influence’ is of course problematic, and I would prefer to speak only of a tragic affinity : cf. the similar moves made by S. Hornblower 1987, 110–35, esp. 117–20, in discussing Thucydides. Sensitivity to the ‘tragic’ elements of the human condition has never been confined to one genre of literature, nor any single art-form, nor to art itself. ‘Tragic’ elements spring from a writer’s vision and sensibilities: literary experience will have helped to shape those sensibilities, but we cannot hope to gauge the precise impact of just one of a complex of overlapping factors. I here suggest only that, in Plutarch’s best writing, his sensibilities are given depth and resonance by an intertextual relationship with Tragedy, the literary genre. (When the literary elements become primary, we are closer to ‘tragic history’ in the debased Hellenistic sense.) Identifying ‘tragic’ suggestions is anything but straightforward: more is needed than, say, tightness of structure, or a doomed or self destructive character. But e.g. the theatrical imagery of Pompey and Theseus and Antony and Lysander (pp. 101 and n. 36, 197–200, 203–t, 296, 355, or even the strongly visual, ‘scened’ quality of the final scenes of Pompey (n. 24) can reasonably be taken as pointers to the dramatic genre. – These questions have been much discussed since de Lacy 1952: see Mossman 1988 = Scardigli 1995, 209–28 for a bold and thought-provoking attempt to distinguish epic and tragic elements in Alexander ; Braund 1993 and Zadorojnyi 1997a for ‘tragic’ elements in Crassus; Mossman 1992 and Braund 1997 for Pyrrhus; Frazier 1992, 4527–8 on Alexander and Pompey; Duff 1999 index s.vv. ‘Tragic’ and ‘Tragedy’, esp. 41–2, 61–2, 123–6; and earlier note the cautious remarks of Russell 1973, 123 and Wardman 1974, 168–79. I briefly discuss some of the general issues in Pelling 1999, 337–8, in particular the question why historical writers seem to have a closer affinity with tragedy than with other genres, especially comedy.

²⁸ In using terms such as ‘triumvirate’ or ‘independent agent’, I do not suggest that these categories are appropriate for illuminating historical fact (both are very problematic); I do suggest that it was in categories such as these that Plutarch approached and understood the period. – I omit the earlier Cicero from this analysis; the later Lives are better informed on the fifties than Cicero, and we need not assume that Plutarch then had the same view of events. Cicero in fact represents Clodius as largely independent, with his hostility to Cicero dating from the Bona Dea affair. That emphasis suits the Life’s interest in Cicero’s private affairs, especially gossip relating to Terentia (e.g. 20–3, 29.2–4, 30.4, 41.2–3). The triumvirs are at first friendly to Cicero, and their feelings change only when Caesar is offended over his offered legatio (30.4–5). Caesar then ‘strengthens’ Clodius, and dissuades Pompey from helping Cicero. There is no more extensive deal between the triumvirs and Clodius, only this casual backing for Cicero’s exile.

²⁹ So Oost 1955, 109 n. 3: ‘Plut. Cato Min. 34 surely can only mean that the triumvirate was behind the silencing of Cato.’

³⁰ Though the Caesar version is closer to that of Cicero (n. 28), and may be a simplification of that Life’s account.

³¹ For an instance of this, cf. p. 4.

³² There is of course considerable historical acumen in Plutarch’s portrayal: nosti hominis tarditatem et taciturnitatem (‘you know the man’s slow-moving, silent way’, Cic. Fam. 1.5b(16).2), and cf. e.g. Gelzer 1959, 158–9, 170–1, 175. Gelzer 164 also finds it useful to contrast Pompey’s phlegmatic conduct of politics with ‘die alte Energie’ on campaigns. It is also likely that some of this portrayal goes back to Pollio: Pelling, forthcoming (a). In Pelling, forthcoming (b) I explore further aspects of this portrayal in the second half of Pompey, in particular how many of the leading themes carry on around Pompey without being directed by him: he is almost a passenger in his own Life.

³³ Esp. 49, 54, 55.12, 61.1: contrast the Life’s earlier stress on his ‘desire for office’, φίλάρχίά, esp. 30.7–8. Pompey of course wants to retain his pre-eminent position (53.9–10), but the nearest approach to desire for a specific άρχη is the hint of 54.8, where he thanks Cato for his support.

³⁴ The other Lives reflect the dilatoriness and indecision at the outset of the war (Caes. 33.4–6 and, less strongly, Cato 52.4, 53.3); but there is no similar attempt to prepare this theme in the accounts of the fifties. The psychological depth of Pompey contrasts with the crude passage at Cato 49.1, where in 52 BCPompey ην οκνού κάί μέλλησέως άτολμού προς το κωλύέίν κάί έπίχέίρέίν ύποπλέως (‘was full of hesitation and timid delay when it came to making any attempt to prevent it’: see p. 97).

³⁵ Pomp. 64 treats the forces which Pompey gathered during 49 BC, and Plutarch’s argument seems intended to justify the strategy of leaving Italy. Some praised Pompey’s departure, though Caesar and Cicero uttered dismissive remarks (63.3–2); but Caesar showed in his actions that he particularly feared ‘time’, τóν χρòνον (63.3–4). ‘In this time (έν δέ τω χρóνω τούτω) a great force gathered for Pompey...’, 64.1. The strength which Pompey now acquired contrasts forcefully with his initial weakness (57.6–9, 60.6–8). Plutarch’s approval of the strategy seems clear; though, in a different train of thought, he later criticizes the decision to abandon Rome (83(3).6–8, cf. 61.6–7).

³⁶ At 84(4).6 the theatre image is also woven into the texture of the athletic imagery which pervades the Life (cf. esp. 8.7, 17.2, 20.2, 41.2, 51.2, 66.4, 84(4) ): Pharsalus is ‘the stadium and theatre for the contest’; ‘no herald called Pompey to come and fight, if he would not leave the crown for another’. This is a good example both of the systematic elaboration of Plutarch’s imagery, and of the interaction of different systems. For the ‘theatre’ motif, we might compare the theatrical imagery in another Life rich in tragedy, the Antony: Demetr. 53.10, Ant. 29.4, 45.4, 54.5, 93(6).4. Antony here echoes and develops the imagery of Demetrius: cf. p. 355 below, de Lacy 1952, 371, Pelling 1988, 21–2, and Duff 1999, 61–2 and n. 35.

³⁷ It is important to take the passage in context, and relate it particularly to the themes of the pair Alexander–Caesar: that is not straightforward. See Duff 1999, 14–22; below,pp. 207, 259–60, 276–7; and Pelling, forthcoming (a).

³⁸ Galba 2.5 (cf. Duff 1999, 28–9), Fab. 16.6.

³⁹ On the Nicias passage, cf. below, p. 117; Wardman 1971, 257–61 and 1974, 154–7; and now esp. Duff 1999, 22–30. For the interest in ethos, cf. esp. Pomp. 8.6–7, Dem. 11.7; for Plutarch’s terminology, p. 62 n. 39 and ch. 10.

⁴⁰ Cf. esp. Per. 1–2, Aem. 1; Duff 1999, 30–45, and on the Aem. passage below, p. 273.

⁴¹ Demetr. 1, with Duff 1999, 45–9. Cf. Cim. 2.2–5.

⁴² Personal life: Pomp. 18.3, 40.8–9, 53.2. Administration: 39.4–6, cf. 27.6–7, 28.5–7. More praise: 10.10–14, 20.6–8, 49.14. Criticism: esp. 10.3–5, 29, 30.8, 38.1, 40.6, 44.4–5, 46.3, 47.8, 53.9–10, 55.6–10, 67.7–10. And the comparative epilogue, as usual, is rich in praise and blame.

⁴³ 28.5, man as naturally responsive to kindness; 29.5, the culpable ambition (philotimia) of Achilles; 53.10, Fortune cannot meet the demands of human nature, for greed is insatiable; 70, blindness and greed; 73.11, ‘oh, how everything is fair for those who are noble!’

⁴⁴ Despite remarking on another sense of moralism, in this 1980 paper I was still using the words ‘moralist’ and ‘moralism’ in a fairly simple way. I would stand by the distinctions I drew between the textures of different Lives, but would now wish to elaborate the distinction between different sorts of moralism: on Antony, I tried to phrase matters in a more nuanced way in Pelling 1988, 10–18, esp. 14–15. For a more ruminative discussion of moralism cf. ch. 10, and now esp. the powerful discussion of Duff 1999, who at 68–70 is reasonably content with the way I now classify the moralism of Antony.

⁴⁵ Campaigns: Cato 8.2–3, 9.5–10, 12.1. Administration: 16–18, 21.3 ff., 35–8, 44, 48.8–10. Candidatures: 8.4–5, 20–1, 42.3–4, 49.2–6. Rebuff: 50. For a more thorough treatment of the ‘moralism’ of Cato than that sketched here, see Pelling 1989, 228–30; Frazier 1995, 158–9; Trapp 1999; and especially Duff 1999, 131–60. Duff agrees (135) that the pair Phocion–Cato Minor ‘adhere[s] more closely than most to the principles set down in the programmatic statements’, and argues (149) that Cato becomes ‘a man to praise, but not to imitate’.

⁴⁶ 2.1–5, 13, 35.4–6, 57.

⁴⁷ Brother: 3.8–10, 8.1, 11.1–8, 15.4. Women: 24.4–25.13, 30.3–10, 52.5–9; cf. 73.2–4, on the sexual predilections of Cato’s son. Drink: 6.1–4, but also note the rejection of the slander at 44.2.

⁴⁸ 31–3; cf. p. 25.

⁴⁹ 7.3, 52.7–9, on married life; 9.10, on ‘true virtue’; 44.12–14, on justice; 46.8, on senseless extravagance; 50.3, on the wise man’s constancy.

⁵⁰ Cf. Steidle 1951, 13–24, echoed by Brutscher 1958, 27–31, 89–91; Garzetti 1954, xliii–xlix; and pp. 5–6, 207–8,ch. 11, and Pelling 1997e.

⁵¹ I discuss the precise interpretation of this sentence in Pelling 1984a, 34, and trace some of the ironies it introduces into the Life in Pelling 1997e, 219–26.

⁵² Dio 41.17.2–3 makes the same point more crudely.

⁵³ Here, once again, there are elements of tragedy, as Caesar is trapped by his own past, a favourite theme of Plutarch: see pp. 5–6, 182, 403–6, and ch. 11; also Pelling 2000, 55. In Caesar’s case a major Shakespearian theme, as so often, may be seen as a brilliant elaboration of a Plutarchan idea.

⁵⁴ In Pelling, forthcoming (a) I return to this passage, and trace some of the larger implications for Plutarch’s judgement on Caesar and for his whole biographical project.

⁵⁵ Thus Caesar’s meddlings in Rome are ‘demagogy’ (20.2): the unprecedented fifteenday supplicatio was largely directed by ‘the goodwill towards him of the people’ (21.2); the reaction of the people (τò πληθος) to Favonius’ outburst is traced (21.8–9); the popular emotions at Julia’s death are emphasized (23.7). Other Lives differ: see n. 57. On this demos theme cf. also pp. 5–6 and chs. 9 and 11.

⁵⁶ At p. 6 I try to show that this reading involved some reworking of material. On the similarity of texture here to the political analysis of Gracchi, cf. pp. 207–8.

⁵⁷ For instance, Pompey is more interested in Pompey’s relations with the senate (pp. 99–102). Thus Pomp. 51–3 gives no stress to the demos in its account of Caesar’s urban machinations: it is there ‘aediles, praetors, consuls, and their wives’ who are stressed (notice again the importance of ‘wives’ in Pompey). The Pompey account of Luca closes with Pompey’s clash with Marcellinus (51); the parallel Caes. 21 ends by stressing the reaction of the demos. Pompey gives no hint that the demos theme is important for an understanding of the period, and there are other places where it cuts away references to the people: Cato, for instance, has more of the popular, as well as the senatorial, opposition to Pompey (e.g. Cato 42.3–4, 42.7, 43.6–7). Cato itself has material which would be a great embarrassment to the tidy account of Caesar, particularly some popular enthusiasm for Cato himself and the optimate cause (e.g. 44.12–14 and the passages mentioned above). That again suits the emphasis of Cato, for the popular reaction reflects Plutarch’s own enthusiasm for Cato. Once again, Plutarch has in each Life selected the political analysis to suit his interests and themes. – For the different emphases in Cic. and Caes. in treating the execution of the Catilinarians, cf. p. 63 n. 57; for the differences between Brut. and Caes. in describing Caesar’s death, pp. 5–6.

⁵⁸ Cf. e.g. Caes. 8.2, where Plutarch suppresses the ‘naughty letter’ (έπιστολιον άκóλάστον) brought to Caesar during the Catilinarian debate: contrast Cato 24.1–3, Brut. 5.2–4. Caes. 49.10 makes little of Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra; and the initial mention of Nicomedes (1.7) is very tame. Contrast such passages as Sull. 2.2–7, Pomp. 2.5–10, Cim. 4.6–10, Crass. 1. Cf. p. 54 and n. 42, 260.

⁵⁹ And even these are used to explain Caesar’s charismatic presence and therefore his public success (17, 38, etc): cf. p. 335 n. 78.

⁶⁰ See also pp. 258–9.

⁶¹ Plutarch does make something of this (34.7, 48.3–4, 54.5, 57.4–6), but might easily have made more. On this see further p.263 n.23.

⁶² Contrast Plutarch’s disapproval of vulgar demagogy at Cato 46.8, 49.6, Aem. 2.6, Advice on Public Life 802d al., Brut. 10.6; of extravagance and debt at Advice on Public Life 802d, 821f, 822c–3e, and Avoid Debt! – I return to this theme in Pelling, forthcoming (b).

⁶³ Cf. 14.16–17, 29.5, 48.5, 56.8–9. Note 54.6, a much more measured description of Caesar’s Anticato than the vituperative Cato 11.7–8, 36.5, 54.2.

⁶⁴ Ant. 35.2–4, 53^, 56.4, 57.4–5, 59.3, 72.3. Other ancient accounts make far less of Octavia, and this theme seems to be Plutarch’s own elaboration: cf. Pelling 1988, 202.

⁶⁵ Antony: 4, 9.5–9, 24.9–12, 43.3–6. Cleopatra: esp. 27.3–5, 29.1–7. Fulvia: 10.5–10. Octavia: cf. 54.3–5. Timon: 70.

⁶⁶ e.g. dress and demeanour, 4.1–5, 17.3–6; dream, 16.7; comment on Megarian bouleuterion, 23.3; comment on the repeated tribute, 24.7–9; detail of the feasts, 28; fishing anecdote, 29.5–7; dice and fighting cocks, 33; etc.

⁶⁷ Demetr. 1, esp. 1.6: cf. Duff 1999, 45–9.

⁶⁸ 9.5–9, 21.1–3, cf. 56.8; 6.6–7, 15.4–5, 24.5–10.

⁶⁹ Russell 1973, 142.

⁷⁰ Russell 1973, 135.

⁷¹ 93(6).4. What little ethical colouring there is in the narrative is favourable to Antony: 67.9–10, 75.3: cf. Pelling 1988, 15, 293–4, 307–8.

⁷² Cf. Pelling 1988, 16, 293–4.

⁷³ ‘This Life is, to a large extent, the story not of one man but of two, Brutus and Cassius’, Wardman 1974, 174.

⁷⁴ I return to some of these suggestions in ch. 6, pp. 148–52.

⁷⁵ Raaflaub 1974b, 306–11. Further references, both to ancient sources and to secondary literature, may be found in Raaflaub’s paper.

⁷⁶ Caes. 30.5 has τω̑ν περί Aντωνιον (lit. ‘those around Antony’, ‘Antony and his people’), but this may well be the later Greek usage, equivalent to ‘Antony’: cf. Radt 1980, 47–56; Holden on Them. 7.6, Hamilton on Alex. 41.5. Antony is certainly already tribune at the time of the Caesar debate (30.3).

⁷⁷ Though there may well be further confusion (or conflation) here. Raaflaub 1974b, 309 may be right to suspect that Plutarch’s notice in Pompey combines Caesar’s terms of 1 Jan. 49 with the occasion, some weeks earlier, of Ant. 5.3–4.

⁷⁸ Pompey (the one Life which refers to the 1 Dec. 50 debate, when the triple sequence of votes certainly took place) in fact gives this sequence least clearly. There Plutarch mentions only two votes, first that Caesar should disarm, secondly that both should do so; and he makes Curio introduce both motions, suppressing the role of the consuls. But Pompey does correctly have 22 senators oppose the final motion; Antony and Caesar have all those present support ‘Antony’.

⁷⁹ Caesar conflates the two apophthegmata, and gives them to Lentulus (30.6); Pompey keeps them separate (58.6, 10), and assigns them to Marcellus. See pp. 93–4.

⁸⁰ So Raaflaub 1974b, 308–9. Dio 41.3.1 is a poor witness, but he confirms the uestis mutatio for the 1 Jan. 49 context: Raaflaub 1974b, 307. – Meyer 1922, 284 n. 1, assumed that the Caesar–Antony and Pompey versions were doublets, and this has been the general view: contra, Holmes 1923, ii. 330 n. 2.

⁸¹ Raaflaub 1974b, 307.

⁸² The device of the false rumour (60.1–2), followed by the truth (60.2). False rumours are important in Pompey: above, pp. 96, 100. The importance of the tribunes’ flight in Caesar and Antony explains a fact which puzzled Raaflaub (1974b, 307), that Antony’s proposal (in Caes.–Ant.) failed while Curio’s (in Pomp.) succeeded. Curio’s ploy must be successful, for Plutarch there wishes to pass to an exulting sequel, the joy with which the demos greeted him (58.9). Antony’s proposal must fall, for the sequel there is the humiliating flight.