5

Plutarch and Thucydides I

For Plutarch, as for many today, Thucydides was a special case among the historians:

It is time for me to appeal to the reader for indulgence, as I treat the events that Thucydides has already handled incomparably: in this part of his narrative he was indeed at his most emotional, vivid, and varied. But do not assume that I am as vain as Timaeus, who thought that he would outdo Thucydides in brilliance and show Philistus to be totally vulgar and amateurish... Of course, it is not possible to omit the events treated by Thucydides and Philistus, for they include material that gives an especially clear notion of the man’s character and his disposition, so often revealed [an alternative reading would give ‘hidden’] by his many calamities. But I have summarized them briefly and kept to the essentials, just to avoid the charge of total negligence. I have tried instead to collect material that is not well-known, but scattered among other authors, or found on ancient dedications and decrees. Nor is this an accumulation of useless erudition: I am conveying material that is helpful for grasping the man’s nature and character.

But we should notice exactly what Plutarch there says. Thucydides is special, but not altogether in the way we expect. Traditionally (at least), we admire Thucydides for his merits as a factual reporter and analyst, his care, thoughtfulness, and apparent precision; if Plutarch could compete at all, we should expect it to be through his literary virtuosity and charm. Yet for Plutarch himself it is Thucydides’ artistic qualities that make him so incomparable, that brilliant variety, vividness, and emotion.¹

(Nic. 1.1, 5)

Plutarch will not compete on that level. Instead, he will try to find out new facts: that, he feels, is the most useful contribution he can make, especially as those facts reveal so much about Nicias himself. This is serious historical enquiry committed to the truth,² especially (in this case) when the truth goes beyond Thucydides.

This desire to supplement Thucydides with new facts is often clear enough: outside Nicias, we might compare the details of Andocides’ imprisonment in Alcibiades (Alc. 20.6–21.6). That is not wholly irrelevant to Alcibiades’ story: it is interesting to see another aristocrat acting with a similar self-seeking shrewdness and concern to save his own skin. But that relevance is still pretty slight, and we can hardly doubt that the length of the item is partly conditioned by Plutarch’s desire to fill out a story where Thucydides (as Plutarch himself comments³) was oddly reticent about naming names. The same perhaps goes for that marvellous nest of stories in Pericles, when he comes to discuss the Megarian Decree and the outbreak of the war (Per. 29–33). Many of the stories suggest highly personal motives on Pericles’ part, and suggest them at length. True, Plutarch is reluctant to commit himself to their accuracy or relevance;⁴ they are merely ‘what people say’ (λεγóμενα). But even their mention, especially at such length, sits uncomfortably with the characterization he has developed of Pericles, this man with such grand spirit and unselfishness, so far above the normal pettiness of public life. Still, the stories were not in Thucydides, and they were good ones: Plutarch saw no reason to resist the temptation to include them.

II

So Plutarch would welcome non-Thucydidean material, but it is often a delicate problem to disentangle precisely what is owed to Thucydides and what comes from elsewhere. The account of the Sicilian Expedition in Nicias affords a particularly clear example of the issue and its difficulties. It is quite evident that Plutarch knows Thucydides at first hand,⁵ and that most of his information is drawn directly from Thucydides’ text. It is equally clear that Plutarch does have some extraneous non-Thucydidean material, which is sometimes quite detailed. It includes items such as the naming of Demostratus in the great Athenian debate (12.6), various supernatural events (13, 14.5–7, 24.6–25.1), the mention of Laïs (15.4), the story of the death of Gongylus (19.7), some casualty-numbers (21.11), the activity of the ‘free youths’ in a sea-battle (24.2), the details of the final debate on the Athenian prisoners (28), and a fair amount of information on the Syracusan reaction to Gylippus (19.3–7, 28.3–4).

Nicias 1 (above, p. 117) makes it an easy guess that the new material is largely owed to Timaeus and Philistus, both of whom he quotes twice (19.5–6, 28.4–5); and that derivation seems fairly secure, even though he clearly had other information as well – Philochorus, for instance (23.8), even in a way Euripides (17.4), or simply general cultural knowledge (15.2, 23). In some cases an item’s provenance can be traced in detail. Thus Philistus FGrH 556 fr. 53 described Demosthenes’ death along the lines of Plutarch’s account at Nic. 28, whereas Timaeus FGrH 566 fr. 24 made something of Laïs (cf. Nic. 15.4). It is natural too to suspect that the omens and portents are owed to Timaeus, given the taste for such things observed at Nic. 1.2–3; also probably the material on Gylippus, in whom Timaeus was clearly interested (Plutarch cites him on this topic at 19.5 and 28.4).⁶ Some of this extraneous material also shows some contact with Diodorus; not that this can help to establish its source, for the current state of Diodoran source-criticism is far too confused.⁷ This contact, moreover, is sometimes a little vague. Diodorus too, for instance, mentions the ‘free youths’, but tells the story in the context of a different battle (13.14.4); he too has many non-Thucydidean numbers, but in the particular case of Nic. 21.11 his figure is slightly different (13.11.5, 2500 against Plutarch’s 2000); like Plutarch, he makes something of Ariston of Corinth in a non-Thucydidean setting, but the context is not the same (13.10.2, Nic. 25.4). The Syracusan proposal at Nic. 28.2 looks like the same tradition as Diodorus 13.19.4, but again there are some mild divergences. The most economical explanation might be that Plutarch, following his usual practice,⁸ has only one source ‘open in front of him’, here Thucydides, and supplements that source from his memory of other writers, doubtless a memory primed by recent re-reading. That would explain why he might transplant some material into a slightly different context,⁹ and perhaps why he slightly misremembered a proposal or a figure.¹⁰

On a rough count, rather over half of Nic. 12–29 seems to come straightforwardly from Thucydides, but the extraneous, non-Thucydidean material is especially full at the beginning, particularly ch. 13 with its collection of omens and portents (perhaps from Timaeus); in the discussion of the eclipse at ch. 23, applying some information about the 413 eclipse itself (for instance the item from Philochorus, 23.7–8) and also a good deal of general cultural and scientific knowledge; and in the final scenes at chs. 28–9. The ‘hard-core’ narrative of the campaign itself, chs. 14–22 and 23–7, is rather more distinctively Thucydidean. Often we find fairly close verbal echoes,¹¹ and the entire narrative articulation follows Thucydides’ account with suggestive closeness. Another rough count gives over two-thirds of this hard-core narrative closely from Thucydides, with less than a quarter clearly extraneous, and about 10% of marginal material – material which could be inference, sometimes fairly extravagant inference, from Thucydides’ account, but might also be drawn from, or at least influenced by, Plutarch’s other sources.

These marginal instances make some interesting test-cases. Some can clearly be inferences from Thucydides, or elaborations of his account, which were well within Plutarch’s range: the summary of Syracusan topography, for instance (17.2); or the vivid detail that ‘some were already making their way’ towards the crucial Syracusan assembly to discuss surrender (18.12, cf. Thuc. 7.2.1); or the inference that the valuables in the Olympieion (χρήματα at Thuc. 6.70.4) were ‘gold and silver dedications’ (16.7) – after all, what else would one expect to find in a temple?

Equally, he was surely able to make up his own mind about Nicias’ strengths and weaknesses, and the elegant criticism of 14.1–2 looks very much like Plutarch’s own: it was one thing to oppose the expedition in Athens, but he should not have wrecked it by his apathy, always gazing wistfully homewards from his ship... Furthermore, we know from elsewhere that Plutarch readily made his points by reconstructing the reactions of onlookers, their praise or their criticism.¹² No surprise, then, to find ‘the terror of the Syracusans and the incredulity of the Greeks’ at the speed and effectiveness of the circumvallation (17.2); or indeed ‘everyone’ criticizing Nicias for his poor strategy (16.9). The dismissive note he injects into a minor campaign can also be his own (15.3–4); so can his praise for Nicias’ swiftness when he finally turned to action (ibid.). He returns to the theme a few chapters later: ‘Nicias was himself present at most of the actions, forcing his ailing body on...’ (18.1), then ‘struggling out of his sickbed’ to supervise the defence after Lamachus has been killed: a picturesque and slightly generous inference from Thucydides 6.101–2, but one of which Plutarch was certainly capable. His Nicias indeed becomes a rather typed figure, the cautious general who is nevertheless swift and effective when he finally turns to action. Plutarch knew the type well enough, and at Aratus 10 he insists that this is a familiar human phenomenon; indeed, the type is rather a hallmark of Plutarch, distinctive enough to encourage a strong suspicion that here too it is he who is rewriting the material, just as at Arat. 10 he rewrites Polybius to produce this favourite figure.¹³

Yet even here a doubt must remain, for he clearly does have a secondary, non-Thucydidean source for Lamachus’ death. The circumstantial detail of 18.3, the single combat with Callicrates, is not from Thucydides, and indeed the whole character of the action is rather different: in Plutarch the Athenians are carried away by a success (18.2), in Thucydides Lamachus is hurrying to mend a reverse (6.101.5). It must be a possibility, though perhaps a small one, that the picturesque material about Nicias has the same provenance.

A similar, but more elaborate, problem is presented by the description of Nicias’ final hours.

There were many terrible sights in the camp, but the most pitiful of all was Nicias himself. Ravaged by sickness, he was reduced against all dignity to the most meagre of food and the slightest of bodily provisions, at a time when he needed so much more because of his disease. Yet despite his weakness he carried on performing and enduring more than many of the healthy. It was clear to all that it was not for himself that he bore the toil, nor because he was clinging to life; it was for the sake of his men that he refused to give up hope. Others were forced by their terror and suffering into tears and lamentation, but if Nicias was ever driven to this, it was clearly because he was measuring the disgrace and dishonour of the expedition’s outcome against the greatness and glory of what he had hoped to achieve. Nor was it only the sight of the man that was so moving. They also recalled his words and advice when he had warned against the expedition, and that made it even clearer how undeserved were his sufferings. They were dispirited too when they thought of the hopes they might place in Heaven, reflecting how this pious man, who had performed so many religious duties with such great splendour, was faring no better than the lowest and humblest of his army. (Nic. 26.4–6)

At first sight that has little in common with Thucydides 7.75–7, yet surprisingly much could be inspired by that passage. Thucydides had dwelt on the agonized reflections of the men themselves, measuring their sufferings against their original hopes (75.2, 6–7): elsewhere too we find Plutarch transferring thoughts and actions from others to Nicias himself,¹⁴ and he may well be doing the same here, at the cost of a certain inconsequentiality.¹⁵ Thucydides had emphasized the pitiful state of the camp, in a very visual register (75); the lamentations can certainly come from him, even though he did not develop the particular focus on Nicias. But even in Thucydides Nicias had at least been active, making his desperate speech of encouragement (77): the only hopes he could offer were weak ones, certainly, but that was scarcely his fault. He was alert and effective too in drawing up his army, 78.1. Yet Thucydides had also emphasized the disease: he indeed makes Nicias himself refer to it at 77.2, when he points out that he is weaker than his men. It was not difficult for Plutarch to infer that he ‘achieved and endured more than many of the healthy’, especially now that provisions would be so miserably deficient; nor, given Plutarch’s readiness to reconstruct how onlookers would have reacted, to guess how they admired him for such resilience. Thucydides’ Nicias had also spoken of ‘the hopes from Heaven’ and his own past religious dutifulness (77.2, 4): Plutarch could guess how his men would respond to that too. And, whatever precisely Thucydides had meant by it, he had famously commented on the undeserved horror of Nicias’ fate: ‘most unworthy of all the Greeks, at least those of my own time, to fall into such misfortune, because all his behaviour had been directed towards virtue’ (ήκίστα δή άξίος ων των γέ έπ’ έμού Eλληνων ές τούτο δύστύχίάς άφίκέσθάί δίά τήν πάσάν ές άρέτην νένομίσμένήν έπίτήδέύσίν, 7.86.5). It was natural enough for Plutarch to transfer that reflection too to the men under his command;¹⁶ and in this Life, with its stress on Nicias’ religious observation, the shift from Thucydides’ ‘virtue’ into ‘piety’ was a very appropriate one. Of course, there may still have been a second source at play here: certainly Plutarch had such a source for the final scenes, and derived from it details of the general’s surrender and death. But there is suspiciously little sign of it here, and most is very likely Plutarch’s own reading of Thucydides.

More questionable is one final example, the exchange of Nicias with Menander and Euthydemus.

Nicias was unwilling to fight a naval battle. Now that so great a fleet was sailing to their help, and Demosthenes was hurrying to them with his reinforcements, it would be sheer idiocy (he said) to fight with a smaller force and one which was so badly equipped. But Menander and Euthydemus, newly promoted to office, were eager to outdo the generals: they wanted to distinguish themselves before Demosthenes arrived, and to surpass anything that Nicias had managed. Their excuse was the prestige of the city, which they said would be wholly destroyed and besmirched if they refused battle with the Syracusan fleet.

(Nic. 20.5–6)

There is nothing like this in Thucydides, in whom Menander and Euthydemus remain fairly colourless creatures. Perhaps it comes from elsewhere. (Indeed, Diodorus has some non-Thucydidean material on differences of opinion within the Athenian army, though he concentrates more on the murmurings of the ordinary soldiers against their generals, 13.12.4, 18.1.) But one can again see how the item could come from a sensibly imaginative reading of Thucydides.

Nicias was clearly being cautious, and eager to hand over the command: hence he would surely not want to fight in this interval before Demosthenes and Eurymedon arrived. Yet the battle was fought anyway: why? It surely ‘must have been’ Menander and Euthydemus who brought it on, for motives that were not hard to guess. In fact, it will all be like the great initial debate at Athens, with Nicias unable to stand up to the thoughtless pressures of others for activity; it will be yet another instance where he is outmanoeuvred by ambitious and energetic leaders, just as before he had fallen foul of Cleon, Alcibiades, and Demostratus; earlier he had overborne his fellow-commander Lamachus (15), now he will himself be overborne in his turn, and activity now will turn out no less disastrously than inactivity then. Indeed, Nicias’ own mistake in asking for new leaders, like so many of his actions, contributes in a paradoxical way to his downfall: that too fits a pattern which is familiar in this Life.¹⁷ It all in fact suits suspiciously well. That makes it natural to think that, here again, Plutarch is heavily at work; and, very probably, heavily at work on Thucydides alone, with no extraneous material beyond his active imagination.¹⁸ The same goes for the continuation of the debate at 21.3–6, which is again very probably an imaginative elaboration of Demosthenes ‘persuading Nicias and his other colleagues’ in Thucydides (πεισάς τον τε Nικίάν κάί τους άλλους ξυνάρχοντάς, 7.43.1). But in both these cases ‘very probably’ is as far as we may go, and certainty is not possible.

III

Still, perhaps that need not matter, or at least matter much. Whether our sources or Plutarch’s imagination furnished the non-Thucydidean material, we can be sure that such additions bring us very close to Plutarch’s own preoccupations, and these will be the main subject of this chapter. Sometimes, as I have suggested, he may simply be supplementing Thucydides for the thrill of it. A point against Thucydides was a point worth scoring. But more often, as in the Menander and Euthydemus example, the points are more profound ones, and touch themes which are central to the Life – Nicias’ uncertain touch with his fellow-commanders, and the catastrophic and self-destructive quality of his own request for their appointment.

It is indeed interesting to see where Plutarch includes material which is clearly non-Thucydidean, whether imaginative or authorized, for he does this with particular frequency at the most intense moments, those which would be most familiar to his readers. The Athenian decision to mount the expedition in the first place (where he adds the beautifully visual detail of young and old alike drawing their maps of Sicily in the dust, 12.1, cf. Alc. 17.4); the Night Battle; the Great Battle in the Harbour; the retreat and final scenes – all follow Thucydides a little less closely than we might have expected, and the close verbal echoes¹⁹ are seldom in such passages as these. Ironically, Plutarch’s account of the naval battle of Actium is verbally closer to Thucydides’ Great Harbour battle than the Nicias account of the Great Harbour itself.²⁰ In Antony, the allusion adds gravity and resonance; in Nicias, it would have been obvious and banal. These of course were the parts where Thucydides was particularly inimitable. Plutarch could assume that his audience was familiar with Thucydides, especially these parts of Thucydides, and he was anxious to avoid a mere rehash.

That familiarity with Thucydides could be exploited in different ways. It can allow him to abbreviate complicated stories: ‘they were outmanoeuvred by Ariston the Corinthian helmsman in the matter concerning lunch, as Thucydides describes (τοίς πέρί το άρίστον, ως έίρηκέ Θουκυδίδης), and were decisively defeated with many losses’ (Nic. 20.8). The audience will find this incomprehensible unless they firmly recall the Thucydidean original at 7.40.2: as so often, a quotation excuses or explains an abbreviation that would otherwise be unacceptable.²¹

Other quotations are subtler. Let us consider a few cases in Alcibiades. That at 6.3 might here seem particularly odd:

Alcibiades was also very susceptible to pleasures: the unconventional nature of his everyday physical behaviour, mentioned by Thucydides, allows us to suspect this...

Why should Thucydides need to be quoted for this ‘unconventionality’ (or ‘transgressiveness’, παρανομία)?²² Surely Alcibiades’ ‘susceptibility to pleasures’ was not really controversial? And Comparison 41(2).2 is scarcely less curious, quoting Thucydides for the tale of Alcibiades’ trick on the Spartan ambassadors. Why does Plutarch not simply refer back to his own narrative, where he has just told the tale (14)? In both cases the explanation is surely the same, that Thucydides’ manner is so familiar to his audience. He was not the man to bring in private excesses lightly, and would only do so if they impinged on public life: that indeed is precisely the point Thucydides is making at 6.15, the passage to which Plutarch here alludes (and a passage to which we shall return).²³ This gives particular weight to the point Plutarch is making. For this, suggestively, is precisely the context where Plutarch first talks about Alcibiades’ impact on public life. The passage continues:

Still, his flatterers seized hold of his desire for fame and his love of glory, and they thrust him into a premature ambition to do great things; they told him that as soon as he entered public life he would not only eclipse all the other generals and popular leaders, but even outstrip the power among the Greeks and the glory that Pericles enjoyed. (Alc. 6.4)

If we remember the Thucydidean original, then the ironies become clearer: as Thucydides there brought out, Alcibiades indeed became great and glorious – and yet his standing was wrecked by precisely the ‘unconventionality’ that Plutarch has just mentioned, and the distaste and the tyrannical suspicions that this private outlandishness inspired. Later in the Life this will be an important theme, for Plutarch will bring out even more clearly than Thucydides how Alcibiades’ private life wrecked his public career, not merely in the recall from Sicily but also in the shift of public opinion that led to his second exile.²⁴ The two strands that Plutarch is starting here, the dissoluteness and the ambition, will eventually come together disastrously; and, if we recall the Thucydidean passage, it reminds us how it happened. It is indeed more of an allusion, summoning up the reader’s recollection of the original, than a straightforward supporting citation, and the point would be lost if his audience did not know its Thucydides well.²⁵

The story of the Spartan ambassadors is a similar but less complex example: the story of Alcibiades’ trick seems far-fetched, but it is not just Plutarch’s story, it is Thucydides’, and in such an author it carries particular weight. In each case the quotation seems unnecessary, but it is the audience’s familiarity with the original, and with Thucydides’ characteristic flavour, that gives them point.

IV

That audience familiarity is still relevant when we come to consider Plutarch’s attitude to Thucydides’ historical analyses. Just as he is chary of alluding to Thucydides’ text at the most obvious and familiar moments, so he is reluctant to echo Thucydides’ insights at the points where the audience would already know them: that would be old-hat. He clearly knows Thucydides’ suggestions of the importance of the generation gap in the great debate on Sicily, where Nicias tries to mobilize the older generation in his support, and Alcibiades successfully counters him (6.13.1, 18.6, cf. 24.3): yet at that point itself he does not echo them. Instead, he develops the analysis rather earlier in Nicias. Thus at 9.5 the ‘older generation’ are among those pressing for peace, whereas at 11.3 they form a separable group in the wranglings about the ostracism. Both passages would seem to prepare for the Sicilian debate, and given the audience’s familiarity with Thucydides perhaps the preparation is felt; but, if it is, it is only by intertextuality, for when Plutarch himself reaches the debate he barely follows up the lead that he has so strongly given. (The old are mentioned at Nic. 12.1, but are just as keen on the expedition as the young, drawing their maps in the sand: even less is made of them here than at Alc. 17.4.) He instead discusses what had happened to the ‘well-off’ (εύποροι), and why they failed in their support for Nicias (12.3). That point is evidently of wider significance in the pair Nicias and Crassus, where wealth is such an important theme, but is not quite what a reader steeped in Thucydides would be expecting.

We can see the same phenomenon in other Lives. For instance, Plutarch evidently knew Thucydides’ insistence on Pericles’ cautious strategy during the war itself; but in Pericles he prefers to develop the caution theme rather earlier, in treating his pre-war foreign policy.²⁶ When he reaches the point where we might expect it, he treats it rather skimpily (33.5–6, ignoring for instance the importance of the sea as the defensive lifeline which made the strategy possible in a protracted war).

The same point could be made more widely about Nicias itself, if we consider Plutarch’s treatment of Nicias’ nervous and apprehensive unease before the demos. That theme is familiar from Thucydides 6 and 7; but Plutarch makes less of it in the Sicilian chapters than we might expect. At 19.6 he barely mentions the letter of 7.11–15; at 22.2–3 he does not conceal Nicias’ famous preference to die in Sicily rather than as a convicted criminal at home (Thuc. 7.48.4), but he makes much less than we might expect of so disquieting an episode.²⁷ Nicias’ behaviour is much more conditioned by his problems on the spot, especially (as we have seen) his wranglings with his fellow-commanders, than by his nervous glances back towards home. The nervousness before the demos certainly emerges in the Life, but again we find it in a different, more surprising place: it is strongly developed in the early chapters, where the theme would be much less obvious.²⁸ It is the leitmotif of the early summarizing passage in ch. 2, where Plutarch comments that this very nervousness paradoxically contributed to Nicias’ popularity, for the people are flattered by being feared.²⁹ Then it is used to explain Nicias’ choice of campaigns during the Archidamian War (6.1–2); in the Pylos debate he is then a rather meeker follower of the people’s will than he was in Thucydides (7.1–5). This goes with a trivialisation of his political thoughtfulness. In Thucydides on several occasions Nicias produces lines or ploys in assemblies which eloquently misread the people: so in the Pylos debate (4.28), so in the affair of the Spartan ambassadors (5.46), and so most spectacularly when he presses the assembly to increase the size of the Sicilian expedition (6.19.2–24.2). Plutarch omits this last suggestive story, and here as elsewhere his Nicias does not misread or fail to gauge the popular temper; he is simply terrified of it. It is a comparatively crude reading, much cruder than in Thucydides.

V

It is also rather cruder than in Plutarch’s other Lives of the period: as so often elsewhere, one can see Plutarch changing the detail of his political analysis to suit the texture of the individual Life.³⁰ In Nicias the people are a danger not just to Nicias, but to everyone: they are not especially keen on Cleon either (2.3), and their taunts to him in the Pylos debate reflect a real menacing hostility, at least for the moment (7.2); they may laugh with him at the end, but they laugh just as they consign him to a mission in which they expect him to fail (7.6; cf. the similar malicious laughter after the ostrakophoria at 11.6, this time at Hyperbolus’ expense). Then in the ostracism story itself the people ‘were disgusted by Alcibiades and feared his overconfidence, as is made clearer in his own Life’ (Nic. 11.2). Yet, despite the cross-reference, what Alcibiades in fact makes clear is something rather different from this ‘disgust’. There we have a subtler picture, with the people fascinated by Alcibiades and indeed sharing much of his temper and style. They too are ambitious and volatile, and it is not surprising that they find his distinctive manner so engaging. These are the men who were so delighted when his quail escaped on his first public appearance, and bustled around helping him to catch it (Alc. 10.1–2): demos and demagogue suit one another, and this playfulness strikes a rather different note from the more taunting style of the demos that we saw in Nicias.

The point is made clear in a more serious register when we reach the main central digressions, flanking the Sicilian chapters (16 and 23). The first discusses, precisely, what the Athenians made of Alcibiades, and we shall see that it presents a much more nuanced picture, one which brings out ambivalent fascination rather than that ‘disgust and fear’ of the Nicias summary (below, pp. 127–8). The second points out how skilful he was at accommodating his temper to the local style, whether he found himself in Sparta, Ionia, Persia, or Thrace: it is no surprise that such a man would chime in with Athens too – especially as this very versatility and flair were foremost among the traits that city and individual shared.³¹

The tale of the Spartan ambassadors makes the point clearly. Both Nicias and Alcibiades make something of the demos, but in very different ways. At Nic. 10.8 Nicias returns from his Spartan mission ‘fearing the Athenians, resentful and indignant as they were that he had persuaded them to give up so many good men’ (those captured on Sphacteria); at Alc. 14.8 Alcibiades tells the Spartan envoys, ‘don’t you see how the demos is proud and ambitious, eager for great deeds...’ (μέγα φρονεί καί μέγάλων ορέγεταί). Both passages are expansions, presumably imaginative expansions, of Thucydides;³² and in each the treatment of the demos is what it needs to be, especially as the Sicilian expedition looms. In Nicias the demos is simply a grave brooding body, meet to be feared by any politician; in Alcibiades its ambition, pride, and confidence are in point. No surprise then that in Alcibiades, but not in Nicias, we hear of their prior interest in Sicily, even in Pericles’ day and during the Archidamian War (Alc. 17.1). Such far-flying ambitions are a longstanding feature of Athens, not just one injected momentarily by Alcibiades, and in this Life we need to know it. Here we see how the style of the man meshes with the style of the demos, how his flair strikes the right note with them: more needs to be explained here than in Nicias, and the analysis is correspondingly richer. It is also crucial to one of the most pleasing reverses of the Life. For all Alcibiades’ chameleon-like changeability, it is the people who with great fickleness turn against him, and try to recall him from Sicily; and he responds with faithlessness to Athens, and turns to Sparta. But then he returns, only to confront a demos (this time the one in Samos) eager to turn against their own fellow-citizens, and play into Spartan hands, rather as he had once done himself; and he shows great constancy and leadership in arguing them out of it (Alc. 26). Treachery is now afoot in Athens itself, while he is the constant patriot: the tables are turned; but they can be turned so neatly because city and leader are so like one another, so deserve each other.³³

It is a thoughtful portrait. In some ways Plutarch owes its inspiration to Thucydides himself, who brought out how skilfully Alcibiades appealed to Athenian national characteristics – their enterprise, their self-confidence, their pride; and his Nicias knows that ‘my rhetoric may be too weak to confront your nature’, κάί προς μέν τούς τροπούς τούς ύμέτέρούς άσθένης άν μού ο λογος έίη (6.9.3). But Plutarch cares about it enough to feel he can revise Thucydides himself to make the analysis even more intricate. The crucial passages in Thucydides are 5.43.2 and especially (once again) 6.15.4, where he discusses the popular reaction to Alcibiades:

The general people were frightened both by the massive lawlessness of his private, physical life and habits, and of the massive spirit with which he carried through everything he did; they consequently became his enemies, thinking that he was aspiring to tyranny. He managed public events excellently, but on a private level everyone became disgruntled with his manner as a person; thus they entrusted affairs to others – and before long brought the city down.

The last point is especially suggestive, with ‘on a private level’ everyone becoming ‘disgruntled with his manner as a person’. That fits a favourite Thucydidean theme, the way in which private and personal aspirations, even egoism, come to interact in an increasingly perilous way with the Athenian democracy:³⁴ Nicias and Alcibiades both fit that pattern with their selfish preoccupations, and so in a different way do the people themselves, allowing their private reactions to compromise their perceptions of public competence. On both sides we are a long way removed from the Funeral Speech, where the individual reaches the highest fulfilment in Athens, precisely in the service of the state.

But Thucydides’ picture is still a disturbingly blunt one. Everyone individually disgruntled with Alcibiades’ private habits: that is rather closer to the rough picture of Nicias, where people were disgusted by Alcibiades’ private life and feared his overconfidence, than to the emphasis that Plutarch prefers in Alcibiades itself. As we have seen, in the important ch. 16 of Alcibiades Plutarch goes to some lengths to characterize the ambivalent but basically affectionate reaction of the demos towards him; we can recognize the same demos who earlier helped him catch his quail. In 16.2 it is the ‘highly-regarded’, the ένδοξοι, rather than the demos as a whole who ‘feel disgust’ (βδέλύττέσθάί, the same word as at Nic. 11.2), and fear his ‘unconventional behaviour’ (πάράνομίά) as ‘tyrannical and outrageous’ (τύράννίκά κάί άλλοκοτά). The echo of Thucydides is clear, but also its transformation, as Plutarch limits this reaction to one section of the city, the ‘highly-regarded’ alone.³⁵ He goes on to explain that the popular attitude requires closer definition. He first sums it up with the line of Aristophanes, ‘it yearns for him, it hates him, it wants to have him’ (16.2, quoting Frogs 1425): they were as indulgent as they could be to his excesses – though the older generation were, once again, unhappy with them ‘as tyrannical and unconventional’ (ως τυράννικοίς κάί πάράνομοις). The conclusion is most measured: ‘so unclearly defined (άκριτος) was opinion concerning him because of the inconsistencies of his nature’; and once again the phrasing points to that way in which people’s veering reactions to Alcibiades strangely mirror the man’s own qualities. And, as we have seen, it will later be the combination of the two, changeable people and changeable Alcibiades, that will produce such a catastrophic mix.

So Plutarch is turning Thucydides, and doing so subtly. He is echoing him; he is even introducing cross-divisions of the demos that rest on Thucydides himself, elsewhere in his work – especially that ‘older generation’ division, where he teases out the implications of the speakers’ argumentation during the debate itself (above, p. 124). He is thus using Thucydides to ‘correct’, or at least refine, Thucydides’ own portrait; and the reinterpretation is surely not unintelligent. As with his judgements of people, so even in political analysis, he is capable of applying his human insight thoughtfully, and on such occasions he is confident enough to pit his own judgements even against Thucydides’; and those interpretations are sometimes not at all bad.³⁶ He similarly wins our respect when he puts more weight than Thucydides on the religious aspects of the popular reactions to the scandals of the Hermae and the Mysteries. For Thucydides the Hermae affair ‘served as an omen for the expedition’ (6.27.3), but that is very brief, and he dwells much more on the way people interpreted the affairs politically, as a pointer to tyranny. Plutarch brings out both aspects, the political fears and the nervy religious atmosphere, in a more even-handed way (Alc. 18.4–8 and Nic. 13). And, great though the respect is that we rightly have for Thucydides, it is hard to be confident that Plutarch was wrong.

In Alcibiades, then, ‘literary’ and ‘historical’ aspects go hand in hand. Plutarch traces the popular reaction to Alcibiades with more subtlety than Thucydides, and this renders his analysis both more historically interesting and more artistically arresting. In Nicias we do not need so subtle a picture of the demos, and so we do not get it: that indeed is a further reason why the interest in the Athenian demos is so strangely muted in the second half of the Life. The interest is crude enough that it soon becomes played out, with little more to say. And it is not just that Plutarch makes less here than we might expect of Nicias’ nervousness before the people; it would also have been possible enough for him to continue themes from the demos chapters in treating the way Nicias handled his soldiers, the Athenian demos as represented in the army. That, indeed, is more or less what Thucydides does himself, giving one or two hints of Nicias’ misreading the troops just as he misread the people at home:³⁷ yet Plutarch fails to pick up these suggestions.

In Pericles we have a more complicated case. Once again we have an insistent interest in tracing how the dominant individual and the demos interact; once again, indeed, we have something of the same effect as in Alcibiades, for we can see how Pericles contrives to instil in the demos something of his own qualities, especially his spirit and pride. Consider ch. 17, for instance. Pericles is here beginning to establish his own peculiar brand of great leadership. He has driven out Thucydides son of Melesias, and can now give up that awkward period of sheer demagogy which came so unnaturally to him (‘contrary to his own nature, which was anything but populist’, 7.3). So now he incited the people ‘to feel even more pride and confidence and to think itself worthy of great deeds’ (έτί μάλλον μέγά φρονέίν κάί μέγάλων άύτον άξίούν πράγμάτων, 17.1). The invitation to the Panhellenic Congress follows, and Plutarch rounds off the chapter by saying ‘I have added this as an indication of his pride and confidence and greatness of spirit’ (τούτο μέν ούν πάρέθέμην ένδέίκνύμένος άύτού το φρονημά κάί την μέγάλοφροσύνην, 17.4). That is elegant ring-composition, as Stadter notes on 17.1, with φρονημά (‘pride and confidence’) picking up φρονέίν, and μέγάλοφροσύνην (‘greatness of spirit’) picking up both μέγά φρονέίν and μέγάλων πράγμάτων; but it is ring-composition with a difference, for what were at the chapter’s beginning the qualities he instilled in the demos are by its end the qualities that typify Pericles himself. The demos and the demagogos are again like one another. And in Pericles too the theme comes back later, again with piquant ironies. At 33.4 it is the people’s pride and confidence – phronema again, the word so often associated with Pericles himself³⁸ – that leads them to be so eager to fight when Archidamus invades, and this of course causes Pericles particular problems. He eventually has to revert to some of his old demagogic methods to suppress this quality which in the past he has so encouraged: now he has to distribute money and send out a few juicy cleruchies (34.2).³⁹

So in Pericles, just as in Alcibiades, characterization of the demos is important; but here, at least in the first part of the Life, one does not feel the same admiration for the subtlety of the re-emphasis or the new political analysis. Indeed, in Per. 7–14 (the period when Pericles was acting ‘contrary to his own nature’, πάρά την άύτού φύσίν), Plutarch’s stress on Athenian two-party politics is at its crudest: on the one side, the hybristic and irresponsible demos; on the other, the well-meaning and long-suffering oligoi.⁴⁰ It is all much cruder than it was in Alcibiades or even in Nicias, where Plutarch had insisted on those subtler cross-divisions of the demos. In some ways that is a simple matter of historical development and change, for Plutarch did indeed think that politics changed after 443, with the double split becoming less fierce and less decisive (Per. 15.1, cf. 11.3). But it is still telling that the two-party analysis is here hedged around with fewer refinements or qualifications than in the earlier, and really rather slight, Cimon.⁴¹ Whatever Plutarch is trying to do here, it is not to produce a political analysis of the greatest possible depth.

Yet here too one can understand why this should be, for the polarity of Athenian politics is important to him. It is a central concern of this Life to explain why an aristocrat like Pericles, with so much education and ‘spirit too weighty for demagogy’ (φρονημά δημάγωγίάς εμβριθεστερον, 4.6, cf. 5.1), should have ended as the leader of a militant democracy, the most effective demagogue of them all. Here there was that bemusing clash between the judgements of the revered Plato and the revered Thucydides, as Gomme remarked;⁴² it is true that Plutarch shows no hesitation in preferring Thucydides,⁴³ but the disagreement was bound to give him pause. Such demagogy would evidently not have come naturally to Pericles, who would have been more at home in a Cleisthenic mode (that is one reason why the political settlement of Pericles’ ancestor is mentioned and praised at 3.2). Plutarch wants to develop, precisely, the contrast between the two sides, the side where Pericles naturally belonged and the side where he unnaturally found himself: the basically sound conservatives and the basically unsound demos and demagogues. The temptation to present the contrast in as sharp and polarized a manner as possible was hard to resist;⁴⁴ and in 7–14 we duly see the polarity at its starkest, for that is where Pericles finds himself where he does not belong, with the demagogues. That in its turn gives especial bite to 15, where we see the harmony with which he reconciles the two sides, and takes further⁴⁵ that distinctive grand style that combines elements of both approaches, stirring and pleasing the demos but also responsibly leading them in the right direction – a direction that, as we have seen, finally brought them to share many of the best traits of Pericles himself, especially that distinctive ‘pride and confidence’, phronema.⁴⁶ That harmonious combination seems all t he more striking for the sharpness with which the polarity had earlier been presented. Thus, for instance, the popularity of Cimon sits well in Cimon itself, where it crudely redounds to Cimon’s credit;⁴⁷ but the theme would intrude upon the neat two-party schematism that the Pericles portrait demands.

VI

Mme de Romilly has splendidly brought out the way in which Plutarch adapts Thucydides to suit his own biographical focus and interest.⁴⁸ I have had little to say about this here, but of course her basic point remains important and valid. Plutarch does stress aspects of character far more than Thucydides; not that Thucydides regarded personal character as unimportant, for it mattered considerably that Pericles was incorruptible, χρημάτων κρείσσων (2.60.5, 65.8); but that emphasis is significantly expanded in Plutarch, who finds enough material on the topic to fill more than a chapter (Per. 15.3–16.9, cf. Fab. 30(3).5–6). And, naturally enough, Plutarch is less concerned to weave his characters’ experience into a more global picture of Athenian life. In Stadter’s words, ‘Thucydides was interested in power, not character, and clear understanding, not temperament, so that the tone of Plutarch’s account often belies its Thucydidean origin’;⁴⁹ perhaps an overstatement (Thucydides could be interested in character too), but only a slight one.

To extend the analysis to Nicias, one could summarize by saying that Nicias is a quite different sort of ‘tragic’ figure for the two authors.⁵⁰ For Thucydides, the tragedy in which Nicias is implicated is far larger than his own. The reasons for Athens’ reverse are more complicated, and we must start with points about Athens rather than points about Nicias. At most, Nicias’ personality plays a part in a much larger pattern and causal sequence; it is against this larger background that we must note and comprehend his individual self-seeking preoccupations, and his inability to recapture more than a part of the talents of a Pericles. He has a Periclean strategic caution, perhaps, but he does not have the flair, nor the ability to attract and harness the Athenian civic sensibilities: those are the qualities that descend to Alcibiades, not to Nicias. But there are several themes here that are fundamental to Thucydides’ larger picture of Athens’ development: the growing stress on the individual rather than the city;⁵¹ the failure, but perhaps the inevitable failure, of Pericles’ successors to secure the remarkable balance of varying qualities that had typified Pericles himself; the difficulties of carrying through a policy of Periclean restraint in a city marked by Periclean confidence and civic pride. Nicias falls, and it matters that he falls in a particularly stirring and undeserved way. But to explain that fall we go back to that larger pattern, the analysis why Athens was the way it was; and we have to understand how such an individual figure fits into a city of that character, and at that particular stage of its disintegrating destiny.

In Plutarch the tragedy is much more personal. Nicias’ own actions and character encompass his own destruction; in a sense that was true in Thucydides as well, but in Plutarch the pattern is much tighter, and much less dependent on a distinctive and subtle analysis of the character of the city itself. In Plutarch it is Nicias’ very nervousness that gives him the popularity which wins him commands (2): that same nervousness that will later condemn him to failure, in the greatest command of all. His involuntary strengthening of Cleon’s authority creates the political conditions that he will be unable to manage (8). Then, in the ostracism story, Plutarch stresses that his agreement with Alcibiades was precisely what leads to the downfall in Sicily: if either Nicias or Alcibiades had been ostracized instead of Hyperbolus, it would all have been so different (11.9).⁵² In the Sicilian debate it is then Nicias’ ostentatious caution that gives the Athenians the confidence that, with such a man in charge, it could not go wrong (12.5). It does all go wrong, of course; but it does so because of Nicias’ own decisions and policies that all go into reverse, all fall back on his own head. This is indeed distinctively Nicias’ tragedy, not as in Thucydides an Athenian tragedy in which Nicias plays an elegant and pathetic part.

So, as de Romilly stresses, the biographical focus is vitally important. But it is possible to overstate this; and, in particular, there is a real danger of underestimating the subtlety of Plutarch’s own political analyses.

In the passages we have considered, everything was centred for Thucydides on the behaviour and fate of Athens, but for Plutarch on the behaviour and fate of the individuals he was writing about.

Thus de Romilly;⁵³ but even for the passages she discussed (centring, for instance, on the nature of Pericles’ authority, or the popular response to Alcibiades) this is a considerable simplification. Indeed, this formulation tends to diminish both authors, for in both Thucydides and Plutarch it is the interrelation between individuals and city that is so often stressed. In Thucydides the fate of Athens is itself bound up with the changing ways in which individuals behave, and in which individualism and public duty come to clash; in Plutarch the individuals’ fate is so often traced in, precisely, their relationship with the Athenian demos. For de Romilly, ‘poor Plutarch’ typically loses the intellectual centre of Thucydides’ analyses; if there is force in the arguments presented here, then at least he replaces them with some analyses of his own which carry a genuine intellectual interest and depth.

That interest in the relationship of individual and demos can be seen even in Themistocles, not on the whole one of Plutarch’s most thoughtful or incisive Lives, and one where the manipulation of material to give a biographical focus is often rather crude. There is little, for instance, on the background to the exchanges of Themistocles with Aristides (3.1–3, 5.7, 11.1), or even to Xerxes’ invasion (the slight and anecdotal quality of ch. 6 is very striking); after Salamis, once Themistocles’ own part is completed, the Persian Wars are dismissed with astonishing perfunctoriness (17.2);⁵⁴ Themistocles’ role in building the Athenian empire is hardly treated at all, and the relevant chapters (17–22 on the early 470s) are notoriously skimpy. But one aspect of Themistocles’ relations with Athens is given some stress, and with a vein of moral unease that sits oddly in so uncensorious a Life: Plutarch here again emphasizes the way in which Themistocles contributed to the pattern of two-party strife. Fifty years later it would be Pericles who would calm matters and bring the city to a sort of harmony, but now it is Themistocles who does so much to bring the rift about, by his policy of changing the demos into sailors (4.4–6, 19.3–6).⁵⁵ The consequence is an unintended one, and simply flows from a step that was necessary to bring salvation. Athens had to become naval, and Plutarch knew it. But he also insists on the unfortunate nature of this consequence. That emphasis is eloquent of this recurrent Plutarchan interest in the relationship between the great man and the demos he leads; eloquent too, perhaps, of the way in which all these Lives sit together and give a coherent history of the whole period as well as a sequence of biographies.⁵⁶

VII

That brings us to two final points. If we try to explain this slightly odd emphasis in Themistocles, we should certainly relate it to the paired Life, the Camillus, where party strife is again a basic theme. The Struggle of the Orders there furnishes the political background against which Camillus works; and Camillus is in fact rather ineffective in calming this atmosphere of fierce factional antagonism. In each case the political strife provides a suggestive counterpoint to the military world in which Themistocles and Camillus both excel. As generals or admirals they earn our praise; but in politics moral judgement is much more difficult and delicate. This is hardly the most successful of Plutarch’s pairs, but even here the pairing matters greatly.⁵⁷

And indeed it is clear that many of the points made in this chapter are really points about pairs rather than individual Lives. Fabius, the pair of Pericles, also develops a crudely two-party view of politics, with Minucius and Varro very much stage demagogues; but Fabius manages the problem less successfully than Pericles. In Crassus, the pair of Nicias, the political analysis is again cruder than in many of the other Lives of the late Republic, just as Nicias is cruder than Alcibiades. Coriolanus, the pair of Alcibiades, also has a fickle and volatile demos which takes a lot of handling; it is far too hot for Coriolanus to handle, in fact. But in his case that is because he is so out of tune with them. Alcibiades is so different, accomplished, educated, stylish, deft; and he is as like the demos as Coriolanus is unlike. Yet eventually he cannot handle them any more successfully; he too is driven to give himself to the other side, the ‘best people’ (albeit more fleetingly, 25.5–6, 26.1); and just as surely he falls. It is an extremely subtle pair, and one where the reversal of the normal Greek–Roman ordering is particularly elegant: first we have the simple case of Coriolanus, then the much more complex one of Alcibiades.⁵⁸

Finally, it is striking that this marvellous pair connects two people of whom Plutarch rather disapproved. If we are to speak of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ Lives, those that are protreptic and those that are deterrent, these would certainly be negative and deterrent. But those positive–negative distinctions never really work. Plutarch can engage sympathetically with an Alcibiades, and try to work out why such a man is interesting and why, for all his qualities, he nevertheless finally falls. In a quite different way, Plutarch’s use of Thucydides can illuminate this question too, for it highlights certain points about his choice of heroes.⁵⁹ Take the case of Cleon, for instance. Plutarch evidently had enough information to write a Life; most of it was afforded by Thucydides himself, and Old Comedy and other sources (especially Theopompus) would have furnished some useful supplementation.⁶⁰ He even had a pair on offer, Clodius, on whom he often waxes so eloquent; indeed, when writing of Clodius he several times borrows phraseology from the Greek demagogue stereotype, and particularly from Cleon himself.⁶¹ Why, then, did he not write a Cleon? Surely it is because Plutarch disapproved of Cleon so strongly, and had so crude a view of the character of the man and of the authority he exercised, that he could not do anything at all interesting with him. He needed that degree of sympathetic involvement to produce a worthwhile biography; and that is what he could generate about a Nicias or an Alcibiades or an Antony, despite all his moral reservations.

If there is anything in the argument of this chapter, he often extended a similar sympathetic understanding even to the Athenian demos, despite a similar degree of reservation about its fickleness and its violence; and that sympathetic involvement was the source of some of his most interesting deviations from Thucydides. Some of those deviations certainly trivialize, as de Romilly stresses; others doubtless intrude contemporary assumptions and ideas that can only distort, as perhaps in his treatment of Pericles’ building programme, or of Cimon’s liberality.⁶² But some are much more interesting. If Plutarch stresses Pericles’ rhetorical charm, warmth, and personal relationships as much as his insight as a source of his authority (a point made clearly by de Romilly); or if he stresses religious as much as political elements as the important background to the affairs of the Hermae and the Mysteries; or if he brings out the complexity of the popular reaction to Alcibiades – his view in all these cases is an interesting one, and well worth serious consideration even in modern terms. That is not necessarily because his views rest on contemporary authority, or at least not in a straightforward way.⁶³ It is because they rest on his human insight, a profound and impressive insight that, at least on some occasions, is likely to have got it pretty well right.

Notes

¹ On this passage see further Duff 1999, 22–30, esp. 25 on the textual problem (we must read <άνά>κάλύπτομένην or <άπο>κάλύπτομένην rather than the manuscripts’ κάλύπτομένην), and Frazier 1996, 32–4.

² I discuss Plutarch’s commitment to historical truth more extensively in ch. 6, esp. pp. 144–6, where I consider more fully the out-of-the-way evidence Plutarch contrives to include in Nicias, and suggest that he prefers this approach to extracting every last ounce from Thucydides’ own account. For Plutarch’s taste for inscriptions and documents, see also p. 40 n. 120.

³ Alc. 20.6, ‘Thucydides failed to name the people who informed, but others give their names as Diocleides and Teucrus’.

⁴ Per. 30.1, ‘they say’ (Polyalces’ advice to turn the decree to the wall); 30.2, ‘so it seems’ (of Pericles’ private animosity against the Megarians); 30.3, ‘it seemed’ (of Anthemocritus’ suspicious death); 30.4, the Megarians ‘turn the blame on to Aspasia and Pericles’ (on this passage cf. p. 269 and n. 6); 31.1, ‘it is not easy to tell how this began...’, of the reasons for the Megarian Decree (but everyone blames Pericles for not rescinding it); 31.2, the Pheidias story is the most damaging and the best attested; 32.6, ‘these, then, are the reasons which are given for his refusal to allow the people to give in to the Spartans; the truth is unclear’; Fab. 30(3).1, ‘the war is said to have been brought on by Pericles’; cf. the earlier ‘they allege’ (άίτίωντάί) at 25.1, of the alleged part of Aspasia in stimulating war against Samos. I discuss some of this material more fully at Pelling 2000, 106–11.

⁵ If argument for this was needed, it was provided adequately and extensively a century ago by Siemon 1881, esp. pp. 28–51 on Nic.; cf. Littman 1970; Lauritano 1957; Tzannetatos 1958; Marasco 1976, especially 8–9; and, briefly on the general issue, Stadter 1989, lx–lxi, and de Romilly 1988. Plutarch quotes Thucydides often in the Moralia (Titchener 1995), and in such a way as to suggest intimate knowledge of the text and its style: that is also the implication of Nic. 1 (above, p. 117), as well as of the many verbal echoes. The last influential attempt to deny Plutarch direct knowledge of Thucydides was that of Levi 1955, 159–95, but that rested on a very low view of Plutarch’s capacity to combine different sources. Levi ended by postulating ‘una fonte che ha potuto confrontare il testo di Timeo con quelli di Tucidide e di Filisto’ (177), marked by ‘l’interesse filosofico, moralistico e scientifico’ (180, though there he does allow that Plutarch’s own interests may have affected his presentation), and writing some centuries after the events (180). It is hard to find a better description of Plutarch himself, and it is evidently more economical to suppose that he has himself combined the different strands of source-material.

⁶ Timaeus is quoted specifically for the Syracusans’ initial dismissiveness towards Gylippus, and their later discovery and disapproval of his financial irregularities. That need not preclude admiration for his generalship (so, rightly, Brown 1958, 66, contra e.g. Lauritano 1957, 118–19); Timaeus clearly stressed that Gylippus was important in attracting allies and support, as Plutarch himself brings out (19.5), and the two emphases need not be contradictory. Nor need it preclude the possibility that Plutarch derived other information concerning Gylippus from the same source, the mockery of the Athenian soldiers (19.4), or the final hostility of the Syracusans when he suggested taking the Athenian generals alive to the Peloponnese (28.2). In each case those items come just before the specific Timaeus citations, but the citations need not, as often claimed, point to a change of source. They simply indicate that the new information is more striking and perhaps more questionable, so that the critical reader stands more in need of knowing its provenance. On both these points Meister 1967, 64–5 and 1970 goes astray.

⁷ For relatively recent treatments cf. Meister’s dissertation and article (1967 and 1970); Pédech 1980. Both build heavily on very weak assumptions about the flavour of Timaeus and Philistus, and equally weak assumptions about Diodorus’ technique (on which see J. Hornblower 1981, ch. 2, esp. pp. 49–63; Sacks 1990).

⁸ If my argument in ch. 1 is correct. Here of course it is also possible that Diodorus followed a similar procedure, and at least some of the divergences are owed to his misrememberings; the two explanations need not be mutually exclusive.

⁹ As suggested by Stern 1884, 441, 444–5.

¹⁰ But the case of the figure might be simply rounding (though ‘2500’ strikes one as round enough); or perhaps the result of some textual corruption, possibly in Plutarch or Diodorus, possibly in a text used by one or the other.

¹¹ Cf. especially 14.3 (Thuc. 6.49.1), 16.1 (6.63.3), 16.2 (6.64.3), 16.8 (6.75.2), 18.5 (6.102.2), 18.9 (6.104.1), 19.3 (7.3.1), 19.9 (7.7.4), 21.1 (7.42.1), 21.2 (7.42.2), 21.7

(7.43.5), 26.1 (7.73.3), 26.2 (7.74.2), 27.9 (7.87.5).

¹² On this see Pelling 1988, index s.v. ‘characterization by reaction’; Duff 1999, index s.v. ‘Onlookers as mouthpiece for author’.

¹³ See pp. 288–91.

¹⁴ So at 16.2, where Nicias sends the man from Catana on his missions, and at 19.4, where he makes no response to Gylippus’ peace-offer; at Thuc. 6.64.1–2 it was ‘the generals’, at 7.3.1–2 ‘the Athenians’. At 18.7 Nicias himself transiently turns to hope; at Thuc. 6.103.3 it was the Athenians. Syracusan high morale in Thucydides (7.41.4) becomes Nicias’ low morale at 20.8. A non-Thucydidean example may be 20.5, where ‘Nicias’ decides not to fight before Demosthenes arrives; Diodorus 13.10.1 has a similar item, but talks of ‘the Athenians’. Cf. Marasco 1976, 17, and for similar techniques in other Lives above, pp. 93–4. In none of the Nicias cases is Plutarch being unreasonable. In view of his stress on Nicias’ authority (15.1), a decision of ‘the generals’ amounted to one of Nicias himself, and by 19.4 he is the only general left. In that passage his disdain for Gylippus’ peace-offer anyway required an explanation, and so did the ease with which Gylippus slipped through the blockade (18.11–12); and that explanation could naturally be in terms of Nicias’ sharing his men’s over-confidence. Commander and men are, this time, at one. And it would be odd if Nicias were not dispirited at 20.8: 7.42.2, ‘some improvement, given their bad situation’ suggests how bad things had been before (ως έκ κάκων ρωμη τίς: for ρωμη of morale cf. 7.18.2). In none of all this need we see any source beyond Thucydides (pace Levi 1955, esp. 174, 176–7, 179, 181).

¹⁵ In ‘... against the greatness and glory of what he had hoped to achieve’, 26.5. Even if ηλπίζέ is there interpreted more as ‘hope’ than ‘expect’, the emphasis is still an odd one, given Nicias’ persistently dispirited view of the chances of success. The similar transfer at 18.7 (preceding note) leads to a parallel inconsequentiality: Nicias would seem to be the last man to be distracted by such irrational hopes, and ‘contrary to his nature’ (πάρά φύσίν) at 18.11 acknowledges the awkwardness. But the catastrophic pattern is still worth the discomfort. Nicias’ transient hopefulness is as unfortunate in its consequences as his more usual depression. Cf. pp. 130–1.

¹⁶ On the importance of ‘others’ in this scene see also Frazier 1996, 67–8, who stresses their value as a contrast to Nicias. – Titchener 2000 suggests that Plutarch transfers Thucydides’ judgement to these observers because his own feelings about Nicias are more negative (cf. n. 28), and he is therefore reluctant to subscribe to Thucydides’ verdict in his authorial voice. Perhaps; but the narrative is anyway so powerful that it encourage readers to share the troops’ admiration.

¹⁷ See below, pp. 130–1.

¹⁸ It is normally assumed without question that Plutarch must have a source for this: cf. e.g. Stern 1884, 442–3, 448–9; Busolt 1899, 293; Pédech 1980, 1725–6. All made more than they should of the contact with Diodorus. Marasco 1976, 159–60, sensibly leaves it open whether Plutarch derives the matter from a source or from ‘his own reflection’. Littman 1970, 230–1, assumes that it is an elaboration of Thucydides; that is welcome, for he does not normally allow Plutarch such freedom of elaboration (e.g. in the case of Menander and Euthydemus he argues that Plutarch’s extra detail is drawn from Philistus,

pp. 212–13).

¹⁹ Above, n. 11.

²⁰ Cf. Ant. 66.3, 77.4 with the notes in my commentary (Pelling 1988, 283, 307); the wording of Nic. 25 is more distant. We might compare the remarks of Hinds 1998, 104–5 on Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Ovid most echoes the Aeneid not when he gives his own version of Aeneas’ story in Met. 13–14 (‘the least Virgilian thing he ever wrote’), but elsewhere in the poem.

²¹ That is particularly clear with Plutarch’s cross-referential self-quotations: cf. Stoltz 1929, 43–55.

²² Russell 1966a, 40–1 = Scardigli 1995, 196–7 points out the oddity, and explains that Thucydides’ restrained manner made this mention of ‘transgressiveness’ all the more telling. As he says, the citation at 13.4 is a similar case, when Plutarch is talking of Hyperbolus: ‘Thucydides too mentions him as a scoundrel’ (μέμνητάί μέν ως άνθρωπού πονηρού κάί Tούκύδίδης). Thucydides would not make such criticisms rashly.

²³ See p. 127, where the passage is quoted.

²⁴ At least as Plutarch portrays it, Alc. 36. I discuss this more fully in Pelling 2000, 54–8; cf. also Duff 1999, 238–9; Gribble 1999, 280–1.

²⁵ I retain the word ‘allusion’ here rather than switching to ‘intertextuality’, though I am ready enough to use the latter term as well. ‘Allusion’ carries more implication of authorial intention, and despite the theoretical minefield this may be helpful, at least in the sense of the audience’s reconstruction of that intention. (Hence it is better to talk of ‘narrator’, the ‘Plutarch’ whom audience construct, rather than simply ‘author’.) One of the most distinctive techniques of Plutarch is to encourage a complicity between narrator and narratee (see ch. 12): the audience response here is not merely to recognize the Thucydidean original, but also to recognize a narrator who expects them to know it. To exclude narratorial self-characterization in such techniques is to diminish the text. For a sophisticated discussion of intertextuality and allusion, retaining a scope for the latter word, cf. Hinds 1998, esp. 49–50, 144. Naturally, ‘allusions’ too import suggestions of the original text and its context into our readings of the later text; good critics have known this for a long time, and scholars should not pretend that this insight is owed to those who have discovered intertextuality.

²⁶ Cf. the stress of Per. 18.1, 19.3, 20.3–4, 21, 22.2, 23.2; cf. then 33.5–6, 38.4, Fab. 28(1).1. Stadter 1989, 209–10 on 18.1 notes that Plutarch evinces no interest in the various strategic tricks that Frontinus ascribes to Pericles: these would sit uncomfortably with such a policy of safety-first (άσφάλείά), as the wording of 18.1 brings out plainly.

²⁷ So de Romilly 1988, 31. Pomp. 67.7–10 offers a suggestive contrast, where Plutarch waxes indignant at the shortsighted selfishness of the Roman aristocrats at Pharsalus, and Pompey’s failure to give the strong leadership one should expect (p. 101): a similar indignation would be justified here.

²⁸ This has the effect of making the early chapters less favourable to Nicias than we might expect from Thucydides, as Nikolaidis 1988 forcefully points out; but he goes too far in speaking of Plutarch’s ‘bias against Nicias’, and arguing that this is to be seen as a negative, deterrent Life (so also Marasco 1976, 22; contra, Titchener 1991, though she too stresses the Life’s ‘negative tone’). There are several passages where Plutarch might have criticized Nicias more fiercely (cf. preceding note), and anyway Plutarch’s unfriendly treatment of the demos itself (pp. 125–6) makes Nicias’ nervousness more understandable. Littman 1970, 252–3, here gives a measured view. Nor is the treatment as independent of Thucydides as Nikolaidis suggests (1988, 320). It is rather that Plutarch transfers Thucydides’ leading themes to explain different and earlier events, rather as in Themistocles he exploits themes from Thucydides’ posthumous survey (1.138) to reinterpret Themistocles’ earlier actions (in that case, actions for which Plutarch’s main source was Herodotus): cf. Littman 1970, 53–7.

²⁹ Notice the reworking in 2.1, the very first sentence after the proem, to insert a reference to ‘the people’. That is adapted from Ath. Pol. 28.5, which lauded Nicias, Thucydides, and Theramenes as ‘the best.. .after the ancients’ and ‘not merely gentlemen but also statesmen and men who treated the whole city like fathers’ (.. .κάί τη πολεί πάση πάτρίκως χρωμενους). Plutarch changes this to make them the ‘best of the citizens and people who inherited from their ancestors goodwill and friendship to the people’ (...κάί πάτρικην [did he misunderstand πάτρικως in Ath. Pol.?} εχοντες ευνοίάν κάί φιλίάν προς τον δημον). This, as elaborated in the rest of the chapter, is the slightly nervous and precarious ‘friendship’ from which he begins. Cf. Levi 1955, 161–2.

³⁰ This analytic flexibility is very clear in the Roman Lives: cf. pp. 96–102 and 207–10. Cf. also the rather different portrayals of the Syracusan demos in Timoleon and Dion:Swain 1989d, 322–3.

³¹ Plutarch here builds on earlier literary portrayals of Alcibiades, which in various ways developed points both of similarity and of incompatibility between city and individual:see Gribble 1999, esp. 29–89.

³² The expansion is intelligent: if we try to reconstruct plausible arguments for Alcibiades to use, we would be hard-pressed to do better than Alc. 14.8–9. Cf. Fornis Vaquero 1994, 505.

³³ For another important ‘reverse’, notice how the spectacular celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries at Alc. 34.3–7 mirrors and corrects the earlier allegations of sacrilege. Here again Plutarch’s suggestions are intelligent and sensitive. Cf. Verdegem 2001; Pelling 2000, 23 and 54.

³⁴ On this see esp. Gribble 1999, 159–213; also Macleod 1975; Connor 1984, esp. 60–2, 163–5, 237; Rood 1998, 185–8; and Pelling 2000, 22, 52–3.

³⁵ Not that these ‘highly-regarded’ people are wrong: the analysis is picked up in the Comparison (Alc. 40(1).3), but there they are described as ‘the sensible’, οί σωφρονές. On Alc. 16 and its political analysis see further Russell 1966a, 45–6 = Scardigli 1995, 204–6; Duff 1999, 234–5; Gribble 1999, 265–8 and 277–9.

³⁶ I elaborate this point in Pelling 2000, 44–60, esp. 54 and 59–60. Cf. also Rood 1998, 234, 288–91 for some other cases where Plutarch interestingly revises Thucydides’ interpretations: in particular, his stress on Nicias’ wealth (Nic. 3.1–2), exploiting Thucydidean material (4.105.1, 7.77.2, 7.86.4) to create a very unthucydidean picture.

³⁷ Some aspects of Nicias’ rhetoric, especially at 6.68.3–4 and 7.64, lend themselves to analysis in this way. For his nervousness of the troops, cf. especially 7.8.1, 14.1 (‘your natures are difficult to command’, χάλέπάί γάρ άί ύμέτέράί φύσέίς άρξάί), 48.3^.

³⁸ Besides 17, cf. 4.6, 5.1, 8.1, 10.7, 31.1, 36.8, 38.1, 39.1; but in the case of the demos here it is more disturbingly connected with ‘anger’ (οργη), a much less Periclean characteristic. Phronema is one of the themes that links Pericles to his pair Fabius, who shows the same quality (Fab. 3.7); he too finds the quality hard to cope with in others (6.2); but he too finally inspires his city to respond with the same quality (18.4).

³⁹ Cf. 9.1, listing ‘cleruchies and theoric grants and distributions of pay’ as the distinctive demagogic methods; then e.g. 9.3. The irony here is missed by Connor 1968, 114. This emphasis on phronema, both Pericles’ own and that inspired in the demos, helps us to understand the different treatment of rhetoric in Plutarch (a point stressed by de Romilly 1988, 24–5, who found Plutarch’s analysis disquietingly trivial). Plutarch presents Pericles’ rhetoric as psychagogia (‘leading of souls’), and emphasizes the point with Platonic allusions at 8.2 and 15.2. For Thucydides it was much more a question of communicating truth and insight, especially prophetic insight, to the demos. Plutarch thus dwells more on moulding and leading the emotions (πάθη) of the people; that emphasis is of course present in Thucydides too, who also stresses Pericles’ power to stem or inflate the people’s confidence, but does so in a much more intellectual register (cf. esp. 2.65.9). One can now understand Plutarch’s re-emphasis. It is the spirit, as moulded by psychagogia, rather than the intellectually inspired insight that is central to his interpretation. And it is again hard to be sure that he was wrong.

⁴⁰ Especially 6.2–3, 7.3–4, 7.8, 9.5, 10.8, 11.3 (and all 11.1–4), 12.1, 14.1, 14.3, 15.1; cf. Stadter 1989, especially his notes on 7.3, 11.3, and 15.1. Many have criticized Plutarch for the crudity of the analysis, especially Frost 1964, 386–92, Breebart 1971, 267–9, Andrewes 1978, 1–5: they generally explain this as a consequence either of Plutarch’s source-material (cf. e.g. Ath. Pol. 28.2) or of the influence of conditions of his own day. (On this second possibility cf. also Ameling 1985.) Both considerations may indeed have played a part. But we also need to explain why this analysis, when compared with Plutarch’s other Lives of the period, is both unusually insistent and unusually crude. That needs to be explained in terms of the distinctive features of this particular Life.

⁴¹ Thus Cimon is genuinely popular in Cim. (5.4–6, 7.4–8.2, 8.7, 10, 15.1, 16.2); Per. 9.2 prefers to hint that Cimon’s liberality was calculated demagogy, thus keeping closer to the tenor of the original (Theopompus FGrH 115 fr. 89) than he does at Cim. 10, where he insists that such spontaneous generosity and rapport with the demos could comfortably coexist with ‘political aims which were aristocratic and philo-Spartan’ (προάίρεσις άριστοκράτικη κάί ?άκωνικη, 10.8). At Per. 10.6 Pericles is ‘put forward by the demos’ to prosecute Cimon; nothing of this at Cim. 14.3–5. Indeed, in Cim. more than in Per. 9–10 Cimon is outside and above the two-party bickering, at least at first, and can act as a moderating influence: cf. 3.1, 19.3, and especially 15.1 (‘when he was present, he would control and restrain the demos, prone as it was to attack the best citizens and to seize all authority and power for itself’). All this implies that the two ‘parties’ were important, but in Cimon Plutarch does not explain every move or political figure in those terms. None of this is particularly impressive; indeed, it is partly a consequence of Plutarch’s general lack of interest in political analysis in Cim. (cf. e.g. the perfunctory explanation at 16.9–10, or the much blander treatment of his recall from exile at 17, especially 17.9, than at Per. 10.1–4). But it is notable that Plutarch’s more insistent concern with political analysis in Per. requires so much simplification and overstatement.

⁴² Gomme HCTi. 56.

⁴³ See Stadter 1989, xxxix; Breebart 1971, 261, 270; and below, pp. 314 and 325, where I discuss this from a different angle. Swain 1990c, 76 notes that Plato is not named at Per. 9.1, where the divergence between Thucydides and ‘many others’ is discussed. Plutarch’s reverence for Plato is such that he would prefer dissent to be tacit. For a similar case in On Controlling Anger (457b–c) cf. Duff 1999, 213.

⁴⁴ The distinctions are drawn sharply and crudely, but not without some discrimination; 11.3 argues that the split, hitherto latent, becomes much fiercer and clearly defined with Thucydides son of Melesias and his more systematic organization, and Plutarch’s own narrative emphases have confirmed that picture. Thus even before 11.3 we see a strong potential split (cf. the passages cited in n. 40), but till that point the distinction is one of two potential sources of support or two different political approaches, ‘popular’ and ‘aristocratic’ (δημοτικης κάί άριστοκράτικης προάίρεσεως, 11.3): thus Cimon too, even though belonging with the conservatives, still knows how to play the demagogue (9.2). Between 11.3 and 15.1 (cf. also 6.2–3), the division of two ‘parties’, systematically at each other’s throats, is clearer: cf. 12.1, 14.1, 14.3. Critics sometimes exaggerate the incoherence of Plutarch’s account, e.g. Meyer 1967, 145.

⁴⁵ ‘Takes further’, because there are already some elements of that style in the earlier, demagogic phase: these furnish one of several devices for making this period less uncomfortable. Cf. e.g. the dignified aloofness from the demos, or the elevated specific motives for basically demagogic measures (7.5–8, 11.6–12). Cf. esp. Stadter 1989, xxxix–xl and Stadter 1987, 258–9; Breebart 1971.

⁴⁶ The fragility of the control is also felt: it is made clear that the demos can always break away from such grave leadership, as they turn away from Pericles in the final years and months (32.6, 33.7–8, 35.3–5); and Plutarch seizes several opportunities to hint at what will happen after his death (especially 39.3–4, but notice also 20.4, 37.1, 37.6, Fab. 29(2).3–4). That suggests some qualifications to the argument of de Romilly 1988, 25.Thucydides naturally generates more interest (as she stresses) in ‘the nature of Pericles’ authority, contrasted with his successors’ lack of authority’ and ‘the whole evolution of Athenian politics during the Peloponnesian War’; such themes do not lend themselves to development in biographical form, as again she concedes. But the theme is hinted in Plutarch too, despite his literary form.

⁴⁷ Cf. n. 41.

⁴⁸ de Romilly 1988. Cf. also the analyses of Frazier 1996 along similar lines, especially her summary at p. 95.

⁴⁹ Stadter 1989, lxi.

⁵⁰ Granted that this phrase raises considerable methodological complications: cf. p. 111 n. 27. Here I again mean tragic affinity as much as tragic influence or allusion, though Nicias 29 in particular evokes the tragic genre, particularly when taken with the balancing Crassus 33: for Crassus see Braund 1993 and Zadorojnyi 1997a. On Thucydides and tragedy see esp. Macleod 1983, 140–58; I say a little more about how Nicias’ self-seeking fits into Thucydides’ larger pattern in Pelling 1990, 259–60.

⁵¹ Cf. p. 127 and n. 34.

⁵² This stress, important in Nicias, is absent from the parallel account at Alc. 13. This helps to explain several variations between the two accounts: I trace these through in detail at Pelling 2000, 49–52. Briefly, (1) At Nic. 11.5 Nicias and Alcibiades both play a part in the scheming against Hyperbolus; in Alc. 13.7 it is Alcibiades alone. That is not just routine biographical focusing, for it is important that Nicias’ own schemings should turn against himself. (2) The role of Phaeax, though a little inconsequential in Alcibiades, is certainly greater than in Nicias (cf. 11.10). The shifting relations of Nicias and Alcibiades are a central point in Nicias and could naturally lead him to play down a complicating additional figure: indeed, the ‘if either Nicias or Alcibiades had been ostracized...’ reflection would be ruined if Phaeax were intruded too heavily, for his ostracism would evidently not have saved Nicias from Sicily. In Alcibiades Plutarch’s focus rests more on Alcibiades’ relationship with the demos, and the extra character is a positive advantage, highlighting different styles of popular leadership. Thus the incompetent rhetoric of Phaeax (Alc. 13.2–3) contrasts effectively with Alcibiades’ winning eloquence (10.3–4), just as Hyperbolus’ ‘contempt for public acclaim’ (doxa, 13.5) contrasts with Alcibiades’ ‘love of honour and acclaim’ (doxa again, 6.4, etc.).

⁵³ de Romilly 1988, 33.

⁵⁴ Frost 1980, 168, comments on this abruptness; cf. also Stadter 1983–4, 359–61.

⁵⁵ An analysis, incidentally, that Thucydides would surely have found much too simpleminded, for all his awareness of the interconnection of democracy and nautical empire (cf. esp. 6.24.3–4). Thucydides, both in his narrative and in the summary at 1.138, has notably little to say or suggest about Themistocles’ part in building Athenian democracy or fostering factional strife; he is more concerned with his role in building Athenian power and empire. Hence the lavish treatment of the construction of the walls (cf. esp. 1.93.4).

⁵⁶ I return to this theme at pp. 187–8, and in Pelling, forthcoming (a) and (b).

⁵⁷ Cf. Stadter 1983_4.

⁵⁸ I say more about this in chs. 15, esp. p. 344, and 16, esp. p. 357.

⁵⁹ On this topic in general cf. essGeiger 1981.

⁶⁰ This might have left some gaps, particularly perhaps on childhood (cf. ch. 14 below); but this was true in other Lives too, and did not stop him writing of (say) Nicias, Philopoemen, Phocion, or Flamininus: cf. p. 153.

⁶¹ Especially ‘(over-)confidence’, ‘brashness’ (θράσυτης) and ‘worthlessness’, ‘disgustingness’ (βδελυρίά). For the traditional nature of the qualities, see my note (1988, 119) on Ant. 2.6 and Stadter’s (1989, 78) on Per. 5.2; for Cleon, cf. Nic. 2.2–3, 8.5, Crass. 36(3).5, Demetr. 11.2, Mor. 855b; for Clodius, Lucull. 34.1, 38.1, Pomp. 46.4, 48.5, Caes. 9.2, Cat. Min. 31.2, Cic. 28.1, Ant. 2.6. On the absence of Lives of ‘the really negative leaders’ cf. also de Blois 1992, 4604.

⁶² Cf. AOn the absence of Livesmeling 1985; Fuscagni 1989, 48–58. Alc. 14.8 is another case where Plutarch is perhaps misled by the political conditions of his own day: cf. S. Hornblower 1983, 120. See also Gomme HCT i. 72–4, on Plutarch’s intrusion of stereotypes from Roman history. But in chs. 10 and 11 I suggest that Plutarch was at pains to keep such contemporary flavouring to a minimum: cf. also Pelling 2000, 58–9.

⁶³ Fifth-century sources will of course have influenced Plutarch’s picture of (say) popular religion or the reaction to Alcibiades, and in that sense he filters contemporary views to us; but that is very different from saying that he draws these particular themes or emphases from a predecessor, contemporary or otherwise.