It is especially important to train and practice children’s memory: for memory is the warehouse of learning. This is why we used to mythologize Memory as the mother of the Muses, making it clear through allegory that nothing creates and nourishes the way memory does. This should be trained in both cases, whether children have a good memory from the beginning or are naturally forgetful. For we may strengthen the inborn ability and supplement the deficiency. The first group will be better than others; but the second will be better than themselves. This is why the Hesiodic line rings true: “If you add a little by little, and you keep doing it, soon you can have something great.”
Parents should also not forget that a skill of memory contributes its great worth not only to education but to life’s actions in general. For the memory of past events becomes an example of good planning for future actions.”
This and the following passage are from Plutarch’s On Whether Sickness of the Body or Mind Are Worse (Moralia 500 ff). The following (especially the last line of the first paragraph) appears to perpetuate the stigmatizing of mental illness. And it does: many behaviors we today would see as parafunctional and requiring therapy, ancient authors viewed as issues of will.
“Just as, therefore, the storm which keeps you from docking is more dangerous than the one that won’t let you sail, the storms of the soul are worse when they do not allow a person to control or put down his troubled thoughts—this person goes without a helmsman, without ballast in confusion and wandering, taking off in steep and opposite courses until suffering a harrowing shipwreck and crushing his life. This is why it is worse to suffer sickness of mind than the body: For those who are sick, merely suffer; the sick of mind suffer and harm others.
But why is it necessary to repeat the great number of afflictions? Current events remind me of them. Do you see this immense, mix up crowd which clings together and mixes around the seat of government and the market?”
“Since we have come to this point in the argument: what is more profitable to life than art? Fire exposed every art and preserves them. This is the reason poets have made Hephaistos the first craftsman. Since humans have been given only a little bit of life and—as Ariston puts it—sleep claims half of life like a tax-collector, I would say that darkness is important: even if it were possible to stay awake through the night, this vigil would be useless if fire did not provide the advantages of day to us and strip away the difference between day and night. If there is nothing more important to people than life and fire increases life considerably, how could fire not be the most beneficial thing of all?”
“Some of the other faults and disorders we suffer are dangerous, hateful, or absurd; but talkativeness is all of these things. For chatterboxes are mocked for explaining common affairs,hated for trumpeting bad news, and they risk their lives because they can’t keep secrets. For this reason, when Anacharsis had a feast at Solon’s home and was stretched out to sleep, he covered his genitals with his left hand and placed his right hand over his mouth: he thought that the tongue demanded the stronger protection! And this is correct. For, one couldn’t easily make a list of how many man have been laid low because of uncontrolled lust any more than the number of cities and governments which a revealed secret has destroyed.”
“Klea, I do not have the same opinion as Thucydides concerning the virtue of women. For he claims that the best woman is the one who has the slimmest reputation among those outside her home, critical or positive—since he believes that the name of a good woman ought to be locked up and kept indoors just like her body. Gorgias, in fact, is more appealing to me, since he insists that the fame rather than the form of a woman should be known to many. Indeed, the Roman practice seems best: granting praise to women in public after their death just as for men.
So, when Leontis, one of the best women died, you and I had a rather long conversation which did not lack philosophical solace; and now, just as you have asked, I have written down for you the rest of the things one can say supporting the assertion that the virtue of a man and woman are the same thing. This [composition] is historical and is not arranged for pleasurable hearing. But if some pleasure is possible in a persuasive piece thanks to the nature of its example, then the argument itself does not avoid some charm—that aid to explanation—nor is it reluctant to “mix the Graces in with the Muses, a most noble pairing”, in the words of Euripides, basing its credibility on the love of beauty which is a special province of the soul.”
“It is not possible to hide wickedness in power. But, as when someone with vertigo* might go up in a high place and move around, only to become dizzy and uncertain, thus revealing their suffering, so fortune amplifies the untaught and ignorant a little with some wealth, reputation or offices and, once they have risen up, it shows them falling. Or rather, it is the same as when you cannot tell which of some containers is solid and which is cracked but when you pour water into them, the culprit leak is clear: rotten minds cannot manage power, but they ooze out random desires, rages, improprieties, and base manners.”
*The original Greek seems to be about people with epilepsy (tous epilêptikous). I changed this for a few reasons. Although I understand ancient physiognomic standards, I am uncomfortable with perpetuating the analogy implied here between sickness of mind and that of body. A person who has such a malady should not be subjected to a comparison to the sick of spirit.
I was going to save this for another day, but with a healthcare vote looming, I could not resist. Another passage from Plutarch’s fragmentary “To an Educated Ruler…”
782b-c
“Among the weak, base and private citizens, ignorance when combined with a lack of power yields little wrongdoing, as in nightmares some trouble upsets the mind, making it incapable of responding to its desires. But when power has been combined with wickedness it adds energy to latent passions. And so that saying of Dionysus is true—for he used to say that he loved his power most when he could do what he wanted quickly. It is truly a great danger when one who wants what is wrong has the power to do what he wants to do.
As Homer puts it “When the plan was made, then the deed was done.” When wickedness has an open course because of its power, it compels every passion to emerge, producing rage, murder, lust, adultery, and greedy acquisition of public wealth.”
Yes, Plutarch wrote an essay called “To the Educated Ruler”. And it has no relevance today, at all. Really, read to the end of this passage (780a-c)…
“The majority of kings and rulers are stupid–they imitate those artless sculptors who believe that their oversized figures seem large and solid if they make them with a wide stance, flexing their muscles, mouths gaped open. For these types of rulers seem merely to be imitating the impressiveness and seriousness of leadership with their deep voice, severe glance, bitter manners and their separate way of living: but they are not really any different from the sculpted colossus which is heroic and godly on the outside, but filled with dirt, stone or lead within.
The real difference is that the weight of the statue keeps it standing straight, never leaning; these untaught generals and leaders often wobble and overturn because of their native ignorance. For, because they have built their homes on a crooked foundation, they lean and slide with it. Just as a carpenter’s square, if it is straight and solid, straightens out everything else that is measured according to it, so too a leader must first master himself and correct his own character and only then try to guide his people. For one who is falling cannot lift others; one who is ignorant cannot teach; one who is simple cannot manage complicated affairs; one who is disordered cannot create order; and one who does not rule himself cannot rule.”
While looking up some random phrases about the healing power of literature, I found myself reading Plutarch this morning. His words on citizenship and exile our powerful and pertinent in our transatlantic crisis of Politics (xenophobia and racism from the right) and Wars (the refugee crises and responses in Europe and Asia). Though his words are of course influenced by his experience of the Roman Empire, there is an essential humanity to them and a belief in common good and shared existence that is too often lost in modern discourse.
“This is the character of your current exile from your customary country. For we have no country by nature, just as we have neither home, nor field, nor blacksmith’s, nor doctor’s office, as Aristôn said. But each of these things develops or, rather, is named and called so by the man inhabiting or using it. For a human being, as Plato says, “is not earthly born and immovable but comes from heaven” just as if the head raises the body up straight from its root stretching towards the sky. So Herakles said well “Am I Argive or Theban? I do not claim / one—every citadel in Greece is my homeland”. But Socrates put it better saying “I am neither Athenian nor Greek, but a citizen of the world,” as someone might claim to be Rhodian or Korinthian, because he did not lock himself within Sounion, Tainaros, or the Keraunian mountains.
As [Euripides] puts it: “Do you see the boundless light above / and the earth opening below with damp embrace?” These are the boundaries of our countries and no man is an exile, foreigner or stranger where there is fire, water, air; where we find the same rulers, overseers, and presidents: the same sun, moon, and star at day’s break; where the same laws exist for all under one order and single government: the summer and winter solstices, the Pleiades and Arcturus, the seasons of planting and harvesting that rise and set for us all; and where there is one king and ruler, god, who knows the beginning, middle and end of everything; who travels through all, guiding it with a straight force. Justice is his attendant as an avenger for those who transgress divine law. We all by nature follow this law in treating all people as our fellow citizens.”
“Friendships transform your character and there is no greater sign of a difference in character than in choosing different friends. This is why neither eating nor drinking nor playing and spending time with a brother is so firm a foundation of agreement as shared friendship, enmity, and enjoying time with the same people and, in turn, hating and shunning alike. For common friendships do not endure slander or feuds—instead, if some anger or complaint should arise, it is resolved by the intervention of friends who accept this responsibility and mediate if they are well-disposed toward both sides and have a similar good-will in common. Just as tin may rejoin broken bronze and bonds it together when soldered to both sides because it is suited similarly to both, so too it is right that a friend who is well-suited and shared by both brothers can increase their goodwill. But those are unbalanced and unshared are disharmonious, just as off-key notes in a musical scale. Just so, it is possible to wonder whether Hesiod was right or not when he said: “Never make a friend equal to a brother.” (Works and Days, 707).
