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Alexei V. Zadorojnyi

Better than sex: erotics of the text in Plutarch

A major line of Plutarch’s polemics in the Non posse is to accuse the Epicureans of setting store by physical pleasures yet disregarding the pleasures of the intellect which are nourished by culture, science, and scholarship.1 Reading history and lite-rature is a pleasant and “painless” activity for the rational part of the psyche (1092E-1093C); scientific discoveries in geometry, astronomy and such are thrilling (1093D-1094E); criticism of music and poetry is highly enjoyable (1094F-1096C).2 Notably, the pleasure of literature is favourably contrasted with the bodily pleasures of food and sex.

But when the story and the narrative involves no harm or pain, and to its contents of fine and great actions is added the power and charm of language (ὅταν δὲ μηδὲν ἔχουσα βλαβερὸν ἢ λυπηρὸν ἱστορία καὶ διήγησις ἐπὶ πράξεσι καλαῖς καὶ μεγάλαις προσλάβῃ λόγον ἔχοντα δύναμιν καὶ χάριν), as when Greek history is told by Herodotus and the Persian by Xenophon, or “what god-in-spired Homer divinely uttered”, or Eudoxus’ Descriptions of the World, Aristo-tle’s Foundations and Constitutions of Cities, or Aristoxenus’ Lives, the joy is not only great and abundant, but also pure and causing no regret (τὸ εὐφραίνον... καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμεταμέλητον). Who would take more pleasure (ἥδιον) in stilling his hunger or quenching his thirst on the Phaeacian fare than in following Odysseus’ tale of his wanderings? Who would find greater pleasure in slee-ping with the most beautiful of women than in sitting up with Xenophon’s account of Pantheia (τίς δ’ ἂν ἡσθείη συναναπαυσάμενος τῇ καλλίστῃ γυναικὶ μᾶλλον ἢ προσαγρυπνήσας οἷς γέγραφε περὶ Πανθείας Ξενοφῶν), Aristobulus’ of Timocleia, or Theopompus’ of Thebe? (1093B-C)

It is possible that the last question is ironically flavoured as an oblique com-ment about (over)commitment to paideia.3 However, there is also a deeper ideo-logical rationale behind the Plutarchan comparison of reading as a source of bona fide pleasure with heterosexual intercourse approached from the male perspective.

For on the one hand, Greek literary culture has a long tradition of pointing up the pleasurable quality and effect of musicopoetry, and indeed of doing so in the id-

1 See Boulogne (2003) 141-3, 168, 176-9; Warren (2011) 285-9; Martos Montiel (1999a) 123-4 and more generally 17, 21, 57, 61-3, 148.

2 Interestingly similar is the (not immediately anti-Epicurean) eulogy of sciences and study of history and literature in Cic. Fin. 5.50-2.

3 Cf. Pelling (2002) 238, also (2007) 156.

466 Alexei V. Zadorojnyi

iom of erotic desire.4 At the same time Greek and Greco-Roman criticism is trans-fixed with the urge to regulate the balance between pleasure and ‘useful’ value in poetry, rhetoric or narrative.5 Plutarch makes a big contribution to this debate, gen-erally taking side with the ‘useful’. The thrust of De audiendis poetis is that the reader should confront the pleasing fabric of the poetic text but resist it and extrapolate the wholesome elements (14F, 15C-D, 15F-16A);6 in lectures pleasure should not be the goal either (De aud. 42C). Philosophically viable reading means being focused on the useful transferable examples, rather than simply enjoying literature (Prof. virt. 79C-D). Herodotus is taken to task precisely for using attractive narrative to spread dodgy content (Hdt. mal. 874B). When marketing his own text, Plutarch may pro-grammatically insist that he is writing not to please the audience but to provide them with useful ethical guidance (Demetr. 1.6; De tranq. 464F). But at times his strategy is more liberal. Pleasure is allowed into the reader’s experience as an accessory in the process of communicating legitimate values (Mul. virt. 243A); the Parallel Lives are once framed in the language of joy too (Aem. 1.3 χάρμα). Scholarship and readings on topics which are both useful and pleasant are germane activities at the symposion (Tuen. san. 133C); Menander is hailed as the most pleasant and appropriately erotic yet morall healthy author for sympotic recitals (QC 712B-D).7 So there is in Plutarch a spectrum of attitudes towards textual pleasure, ranging from the urgency to police it and to deny it priority within his own writerly agenda to the readiness to accept pleasure as a concomitant bonus of ‘good’ discourse.

Most of us would probably subscribe to the idea that reading is a pleasant thing; moreover, we inhabit a rich modern tradition of metaphorising the relationship be-tween the text and the writer/reader as a kind of erotic rapport.8 Roland Barthes’ 1973 essay Le plaisir du texte famously blends both these sensibilities into a series of fragmented, aphoristic comments on the phenomenon of the reader’s pleasure vis-à-vis the text. To Barthes, this pleasure is a dynamic, unstable and subjective experi-ence which is fundamentally not beholden to any ideological, moral or sociopoliti-cal constraints; it is a sort of intransitive psychological situation that occurs because it does and does not need justification. It has no structure as such – it is a drift (une dérive),9 so it cannot be truly analysed by criticism. Crucially, the reader’s pleasure is,

4 Calame (1992) 37-8, 40-1, 47-8. Plutarch is of course aware of the tradition: e.g. Phoc. 7.6 (Μουσέων ἐρατᾶν δῶρον), Amat. 751D (χάρις), QC 704F-705A and De soll. an. 984B-C (ἐρατὸν μέλος).

5 E.g. Pl. R. 607d8-9; Cic. Fin. 5.51; Hor. AP 333, 343-4; Gal. Anat. adm. 3.9 vol. ii p. 393 Kühn; Ael. Arist. 2.421. Konstan (2005) 8-9; Hunter and Russell (2011) 74; cf. Goldhill (1995) 7 on κτῆμα... τερπνόν in the prologue of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe: “Terpnon... points towards the contested rela-tions of (im)proper pleasure between a text and an audience.”

6 See e.g. Van der Stockt (1992) 128-32; Martos Montiel (1999a) 142-3; Saïd (2005) 157-8; Hunter (2009) 172.

7 Gilula (1987) 511-12; Di Florio (2005) 120-1, 134; further, Casanova (2007).8 Kellman (1985) 3-29.9 Brown (1992) 62 glosses dérive as “a semantic whirlpool”.

467Better than sex

deep down, erotic; Barthes insinuates this by way of some of his metaphors (Kama-sutra, striptease, bondage) and especially by equating the textual pleasure with perversion,10 that is, the embarrassing desire for the forbidden, delicious corruption of the normative codes of genre, of language itself. Last but not least, Barthes’ tenta-tively differentiates between plaisir that is programmed for complicity with the es-tablished culture, and jouissance as the radical, revelational, typically uncomfortable and scandalous transcendence of the norms; on the whole, Barthes plumps for jouis-sance, not because he invariably prefers avant-guarde writing but because as a post-modernist he seeks to inscribe subversive jouissance onto the extant literature.

Barthes’ vision might provide some helpful comparanda to the Plutarchan and, more broadly, ancient views on pleasurability of the text.11 Thus it is apparent that while to Barthes the text and the pleasure of the text are autonomous, subjective and potentially climaxing in a spasm of rule-breaking jouissance, in Plutarch the reader’s pleasure is a facet of intellectualism as the teleologically choiceworthy way of life. According to Plutarch, the appeal of representative arts is rooted in our recognition of the presence, or better the input of rationality and skill therein (QC 673D-674C).12 The championing of cultured pleasures in the Non posse as intellectual activities and therefore superior to pleasures of the flesh is a tactic to browbeat the Epicureans, yet it fits in with the time-honoured rhetoric of polarisation (with a variable degree of rigour) between bodily appetites and paideutic learning.13 As a Platonist, Plutarch could draw on the Republic’s theory about distinctive pleasures available to each part of the tripartite soul, the truest pleasures being the prerogative and privilege of the reasoning part (580d-583a, 586a-587a).14 Even more relevant is Plato’s sophisticated hierarchical taxonomy of the Good towards the end of the Philebus (66a-c); the fourth place is given to “the soul’s own properties, to the sciences and the arts, and what we called right opinions” (ἃ τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτῆς ἔθεμεν, ἐπιστήμας τε καὶ τέχνας καὶ δόξας �ρθὰς λεχθείσας), and the fifth to the “painless” (ἀλύπους) and “pure” (καθαράς) pleasures which are “the soul’s own, following upon the sciences, and some upon sense-perception.” 15

It would appear that in the Non posse Plutarch effectively spells out the “sci-

10 On perversion as a positive term of Barthes’ aesthetics, see Brown (1992) 100-2.11 Cf. Konstan (2005) 15, albeit he is entirely blasé about the differences that separate the two

hermeneutic outlooks.12 Van der Stockt (1992) 49-55; Konstan (2005) 13-14; Hunter and Russell (2011) 97.13 E.g. Pl. Phd. 114d8-e4; Ael. Arist. Hier. 1.19; Plut. QC 673A ‘when the body is comfortable

and at peace, the soul... turns to its own pleasures and feasts on arguments, learning, tales and exotic enquiries’ (ἐπὶ τὰς αὑτῆς ἡδονὰς τρέπεται, λόγοις εὐωχουμένη καὶ μαθήμασι καὶ ἱστορίαις καὶ τῷ ζητεῖν τι [ἀκούειν] τῶν περιττῶν), with Kechagia (2011) 85 and Pelling (2011) 214; generally Martos Montiel (1999a) 16-18.

14 Warren (2011) 278-84.15 The Philebus passage is paraphrased by Plutarch in De E 391C-D; see Cosenza (1999); Mar-

tos Montiel (1999a) 95-7 and (1999b) 115-17. The influence of the Philebus on Plutarch’s epistemol-ogy and aesthetics is still underexplored.

468 Alexei V. Zadorojnyi

ences and arts” of the Philebus16 by going through a gamut of intellectual practices arranged along a progressive scale, from fiction and historical narratives that are “somehow simple and smooth” (1093D ταῖς μὲν ἱστορίαις ἁπλοῦν τι καὶ λεῖόν ἐστι) to geometry and astronomy, and then to musical and literary criticism (1095A-B, 1096C-D). The pleasure of the text occurs via pursuit of knowledge and is validated by proximity to the rational energy of the soul; hermeneutics is a higher-level exer-cise in rationality than ‘plain’ reading and hence altogether more pleasurable:17

Sensual men, when they see that old age makes many pleasures wither away... should conduct the Aphrodisia, and the mornings-after by spending time with history, poetry or questions (προβλήμασι) of music and geometry. ... As for the characterization in poets and their inventions and different styles and the solutions to problems which combine aptness and cogency with appopri-ateness and subtlety, I think that, in Xenophon’s words [Cyn. 5.33], they even make the lover forget his passion; so overwhelming are they in respect of pleasure (τοσοῦτον ἡδονῇ κρατοῦσιν). (1094F-1095A, 1096B-C)

Scholarship replaces sex and is willy-nilly eroticised itself.18 Here and in 1093C – where reading about virtuous women is alleged to be better than sleeping with a beautiful woman – sexuality as foil to intellectual activity is unmistakably gendered: the reader who accesses the superior quasi-erotic satisfaction through reading is male. I contend that here we have an echo of the entrenched logo- and phallocentric assumptions among the Greco-Roman intellectual class. Plutarch’s notion of reading that supersedes sex builds on the habits of couching the discourse of normative rea-son in the terms (and in favour of) masculinity (e.g. Dio 30.36-8) and indeed of ana-tomical virility. The image of Hermes’ erection is allegorised as full-grown rationality (Cornut. Epidr. 16; Plut. An seni 797F). Conversely, discredited cultural players (sophists) can be described as eunuchs (Dio 4.35-6; Ael. Arist. 34.12-13 and 48) – shallow logos equals impotence;19 the Epicurean teaching may be polemically juxta-posed with prostitution (πόρνης δόγμα, Gell. 9.5.8). Various ethico-philosophical scenarios in Plutarch and beyond are assimilated to sexual experience from a male standpoint: curiosity is a transgression analogous to adultery with married women (De cur. 519E-F); male-led education of a wife is likened to impregnation (Con. praec. 145D-E);20 erection and emotions are brought to heel by the same philoso-

16 Pace Warren (2011) 278.17 By contrast, to Barthes (1973) 30-1 = (2002) 228, criticism and reading of criticism are

pleasurable in the sense of voyeuristic perversion.18 And so is knowledge tout court, cf. 1093A: ‘to learn the truth itself is lovely and desirable

(ἐράσμιον... καὶ ποθεινόν) to us just as life and existence, due to knowing’.19 Whitmarsh (2001) 113-14, 193-4.20 A redraft of Plato’s idea in the Phaedrus about philosophical insemination by logos, which

Halperin (1992) 117 aptly calls “homotextuality”.

469Better than sex

phical training (Prof. virt. 83B-C).21 The discourses of male sexuality and of textual culture almost literally cross-fertilise each other: having listened to a sympotic re-cital of Menander, the guests will be leaving “to lie down with their wives” (QC 712C); the ignorant bibliophile cannot appreciate exquisite books any more than a blind man “could enjoy the beauty of the beloved boy” (Luc. Ind. bibl. 2).

To Plutarch the pleasure of the text is thus a spin-off of the logocentric and heavily gendered meta-discourse of knowledge – a far cry from Barthes, then. Having said that, the Plutarchan schema is less monolithic and smug than it may seem. First, the pleasures of sight and sound are not easy to classify against the standard Platonist dichotomy between reason and emotion:

As for the type of pleasure that comes through the ears and eyes, whether it belongs more with reason or with emotion or is their common property (εἴτε τῷ λόγῳ μᾶλλον εἴτε τῷ πάθει προσῆκον εἴτε κοινὸν ἀμφοῖν ἐστιν)... (QC 746F-747A)22

It is theatre and music that are referred to, but in the Greco-Roman world read-ing is likewise a visual and aural experience. If the text draws us into pathos,23 the concept of literature as a resource for agreeable learning becomes complicated and perhaps destabilised. The emotional impact of the text is tellingly described in the Non posse:

we are bitten as we read (δακνόμενοι... ἀναγινώσκομεν) Plato’s tale of the At-lantis and the last book of the Iliad. (1093A)

The phrase blurs the boundary between philosophical and ‘lay’ textuality and leaves the reader in a sort of menage à trois with philosophy and poetry, notwith-standing their markedly different stances on truth.24 More saliently, the image of the text “biting” the reader suggest erotic25 empowerment of the text over the reader – which to a degree problematises the reader’s masculinity.26

The model of reading as innocuous infotainment in the Non posse reflects the worldview of the ideal Plutarchan pepaideumenoi. But within Plutarch’s own narra-tive episodes of reading and specifically forming responses to texts tend to fall short of this ideal.27 Cato fails to achieve a serene philosophical death despite his intense

21 Yet see Prof. virt. 80E and esp. 81D for more complex gendering of erôs for philosophy.22 Martos Montiel (1999a), 19-20, 48.23 Cf. De aud. poet. 30E.24 De aud. poet. 17D; Quaes. Plat. 1000D.25 Biting is an established trope for love: e.g. QC 619A, Prof. virt. 77B.26 For seminal if adventurous insights, see Svenbro (1993) 189-95.27 One salutary exception is Philopoemen who focuses on books that “help towards virtue”

(πρὸς ἀρετὴν ὠφελεῖσθαι) and stimulate martial valour and military skills (Phil. 4.6-8).

470 Alexei V. Zadorojnyi

perusal of the Phaedo (Cato mi. 68.1-5, 70.1-2, 70.8-10);28 young Alcibiades reacts violently when he cannot get “a book of Homer” (Alc. 7.1); Augustus’ approval of Cicero’s text (Cic. 49.6) raises poignant ethico-political questions. Caesar weeps when reading about Alexander (Caes. 11.5-6) – he is passionately, we might say erotically involved with the story,29 yet he is a reader driven by ambition, not by the pleasure of knowledge. The Parthians mock the Roman decadence embodied in the ‘naughty books’ (ἀκόλαστα βιβλία) a Roman officer happened to have in his baggage (Crass. 32.4-5), but they can hardly claim the high ground as moralists and as read-ers, considering how they rejoice in a macabre performance of Euripides’ Bacchae (33.3-4 μετὰ κραυγῆς καὶ χαρᾶς... ταῦτα μὲν πάντας ἔτερπεν... ἡσθεὶς δ᾿ ὁ βασιλεὺς).30

Such faulty readerly attitudes in the Lives do not necessarily undermine the ideal attitude set forth in the Non posse. But the tension between the two mentalities is observable when they are played off against each other:

Simmias... had recently returned to Thebes and was full of diverse tales and foreign stories (μύθων τε παντοδαπῶν καὶ λόγων βαρβαρικῶν), to which Arch-ias, in his leisure moments, happily listened (ἡδέως ἠκροᾶτο)... (De gen. 576C)

The depraved tyrant Archias exemplifies indiscriminate textual hedonism; he is a (hetero)sexual hedonist too (cf. 577C, 594D, 596E); he will get his comeup-pance. Yet the stories are supplied to him by Simmias the Socratic philosopher – a striking reminder that the pleasure of the text can be calibrated and manipulated by the paideutically advanced narrator; incidentally, Plutarch himself was latter dubbed “Aphrodite and lyre of all philosophy” (Eunap. VS 454).31

The text’s subject matter can stand in the way of ‘clean’ philomatheia among the readership. In the Non posse Plutarch celebrates the innocent pleasure of historio-graphy, beginning the list of recommended reading with Herodotus (1093B). Elsewhere he points out that historical texts are essentially a chronicle of wickedness (De cur. 517E-F)32 and takes the hatchet to Herodotus whose pleasant narrative disguises an unacceptable account of classical Greek past (Hdt. mal. 854E-F, 874A-C).33 Another obvious problem area is erotica.34 Plutarch steers the reader away from

28 Zadorojnyi (2007).29 Note that Caesar’s passions in the Life are largely disconnected from sexuality: Beneker

(2002/2003) and (2012) 140-51.30 Zadorojnyi (1997) 182.31 “Aphrodite” as sobriquet for stylistic charm: e.g. D. Hal. Comp. verb. 3; Eunap. VS 473, 501.32 Further on this passage, see Inglese (1997). Cf. De aud. poet. 25D-E; [D. Hal.] Rhet. 11.2.33 Pelling (2007) 155-7.34 For the Greco-Romans erotic story-telling has special clout with the recipient, whether he (!)

is yielding to such material (pseudo-Luc. Amores 1 ‘the wily and sweet persuasiveness of your naughty stories’, ἡ τῶν ἀκολάστων σου διηγημάτων αἱμύλη καὶ γλυκεῖα πειθὼ) or abstaining from it (Gal. Loc. aff. 6.6 vol. 8 p. 451 Kühn καὶ θεαμάτων καὶ διηγήσεως καὶ μνήμης... εἴργειν ἑαυτόν).

471Better than sex

it in the Non posse: all three women whose narratives give us supra-sexual pleasure (1093C) illustrate the defeat of sensuality by honourable (typically violent) agency – the beautiful Pantheia is not only paradigmatically chaste (cf. QC 706D) but also the cause of Cyrus’ exemplary self-restraint (De aud. poet. 31C; De cur. 521F-522A);35 the noble Theban Timocleia avenges herself on the rapist soldier and is pardoned by Alexander (Alex. 12; Mul. virt. 259E-260D); Thebe is married to the cruel tyrant Alexander of Pherae but helps to overthrow him (Pel. 28.5-10, 35.5-12; Mul. virt. 256A; Hdt. mal. 856A). Plutarch’s readerly-writerly policy entails caginess about sex36 as well as strictures against obscene humour (σπερμολογία, QC 712E, Comp. Aristoph.-Men. 853C) or pornography (ἀκόλαστα βιβλία, Crass. 32.4).37 Still, on occasion Plutarch might indulge in delicate narratorial eroticism, such as in the cameo story about young Crassus and two pretty slavegirls assigned to him by the friendly host (Crass. 5.2-6); nothing explicit for sure, but the setting is irresistibly idyllic (4.5-7), and the episode is said to be “often recalled and eagerly retold” by one female participant (5.6 πολλάκις... μεμνημένης... διεξιοιύσης προθύμως) – a nicely mise en abyme way of activating the reader’s erotic fantasies and, at the end of the day, an accomplished piece of textual seduction. As a moralist, Plutarch promises us the supreme joy of ethical scrutiny (Aem. 1.1-4). As a narrator he may be more inclined to experiment with our hedonistic habits:38 temptation is, after all, a tried tool of educators who like to take risks.*

35 Further, Beneker (2012) 114-25.36 Plutarch certainly does not write off sexuality in toto: Stadter (1995), Beneker (2012) 158-

60, 211-13 and passin, and esp. Martos Montiel (2007) 508-13.37 Yet cf. De aud. poet. 18B, with Hunter and Russell (2011) 100.38 Cf. QC 746D “the innate craving for pleasures”, τὴν μὲν ἔμφυτον ἐπιθυμίαν ἡδονῶν.* I am grateful, as so often, to Christopher Pelling for many excellent and insightful suggestions.

472 Alexei V. Zadorojnyi

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INDICE DEL VOLUME

Paola Volpe CacciatorePremessa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Francesca AlesseLa buona χρῆσις. Aspetti della saggezza prescrittiva in Plutarco e nel Cor-pus plutarcheum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Eran AlmagorTwo Clandestine Readers within Plutarch’s Lives: The Narrator and the Implied Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jason BantaWhen Viewed From Afar: Re-reading City as Text in Plutarch’s Numa

Francesco BecchiContributi congetturali e scelte interpretative nelle traduzioni latino-umanistiche dei Moralia di Plutarco: il De capienda ex inimicis utilitate

Mark BeckAlexander for the Romans: The Ideology of Anger Control in Plutarch and Arrian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Elisabetta BerardiLa circolazione del testo plutarcheo: il de Herodoti malignitate . . . . .

Claudio BevegniI Moralia di Plutarco in Poliziano: per un censimento delle citazioni e dei riusi nelle opere dell’umanista fiorentino . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ewen BowiePlutarch in Scottish Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Frederick E. BrenkLooking at Conjectures (Guesses?) in Plutarch’s Dialogue on Love . . .

Carla CastelliRitrarre l’ethos: statue e scelte lessicali nelle Vite Parallele . . . . . . .

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506 Indice del volume

Andrea CatanzaroPlutarch at Byzantium in XII century: Niketa Choniates and Plutar-chean political areté in the Chronikè Diéghesis . . . . . . . . . . .

Brad L. Cook Plutarch, Cicero, and Leonardo Bruni’s Cicero novus . . . . . . . . .

Aurora CortiPlutarco in difesa di Arcesilao e contro Colote: un valore morale del-l’ἐποχή? Alcune considerazioni su adversus Colotem 1124 b . . . . . .

José Antonio Fernández DelgadoNuove testimonianze dell’opera di Plutarco . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Timothy E. DuffL’articolazione interna del libro plutarcheo . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Daria Gigli PiccardiPlutarco, Sarapione e la poesia filosofica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Johann GoekenLa rhétorique aux banquets de Plutarque . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Olivier Guerrier – Françoise FrazierAmyot “sçavant translateur” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rainer Hirsch-Luipold“The Most Ennobling Gift of the Gods”. Religious Traditions as the Ba-sis for Philosophical Interpretation in Plutarch . . . . . . . . . . .

Noreen HumbleImitation as commentary? Plutarch and Byzantine historiography in the 10th century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Giovanni IndelliTraduzioni latine quattrocentesche dell’opera di Plutarco Περὶ τοῦ τὰ ἄλογα λόγῳ χρῆσθαι . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Susan JacobsPlutarch’s Parallel Lives: Case-Studies in Statesmanship . . . . . . .

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507Indice del volume

Katarzyna JazdzewskaReading Plato’s ‘big letters’: the opening of Plutarch’s De audiendo and Plato’s Republic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Orestis KaravasQuelques remarques sur la comparaison d’Aristophane et de Ménan-dre de Plutarque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thomas R. KeithPlutarch on Chrysippus’ Peri Biōn and the Problem of the Sage . . .

Luigi LeuriniLa tradizione manoscritta del De Iside et Osiride di Plutarco alla luce del codice Ambrosianus H 113 sup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Stefano Martinelli TempestaLa tradizione manoscritta dei Moralia di Plutarco. Riflessioni per una messa a punto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Patrizia MarzilloPlutarco esegeta. Il Commento a Le Opere e i Giorni di Esiodo . . .

Federicomaria MuccioliPlutarco alla corte dei Malatesti, tra Cesena e Rimini . . . . . . . .

Anastasios G. NikolaidisPlutarch on the Fifth Century Sophists . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mirko ObradovićPlutarch on Female Prostitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Aurelio Pérez JiménezTraducciones latinas de las Vidas Paralelas en el Humanismo. El ejem-plo del Alejandro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Amedeo Alessandro RaschieriCodici plutarchei nella biblioteca di Giorgio Valla . . . . . . . . .

Alberto RigolioPlutarch in the Syriac tradition: an overview . . . . . . . . . . . .

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508 Indice del volume

Dámaris Romero GonzálezEl topos del Trípode de los Siete Sabios (Sol. 4.1-4) en Historia Mona-chorum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Geert RoskamThe place of literature in Plutarch’s Consolatio ad uxorem . . . . . .

Thomas SchmidtLecteurs antiques de Plutarque: les témoignages papyrologiques . .

Dimos SpatharasPlutarch’s De invidia et odio and Aristotle’s Rhetoric . . . . . . . . .

Philip A. StadterCato the Younger in the English Enlightenment: Addison’s rewriting of Plutarch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Matteo TauferDiversità d’approcci di Xylander e Amyot alla vulgata di due passi plu-tarchei (ser. num. vind. 565 C e 567 A) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Luc Van der StocktTechnical terminology in Plutarch’s Lives: addressing the layman . .

Gabriella VanottiIl giudizio di Plutarco su Stesimbroto di Taso in FF 10b e 11 . . . . .

Sophia XenophontosFrom Chaeronea to Paris: Adamantios Koraes as a reader of Plutarch and the choice of heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alexei V. ZadorojnyiBetter than sex: erotics of the text in Plutarch . . . . . . . . . . .

Indice delle citazioni degli autori antichi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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finito di stampare

nel mese di aprile

dell’anno mmXiii

nell’officina tipografica

m. d’auria editore

palazzo pignatelli - napoli