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by Plutarch
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In: Harvard Classics·Biographies·History - Ancient
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #14140.
Plutarch’s Lives III is a collection of biographical sketches that juxtaposes Greek and Roman figures, drawing on the author’s extensive knowledge of antiquity. The volume opens with a vivid, almost theatrical scene in which a young captive is presented to a banquet, prompting a chorus‑like dialogue that quickly shifts to the brutal politics of Parthia: the treachery of Hyrodes, the murder of Surena, and the poisonous intrigue that ends with Phraates strangling his own father. Interspersed with these narrative strands are dense footnotes that identify historical persons, such as the Licinian Crassus and various Roman magistrates, clarify Greek terms, and comment on textual variants, anchoring the work firmly in the scholarly tradition of early‑modern classical studies.
The voice is unmistakably that of a learned Greek essayist writing in the first‑century AD, whose style blends moral reflection with meticulous historical detail. Readers who relish dense, source‑heavy prose, students of classical history, scholars of comparative biography, and anyone fascinated by the interplay of myth, politics, and ethical commentary in ancient Greece and Rome, will find Plutarch’s analytical tone and rich intertextuality especially rewarding.
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[Footnote 5: Crassus belonged to the Licinia Gens. His name was M. Licinius Crassus Dives. He was the son of P. Licinius Crassus Dives, who was consul B.C. 97, and afterwards governor of the nearer Spain. In B.C. 93 P. Crassus had a triumph. He was afterwards employed in the Marsic war; and in B.C. 89 he was censor with L. Julius Cæsar, who had been consul in B.C. 90.
M. Licinius Crassus, whose life Plutarch has written, was the youngest son of the Censor. The year of his birth is uncertain; but as he was above sixty when he left Rome for his Parthian campaign B.C. 55, he must have been born before B.C. 115. Meyer (Orator. Roman. Fragment.) places the birth of Crassus in B.C. 114.]
[Footnote 6: Kaltwasser makes this passage mean that Crassus merely took his brother's wife and her children to live with him; which is contrary to the usual sense of the Greek words and readers the following sentence unmeaning.
Kaltwasser observes that we do not know that such marriages were in use among the Romans. I know no rule by which they were forbidden. (Gaius, i. 58, &c.)]
[Footnote 7: The punishment of a Vestal Virgin for incontinence was death. She was placed alive in a subterranean vault with a light and some food. (Dionysius, ix. 40: Liv. 8. c. 15; Juvenal, Sat. iv. 8.) The man who debauched a Vestal was also put to death. The Vestal Virgins had full power of disposing of their property; they were emancipated from the paternal power by the fact of being selected to be Vestal Virgins (Gaius, i. 130); and they were not under the same legal disabilities as other women (Gaius, i. 145; according to Dion Cassius, 49. c. 38, Octavia and Livia received privileges like those of the Vestals).
Another Licinia, a Vestal, had broken her vow, and was punished B.C. 113.]
[Footnote 8: See the Life of Crassus, c. 12; and the Life of Sulla, c. 35.]
[Footnote 9: This may hardly be a correct translation of [Greek: argurognômonas] ἀργυρογνωμόνας: but it is something like the meaning.]
[Footnote 10: King Archidamus of Sparta, the second of the name, who commanded the Peloponnesian war, B.C. 431. Plutarch (Life of Demosthenes, c. 17) puts this saying in the mouth of one Krobylus, a demagogue.]
[Footnote 11: Cicero (Brutus, c. 66) speaks of the oratory of Crassus, and commends his care and diligence; but he speaks of his natural parts as not striking. Crassus spoke on the same side as Cicero in the defence of Murena, of Caelius, and of Balbus (Meyer, Orator. Roman. Fragmenta, p. 382).]
[Footnote 12: A Roman who aspired to the highest offices of the State, prepared his way by the magnificence of his public entertainments during his curule ædileship, and by his affable manners. An humble individual is always gratified when a great man addresses him by name, and a shake of the hand secures his devotion. Ovidius (Ars Amat. ii. 253) alludes to this way of winning popular favour, and judiciously observes that it costs nothing, which would certainly recommend it to Crassus. If a man's memory was not so good as that of Crassus, he had only to buy a slave, as Horatius (1 Epist. i. 50) recommends, who could tell him the name of every man whom he met. Such a slave was called Nomenclator. If the nomenclator's memory ever failed him, he would not let his master know it: he gave a person any name that came into his head.]
[Footnote 13: The Greek is [Greek: stegastrou] στέγαστρου, 'something that covers;' but whether cloak or hat, or covered couch, or sedan, the learned have not yet determined.]
[Footnote 14: These words may not be Plutarch's, and several critics have marked them as spurious. The Peripatetics, of whom Alexander was one, did not consider wealth as one of the things that are indifferent to a philosopher; the Stoics did.]
[Footnote 15: This is Plutarch's word; but the father of Crassus was Proconsul in Spain. When Cinna and Marius returned to Rome, B.C. 87, Crassus and his sons were proscribed. Crassus and one of his sons lost their lives: the circumstances are stated somewhat differently by different writers. (Florius, iii. 21; Appian, Civil Wars, i. 72.)
Drumann correctly remarks that Plutarch and other Greek writers often use the word [Greek: stratêgos] στρατηγός simply to signify one who has command, and that [Greek: stratêgos] is incorrectly rendered 'Prætor' by those who write in Latin, when they make use of the Greek historians of Rome. But Plutarch's [Greek: stratêgos] στρατηγός sometimes means prætor, and it is the word by which he denotes that office; he probably does sometimes mean to say 'prætor,' when the man of whom he speaks was not prætor. Whether [Greek: stratêgos] στρατηγός in Plutarch is always translated prætor or always Commander, there will be error. To translate it correctly in all cases, a man must know whether the person spoken of was prætor or not; and that cannot always be ascertained. But besides this, the word 'Commander' will not do, for Plutarch sometimes calls a Proconsul [Greek: stratêgos] στρατηγός, and a Proconsul had not merely a command: he had a government also.]
[Footnote 16: So the name is written by Sintenis, who writes it Paccianus in the Life of Sertorius, c. 9. Some editions read Paciacus; but the termination in Paciacus is hardly Roman, and the termination in Pacianus is common. But the form Paciacus is adopted by Drumann, where he is speaking of L. Junius Paciacus (Geshichte Roms, iv. p. 52).
Drumann observes that the flight of Crassus to Spain must have taken place B.C. 85, for he remained eight months in Spain and returned to Rome on the news of Cinna's death, B.C. 84.]
[Footnote 17: The MSS. have [Greek: auran] αὖραν, 'breeze,' which Coræs ingeniously corrected to [Greek: laupan] λαύπαν, 'path,' which is undoubtedly right.]
[Footnote 18: If Fenestella died in A.D. 19 at the age of seventy, as it is said, he would be born in B.C. 51, and he might have had this story from the old woman. (Clinton, Fasti, A.D. 14.) See Life of Sulla, c. 28.]
[Footnote 19: Malaca, which still retains its name Malaga, was an old Phœnician settlement on the south coast of Spain. Much fish was salted and cured there; but I know not on what ground Kaltwasser concludes that the word 'Malach' means Salt. It is sometimes asserted that the name is from the Aramaic word Malek, 'King;' but W. Humboldt (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens) says that it is a Basque word.]
[Footnote 20: The son of Metellus Numidicus. See the Lives of Marius and Sertorius. Sulla lauded in Italy B.C. 83. See the Life of Sulla, c. 27.]
[Footnote 21: This is the town which the Romans called Tuder. It was situated in Umbria on a hill near the Tiber, and is represented by the modern Todi.]
[Footnote 22: See the Life of Sulla, c. 29.]
[Footnote 23: There is nothing peculiar in this. It is common enough for a man to blame in others the faults that he has himself.]
[Footnote 24: See the Life of Cæsar, c. 1. 2. and 11.]
[Footnote 25: M. Porcius Cato, whose Life Plutarch has written.]
[Footnote 26: Cn. Sicinius was Tribunus Plebis B.C. 76. He is mentioned by Cicero (Brutus, c. 60) as a man who had no other oratorical qualification except that of making people laugh. The Roman proverb to which Plutarch alludes occurs in Horatius, 1 Sat. 4. 34:--
"Foenum habet in cornu, longe fuge."
[Footnote 27: The insurrection of the gladiators commenced B.C. 73, in the consulship of M. Terentius Varo Lucullus, the brother of Lucius Lucullus, and of C. Cassius Longinus Verus. The names of two other leaders, Crixus and Oenomaus, are recorded by Floras (iii. 20) and by Appian (Civil Wars, i. 116). The devastation caused by these marauders was long remembered. The allusion of Horatius (Carm. ii. 14) to their drinking all the wine that they could find,is characteristic.]
[Footnote 28: This Clodius is called Appius CloDius Glaber by Florus (iii. 20). Compare the account of Appian (i. 116). Spartacus commenced the campaign by flying to Mount Vesuvius, which was the scene of the stratagem that is told in this chapter (Frontinus, Stratagem, i. 5) Drumann (Geschichte Roms, iv. 74. M. Licinius Crassus, N. 37) has given a sketch of the campaign with Spartacus.]
[Footnote 29: P. Varinius Glaber who was prætor; and Clodius was his legatus. He seems to be the same person whom Frontinus (Stratagem, i. 5) mentions under the name of L. Varinus Proconsul.]
[Footnote 30: The place is unknown. Probably the true reading is Salinæ, and the place may be the Salinæ Herculeæ, in the neighbourhood of Herculaneum. But this is only a guess.]
[Footnote 31: The consuls were L. Gellius Publicola and Cn. Lentulus Clodianus B.C. 72.]
[Footnote 32: This was C. Cassius Longinus Verus, proconsul of Gaul upon the Po (see c. 8). Plutarch calls him [Greek: stratêgos] στρατηγός. Appian (Civil Wars, i. 117) says that one of the consuls defeated Crixus, who was at the head of 30,000 men, near Garganus, that Spartacus afterwards defeated both the consuls, and meditated advancing upon Rome with 120,000 foot soldiers. Spartacus sacrificed three hundred Roman captives to the manes of Crixus, who had fallen in the battle in which he was defeated; 20,000 of his men had perished with Crixus.
Cassius was defeated in the neighbourhood of Mutina (Modena) as we learn from Florus (iii. 20).]
[Footnote 33: Appian (i. 118) gives two accounts of the decimation, neither of which agrees with the account of Plutarch. This punishment which the Romans called Decimatio, is occasionally mentioned by the Roman writers (Liv. ii. 59).]
[Footnote 34: Kaltwasser with the help of a false reading has mistranslated this passage. He says that Spartacus sent over ten thousand men into Sicily. Drumann has understood the passage as I have translated it.]
[Footnote 35: If the length is rightly given, the ditch was about 38 Roman miles in length. There are no data for determining its position. The circumstance is briefly mentioned by Appian (Civil Wars, i. 118). Frontinus (Stratagem., i. 5) states that Spartacus filled up the ditch, where he crossed it, with the dead bodies of his prisoners and of the beasts which were killed for that purpose.]
[Footnote 36: This lake, which Plutarch spells Leukanis, is placed by Kaltwasser in the vicinity of Paestum or Poseidonia, but on what grounds I do not know. Strabo indeed (p. 251) states that the river makes marshes there, but that will not enable us to identify them. Cramer (Ancient Italy, ii. 366) places here the Stagnum Lucanum, where Plutarch "mentions that Crassus defeated a considerable body of rebels under the command of Spartacus (Plut. Vit. Crass.)": but nothing is given to prove the assertion. He adds, "In this district we must also place the Mons Calamatius and Mons Cathena of which Frontinus speaks in reference to the same event (Stratagem, ii. 4); they are the mountains of Capaccio." This is founded on Cluverius, but Cluverius concludes that the Calamatius of Frontinus (ii. 4, 7), or Calamarcus as the MSS. seem to have it, is the same as the Cathena of Frontinus (ii. 5, 34); for in fact Frontinus tells the same story twice, as he sometimes does. It is a mistake to say that Frontinus is speaking "of the same event," that is, the defeat of the gladiators on the lake. He is speaking of another event, which is described farther on in this chapter, when Crassus attacks Cannicius and Crixus, and "sent," as Frontinus says (ii. 4, 7), " twelve cohorts round behind a mountain."]
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