He had this project. There city, and a river running by In that mound he prepared with him, and all of them were slain in the wars. At which Pythes fell into a despairing condition, so that he fell under the like suffering with many wicked men and fools. He dreaded death, but was weary of his life; yea, he was willing not to live, but could not cast away his life. was a great mound of earth in the it which they called Pythopolites. him a sepulchre, and diverted the stream so as to run just by the side of the mound, the river lightly washing the sepulchre. These things being finished, he enters into the sepulchre, committing the city and all the government thereof to his wife: commanding her not to come to him, but to send his supper daily laid on a sloop, till the sloop should pass by the sepulchre with the supper untouched; and then she should cease to send, as supposing him dead. He verily passed in this manner the rest of his life; but his wife took admirable care of the government, and brought in a reformation of all things amiss among the people. THE TEACHING OF VIRTUE From the Discourse That Virtue may be Taught,' in Plutarch's Miscellanies and Essays: Copyrighted. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown & Co., publishers. M EN deliberate and dispute variously concerning virtue, whether prudence and justice and the right ordering of one's life can be taught. Moreover, we marvel that the works of orators, shipmasters, musicians, carpenters, and husbandmen are infinite in number, while good men are only a name, and are talked of like centaurs, giants, and the Cyclops: and that as for any virtuous action that is sincere and unblamable, and manners that are without any touch and mixture of bad passions and affections, they are not to be found; but if nature of its own accord should produce anything good and excellent, so many things of a foreign nature mix with it (just as wild and impure. productions with generous fruit) that the good is scarce discernible. Men learn to sing, dance, and read, and to be skillful in husbandry and good horsemanship; they learn how to put on their shoes and their garments; they have those that teach them how to fill wine, and to dress and cook their meat; and none of these things can be done as they ought, unless they be instructed. how to do them. And will ye say, O foolish men! that the skill of ordering one's life well (for the sake of which are all the rest) is not to be taught, but to come of its own accord, without reason and without art? Why do we, by asserting that virtue is not to be taught. make it a thing that does not at all exist? For if by its being learned it is produced, he that hinders its being learned destroys it. And now, as Plato says, we never heard that because of a blunder in metre in a lyric song, therefore one brother made war against another, nor that it put friends at variance, nor that cities hereupon were at such enmity that they did to one another and suffered one from another the extremest injuries. Nor can any one tell us of a sedition raised in a city about the right accenting or pronouncing of a word,—as whether we are to say Tελxivaç or Τέλχινας, nor that a difference arose in a family betwixt man and wife about the woof and the warp in cloth. Yet none will go about to weave in a loom or to handle a book or a harp, unless he has first been taught, though no great harm would follow if he did, but only the fear of making himself ridiculous (for as Heraclitus says, it is a piece of discretion to conceal one's ignorance); and yet a man without instruction presumes himself able to order a family, a wife, or a commonwealth, and to govern very well. Diogenes, seeing a youth devouring his victuals too greedily, gave his tutor a box on the ear, and that deservedly, as judging it the fault of him that had not taught, not of him that had not learned, better manners. And what! is it necessary to begin from a boy to learn how to eat and drink handsomely in company, as Aristophanes expresses it, "Not to devour their meat in haste, nor giggle, and yet are men fit to enter into the fellowship of a family, city, married estate, private conversation, or public office, and to manage it without blame, without any previous instruction concerning good behavior in conversation? When one asked Aristippus this question, What, are you everywhere? he laughed and said, I throw away the fare of the waterman if I am everywhere. And why canst not thou also answer, that the salary given to tutors is thrown away and lost if none are the better for their discipline and instruction? But as nurses shape and form the body of a child with their hands, so these masters, when the nurses have done with them, first receive them into their charge, in order to the forming of their manners and directing their steps into the first tracks of virtue. THE NEED OF GOOD SCHOOLMASTERS From A Discourse on the Training of Children,' in Plutarch's 'Miscellanies and Essays': Copyrighted. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown & Co., publishers. WR E ARE to look after such masters for our children as are blameless in their lives, not justly reprovable for their manners, and of the best experience in teaching. For the very spring and root of honesty and virtue lies in the felicity of lighting on good education. And as husbandmen are wont to set forks to prop up feeble plants, so do honest schoolmasters prop up youth by careful instructions and admonitions, that they may duly bring forth the buds of good manners. But there are certain fathers nowadays who deserve that men should spit on them in contempt, who, before making any proof of those to whom they design to commit the teaching of their children, intrust them either through unacquaintance, or as it sometimes falls out, through bad judgment—to men of no good reputation, or it may be such as are branded with infamy. They are not altogether so ridiculous, if they offend herein through bad judgment; but it is a thing most extremely absurd, when, as oftentimes it happens, though they know and are told beforehand by those who understand better than themselves, both of the incapacity and rascality of certain schoolmasters, they nevertheless commit the charge of their children to them, sometimes overcome by their fair and flattering speeches, and sometimes prevailed on to gratify friends who entreat them. This is an error of like nature with that of the sick man who to please his friends, forbears to send for the physician that might save his life by his skill, and employs a mountebank that quickly dispatcheth him out of the world; or of him who refuses a skillful shipmaster, and then at his friend's entreaty commits the care of his vessel to one that is therein much his inferior. In the name of Jupiter and all the gods, tell me how can that man deserve the name of a father, who is more concerned to gratify others in their requests than to have his children well educated? Or is not that rather fitly applicable to this case which Socrates, that ancient philosopher, was wont to say,- that if he could get up to the highest place in the city, he would lift up his voice and make this proclamation thence: "What mean you, fellow-citizens, that you thus turn every stone to scrape wealth together, and take so little care of your children, to whom one day you must relinquish it all?"-to which I would add this, that such parents do like him that is solicitous about his shoe, but neglects the foot that is to wear it. And yet many fathers there are, who care so much for their money and so little for their children, that lest it should cost them more than they are willing to spare to hire a good schoolmaster for them, they rather choose such persons to instruct their children as are of no worth; thereby beating down. the market, that they may purchase ignorance cheap. It was therefore a witty and handsome jeer which Aristippus bestowed on a stupid father, who asked him what he would take to teach his child. He answered, a thousand drachms. Whereupon the other cried out: O Hercules, what a price you ask! for I can buy a slave at that rate. Do so, then, said the philosopher, and thou shalt have two slaves instead of one,- thy son for one, and him thou buyest for another. MOTHERS AND NURSES From A Discourse on the Training of Children,' in Plutarch's Miscellanies and Essays: Copyrighted. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown & Co., publishers. TH HE next thing that falls under our consideration is the nursing of children, which in my judgment the mothers should do themselves, giving their own breasts to those they have borne. For this office will certainly be performed with more tenderness and carefulness by natural mothers; who will love their children intimately, as the saying is, from their tender nails. Whereas both wet and dry nurses who are hired, love only for their pay, and are affected to their work as ordinarily those that are substituted and deputed in the place of others Yea, even Nature seems to have assigned the suckling and nursing of the issue to those that bear them; for which cause she hath bestowed upon every living creature that brings forth young, milk to nourish them withal. And in conformity thereto, Providence hath also wisely ordered that women should have two breasts, that so, if any of them should happen to bear twins, they might have two several springs of nourishment ready for them. Though if they had not that furniture, mothers would still be more kind and loving to their own children. And that not without reason; for constant feeding together is a great means to heighten the affection mutually betwixt any persons. Yea, even beasts, when they are separated from those that have grazed with them, do in their way show a longing for the absent. Wherefore, as I have said, mothers themselves should strive to the utmost to nurse their own children. But if they find it impossible to do it themselves, either because of bodily weakness (and such a case may fall out), or because they are apt to be quickly with child again, then are they to choose the honestest nurses they can get, and not to take whomsoever they have offered them. And the first thing to be looked after in this choice is, that the nurses be bred after the Greek fashion. For as it is needful that the members of children be shaped aright as soon as they are born, that they may not afterwards prove crooked and distorted, so it is no less expedient that their manners be well fashioned from the very beginning. For childhood is a tender thing, and easily wrought into any shape. Yea, and the very souls of children readily receive the impressions of those things that are dropped into them while they are yet but soft; but when they grow older they will, as all hard things are, be more difficult to be wrought upon And as soft wax is apt to take the stamp of the seal, so are the minds of children to receive the instructions imprinted on them at that age. All the above citations from the 'Morals are from a translation edited by W. W. Goodwin |