AMMONIUS, the Platonist philosopher, Plutarch’s teacher.
LAMPRIAS, Plutarch’s brother.
PLUTARCH.
THEON, a literary friend.
EUSTROPHUS, an Athenian.
NICANDER, a priest of the temple.
Chap. 1. Dedication to Serapion at Athens. I am sending you, as an
instalment, some of my Pythian Dialogues. What is the problem put before
us by Apollo under the form of the letter E? I had always avoided the
question, but here is a report of a conversation with some visitors, of
whom Ammonius was one, in, or soon after, the year A. D. 66, when Nero
came to Greece.
2. AMMONIUS was arguing that Apollo propounds subjects for philosophical
inquiry in the ordinances and emblems of his temple, not least in this
letter E.
3. LAMPRIAS quoted the traditional account, that the Wise Men, who were
properly five, not seven, met here, and, after discussion, set up the
letter E, as a numeral, for a protest against the intrusion of a sixth
and seventh into their company. The ancient wooden E is still called
that of the Wise Men.
4. AMMONIUS smiled, knowing Lamprias to be capable of improvising a
‘traditional view’. One of the company mentioned a Chaldaean visitor,
who had lately talked much nonsense about the number seven. The
officials of the temple know no view except that the letter is
significant as a word (‘if’ or ‘whether’).
5. NICANDER confirmed this. ‘If’ is used with us in the formula of
questions put to the god, or, as ‘if only’, in prayers.
6. THEON puts in a plea for ‘Dialectic’, i.e. Logic. ‘If’ is the
conjunction which holds together the conjunctive proposition or
syllogism, the special prerogative of _human_ intellect. Hercules, in
his early days, mocked at Logic and the E, and then removed the tripod
by force.
7. EUSTROPHUS: ‘Bravo, Theon, a Hercules, all but the lion’s skin!’ He
appeals to the devotees of Mathematics to say a word for the
arithmetical virtues of the number five (a thrust at Plutarch himself,
who had yet to learn Academic moderation in his zeal for Mathematics).
8-16. PLUTARCH _loq._:
8. Yes, five has virtues: 5 = 2 + 3, the first even added to the first
odd. It is called ‘Marriage’. After multiplication it reproduces itself,
and so symbolizes the ‘Conflagration’ and ‘Renovation’ of Heraclitus
(and the Stoics),