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* * * * *
Plutarch's Romane Questions. Translated
A.D. 1603 by Philemon Holland, M.A., Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge. Now again edited
by Frank Byron Jebons, M.A., Classical
Tutor to the University of Durham
With Dissertations on Italian
Cults, Myths, Taboos, Man-
Worship, Aryan Marriage
Sympathetic Magic
and the Eating
of Beans
——
_LONDON. MDCCCXCII. PUBLISHED BY DAVID NUTT_
_IN THE STRAND_
PREFACE.
On the whole, with the proper qualifications, Plutarch's _Romane Questions_
may fairly be said to be the earliest formal treatise written on the
subject of folk-lore. The problems which Plutarch proposes for solution are
mainly such as the modern science of folk-lore undertakes to solve; and
though Plutarch was not the first to propound them, he was the first to
make a collection and selection of them and give them a place of their own
in literature. On the other hand, though Plutarch's questions are in the
spirit of modern scientific inquiry, his answers—or rather the answers
which he sets forth, for they are not always or usually his own—are
conceived in a different strain. They are all built on the assumption that
the customs which they are intended to explain were consciously and
deliberately instituted by men who possessed at least as much culture and
wisdom as Plutarch himself, or the other philosophers who busied themselves
with this branch of antiquities. This assumption, however, that the
primitive Italians or the pro-ethnic Aryans shared the same (erroneous)
scientific and philosophical views as the savants of Plutarch's day, is an
unverified and improbable hypothesis. The Aryans were in the Stone Age, and
had advanced only to such rudimentary agriculture as is possible for a
nomad people. If, therefore, we are to explain their customs, we must keep
within the narrow circle which bounds the thought and imagination of other
peoples in the same stage of development. Plutarch, however, in effect asks
himself, "If I had instituted these customs, what would my motives have
been?" and in reply to his own question he shows what very learned reasons
might have moved him; and also, quite unconsciously, what very amiable
feelings would in reality have governed him; for, if he ascribes to the
authors of these customs the learning of all the many books which he had
read, he also credits them with a kindliness of character which belonged to
himself alone. Thus, to go no further than the first of the _Romane
Questions_, viz., _What is the reason that new-wedded wives are bidden to
touch fire and water?_ Plutarch first gives four high philosophical
reasons, which he may have borrowed, but concludes with one which we may be
sure is his own: "Or last of all [is it] because man and wife ought not to
forsake and abandon one another, but to take part of all fortunes; though
they had no other good in the world common between them, but fire and water
only?"
That this, like the rest of Plutarch's reasons, is fanciful, may not be
denied, but would not be worth mentioning, were it not that here we have,
implicit, the reason why no modern translation could ever vie with Philemon
Holland's version of the _Romane Questions_. It is not merely because
Philemon's antiquated English harmonises with Plutarch's antiquated
speculation, and by that harmony disposes the reader's mind favourably
towards it; but in Philemon's day, England, like the other countries of
Western Europe, was discovering that all that is worth knowing is in Greek.
The universal respect felt for Greek in those days, even by schoolmasters
(Holland was himself Head-master of Coventry Free School), is still
apparent to those who read this translation. But things are now so changed
that the English language of to-day cannot provide a seemly garb for
Plutarch's ancient reasonings. To say in modern English that "five is the
odd number most connected with marriage," is to expose the Pythagorean
doctrine of numbers to modern ridicule. But when Philemon says, "Now among
al odde numbers it seemeth that Cinque is most nuptial," even the
irreverent modern cannot fail to feel that Cinque was an eminently
respectable character, whose views were strictly honourable and a bright
example to other odde numbers. Again, Philemon's insertion of the words "it
seemeth" makes for reverence. The insertion is not apologetic; nor does it
intimate that the translator hesitates to subscribe to so strange a
statement. Rather, it summons the reader to give closer attention to the
words which are about to follow—words of wisdom such as is to be found
nowhere else but only in the fountain of all knowledge, Greek. Insertions
and amplifications are indeed characteristic of Philemon as a translator.
But, though his style is florid, it is lucid; his amplifications make the
meaning clearer to the English reader, and, as a rule, only state
explicitly what is really implied in the original. Sometimes (_e.g._,
towards the end of _R. Q._ 6) he does enlarge on the text beyond all
measure; sometimes, again, defective scholarship leads him to ascribe
things to Plutarch which Plutarch never said (_e.g._, in _R. Q._ 5, ταῦτα
τρόπον τινὰ τοῖς Ἑλληνικοις ἔοικεν does not mean "this may seeme in some
sort to have beene derived from the Greeks"); and sometimes he is mistaken
as to the meaning of a word (_e.g._, ἔνοχος in _R. Q._ 5). On the other
hand, where the text is corrupt, he sees and says what the meaning really
is; and Hearne's verdict that Holland had "an admirable knack in
translating books" does not go beyond the mark. Indeed, it does not do
justice to Philemon, for it hardly prepares us to learn that, in the
infancy of the study of Greek in England, Philemon threw off, among other
trifles, translations of all the _Moralia_ of Plutarch, the whole of Livy,
the enormous _Natural History_ of Pliny, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus,
the _Cyropædia_ of Xenophon, and Camden's _Britannia_. Southey is more just
to the assiduous labours of a life of study carried to the age of
eighty-five, when he calls Philemon "the best of the Hollands." But the
most discerning criticism of Holland, as "translator generall in his age"
(Fuller), is contained in Owen's epigram on Holland's translation of the
_Natural History_, that he was both _plenior_ and _planior_ than Plinius.
To judge from the _Romane Questions_, Philemon must have used as his text
the edition of 1560-70, Venet., for he evidently avails himself of
Xylander's emendations of the Aldine _editio princeps_, 1509-19. One
cannot, however, be quite certain on this point, for the title-page of
Holland's translation of the _Moralia_ runs: "The Philosophie, commonly
called the Morals, written by the learned philosopher Plutarch of
Chaeronea, translated out of Greek into English, and conferred with Latin
and French." Now the Latin translation must have been Xylander's; and the
only edition of the text used by Holland may have been that of H. Stephens,
with which Xylander's Latin translation and notes were published. The
French with which Philemon conferred was of course that of Jacques Amyot,
who had already translated Plutarch's _Lives_ in 1559, and followed up that
translation with one of the _Moralia_ in 1574. Philemon's translation of
the _Morals_ appeared in 1603 ("revised and corrected" in 1657).
The _Morals_ in general and the _Romane Questions_ in particular have
received little attention from commentators. The only notes I have
succeeded in getting hold of, besides those of Xylander and Reiske
(complete edition of Plutarch, Lips., 1774-82), are some by Boxhorn (in the
fifth volume of the _Thesaurus_ of Grævius, 1696), which includes one
sensible remark (quoted p. xxxii. below), and those by Wyttenbach (Oxford,
1821), which, if I had looked at them before instead of after writing my
Introduction, would have provided me with a good many classical references
that, as it is, I have had to put together myself.