Quaestiones Convivales

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. III. Goodwin, William W., editor; Creech, Thomas, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

---but men are to be deceived with oaths. And Glaucias said: I have heard that this speech was used against Polycrates the tyrant, and it may be that it was spoken also to others. But why do you demand this of me? Because verily, quoth Sospis, I see that children play at odd and even with cockal bones, but Academics with words. For it seems to me that such stomachs differ in nothing from them who hold out their clutched fists and ask whether they hold odd or even. Then Protogenes arose and called me by name, saying: What ail we, that we suffer these rhetoricians thus to brave it out and to mock others, being demanded nothing in the mean time, nor put to it to contribute their scot to the conference—unless peradventure they will come in with the plea that they have no part of this table-talk over the wine, being followers of Demosthenes, who in all his life never drank wine. That is not the reason, said I; but we have put them no questions. And now, unless you have any thing better to ask, methinks I can be even with these fellows, and put them a puzzling question out of Homer, as to a case of repugnance in contrary laws.

WHAT question will you put them, said Protogenes? I will tell you, continued I, and let them carefully attend. Paris makes his challenge in these express words:

  • Let me and valiant Menelaus fight
  • For Helen, and for all the goods she brought;
  • And he that shall o’ercome, let him enjoy
  • The goods and woman; let them be his own.
    • And Hector afterwards publicly proclaiming this challenge in these express words:
  • He bids the Trojans and the valiant Greeks
  • To fix their arms upon the fruitful ground;
  • Let Menelaus and stout Paris fight
  • For all the goods; and he that beats have all.
    • Menelaus accepted the challenge, and the conditions were sworn to, Agamemnon dictating thus:
  • If Paris valiant Menelaus kills,
  • Let him have Helen, and the goods possess;
  • If youthful Menelaus Paris kills,
  • The woman and the goods shall all be his.
    • [*](See Il. III. 68, 88, 255, and 281.)
    Now since Menelaus only overcame but did not kill Paris, each party hath somewhat to say for itself, and against the other. The one may demand restitution, because Paris was overcome; the other deny it, because he was not killed. Now how to determine this case and clear the seeming repugnances doth not belong to philosophers or grammarians, but to rhetoricians, that are well skilled both in grammar and philosophy.

    Then Sospis said: The challenger’s word is decisive; for the challenger proposed the conditions, and when they were accepted, the other party had no power to make additions. Now the condition proposed in this challenge was not killing, but overcoming; and there was reason that it should be so, for Helen ought to be the wife of the bravest. Now the bravest is he that overcomes; for it often happens that an excellent soldier might be killed by a coward, as is evident in what happened afterward, when Achilles was shot by Paris. For I do not believe that you will affirm, that Achilles was not so brave a man as Paris because he was killed by him, and that it should be called

    the victory, and not rather the unjust good fortune, of him that shot him. But Hector was overcome before he was killed by Achilles, because he would not stand, but trembled and fled at his approach. For he that refuseth the combat or flies cannot palliate his defeat, and plainly grants that his adversary is the better man. And therefore Iris tells Helen beforehand,
  • In single combat they shall fight for you,
  • And you shall be the glorious victor’s wife.
    • [*](Il. III. 137.)
    And Jupiter afterwards adjudges the victory to Menelaus in these words:
    The conquest leans to Menelaus’s side.[*](Il. IV. 13.)
    For it would be ridiculous to call Menelaus a conqueror when he shot Podes, a man at a great distance, before he thought of or could provide against his danger, and yet not allow him the reward of victory over him whom he made fly and sneak into the embraces of his wife, and whom he spoiled of his arms whilst he was yet alive, and who had himself given the challenge, by the terms of which Menelaus now appeared to be the conqueror.