De fraterno amore

In this essay Plutarch has arranged his material somewhat more methodically than is his usual practice. In chaps. 1-7 he shows that Brotherly Love is in accordance with nature; in 9-19 he tells us how we should conduct ourselves toward a brother: (a) while our parents are alive, (b) when they are dead, (c) when the brother is our inferior, (d) when our superior; and also the reasons for quarrels and the treatment thereof. He closes with some pleasant tales of affection for brothers’ children.

That Plutarch wrote this work after De Adulatore et Amico, De Amicorum Multitudine,[*](This point was subsequently shown, but with much less care and detail, by G. Hein (Quaestiones Plut., diss. Berlin, 1916, p. 37), who seems to have been ignorant of Brokate’s far superior work.) and the Life of Cato Minor was demonstrated by C. Brokate (De aliquot Plui. libellis, diss. Güttingen, 1913, pp. 17-24, 58; and see the excellent tables on pp. 47, 61). Plutarch appears to have retained a certain amount of more or less irrelevant material on friendship from his recent work on these treatises, and also to have drawn upon some portions of Theophrastus’s treatise On Friendship.[*](Cf. Brokate, op. cit., pp. 7 ff.)

The essay is No. 98 in the Lamprias catalogue.

The ancient representations of the Dioscuri are called by the Spartans beam-figures [*](Cf. M. C. Waites, Amer. Jour. Arch., xxiii., 1919, pp. 1 ff.: this passage is cited by Eustathius on Il., 1125. 60.): they consist of two parallel wooden beams joined by two other transverse beams placed across them; and this common and indivisible character of the offering appears entirely suitable to the brotherly love of these gods. In like manner do I also dedicate this treatise On Brotherly Love to you, Nigrinus and Quietus,[*](The identity of Avidius Nigrinus and Avidius Quietus is not certainly established; see Prosopographia Imp. Rom., i. pp. 189-190.) a joint gift for you both who well deserve it. For as to the exhortations this essay contains, since you are already putting them into practice, you will seem to be giving your testimony in their favour rather than to be encouraged to perform them; and the pleasure you will take in acts which are right will make the perseverance of your judgement more firm, inasmuch as your acts will win approval before spectators, so to speak, who are honourable and devoted to virtue.

Now Aristarchus,[*](Nauck, comparing Suidas, s.v. Theodectes, and Stephanus Byzantius, would correct Aristarchus to Aristandrus, the father of the tragic poet Theodectas of Phaselis.) the father of Theodectes, by way of jeering at the crowd of sophists, used to say that in the old days there were barely seven Sophists, [*](That is, the Seven Wise Men. Plutarch so uses σοφιστής (cf. Moralia, 96 a, where all mss. but one read σοφιστοῦ; 857 f); so also Aristotle, Frag. 5 ed. V. Rose. Cf. the earlier usage of Herodotus, i. 29 (where Wells’s note is hopelessly wrong); ii. 49; iv. 95; Hippocrates, De Vet. Med., 20.) but