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.

This ninth book, Sossius Senecio, contains the discourses we held at Athens at the Muses’ feast, for this number nine is agreeable to the number of the Muses. Nor must you

wonder when you find more than ten questions (which number I have observed in my other books) in it; for we ought to give the Muses all that belongs to them, and be as careful of robbing them as of a temple, since we owe them much more and much better things than these.

AMMONIUS, captain of the militia at Athens, would show Diogenianus the proficiency of those youths that learned grammar, geometry, rhetoric, and music; and invited the chief masters of the town to supper. There were a great many scholars at the feast, and almost all his acquaintance. Achilles invited only the single combatants to his feast, intending (as the story goes) that, if in the heat of the encounter they had conceived any anger or ill-will against one another, they might then lay it aside, being made partakers of one common entertainment. But the contrary happened to Ammonius, for the contentions of the masters increased and grew more sharp midst their cups and merriment; and all was disorder and confused babbling.

Therefore Ammonius commanded Erato to sing to his harp, and he sang some part of Hesiod’s Works beginning thus,

Contention to one sort is not confined;[*](Works and Days, 11.)
and I commended him for choosing so apposite a song. Then he began to discourse about the seasonable use of verse, that it was not only pleasant but profitable. And straight every one’s mouth was full of that poet who began
Ptolemy’s epithalamium (when he married his sister, a wicked and abominable match) thus,
Jove Juno called his sister and his wife;[*](Il. XVIII 356.)
and another, who was unwilling to sing after supper to Demetrius the king, but when he sent him his young son Philip to be educated sang thus,
  • Breed thou the boy as doth become
  • Both Hercules’s race and us;
    • and Anaxarchus who, being pelted with apples by Alexander at supper, rose up and said,
    Some God shall wounded be by mortal hand.[*](Eurip. Orest. 271.)
    But that Corinthian captive boy excelled all, who, when the city was destroyed, and Mummius, taking a survey of all the free-born children that understood letters, commanded each to write a verse, wrote thus:
    Thrice, four times blest, the happy Greeks that fell.[*](Odyss. V. 306.)
    For they say that Mummius was affected with it, wept, and gave all the free-born children that were allied to the boy their liberty. And some mentioned the wife of Theodorus the tragedian, who refused his embraces a little before he contended for the prize; but, when he was conqueror and came in unto her, clasped him and said,
    Now, Agamemnon’s son, you freely may.[*](Soph. Electra, 2.)