De sollertia animalium

AUTOBULUS.. When Leonidas was asked what sort of a person he considered Tyrtaeus to be, he replied, A good poet to whet the souls of young men,[*](cf. Mor 235 f, where it is an anonymous saying; but the Life of Cleomenes, ii (xxiii = 805 d) also attributes it to Leonidas.) on the ground that by means of verses the poet inspired in young men keenness, accompanied by ardour and ambition whereby they sacrificed themselves freely in battle. And I am very much afraid, my friends, that the Praise of Hunting [*](The authorship of this work has been endlessly disputed, but present opinion (pace Sinko, Eos, xv. pp. 113 ff. and Hubert, Woch. f. klass. Phil. xxviii, pp. 371 ff.) holds that it is Plutarch himself who wrote it (Schuster, op. cit. pp. 8 ff.). Bernardakis (vii, pp. 142-143) included this passage (959 b-d) as a fragment of the lost work.) which was read aloud to us yesterday may so immoderately inflame our young men who like the sport that they will come to consider all other occupations as of minor, or of no, importance and concentrate on this.[*](There canot be two passions more nearly resembling each other than hunting and philosophy (Huxley, Hume, p. 139), and see Shorey’s note on Plato, Republic, 432 b (L.C.L.); cf., however, Rep. 535 d, 549 a. See also Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 43 f.; Xenophon, Cynegetica, i. 18; xii. 1. ff.; Cyr. viii. 1. 34-36; Pollux, preface to book v; the proems of Grattius, Nemesianus, Arrian, etc.) As a matter of fact, I myself caught the old fever all over again

in spite of my years and longed, like Euripides’[*](Cf. Hippolytus, 218 f. It follows from the fuller quotation in Mor. 52 c that Plutarch’s text of Euripides inverted the order of these lines as given in our mss. of the tragedian.) Phaedra,

To halloo the hounds and chase the dappled deer;

so moved was I by the discourse as it brought its solid and convincing arguments to bear.

SOCLARUS.. Exactly so, Autobulus. That reader yesterday seems to have roused his rhetoric from its long disuse[*](Presumably an autobiographical detail.) to gratify the young men and share their vernal mood.[*](The word is found only here, but may well be right if Plutarch is in a poetical, as well as a playful, humour.) I was particularly pleased with his introduction of gladiators and his argument that it is as good a reason as any to applaud hunting that after diverting to itself most of our natural or acquired pleasure in armed combats between human beings it affords an innocent spectacle of skill and intelligent courage pitted against witless force and violence. It agrees with that passage of Euripides[*](Frag. 27 from the Aeolus (so Stobaeus); Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. pp. 370 f.; cf. Mor. 98 e. The text is somewhat confused.):

1. Slight is the strength of men;
2. But through his mind’s resource
3. He subdues the dread
4. Tribes of the deep and races
5. Bred on earth and in the air.