Plutarch, Moralia (Œuvres morales)
Ἠθικά (Ēthiká)
Також відомий як: Œuvres morales, Oeuvres morales, Moralia, Sur les délais de la justice divine, avis de Plutarque
Overview
The Moralia (Greek Ēthiká, French Œuvres morales) are the 78 essays and speeches attributed to Plutarch of Chaeronea, on ethics, religion, politics, education and natural questions, which circulated alongside his Parallel Lives. (Wikipedia, "Moralia".) Amyot's translation of 1572 made them a classic of French prose; Montaigne's Essais are full of them. The Lives are treated in Parallel Lives.
Marie and this work
In the first week of March 1876, in Rome, kept out of society, she explains, by the scandal that Zamiatine's lawyer had spread through the embassies in the Romanoff inheritance lawsuit (055.0054-0059), Marie turns to Plutarch for an answer to a question that is also her own. On 3 March 1876 she writes:
- J'ai lu dernièrement dans Plutarque "pour quelles raisons les enfants souffraient de la faute de leurs pères" and "Le bonhomme ne m'a pas convaincue". She quotes: "Car s'il est juste, dit-il, que les gens d'une haute vertu soient honorés dans leur descendance, il est juste aussi que les grands criminels soient punis dans la leur" (055.0060). Her argument follows: some ancestor of hers must have been a great criminal since she and her mother are unhappy in everything; "Que Plutarque me permette de lui dire qu'à force de raisonner, il déraisonne" (055.0061-0062). Honours for the children of good men are fair, but it is absurd that God should punish a son for a father's fault (055.0063).
- When she goes on to defend her right to reason about God, she answers Plutarch: "C'est téméraire, dit Plutarque. Non ! Dieu est accessible à tous..." (055.0072).
- The next day, 4 March, she wonders whether to write "quelques commentaires sur Plutarque" (055.0099); on 18 March she jokes that she has neglected "les avis de Plutarque" to dine at the table d'hôte with the Muliterno family (055.0884). (Whether these two later allusions are to the same treatise is not certain.) The following paragraph, 055.0885, quotes a maxim, "Se mêler à table avec des inconnus, n'est pas le propos d'un homme sensé", which the diary's footnote assigns to Plutarch's Table-Talk (Quaestiones convivales); this makes the "avis de Plutarque" of 055.0884 a reference to the Moralia too.
Identification. The treatise she is reading is almost certainly De sera numinis vindicta ("On the Delays of Divine Vengeance", in French "Sur les délais de la justice divine"). Its dialogue opens with a warning that it would be "a bold and daring arrogance" for mortals to presume to speak of the Godhead, and, further on, argues that if the reward of virtue extends to posterity, so must the punishment of wickedness ("it becomes us, if we believe that the reward of virtue ought to be extended to posterity, by the same reason to take it for granted that punishment ... ought not to be stayed", Goodwin's English edition, Gutenberg 79588). The quotation Marie gives matches this passage. Which French translation she was using is not known.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Moralia".
- W. W. Goodwin (ed.), Plutarch's Morals, vol. 4 (1878), Project Gutenberg 79588: the text of "Concerning such whom God is slow to punish" (the identification above was checked against it).
- fr.wikisource, Œuvres morales (index; the treatise itself is not yet transcribed there).
- Diary paragraphs as cited above.
Note: the stub `people/mentioned/PLUTARQUE.md` and the Parallel Lives entry cover Plutarch as a person and as the author of the Lives. The parallel entry `VIES_PARALLELES.md` (another batch) covers both works and should be merged into this pair.