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Monaco, Mallory
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URI:http://hdl.handle.net/10316.2/36363
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DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/0258-655X_9_4
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This paper is a revised version of a presentation first delivered at Irony and Humour as
Imperial Greek Literary Strategies: The Playful Plutarch, 13 July 2011, in Oxford. It also
forms the basis for a collaborative article on the use of humor in the Demetrius-Antony pair
which M. Beck and I are preparing for publication in the edited volume arising from the
Playful Plutarch conference. I would like to thank Eran Almagor, Katerina Oikonomopoulou,
and Christopher Pelling for organizing this conference, and special thanks to Eran Almagor,
David Kaufman, and Christopher Caterine for their helpful comments.
All Greek texts are from the edition of K. ZIEGLER; English translations of the Lives are
modified version of B. PERRIN, and the Moralia are modified from H. FOWLER.
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MALLORY MONACO
,
,
but when men have led reckless lives, and have become
conspicuous for badness, in the
exercise of power or in great undertakings, perhaps it is not too
wrong for me to introduce a pair
or two of them into my Lives,
though not, by Zeus, giving variety to my writing for the pleasure
and diversion of my readers
The assertion that he is not including
these pairs by Zeusfor pleasure and
diversion implies, in fact, that there
is a very real threat that his readers
might find these Lives enjoyable on a
low level. In this passage, as Tim Duff
has recognized, Plutarch establishes a
distinction between an ideal reader the
serious student of moral philosophy
and a casual reader, who may be reading
Plutarchs works without a specific
intellectual goal in mind2. A related
distinction appears in the Table Talk3:
Plutarch argues that if the guests at a
dinner-party are mostly philosophers,
then weighty philosophical discussions
are appropriate to the table; but
when the majority of guests are more
attentive to musical entertainment
2
3
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The paucity of scholarship on the comic in Plutarch was one of the motivating factors for
the Playful Plutarch conference. For scholarship on tragedy in Plutarch, see PH. DE LACY,
Biography and Tragedy in Plutarch, AJPh, 73 (1952) 159-171; J. MOSSMAN, Tragedy and
Epic in Plutarchs Alexander, JHS, 108 (1988) 83-93; A. ZADOROJNYI, Tragedy and epic
in Plutarchs Crassus, Hermes, 125 (2) (1997) 169-182; T. DUFF, Plato, Tragedy and the
Ideal Reader in Plutarchs Demetrios and Antony, Hermes, 132 (2) (2004) 271-291.
9.5-6 (Stilpo the Cynic); 11.2-3 (Stratocles the demagogue); 17.2-5 (Aristodemus the
fawn); 25.4-6 (Demetrius pet-names for the Successors), among others.
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MALLORY MONACO
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MALLORY MONACO
.
Now Aristophanes is neither
pleasing to the many nor endurable to the thoughtful, but his
poetry is like a courtesan who
has passed her prime and then
takes up the role of a wife, whose presumption the many cannot
endure and whose licentiousness
and malice the dignified abhor.
Though Lamia is not named explicitly, Plutarch clearly had the same
sort of grotesquely debauched and inappropriately demanding woman in
mind when he was writing the Life of
Demetrius; the Moralia passage brings
into high relief the fact that women like
Lamia were subject to ridicule because
they can be harmful to the public and
offensive to the sensibilities of virtuous
men. Furthermore, Demetrius is made
ridiculous by his uxorious devotion to
such a vicious woman, and for this he
is mocked both publicly and privately.
His ambassadors to Lysimachus jokingly compared their kings lovebites with the Lysimachus scars from
a lions claws (27.3), and the courtesan
Demo mocked Demetrius to his face
for his unseemly love of a much older
woman (27.4). Each time Plutarchs
reader laughs at Lamia or, more likely,
at Demetrius because of Lamia, the
lesson that such debased actions or habits are contrary to a virtuous life is
subtly yet powerfully reinforced.
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this story in the chronologically-appropriate moment of the narrative, it
would have confused the initial characterization of Antigonus as indulgent,
light-hearted father; placed where it
now stands, the potentially humorous
story instead highlights Antigonus
sharp temper and tongue within the
boundaries of the tragic half.
IV. To sum up thus far: the humor
associated with Antigonus and Lamia in
the comic half of the Life is light-hearted
in tone, but nevertheless contains a
serious lesson about the characteristics
and habits the virtuous reader of Plutarch should avoid. Demetrius vices
are treated as follies, but the very fact
that humor and laughter are directed at
them serves to distinguish these vices
from Demetrius virtues. In the tragic
half, Plutarch does not remove humor
altogether, but rather adapts its use to fit
the more serious narrative of Demetrius
fall from power. The predominant type
of humor which the reader encounters
during the narrative of Demetrius demise is gallows-humor, the tense sort
of laughter which arises when one is
face-to-face with death. In general,
these passages serve to undermine Demetrius inflated self-perception, and to
emphasize the negative consequences of
his character-flaws which were underplayed in the comic half.
A few examples demonstrate the
grotesque humor with which Plutarch
peppers the narrative. First, Plutarch
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