Clutch

I thought I'd post a quote from Plutarch's Coriolanus that have always struck me as interesting. ("Always" here meaning for about two years, since I first read it.)

Plutarch is describing how Rome is overjoyed that some women, including Coriolanus's beloved mother, have persuaded him to stop his Volscians from attacking the city. In gratitude, funds are granted for a temple and statue to Female Fortune.

When the statue is erected, however, it's heard to speak!

What strikes me as so interesting about this passage is how fully familiar Plutarch's moves are. Essentially nothing in contemporary debates about miracles is left out, from his own appeal to the inherent intelligibility and greater reasonableness of naturalistic explanation, to his awareness of how powerful biases can lead people to interpret ambiguous sensations as if they were clearly significant, to his gloss on the countervailing argument of the miracle-claimers, that the definitional greatness of god(s) rules out any confident assessment of how they might choose and be able to act in the world. It's really a very elegant presentation of arguments that have not much changed, in many respects.

The dialectic is a bit unusual, though: his initial statement of scepticism is so strong, while his rediscovered piety by the end of the passage suggests ambivalence. I get the feeling that the former is genuine, while the latter is more of a sop.

On the other hand, this hardly indicates some general scepticism of supernatural doings on Plutarch's part. Whenever he's reporting extravagantly miraculous events, he seems to make a special effort to hold the report at arm's length by saying "it is said that" or "those present claimed" or somesuch. But he makes no such effort on matters of augery or portents, for example impugning Crassus' judgement for repeatedly ignoring bad omens attending upon his foray into Parthia (like tripping over his son on the way out of a temple, etc). The sceptical thought in this passage is sophisticated, but apparently pretty limited in the role it played for Plutarch.

Anyhow, I thought it was an interesting window on ancient thought about reporting miracle claims.

Amaleq13

I agree and your comments are just as interesting, IMO.

That some sort of deity exists seems to be a fundamental assumption. I don't know whether the notion of questioning that assumption was something that never occurred to him or one that he consciously avoided or one that he considered unassailable. My impression of him, though, is of a man who has followed reason as far as his cultural background allowed.

Clutch

Yes, and moreover the grammar suggests a single deity.

Seems a bit strange for a polytheist, or one writing for polytheists. Unfortunately I don't have the book in Latin, and I don't read Latin remotely well enough to judge anyhow, so I can't tell whether this is an accurate reflection of Plutarch or an artifact of the Dryden translation.

Or, maybe "the deity" is here used just as a general term for "divine things", as a later phrase in the passage has it. As in "the clergy" or "the bureaucracy" -- not entailing that there's only one constituent.

Anyone else know, by any chance?