Nine biographies into his work, Plutarch explains what he’s up to! See, each of the Plutarch
Caesar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and down with them in their arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys, embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask whether the women in their country were not used to bear children; by that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and lavish upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us to be bestowed on those of our own kind.
Sure, I was a little insulted by this. It’s not like I dress Rufus up in a little sailor suit, but he does make a wonderful substitute kid for us, and he’s already lived up to his old man’s dream of being a professional athlete! Still, I get what Caesar was complaining about, even though he had to pass his power on to his nephew, rather than a son.
Anyway, Plutarch’s point is that our enjoyment of the sensual world is a betrayal of our natural spirit of inquiry, just as fawning over pets is a betrayal of our parental impulses. He goes on to contend that art — whether it be dyeing, perfuming, music, poetry or sculpture (note that art carried a stronger connotation of artifice than art nowadays does) — doesn’t enrich the soul —
He who busies himself in mean occupations [the aforementioned arts] produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good. Nor did any generous and ingenuous young man at the sight of the statue of Jupiter at Pisa ever desire to be a Phidias or on seeing that of Juno at Argos long to be a Polycletus or feel induced by his pleasure in their poems to wish to be an Anacreon or Philetas or Archilochus. For it does not necessarily follow that if a piece of work please for its gracefulness therefore he that wrought it deserves our admiration.
— the way reflecting on virtue does. Hence, writing these paired biographies of noble lives!
[V]irtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men’s minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practice and exercise; we are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us.
Because I’m all about The Why (and secondarily about The Process), I’m glad Plutarch explored his rationale in this passage, even if my depiction of it makes the Lives sound boring or moralistic. They’re not, and I’m awfully glad I’ve made the time to read them.
On to Pericles and Fabius Maximus!