{"id":4071,"date":"2009-06-14T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2009-06-14T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=4071"},"modified":"2009-06-13T20:22:59","modified_gmt":"2009-06-14T00:22:59","slug":"we-dance-on-the-strings-of-powers-we-cannot-perceive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/we-dance-on-the-strings-of-powers-we-cannot-perceive","title":{"rendered":"We dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday<\/a>, I mentioned a passage that intrigued me in Plutarch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life of Coriolanus<\/a>. I find the Lives<\/em> in general pretty entertaining (which is why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still reading them: duh) and informative (because I know almost zero about Roman history, while my knowledge of Greek history is awfully spotty). In addition the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153historical facts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of his biographies (depending on what you think of his accuracy), Plutarch also has some awesome digressions about history, character, and, in this case, the role of the gods and free will in Homer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poetry.<\/p>\n

Discussing how Coriolanus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 mom and wife got it into their heads to gather the women of Rome and implore the general directly to spare the city that ostracized him, Plutarch ascribes a sort of divine inspiration, which leads to the passage that I mentioned:<\/p>\n

[A]t last a thing happened not unlike what we so often find represented \u00e2\u20ac\u201d without, however, being accepted as true by people in general \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in Homer. On some great and unusual occasion we find him say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But him the blue-eyed goddess did inspire;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and elsewhere, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But some immortal turned my mind away, \/ To think what others of the deed would say;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and again, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Were\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t his own thought or were\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a god\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s command?”<\/p>\n

People are apt, in such passages, to censure and disregard the poet, as if, by the introduction of mere impossibilities and idle fictions, he were denying the action of a man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own deliberate though and free choice; which is not, in the least, the case in Homer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s representation, where the ordinary, probably, and habitual conclusions that common reason leads to are continually ascribed to our own direct agency. He certainly says frequently enough, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But I consulted with my own great soul;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or, as in another passage, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He spoke. Achilles, with quick pain possessed, \/ Resolved two purposes in his strong breast;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and in a third, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u201dYet never to her wishes won \/ The just mind of the brave Bellerophon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

But where the act is something out of the way and extraordinary, and seems in a manner to demand some impulse of divine possession and sudden inspiration to account for it, here he does introduce divine agency, not to destroy, but to prompt the human will; not to create in us another agency, but offering images to stimulate our own; images that in no sort or kind make our action involuntary, but give occasion rather to spontaneous action, aided and sustained by feelings of confidence and hope. For either we must totally dismiss and exclude divine influences from every kind of causality and origination in what we do, or else what other way can we conceive in which divine aid and cooperation can act? Certainly we cannot suppose that the divine beings actually and literally turn our bodies and direct our hands and our feet this way and that, to do what is right: it is obvious that they must actuate the practical and elective element of our nature, by certain initial occasions, by images presented to the imagination, and thoughts suggested to the mind, such either as to excite it to, or avert and withhold it from, any particular course.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I still have problems with understanding the instances in Homer where the gods take physical roles in the action (especially in the Iliad<\/em>), but I thought this was a pretty graceful effort at reconciling the role of gods in free will.<\/p>\n

As a bonus, it ties back to the previous post I wrote<\/a> about Plutarch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life of Pericles<\/a>. Here, he explains that the role of his Lives<\/em> is to inspire virtue by recounting the virtues:<\/p>\n

[V]irtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sounds to me like he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s saying that the gods are responsible for inspiring our extraordinary actions through their images, but also that the Lives<\/em> can help inspire the mundane (earthly) virtues. Let me know if it sounds like that to you, esp. if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read more of the Lives<\/em> and can clue me in on some of the meta of what Plutarch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, I mentioned a passage that intrigued me in Plutarch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life of Coriolanus. I find the Lives in general pretty entertaining (which is why I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still reading them: duh) and informative (because I know almost zero about Roman history, while my knowledge of Greek history is awfully spotty). In addition the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153historical facts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “We dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[724,654],"class_list":["post-4071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-coriolanus","tag-plutarch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-13F","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6474,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lets-go-a-roman","url_meta":{"origin":4071,"position":0},"title":"Let’s Go A-Roman","author":"Gil","date":"July 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Since I got back from that Piraeus seminar in Annapolis in early June (part 1 and part 2), I've found myself recharged. Now that I've wrapped up the Top Companies issue of my magazine, which occupies my June-into-July every year, I feel like I'm ready to get at a lot\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0140443886","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3900,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/art-virtue-and-dogs-in-sailor-suits","url_meta":{"origin":4071,"position":1},"title":"Art, virtue, and dogs in sailor suits","author":"Gil","date":"May 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Nine biographies into his work, Plutarch explains what he's up to! See, each of the Plutarch so far has essentially dived into the biography itself. But with Pericles' section, Plutarch instead begins by, um, decrying people who love their pets too much: Caesar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0679600086","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3827,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/roman-gods","url_meta":{"origin":4071,"position":2},"title":"Roman Gods","author":"Gil","date":"April 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm working my way through Plutarch's Lives (or Parallel Lives, if you like). I decided not to challenge myself to blog about it, the way I did with Montaigne, because I didn't like the way that made me rush through some of the essays in an attempt to compress\/distill them.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"montaigne\"","block_context":{"text":"montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tag\/montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0679600086","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2891,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-defense-of-seneca-and-plutarch","url_meta":{"origin":4071,"position":3},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Defense of Seneca and Plutarch","author":"Gil","date":"November 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"No rambling exegeses this week. Instead, you get a couple of passages from Montaigne. The first comes from his Defense of Seneca and Plutarch: We must not judge what is possible and what is not, according to what is credible and incredible to our sense. . . . It seems\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3858,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/dam-straight","url_meta":{"origin":4071,"position":4},"title":"Dam, straight.","author":"Gil","date":"April 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I took a half-day, ran some errands, and then got home with plenty of time to work on my post about John Lanchester & the metaphors of risk and finance. Or I could've written up the rest of my notes about last week's Las Vegas trip, and posted the pix\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3565\/3487191962_03ff51f6a2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4044,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-6809","url_meta":{"origin":4071,"position":5},"title":"What It Is: 6\/8\/09","author":"Gil","date":"June 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: Plutarch's life of Coriolanus, which makes me wonder how good Shakespeare's play is. There's a neat passage in this bio that I'll transcribe and post a little later, about the role of the gods in human action. What I'm listening to: Joe Jackson's Night and Day. What\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1903436648","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4072,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions\/4072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}