Plutarch, De Superstitione, Frank Cole Babbitt (Translator), 10

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[10] Hence it occurs to me to wonder at those who say that atheism is impiety, and do not say the same of superstition. Yet Anaxagoras was brought to trial for impiety on the ground that he had said the sun is a stone; but nobody has called the Cimmerians impious because they do not believe even in the existence of the sun at all. ¹ What say you? The man who does not believe in the existence of the gods is unholy? And is not he who believes in such gods as the superstitious believe in a partner to opinions far more unholy? Why, for my part, I should prefer that men should say about me that I have never been born at all, and there is no Plutarch, rather than that they should say Plutarch is an inconstant fickle person, quick-tempered, vindictive over little accidents, pained at trifles. If you invite others to dinner and leave him out, or if you haven’t the time and don’t go to call on him, or fail to speak to him when you see him, he will set his teeth into your body and bite it through, or he will get hold of your little child and beat him to death, or he will turn the beast that he owns into your crops and spoil your harvest²

When Timotheus, in a song at Athens, spoke of Artemis as

Ecstatic Bacchic frantic fanatic,³

Cinesias, the song-writer, standing up in his place among the audience, exclaimed, May you have a daughter like that! It is a fact that the superstitious make assumptions like that, and even worse than that, about Artemis: If hasting in fear from a hanging corpse, If near to a woman in childbirth pain, If come from a house where the dead are mourned, Polluted you entered the holy shrine, Or if from the triple cross-roads come

Drawn to the place by cleansing rites For the part you bear to the guilty one.⁴

And they think no more reasonably than this about Apollo and about Hera and about Aphrodite. For they tremble at all of these and dread them. And yet what did Niobe say regarding Leto that was So irreverent as is the belief which superstition has fixed in the minds of the unthinking regarding the goddess, that, because she was derided, she required that the unhappy woman’s

Daughters six that she bore and six sons in the prime of young manhood ⁵

be shot dead? So insatiable was she in doing harm to others, and so implacable! For if it were really true that the goddess cherishes anger, and hates wickedness, and is hurt at being ill spoken of, and does not laugh at man’s ignorance and blindness, but feels indignation thereat, she ought to require the death of those who falsely impute to her such savagery and bitterness, and tell and write such stories. At any rate, we bring forward the bitterness of Hecuba as something barbaric and savage when she says,

I wish I might eat up his liver, Biting it ’tween my teeth.⁶

And yet of the Syrian goddess ⁷ the superstitious believe that if anybody eats sprats or anchovies, she will gnaw through the bones of his shins, inflame his body with sores, and dissolve his liver.

De Superstitione. Plutarch. Frank Cole Babbitt (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1928.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

Superstition (English) (Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. IΙ. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1928 (printing).)

Editions (1)

Περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, Vol I. Vernardakēs, Grēgorios N., editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1888.) — 10 focus

ὅθεν ἔμοιγε καὶ θαυμάζειν ἔπεισι τοὺς τὴν 169f ἀθεότητα φάσκοντας ἀσέβειαν εἶναι, μὴ φάσκοντας δὲ τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν. καίτοι γʼ Ἀναξαγόρας δίκην ἔφυγεν ἀσεβείας ἐπὶ τῷ λίθον εἰπεῖν τὸν ἥλιον, Κιμμερίους δʼ οὐδεὶς εἶπεν ἀσεβεῖς ὅτι τὸν ἥλιον 20 οὐδʼ εἶναι τὸ παράπαν νομίζουσι. τί σὺ λέγεις; ὁ μὴ νομίζων θεοὺς¹ ἀνόσιός ἐστιν; ὁ δὲ τοιούτους νομίζων οἵους οἱ δεισιδαίμονες, οὐ μακρῷ δόξαις ἀνοσιωτέραις σύνεστιν; ἐγὼ γοῦν ἂν ἐθέλοιμι μᾶλλον τοὺς ἀνθρώπους λέγειν περὶ ἐμοῦ μήτε γεγονέναι 25 170a τὸ παράπαν μήτʼ εἶναι Πλούταρχον ἢ λέγειν ὅτι Πλούταρχός ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος ἀβέβαιος εὐμετάβολος, εὐχερὴς πρὸς ὀργήν, ἐπὶ τοῖς τυχοῦσι τιμωρητικός, μικρόλυπος· ἂν καλῶν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἑτέρους παραλίπῃς ἐκεῖνον, ἂν ἀσχολίας σοι γενομένης ἐπὶ θύρας μὴ ἔλθῃς ἢ μὴ προσείπῃς, διέδεταί σου τὸ σῶμα προσφὺς ἢ συλλαβὼν ἀποτυμπανιεῖ τὸ παιδίον, ἢ θηρίον ἔχων² τοῖς καρποῖς ἐφήσει καὶ λυμανεῖται τὴν ὀπώραν. τοῦ Τιμοθέου τὴν Ἄρτεμιν ᾄδοντος ἐν Ἀθήναις καὶ λέγοντος θυιάδα³ φοιβάδα μαινάδα λυσσάδα Κινησίας ὁ μελοποιὸς ἐκ τῶν 170b θεατῶν ἀναστάς τοιαύτη σοι εἶπε θυγάτηρ γένοιτο.⁴ καὶ μὴν ὅμοια τούτοις καὶ χείρω περὶ Ἀρτέμιδος οἱ δεισιδαίμονες ὑπολαμβάνουσιν αἵ τε κἂν ἀπʼ ἀγχόνας ἀίξασα αἵ τε καλεχόνα κναίσατε αἵ τε κανέκεκρος μαίουσα ἂν πεφυρμένα ἐσῆλθες αἵ τε καὶ ἐκ τριπόδων καθαρμάτεσσιν ἐπισπώμενα τῷ παλαμναίῳ συμπλεχθεῖσα. οὐδὲν δὲ τούτων ἐπιεικέστερα φρονοῦσι περὶ Ἀπόλλωνος περὶ Ἥρας περὶ Ἀφροδίτης· πάντας γὰρ τούτους τρέμουσι καὶ δεδοίκασι. καίτοι τί τοσοῦτον ἡ Νιόβη περὶ τῆς Λητοῦς ἐβλασφήμησεν, ὅσου⁵ ἡ δεισιδαιμονία πέπεικε 170c περὶ τῆς θεοῦ τοὺς ἄφρονας, ὡς ἄρα λοιδορηθεῖσα κατετόξευσε τῆς ἀθλίας γυναικὸς

ἓξ μὲν θυγατέρας, ἓξ δʼ υἱέας ἡβώοντας;

⁶ οὕτως ἄπληστος ἀλλοτρίων κακῶν ἦν καὶ ἀνίλαστος. εἰ γὰρ ἀληθῶς ἡ θεὸς χολὴν εἶχε καὶ μισοπόνηρος ἦν καὶ ἤλγει κακῶς ἀκούουσα καὶ μὴ κατεγέλα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ἀμαθίας καὶ ἀγνοίας ἀλλʼ ἠγανάκτει, τούτους ἔδει κατατοξεῦσαι⁷ τοὺς τοσαύτην ὠμότητα καὶ πικρίαν καταψευδομένους αὐτῆς καὶ τοιαῦτα λέγοντας καὶ γράφοντας. τῆς γοῦν Ἑκάβης προβαλλόμεθα τὴν πικρίαν ὡς βάρβαρον καὶ θηριώδη λεγούσης 170d

τοῦ ἐγὼ μέσον ἧπαρ ἔχοιμι

⁸

ἐσθέμεναι προσφῦσα,

τὴν δὲ Συρίαν θεὸν οἱ δεισιδαίμονες νομίζουσιν, ἂν μαινίδας τις ἢ ἀφύας φάγῃ, τὰ ἀντικνήμια διεσθίειν, ἕλκεσι τὸ σῶμα πιμπράναι, συντήκειν τὸ ἧπαρ.

Translations (1)

Of Superstition, or Indiscreet Devotion Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. II. Goodwin, William W., editor; Baxter, William translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.) — 10 focus

[10] So that I cannot but wonder at those that charge atheism with impiety, and in the mean time acquit superstition. Anaxagoras was indicted of blasphemy for having affirmed the sun to be a red-hot stone; yet the Cimmerians were never much blamed for denying his being. What? Is he that holds there is no God guilty of impiety, and is not he that describes him as the superstitious do much more guilty? I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me, that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than they should say: Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow; if you invite others to sup with you, and chance to leave out Plutarch, or if some business falls out that you cannot wait at his door with the morning salute, or if when you meet with him you don’t speak to him, he’ll fasten upon you somewhere with his teeth and bite the part through, or catch one of your children and cane him, or turn his beast into your corn and spoil your crop. When Timotheus the musician was one day singing at Athens an hymn to Diana, in which among other things was this,—

Mad, raving, tearing, foaming Deity,—

Cinesias, the lyric poet, stood up from the midst of the spectators, and spoke aloud: I wish thee with all my heart such a Goddess to thy daughter, Timotheus. Such like, nay worse, are the conceits of the superstitious about this Goddess Diana:—

Thou dost on the bed-clothes jump,

And there liest like a lump.

Thou dost tantalize the bride,

When love’s charms by thee are tied.

Thou look’st grim and full of dread,

When thou walk’st to find the dead.

Thou down chairs and tables rumbl’st,

When with Oberon thou tumbl’st. ¹

Nor have they any milder sentiments of Apollo, Juno, or Venus; for they are equally scared with them all. Alas! what could poor Niobe ever say that could be so reflecting upon the honor of Latona, as that which superstition makes fools believe of her? Niobe, it seems, had given her some hard words, for which she fairly shot her

Six daughters, and six sons full in their prime;

so impatient was she, and insatiate with the calamities of another. Now if the Goddess was really thus choleric and vindictive and so highly incensed with bad language, and if she had not the wisdom to smile at human frailty and ignorance, but suffered herself to be thus transported with passion, I much marvel she did not shoot them too that told this cruel story of her, and charged her both in speech and writing with so much spleen and rancor. We oft accuse Queen Hecuba of barbarous and savage bitterness, for having once said in Homer,—

Would God I had his liver ’twixt my teeth;

yet the superstitious believe, if a man taste of a minnow or bleak, the Syrian Goddess will eat his shins through, fill his body with sores, and dissolve his liver.

Notes on the current edition

Superstition

1. Cf. Homer, Od. xi. 13-19.

2. Probably a covert reference to Artemis who sent the Calydonian boar to ravage the fields; Homer, Il. ix. 533 ff.

3. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec., iii. p. 620, Timotheus, No. 1; cf. Plutarch, Moralia, 22 A.

4. Cf. Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Gr. iii. p. 680; Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 633, and Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Lesebuch (berli, 1902), p. 336.

5. Adapted from Homer, Il. xxiv. 604.

6. Homer, Il. xxiv. 212.

7. Cf., for example, Athenaeus, 346 d, or Kock, Com. Attic. Frag. iii. p. 167, Menander, No. 544.

Plutarch De Superstitione 10

Frank Cole Babbitt (Translator)

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