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INTRODUCTION

This popular oration, or diatribe, ¹ was read by Plutarch² in some city of Asia Minor: Volkmann ³ thought Sardis, the capital of the province; Haupt⁴ thought Halicarnassus; Wilamowitz⁵ Ephesus. The occasion is clearly the consul’s yearly hearing of lawsuits from the whole province.

The proof that afflictions of the soul are worse than diseases of the body is treated in a popular and, in chapter 4, dramatic manner. The conclusion is lost.

The same subject was treated in his commonplace fashion by Maximus Tyrius,⁶ who shows no knowledge of Plutarch’s oration, nor any relation to his sources; Cicero, however, at the beginning of the third book of the Tusculan Disputations, exhibits some kinship with Plutarch’s argument. Siefert⁷ has twice elaborated his opinion that some of this work of Plutarch’s was drawn from the ὑπόμνημα (I should prefer to say ὑπομνήματα⁸) which Plutarch used in writing De Tranquillitate.

The text is not good. The work is listed as No. 208 in the Lamprias catalogue.

Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores. Plutarch. William Clark Helmbold (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1939.

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Current edition Perseus

Whether the Affections of the Soul are Worse Than Those of the Body (English) (Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. VI. Helmbold, William Clark, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1939 (printing).)

Notes on the current edition

Whether the Affections of the Soul are Worse Than Those of the Body

1. So Pohlenz, as I think, correctly: I therefore do not accept Wilamowitz’s combination of this and the preceding work as fragments of the same dialogue.

2. Xylander, practically alone, denies the genuineness - on what ground he does not say.

3. Plutarch, vol. i. 62 f.

4. Opuscula, iii. 554 ( Hermes, vi. 258).

5. Hermes, xl. 161 ff.

6. Orat. 7 ed. Hobein, 13 ed. Dübner.

7. Comm. Ienenses, 1896, pp. 106-110; Plutarchs Schrift Περὶ εὐθυμίας, pp. 26-28.

8. See the introduction to the De Tranquillitate.

Plutarch Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores intro

William Clark Helmbold (Translator)

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INTRODUCTION

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