Plutarch, Rawls, Lord Mansfield and Buster the Dog, etc.

Brad DeLong linked my snippet from Plutarch on Cato the Elder, setting off an instructive thread about slavery (link). It brought to my mind the story of the Slave ship Zong, notorious from the JMW Turner painting, where Master Luke Collingwood ordered that slaves be thrown overboard so the owners could collect on the insurance (link). No one was ever prosecuted for murder in the case, although there was litigation over the insurance claim, prompting Lord Mansfield to say that there was "no doubt that (though it shocks one very much) the case was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard"—and if you think this is gauche, take a look at the argument of the Solicitor General.

A DeLong commentator remarked that John Rawls characterized non-human animals as lying "outside the scope of the theory of justice" – echoing Plutarch. The commentator continues:

Of course, Plutarch himself seems to have regarded treatment of slaves *and* animals as issues of "kindness and charity," while "justice," I suppose, applies to free people. Rawls would undoubtedly say that "justice" applies to human slaves, but still keeps non-human animals in the sphere of "compassion and humanity." [Martha?] Nussbaum … attacks Rawls with the critique that "justice" also applies to non-human animals.

Over lunch yesterday, Mrs. B tried to explain to me that “mercy” is best understood as some sort of subset of the “justice;” she didn’t persuade but she is the philosopher in the family, so perhaps I should defer to her judgment. It does make me remember, however, the story of the guy who asked the rabbi deliver a eulogy for Buster his dog. The rabbi said he didn’t do memorial speeches for animals, but the petitioner persisted, saying that he was a prosperous man with no family, and would make it worth the rabbi’s while. The rabbi, being a reasonable fellow, reconsidered the issue, and set him down for 2 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon when, he figured, there wouldn’t be much of a crowd.

Thursday came and sure enough, the synagogue was almost empty, but the rabbi gave it his best shot. After the service, his petitioner approached him and passed over a $50,000 check. “You know,” he told the rabbi, “until you spoke I just didn’t realize what a great friend Buster was to Israel.”

Plutarch on Kindness

As I get older, I tend to admire brilliance less and kindness more. This may be just selfishness: I am less and less likely to be brilliant (if I ever was likely to be) and I probably find (or expect to find) myself more in need of kindness.

One person who shared a taste for kindness was Plutarch, the essayist and biographer, so beloved of Shakespeare for his unerring skill at identifying a good story. Plutarch wrote in the corrupt post-Augustan period of the Roman Empire. There’s a certain “twilight” quality much of his work work. It’s as if he can look back on a long life in an aging civilization, and identify so many things he might wish could have gone differently.

You see a remarkable instance of Plutarch’s instinct in his discussion of Cato the Elder. Cato was the archetypical “old republican”—hard-working, thrifty, honest and just. Plutarch thought Cato a good man in so many ways, but he does notice one odd or unexpected quirk. When Cato’s slaves “became too old to work,” Plutarch says, “he felt it his duty to sell them rather than feed so many useless mouths.” Plutarch sees fit to pause and reflect on the point:

For my own part I regard his conduct towards his slaves in treating them like beasts of burden, exploiting them to the limits of their strength, and then, when they were old, driving them off and selling them, as the mark of a thoroughly ungenerous nature, which cannot recognize any bond between man and man but that of necessity. And yet we see that kindness possesses a far wider sphere of action than justice, for it is in the nature of things that law and justice are confined to our dealings with our fellow men, whereas kindness and charity, which often flow from a gentle nature like water form an abundant spring, may be extended even to dumb animals. A kindly man will take good care of his horses even when they are worn out in his service, and will look after his dogs not only when they are puppies, but when they need special treatment.

For my part, I would not sell even my draught ox simply because of his age, far less turn out an old man from the home and the way of life to which he has grown accustomed for the sake of a few paltry coins, especially since he would be of no more use to the buyer than he was to the seller.

—Plutarch, “Cato the Elder” in Makers of Rome 119-151,
125-6 (Penguin Paperback ed. 1965)

I suppose it scarcely needs mention it seems never to occur to Plutarch to question slavery per se, and that he tops off his argument from principle with a fairly straightforward argument from practice (who would buy these guys anyway?). He concludes by saying that whether this attitude counts as “greatness or pettiness of spirit is a question which the reader must decide for himself.” Maybe, but I’d say it’s pretty clear that Plutarch has made his own decision.

Fn.: Spotted on the exercycle this morning: Karen Armstrong, speaking of Confucious, remarks on "his kindness and brilliance--an unusual combination." See Karen Armstrong, The Great Trnsformation 241 (Anchor Paperback ed. 2007).

US to China: Now You Worry

I well remember the old canard about the debtor who calls up the bank and says “I’m tired about worrying about how much I owe you; now you worry about it for a while.” Last week, I heard my friend Taxmom kick it to a new level: if you owe enough money to the bank, she said, you own the bank.

Maybe she was channeling this guy:

Eumenes of Cardia was principal secretary to Alexander the Great and a member of his army. As a Greek general n the Macedonian force,Eumenes was regarded with suspicion and contempt. Those who served under him had to respect his martial abilities but this made the Macedonians fear and hate him even more. With the death of Alexander, Eumenes lost his sponsor and his situation suddenly became rather precarious. As Plutarch explained, Eumenes’ response consisted of an unusual hostage strategy. He borrowed as much money as he could, especially from his bitterest rivals. As creditors, Eumenes’ enemies acquired a financial interest in his ability to repay them, something which he could not do if he were dead. As a debtor, Eumenes made reluctant allies out of his creditors. He had, in effect, taken their money hostage.

--Bruce G. Carruthers, City of Capital 3 (Paperback ed. 1999)

I wonder of the managers of China’s foreign investments has read Carruthers (link).

Carruthers quotes the original account in Plutarch:

Eumenes, however, perceiving that, while they despise done another, they feared him and were on the watch for an opportunity to kill him, pretended to be in need of money and got together many talents by borrowing them from those who hated him most, in order that they might put confidence in him and refrain from killing him out of regard for the money they had lent him. The consequence was that the wealth of others was his body-guard, and that, whereas men generally preserve their lives by giving, he alone won safety by receiving.

--Plutarch, Eumenes

Update:From this morning's cull, some useful background.

"The Great Pan is Dead"

Epitherses ... said that designing a voyage to Italy, he embarked himself on a vessel well laden both with goods and passengers. About the evening the vessel was becalmed about the Isles Echinades, whereupon their ship drove with the tide till it was carried near the Isles of Paxi; when immediately a voice was heard by most of the passengers (who were then awake, and taking a cup after supper) calling unto one Thamus, and that with so loud a voice as made all the company amazed; which Thamus was a mariner of Egypt, whose name was scarcely known in the ship. He returned no answer to the first calls; but at the third he replied, Here! here! I am the man. Then the voice said aloud to him, When you are arrived at Palodes, take care to make it known that the God Pan is dead. Epitherses told us, this voice did much astonish all that heard it, and caused much arguing whether this voice was to be obeyed or slighted. Thamus, for his part, was resolved, if the wind permitted, to sail by the place without saying a word; but if the wind ceased and there ensued a calm, to speak and cry out as loud as he was able what he was enjoined. Being come to Palodes, there was no wind stirring, and the sea was as smooth as glass. Whereupon Thamus standing on the deck, with his face towards the land, uttered with a loud voice his message, saying, The great Pan is dead. He had no sooner said this, but they heard a dreadful noise, not only of one, but of several, who, to their thinking, groaned and lamented with a kind of astonishment. And there being many persons in the ship, an account of this was soon spread over Rome, which made Tiberius the Emperor send for Thamus; and he seemed to give such heed to what he told him, that he earnestly enquired who this Pan was; and the learned men about him gave in their judgments, that it was the son of Mercury by Penelope.

--Plutarch, Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers
(R. Midgley, trans., 1870,
reprinted in R. Stoneman, A Literary Companion to Travel in Greece 25-6 (Penguin , 1984)

I have been trying to find out more about the great Pan and his story. So far, the best I can do is a the poem, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity by John Milton (1629). Stanza XIX reads:

The Oracles are dumb,
No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell.

In his complete Milton, Merritt Y. Hughes says "Many details of the flight of the pagan gods seemed to A. S.Cook to come from the Apotheosis of Prudentius or the Parthenicae (III, i) of Mantuan." See M. Hughes, John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose 48 (1957). Are there other references?

Reactive Shakespeare

One of the most attractive and interesting things about Shakespeare is his reactive capacity—his ability to respond to others, and to say “I see possibilities here,” and to make the ordinary extraordinary. Read Golding’s Ovid or North’s Plutarch and compare (say) Prospero “drowning his book” or Enobarbus appreciating Cleopatra: in each case, the original is pretty good in its own right, but the rewrite is better.

He does the same thing with himself. You can just imagine him looking at an early performance of Richard II and saying “note to self: next time, let the clowns talk prose.” In tragedy, he builds and builds, from Romeo and Juliet, through Julius Caesar on to the incomparable heights of Antony and Cleopatra.

In A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, James Shapiro comes up with a wonderful example that I hadn’t noticed before. That would be Sonnet 138, which I took the trouble to memorize a few years back. But here is an original version, as the opening poem in The Passionate Pilgrim:

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her (though I know she lies)
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unskillful in the world’s false forgeries.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years be past the best:
I, smiling, credit her false-speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is a soothing tongue,
And age (in love) loves not to have years told.
Therefore I’ll lie with love, and love with me
Since that our faults in love thus smothered be.

The “revised, standard” version reads:

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some uuntutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days be past the best:
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue,
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

I’ve italicized the changes (and omitted two sets of superfluous parentheses). I won’t say that every change is an improvement, but it is fascinating to wonder just what Shakespeare had in mind when he edited as he did. Anyway, listen to Shapiro:

The most significant change is also the subtlest. By turning “I know to “she knows” in line 6, a shared understanding and subjectivity is introduced. We are now witnesses to a lover’s game, one in which role-playing leads to mutual understanding. … Only in the revised version does the speaker learn to see himself through his lover’s eyes. We’re n o longer listening to someone brag about an affair; instead, we’re experiencing the excitement and confusion of what it feels like to be in love.

--James Shapiro, A Year in the Life
of William Shakespeare 201 (2005)

There’s plenty more of the same in this stimulating and thought-provoking book.