Clutch
January 9, 2005, 10:30 PM
I thought I'd post a quote from Plutarch's Coriolanus that have always struck me as interesting. ("Always" here meaning for about two years, since I first read it.)
Plutarch is describing how Rome is overjoyed that some women, including Coriolanus's beloved mother, have persuaded him to stop his Volscians from attacking the city. In gratitude, funds are granted for a temple and statue to Female Fortune.
When the statue is erected, however, it's heard to speak!
The senate… caused the temple to be built and a statue set up in it… which the Romans say uttered, as it was putting up, words to this effect, “Blessed of the gods, O women, is your gift.�
These words, they profess, were repeated a second time, expecting our belief of what seems pretty nearly an impossibility. It may be possible enough that statues may seem to sweat, and to run with tears, and to stand with certain dewy drops of a sanguine colour; for timber and stone are frequently known to contract a kind of scurf and rottenness, productive of moisture; and various tints may form on the surfaces, both from within and from the action of the air outside; and by these signs it is not absurd to imagine that the deity may forewarn us. It may happen, also, that images and statues may sometimes make a noise not unlike that of a moan or a groan, through a rupture or violent internal separation of the parts; but that an articulate voice, and such express words, and language so clear and exact and elaborate, should proceed from inanimate things is, in my judgment, a thing utterly out of possibility. For it was never known that either the soul of man, or the deity himself, uttered vocal sounds and language, without an organised body and members fitted for speech. But where history seems in a manner to force our assent by the concurrence of numerous and credible witnesses, we are to conclude that an impression distinct from sensation affects the imaginative part of our nature, and then carries away the judgment, so as to believe it to be a sensation; just as in sleep we fancy we see and hear, without really doing either.
Persons, however, whose strong feelings of reverence to the deity, and tenderness for religion, will not allow them to deny or invalidate anything of this kind, have certainly a strong argument for their faith, in the wonderful and transcendent character of the divine power; which admits no manner of comparison with ours, either in its nature or its action, the modes or the strength of its operations. It is no contradiction to reason that it should do things that we cannot do, and effect what for us is impracticable: differing from us in all respects, in its acts yet more than in other points we may well believe it to be unlike us and remote from us. Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.
What strikes me as so interesting about this passage is how fully familiar Plutarch's moves are. Essentially nothing in contemporary debates about miracles is left out, from his own appeal to the inherent intelligibility and greater reasonableness of naturalistic explanation, to his awareness of how powerful biases can lead people to interpret ambiguous sensations as if they were clearly significant, to his gloss on the countervailing argument of the miracle-claimers, that the definitional greatness of god(s) rules out any confident assessment of how they might choose and be able to act in the world. It's really a very elegant presentation of arguments that have not much changed, in many respects.
The dialectic is a bit unusual, though: his initial statement of scepticism is so strong, while his rediscovered piety by the end of the passage suggests ambivalence. I get the feeling that the former is genuine, while the latter is more of a sop.
On the other hand, this hardly indicates some general scepticism of supernatural doings on Plutarch's part. Whenever he's reporting extravagantly miraculous events, he seems to make a special effort to hold the report at arm's length by saying "it is said that" or "those present claimed" or somesuch. But he makes no such effort on matters of augery or portents, for example impugning Crassus' judgement for repeatedly ignoring bad omens attending upon his foray into Parthia (like tripping over his son on the way out of a temple, etc). The sceptical thought in this passage is sophisticated, but apparently pretty limited in the role it played for Plutarch.
Anyhow, I thought it was an interesting window on ancient thought about reporting miracle claims.
Plutarch is describing how Rome is overjoyed that some women, including Coriolanus's beloved mother, have persuaded him to stop his Volscians from attacking the city. In gratitude, funds are granted for a temple and statue to Female Fortune.
When the statue is erected, however, it's heard to speak!
The senate… caused the temple to be built and a statue set up in it… which the Romans say uttered, as it was putting up, words to this effect, “Blessed of the gods, O women, is your gift.�
These words, they profess, were repeated a second time, expecting our belief of what seems pretty nearly an impossibility. It may be possible enough that statues may seem to sweat, and to run with tears, and to stand with certain dewy drops of a sanguine colour; for timber and stone are frequently known to contract a kind of scurf and rottenness, productive of moisture; and various tints may form on the surfaces, both from within and from the action of the air outside; and by these signs it is not absurd to imagine that the deity may forewarn us. It may happen, also, that images and statues may sometimes make a noise not unlike that of a moan or a groan, through a rupture or violent internal separation of the parts; but that an articulate voice, and such express words, and language so clear and exact and elaborate, should proceed from inanimate things is, in my judgment, a thing utterly out of possibility. For it was never known that either the soul of man, or the deity himself, uttered vocal sounds and language, without an organised body and members fitted for speech. But where history seems in a manner to force our assent by the concurrence of numerous and credible witnesses, we are to conclude that an impression distinct from sensation affects the imaginative part of our nature, and then carries away the judgment, so as to believe it to be a sensation; just as in sleep we fancy we see and hear, without really doing either.
Persons, however, whose strong feelings of reverence to the deity, and tenderness for religion, will not allow them to deny or invalidate anything of this kind, have certainly a strong argument for their faith, in the wonderful and transcendent character of the divine power; which admits no manner of comparison with ours, either in its nature or its action, the modes or the strength of its operations. It is no contradiction to reason that it should do things that we cannot do, and effect what for us is impracticable: differing from us in all respects, in its acts yet more than in other points we may well believe it to be unlike us and remote from us. Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.
What strikes me as so interesting about this passage is how fully familiar Plutarch's moves are. Essentially nothing in contemporary debates about miracles is left out, from his own appeal to the inherent intelligibility and greater reasonableness of naturalistic explanation, to his awareness of how powerful biases can lead people to interpret ambiguous sensations as if they were clearly significant, to his gloss on the countervailing argument of the miracle-claimers, that the definitional greatness of god(s) rules out any confident assessment of how they might choose and be able to act in the world. It's really a very elegant presentation of arguments that have not much changed, in many respects.
The dialectic is a bit unusual, though: his initial statement of scepticism is so strong, while his rediscovered piety by the end of the passage suggests ambivalence. I get the feeling that the former is genuine, while the latter is more of a sop.
On the other hand, this hardly indicates some general scepticism of supernatural doings on Plutarch's part. Whenever he's reporting extravagantly miraculous events, he seems to make a special effort to hold the report at arm's length by saying "it is said that" or "those present claimed" or somesuch. But he makes no such effort on matters of augery or portents, for example impugning Crassus' judgement for repeatedly ignoring bad omens attending upon his foray into Parthia (like tripping over his son on the way out of a temple, etc). The sceptical thought in this passage is sophisticated, but apparently pretty limited in the role it played for Plutarch.
Anyhow, I thought it was an interesting window on ancient thought about reporting miracle claims.