(fl c50–c120 ce). Greek philosopher and writer. A descendant of an old and respected family in Boeotia, he was one of the most important Greek authors of his time. He wrote more than 200 separate works, of which some 50 biographies, 78 other works comprising the so-called Moralia, and a few extant fragments reflect his interests in biography, rhetoric, logic, philosophy and antiquities. He studied with Ammonius and later travelled widely, visiting Athens, Egypt and Rome. For the last three decades of his life he was a priest at Delphi and participated in the revival of the shrine under the emperors Hadrian and Trajan, the latter granting him consular privileges (according to the Suda).
The dialogue On Music (Peri mousikēs) was included among the Moralia by tradition, but current scholarship regards it as almost certainly not the work of Plutarch. Nevertheless, it contains a wealth of information on ancient Greek musical life, including important historical material pertaining to Pythagorean music theory, the ‘invention’ of various musical forms and the development of early musical scales. Some of this material is attributed to works (now lost) by Alexander of Aetolia, Aristoxenus, Glaucus of Rhegium and Heraclides Ponticus. The dialogue, set in the form of a Symposium on the second day of the Saturnalia, is in a sense the earliest ‘history’ of Greek music. The two primary speakers in the dialogue, Lysias and Soterichus (the precentor, Onesicrates, appears mainly at the beginning and the end), represent respectively the practical and theoretical viewpoints of music and its development. After describing various musico-poetic forms (see Greece, §I, 4) and attributing them to early ‘inventors’ (including Amphion, Archilochus, Linus, Marsyas, Olympus the Mysian, Orpheus, Phrynis of Mytilene, Pindar, Polymnestus of Colophon, Sacadas of Argos, Stesichorus, Terpander and many others; see individual entries and see also Nomos), Lysias explains the construction of the enharmonic genus, its relationship to the other genera, and a special spondeion scale (see Greece, §I, 6(iii)(e)), the precise structure of which remains obscure. As the second speaker, Soterichus begins by observing that the gods themselves, especially Apollo, must be given credit for the invention of music. He then expands on Lysias’s practical presentation, correcting and augmenting his descriptions of the musico-poetic forms and the spondeion scale. He subsequently turns his attention to the realm of Pythagorean mathematics and music, especially as preserved in Plato’s Timaeus (35b–36b), Aristotle’s Physics (iii.4, 203a4–16) and Metaphysics (i.5, 985b23–987a28), Euclid’s Elements (vii), Nicomachus’s Introduction to Arithmetic (i.7–10) and Theon of Smyrna’s On Mathematics Useful for the Understanding of Plato. This material leads Soterichus to conclude that music should be elevating, instructive and useful; as such, it should form an essential part of Paideia. Modern musical innovations, including some of those already mentioned by Lysias, have in his view led music to its present low estate, aptly represented by the famous fragment from the Cheiron of Pherecrates. In order to restore music to its proper place, the ancient style must be copied and the proper use of music must be determined by philosophy. This observation leads Soterichus to review the principles of harmonics and rhythmics, the knowledge of which is insufficient alone for the creation or judgment of musical art. After Soterichus draws his speech to a close with a quotation from the Hymn to Apollo (Iliad, i.472–4), the precentor Onesicrates provides the philosophical capstone of the dialogue: as Pythagoras, Plato and Archytas have revealed, music is of value because the revolution of the universe is based on music (mousikē) and god has arranged everything to accord with harmonia (kath’ harmonian).
In addition to the pseudepigraphous dialogue On Music, a number of authentic treatises within the Moralia contain important information on Pythagorean mathematics and music (On the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus; see Aristides Quintilianus), the ethical effect and value of music in society (Table-Talk), and the history of musical instruments (Ancient Customs of the Spartans; Life of Crassus; On Progress in Virtue; On the Control of Anger). Both the Lives and the Moralia of Plutarch were popular in the Byzantine empire, and the organization and preservation of his writings, including the pseudepigrapha, was largely due to the Byzantine scholar Maximus Planudes. On Music is preserved alone in the late 12th-century I-Vnm gr.app.cl.VI/10 (RISM, B/XI, 273), one of the most important codices containing texts on ancient Greek music. Two codices of the late 13th or very early 14th century preserve the complete texts of the Lives and the Moralia: F-Pn gr.1671 and 1672 (RISM, B/XI, 66–7). Three others of the same general age preserve the whole of the Moralia: I-Ma gr.859 (C 126 inf.; RISM, B/XI, 186), presumed to have been copied for Planudes; Rvat gr.139 (RISM, B/XI, 207); and Fl gr.80.5 (RISM, B/XI, 165), copied from the Vatican codex. The first published translation of the dialogue On Music, by Carlo Valgulio (based on Rvat gr.186: RISM, B/XI, 210), appeared in 1507, and the treatise had a considerable impact on musical humanism in the Renaissance and on later writers.
C. Valgulio: Prooemium in musicam Plutarchi ad Titum Pyrrhinum (Brescia, 1507), ff.a2r–b2v [trans. on ff.b3r–d5v]; corrected text in Plutarchi Caeronei, philosophi, historicique clarissimi opuscula (quae quidem extant) omnia (Basle, 1530), ff.25v–32v and 244v–247v
G. Xylander, trans.: ‘De musica’, Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia … omnes de graeca in latinam linguam transcripti (Paris, 1570), 564–75
P.J. Burette, ed. and trans.: Dialogue de Plutarque sur la musique (Paris, 1735/R); also pubd in Mémoires de littérature tirés des registres de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, x (1736), 111–310 [commentaries, ibid., xiii (1740), 173–316; xv (1743), 293–394; xvii (1751), 31–60]
J.H. Bromby, trans.: The Peri mousikēs of Plutarch (Chiswick, 1822)
R. Volkmann, ed.: Plutarchi De musica (Leipzig, 1856)
R. Westphal, ed. and trans.: Plutarch über die Musik (Breslau, 1866)
J. Philips, trans.: ‘Concerning Music’, Plutarch’s Morals Translated from the Greek by Several Hands, ed. W.W. Goodwin (Boston, 1870), i, 102–35
H. Weil and T. Reinach, eds. and trans.: Plutarque: De la musique, Peri mousikēs (Paris, 1900)
G. Skjerne, ed. and trans.: Plutarks Dialog om Musiken (Copenhagen, 1909)
F. Lasserre, ed. and trans.: Plutarque: De la musique (Olten, 1954)
K. Ziegler, ed.: Plutarchi Moralia, vi/3 (Leipzig, 1966)
B. Einarson and P.H. De Lacy, eds. and trans.: ‘On Music’, Plutarch’s Moralia, xiv (London and Cambridge, MA, 1967), 343–455
L. Gamberini, trans.: Plutarco ‘Della musica’ (Florence, 1979)
L. Laloy: ‘Quels sont les accords cités dans le ch. xix du Peri mousikēs?’, Revue de philologie, xxii (1899), 132–40
L. Laloy: ‘Anciennes gammes enharmoniques’, Revue de philologie, xxiii (1899), 238–48; xxiv (1900), 31–43
R.P. Winnington-Ingram: ‘The Spondeion Scale’, Classical Quarterly, xxii (1928), 83–91
K. Ziegler: ‘Plutarchea, I: Zu De musica’, Studi in onore di Luigi Castiglioni (Florence, 1960), 1107–35
E.K. Borthwick: ‘Notes on the Plutarch De Musica and the Cheiron of Pherecrates’, Hermes, xcvi (1968), 60–73
J.P.H.M. Smits: Plutarchus en de grieske muziek: de mentaliteit van de intellectueel in de tweede eeuw na Christus (Bilthoven, 1970)
J. Dillon: The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (Ithaca, NY, 1977)
E. Werner: ‘Pseudo-Plutarch’s Views on the Theory of Rhythm’, Orbis musicae, vii (1979–80), 27–36
T.J. Mathiesen: Ancient Greek Music Theory: a Catalogue Raisonné of Manuscripts, RISM, B/XI (1988)
C.V. Palisca: The Florentine Camerata: Documentary Studies and Translations (New Haven, CT, 1989) [incl. trans. of C. Valgulio’s Proem to On Music]
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 355–66
THOMAS J. MATHIESEN