Orator-politician vs. philosopher: Plutarch’s Demosthenes 1–3 and Plato’s Theaetetus

Abstract

The present article argues for both a lexical and a larger conceptual connection between the prologue to Plutarch's Demosthenes–Cicero book (Dem. 1–3) and the so-called digression on the lives of the orator-politicians and the philosophers in Plato's Theaetetus (172c–177c). It first proposes a connection between the two passages through the appearance of forms of the word ἀπομαραίνεσθαι, a verb which takes arts in general as its subject in Plutarch and rhetoric in particular in Plato. It then shows that Plato's views of rhetorical-political and philosophical lives as articulated in the Theaetetus digression have influenced Plutarch's prologue, especially in regard to the way that Plutarch describes the persistence of virtue and presents himself as both a philosopher and a politician. Finally, it concludes with the suggestion that Plutarch sets out in the prologue, through his self-presentation, the standards by which Demosthenes and Cicero are characterized and judged in the rest of the book.