- Title Pages
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Friends or Patrons?
- 2 Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i> and Their Roman Readers
- 3 Revisiting Plutarch’s Lives of the Caesars
- 4 Plutarch
- 5 Plutarch and Apollo of Delphi
- 6 Drinking, <i>Table Talk</i>, and Plutarch’s Contemporaries
- 7 Leading the Party, Leading the City
- 8 Before Pen Touched Paper
- 9 Plutarch’s Latin Reading
- 10 Plutarchan Prosopography
- 11 Plutarch and Trajanic Ideology
- 12 The Justice of Trajan in Pliny <i>Epistles</i> 10 and Plutarch
- 13 Plutarch’s Alexandrias
- 14 The Philosopher’s Ambition
- 15 Plutarch’s Lives
- 16 The Rhetoric of Virtue in Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i>
- 17 Paidagôgia pros to theion
- 18 Paradoxical Paradigms
- 19 Competition and its Costs
- 20 Parallels in Three Dimensions
- 21 Cato the Younger in the English Enlightenment
- 22 Alexander Hamilton’s Notes on Plutarch in His Paybook
- 23 Should we Imitate Plutarch’s Heroes?
- Bibliography
- Index of Plutarchan Passages
- Index of non-Plutarchan Passages
- Index of Names
- Index of Topics
Plutarch and Apollo of Delphi
Plutarch and Apollo of Delphi
- Chapter:
- (p.82) 5 Plutarch and Apollo of Delphi
- Source:
- Plutarch and his Roman Readers
- Author(s):
Philip A. Stadter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter reviews Plutarch’s presentation of Roman dealings with the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. After a brief description of the procedure for oracular consultation over which Plutarch would have presided, it turns to the reports of Delphic oracles in the Greek lives, with the caveat that this chapter discusses not what actually happened, but Plutarch’s treatment. In these Greek Lives, Plutarch finds Apollo’s oracle admired for its wisdom and respected for its assistance in time of crisis, but ignored when it warned of danger, and cynically exploited by politicians. In the Roman Lives, the Delphic sanctuary is used by Flamininus and Aemilius Paullus as a place to advertise themselves,, and by Sulla as a ready source of wealth to pay his soldiers. Plutarch brings out the ambiguity of Apollo’s relation to Sulla: did he disapprove or favour him? Remarkably, Plutarch does not speak of contemporary Romans consulting the god, although some Romans may have requested a consultation that failed.
Keywords: Plutarch, Delphi, Rome, Flamininus, Aemilius Paullus, Sulla, Apollo, oracle
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
- Title Pages
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Friends or Patrons?
- 2 Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i> and Their Roman Readers
- 3 Revisiting Plutarch’s Lives of the Caesars
- 4 Plutarch
- 5 Plutarch and Apollo of Delphi
- 6 Drinking, <i>Table Talk</i>, and Plutarch’s Contemporaries
- 7 Leading the Party, Leading the City
- 8 Before Pen Touched Paper
- 9 Plutarch’s Latin Reading
- 10 Plutarchan Prosopography
- 11 Plutarch and Trajanic Ideology
- 12 The Justice of Trajan in Pliny <i>Epistles</i> 10 and Plutarch
- 13 Plutarch’s Alexandrias
- 14 The Philosopher’s Ambition
- 15 Plutarch’s Lives
- 16 The Rhetoric of Virtue in Plutarch’s <i>Lives</i>
- 17 Paidagôgia pros to theion
- 18 Paradoxical Paradigms
- 19 Competition and its Costs
- 20 Parallels in Three Dimensions
- 21 Cato the Younger in the English Enlightenment
- 22 Alexander Hamilton’s Notes on Plutarch in His Paybook
- 23 Should we Imitate Plutarch’s Heroes?
- Bibliography
- Index of Plutarchan Passages
- Index of non-Plutarchan Passages
- Index of Names
- Index of Topics
