Does anyone know the following quotation from Plutarch attributed to Philip II of Macedon?
"It is not only the most warlike peoples, the Boeotians, Spartans, and Cretans, who are the most susceptible to this kind of love but also the greatest heroes of old: Meleager, Achilles, Aristomenes, Cimon, and Epaminondas."
I have found several references on the internet, but none with a proper citation to say which work it comes from, though I’m guessing it is somewhere in the Moralia.
I'd be grateful to anyone who can tell me where it comes from.
A search of the texts at LacusCurtius (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/home.html ) turns up nothing.
Thanks for the feedback, Tamara. I know the site, so you've spared me the trouble of searching there.
And fortunately, in the meantime a contact I have at the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, Macedonia, Vojislav Sarakinski, has been good enough to identify the source in Plutarch's Moralia. Plutarch, Amatorius 17. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plut.+Amatorius+17&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0314.
On a quick review, the quote does not appear to be attributable to Philip II as claimed.
The quotation is, indeed, contained in Plutarch's Moralia (The Dialogue on Love, 761D), and the Loeb editors (Minar, Sandbach, and Helmbold [Moralia, Vol. 9, p. 381]) cross-reference the passage to Plutarch's Life of Pelopidas, as well as Life of Cimon. It may well be that your murky attribution to Philip II may emerge in one or the other of those two Lives by Plutarch...
Thanks for your advice, John. It's been very helpful. I have a translation of the Amatorius dialogue in a paperback selection put out by OUP under their World Classics series. In this, the dialogue is titled "Eroticus". Until now, I had not had the chance of checking the Loeb edition, but have just done a quick check of the cross-references today thanks to the help of the page citation you provided, and the aid of Google books which enabled me to see the relevant footnotes.
Following up on this I'd have to agree that the attributions to Philip that I have seen are murky at best, and probably quite dubious. The sole link would appear to be through the Life of Pelopidas, which includes a description of Philip's reaction to the sight of the dead members of the Sacred Band after the battle of Chaeroneia (18.5).
My guess is that someone has taken the similarities in the sentiments of the two passages as justification for seeing both passages as coming from Philip, or at least an account of Philip's life.
I'm currently looking at the assassination of Philip, and I was looking to see if the above passage provided any possible corroboration to Diodorus' claim that Philip was killed by his jilted male lover. The above helps me put the issue in a much clearer context.
I note from your own page that you have done a lot of work on ancient medicine, and on Galen's writings in particular. It's a fascinating area, and one I'd like to learn more about when I can find the time.
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