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Abstract
It has been noted by scholars that Plutarch’s Amatorius draws from two different genres, the dialogue and the drama, in acknowledgement of their significance for the Greek discourse on love. This chapter argues that there is a third important literary tradition that Plutarch recognizes as central to the development of conceptions of love and which plays a substantial role in the Amatorius: it is didactic hexameter poetry, and in particular Hesiod and Empedocles, with whom the dialogue establishes complex, intertextual relations.
Abstract
It has been noted by scholars that Plutarch’s Amatorius draws from two different genres, the dialogue and the drama, in acknowledgement of their significance for the Greek discourse on love. This chapter argues that there is a third important literary tradition that Plutarch recognizes as central to the development of conceptions of love and which plays a substantial role in the Amatorius: it is didactic hexameter poetry, and in particular Hesiod and Empedocles, with whom the dialogue establishes complex, intertextual relations.
This contribution examines Plutarch’s depiction of the kingfisher in De sollertia animalium 982e-983e and argues that it presents the bird as embodiment of three uxorial virtues: love for husband, love for offspring, and care for household. While Plutarch clearly draws from the abundant store of Greek kingfisher-lore, his account explicates the moralizing potential of the kingfisher-exemplum in a manner unparalleled in extant earlier tradition. In his composition of the passage, Plutarch might have been inspired by the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Halcyon with which the kingfisher-passage in De sollertia animalium shares numerous remarkable resemblances.