Character Change in Plutarch

THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL worthwhile treatments of Plutarch's conception of character change.' It is agreed that most of his heroes have fairly stable characters: Plutarch assumes a personality from the outset and maintains and/or develops it throughout the biography. In this sense of development characters change; but it is only rarely that Plutarch admits the possibility of a radical turnaround in a man's character, a complete departure from his earlier characteristics. It has been noted that this staticism is firmly located within Greek literary traditions. In the following pages I want to consider more closely mechanisms of character change in Plutarch's thinking, and why it is that he envisaged one or two exceptional cases of real change in the subjects of his biographies. What in Plutarch's eyes makes an individual? What does he mean when he talks of joqo?2 To start with there are inherited characteristics passed on in families (cf. De sera num. vind. 559d, U4vajiv twa ial icowmv av t Cato Minor 1 indicates the ancestry of Cato's virtue. But environment is more important than heredity. Plutarch tells us that it is difficult to decide whether those who suffer from inherited faults will also turn out bad, because "the involvement of human nature [hi 8' Avepd~mov qptoy] in our habits, attitudes, and regulations often makes it hide its failings and imitate rz KiaXd, the result being that it either wipes out and escapes entirely from an inherited stain of vice, or else envelops itself in a cover of duplicity for a long time" (De sera num. vind. 562b). "Correct therapy" can restore the soul to its "proper state" (551d; for therapy cf. De vit. pud. 530e, De gen. Socr. 584e), "for tb pevraPliXXov of man has been labelled his 'pznoS and i0o0, since Ci'Oo [habit] sinks very deep, takes hold firmly, and wields the greatest power" (De sera num. vind. 551e). Character is determined by habituation. Plutarch has a good deal to say about this along Aristotelian lines in the essay De virtute morali. By nature