Plut. Mor., Symposiacs 5.1.1 — Symposiacs

Plut. Mor., Symposiacs 5.1.1 — Symposiacs, Plutarch; served verbatim

Question I. WHY TAKE WE DELIGHT IN HEARING THOSE THAT REPRESENT THE PASSIONS OF MEN ANGRY OR SORROWFUL, AND YET CANNOT WITHOUT CONCERN BEHOLD THOSE WHO ARE REALLY SO AFFECTED? PLUTARCH, BOETHUS. OF this we discoursed in your company at Athens, when Strato the comedian (for he was a man of great credit) flourished. For being entertained at supper by Boethus the Epicurean, with a great many more of the sect, as it usually happens when learned and inquisitive men meet together, the remembrance of the comedy led us to this enquiry,—Why we are disturbed at the real voices of men, either angry, pensive, or afraid, and yet are delighted to hear others represent them, and imitate their gestures, speeches, and exclamations. Every one in the company gave almost the same reason. For they said, he that only represents excels him that really feels, inasmuch as he doth not suffer the misfortunes; which we knowing are pleased and delighted on that account.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

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Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Boethus — a candidate entry Epicurean — a candidate entry Strato — a candidate entry

Symposiacs, Plutarch — translated by Thomas Creech (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)