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Life of Philopoemen
“... Philopœmen ne montra nulle faiblesse, nulle condescendance : il se mit à parcourir les villes, prenant les jeunes gens un à un, éveillant en eux l’amour de l’honneur, usant de rigueur quand il le fallait ; et souvent il leur faisait faire des exercices, des parades, des petites guerres dans les endroits où il devait se trouver le plus de spectateurs. En peu de temps ils eurent acquis une vigueur et une ardeur étonnantes. Il les rendit si agiles, si prompts à exécuter les manœuvres, il les accoutuma si bien à faire conversion à droite ou à gauche par escadrons, demi-tour ou volte-face homme par homme, qu’à voir la facilité avec laquelle la troupe entière exécutait les évolutions, on eût dit un seul corps opérant un mouvement spontané...”
40 pages, Unknown Binding
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About the author
Plutarch
4,291 books934 followersPlutarch (later named, upon becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus; AD 46–AD 120) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He is classified as a Middle Platonist. Plutarch's surviving works were written in Greek, but intended for both Greek and Roman readers.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 1, 2018
A Forgettable Greek
1 July 2018 – Casino
Here I am, sitting at a railway station out in the Australian bush waiting for my bus to arrive to take me to my next destination. Okay, in these parts of the world it might not be the best thing to do to whip out your laptop and start using it, particularly since in this part of the world they still have pay phones and video rental shops. Yes, this is the old world. Interestingly the town is named Casino (and I walked around it in little more than 45 minutes) and people do come here looking for a Casino. Mind you, most of the locals simply point them to a pub with pokies and the visitors end up leaving in disgust. Maybe, some time in the past, they did attempt to turn this place into Australia’s version of Las Vegas, though a part of me feels that maybe the locals wouldn’t want the influx of tourists that such a venture would create (needless to say that it is somewhat off the beaten track as well).
Anyway, I probably should be talking about Philopoemen, but in reality what is there to actually say. Honestly, not much. In fact, if it wasn’t for Plutarch writing about him he probably would have been forgotten anyway. Mind you, I suspect that most readers simply rush through this biography to look for something much more juicer, such as Julius Caeser and Brutus.
Yet Plutarch seemed to be interested in him enough to actually write a biography on him, not that it is a particularly long biography. I would say that he was basically living in the twilight of the Grecian age, at a time where Rome was pretty much exerting its influence across the Mediterranean. What he did do was that he managed to unite the Greeks under the Achaean League, not that it actually did him all that much good considering pretty shortly after Rome swept through this area with full force. Okay, it probably took a couple of hundred years for this to happen, but we must remember that it was around the time of Pompey that Rome had captured Anatolia and then marched onto Jerusalem. Actually, come to think of it, no wonder there was a lot of animosity from the Jews towards the Romans during the time of Jesus since Pompey’s desecration of the temple pretty much happened within living memory for some of the older citizens of the land (well, probably not quite, but it would have been at least a generation removed).
So, what is there to really say about Philopoemen? To be honest with you, not much. He was a Greek, he was a general, and he won a bunch of battles. Okay, Plutarch does note that he also saw himself as a public servant, in the most honourable way imaginable (not like the way public servants are viewed today, but then that has a lot to do with the right wing demagogues who are doing whatever they can to dismantle the government machinery). In a way, as a general one is also a public servant, and there is also this idea of leading by example. The better generals were the ones who actually fought in the midst of battle as opposed to observing from the top of a hill. Then again, there is the problem that as a general you are a pretty big target, and once you are taken down, well, you are going to find it difficult to be replaced.
As for the Greeks, well, I’d hardly look at them as being in their twilight here. The thing is that the Greek culture existed for over a thousand years after this, and even then it still existed during the Ottoman domination of the region. Greece, being a mountainous country, meant that Ottoman rule really didn’t penetrate into the interior. Even before that, while the region was ruled from Byzantium, and the citizens considered them to be Roman, the fact that the lingua-franca was Greek suggests that this region was still, in heart and mind, very much Greek.
1 July 2018 – Casino
Here I am, sitting at a railway station out in the Australian bush waiting for my bus to arrive to take me to my next destination. Okay, in these parts of the world it might not be the best thing to do to whip out your laptop and start using it, particularly since in this part of the world they still have pay phones and video rental shops. Yes, this is the old world. Interestingly the town is named Casino (and I walked around it in little more than 45 minutes) and people do come here looking for a Casino. Mind you, most of the locals simply point them to a pub with pokies and the visitors end up leaving in disgust. Maybe, some time in the past, they did attempt to turn this place into Australia’s version of Las Vegas, though a part of me feels that maybe the locals wouldn’t want the influx of tourists that such a venture would create (needless to say that it is somewhat off the beaten track as well).
Anyway, I probably should be talking about Philopoemen, but in reality what is there to actually say. Honestly, not much. In fact, if it wasn’t for Plutarch writing about him he probably would have been forgotten anyway. Mind you, I suspect that most readers simply rush through this biography to look for something much more juicer, such as Julius Caeser and Brutus.
Yet Plutarch seemed to be interested in him enough to actually write a biography on him, not that it is a particularly long biography. I would say that he was basically living in the twilight of the Grecian age, at a time where Rome was pretty much exerting its influence across the Mediterranean. What he did do was that he managed to unite the Greeks under the Achaean League, not that it actually did him all that much good considering pretty shortly after Rome swept through this area with full force. Okay, it probably took a couple of hundred years for this to happen, but we must remember that it was around the time of Pompey that Rome had captured Anatolia and then marched onto Jerusalem. Actually, come to think of it, no wonder there was a lot of animosity from the Jews towards the Romans during the time of Jesus since Pompey’s desecration of the temple pretty much happened within living memory for some of the older citizens of the land (well, probably not quite, but it would have been at least a generation removed).
So, what is there to really say about Philopoemen? To be honest with you, not much. He was a Greek, he was a general, and he won a bunch of battles. Okay, Plutarch does note that he also saw himself as a public servant, in the most honourable way imaginable (not like the way public servants are viewed today, but then that has a lot to do with the right wing demagogues who are doing whatever they can to dismantle the government machinery). In a way, as a general one is also a public servant, and there is also this idea of leading by example. The better generals were the ones who actually fought in the midst of battle as opposed to observing from the top of a hill. Then again, there is the problem that as a general you are a pretty big target, and once you are taken down, well, you are going to find it difficult to be replaced.
As for the Greeks, well, I’d hardly look at them as being in their twilight here. The thing is that the Greek culture existed for over a thousand years after this, and even then it still existed during the Ottoman domination of the region. Greece, being a mountainous country, meant that Ottoman rule really didn’t penetrate into the interior. Even before that, while the region was ruled from Byzantium, and the citizens considered them to be Roman, the fact that the lingua-franca was Greek suggests that this region was still, in heart and mind, very much Greek.
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