Concerning the Face which Appears in the Orb Of the Moon (intro-4)

1. The authenticity of this dialogue has sometimes been questioned but without any plausible reason.[*] On the other hand, despite statements to the contrary, it is certainly mutilated at the beginning,[*] although one cannot tell whether much or little has been lost; this follows not merely from the abruptness of the opening as we have it, the lack of any kind of introduction, and the failure to identify the main speaker until two-thirds of the dialogue have been

2. In the dialogue as it stands the first speaker is Sulla. His chief function is to recount the myth which he mentions in the first extant words and which occupies the final fifth of the work; but he interrupts the dialogue proper at 929 E 930 A to ask whether a certain difficulty was treated in the discussion which Lucius is reporting. He is a Carthaginian (cf. 942 C), presumably the Sextius Sulla cited by Plutarch in his Romulus, chap. 15 (26 C), and the same as the Carthaginian Sulla who gave a dinner for Plutarch in Rome (Quaest. Conviv. 727 B). He is probably the Sulla who appears as the interlocutor of Fundanus in the Cohibenda Ira (note b, 453 A) but probably not the same as the Sulla of Quaest. Conviv. 636 A (ὁ ἑταῖρος) and 650 A (one of τῶν συνήθων).

The second speaker, at once the narrator of the whole conversation and the leader of the dialogue

Apollonides, the third speaker, is at once identified as expert in geometry (920 F), and Lamprias indicates that the scope and limitations of his specialty coincide with those of Hipparchus, the great astronomer (921 d, cf. 925 A). He puts forward objections to Lamprias’s explanation of the face based upon astronomical terminology and calculations (933 f, 935 d-e). An Apollonides appears at Quaest Conviv. 650 F along with Sulla; but he is called o( taktiko\s *)apollwni/dhs, and there is no compelling reason to identify the two.[*] Prickard may well be right in saying that the name Apollonides here was used by Plutarch to mean one of the clan of Apollonius, i.e. a mathematician who, like Apollonius,[*] is interested in astronomical theory.

Certainly Aristotle, who puts forward the orthodox Peripatetic theory of the heavenly bodies (928 E ff.), is only a name chosen by Plutarch to signify the school that he represents (cf. 920 F), even as the representative Epicurean in Sera Numinis Vindicta is called Epicurus.[*]

The Stoic position is represented by Pharnaces. This name was borne by the son of Mithridates, of whom Plutarch tells in the Lives of Pompey and Caesar, as well as by several notable Persians mentioned by Herodotus and Thucydides[*]; and Plutarch probably chose it for his Stoic because of its Asiatic sound.[*]

After the role of Lamprias the largest in the dialogue proper is that of Lucius, who is probably the same as Lucius, the pupil of Moderatus the Pythagorean, from Etruria, a guest at the dinner which Sulla gave for Plutarch in Rome (Quaest. Conviv viii. 7-8 [727 B ff., 728 D ff.]).[*] Early in the dialogue (921 F) Lamprias turns to Lucius for aid; he seems to think it appropriate that Lucius should set forth the strict demonstration of the Academic theory concerning

Theon, whom Lamprias asks to identify a quotation (923 F) and whom he later teases for admiring Aristarchus to the neglect of Crates (938 D), is recognized as the literary authority in the group (cf. 931 E, 940 A). He is probably to be identified with Θέων ὁ γραμμοτικός, who was a guest at Sulla’s dinner along with Lucius (Quaest. Conviv 728 F) and who also dined with Plutarch at the house of Mestrius Florus (Quaest. Conviv 626 E).[*] In the Facie his chief contribution is a speech (937 D 938 C) which he makes after the main part of the dialogue has been concluded and which Lamprias praises as a kind of relaxation after the seriousness of the scientific discussion.

The last of the persons present is Menelaus the mathematician. Lucius addresses him directly once (930 A), but Menelaus makes no reply and neither speaks nor is spoken to elsewhere in the dialogue as we have it,[*] He is not mentioned anywhere else by Plutarch either; but he is probably meant to be the Menelaus of Alexandria whom Ptolemy once calls

3. From 937 C - D it follows that the interlocutors have hitherto been promenading as they talked and that now they sit down upon the steps, seats, or benches (ἐπὶ τῶν βάθρων) and remain seated to the end. No other indication of the scene or location is given in the work as we have it. It had generally been assumed that the dialogue was meant to take place in Chaeronea[*]; but nothing in the text requires this, and F. H. Sandbach has adduced strong arguments for believing that the dramatic location is Rome or the vicinity of Rome.[*] The persons in the dialogue furnish one of these arguments. Apollonides, Aristotle, and Pharnaces occur nowhere else in Plutarch’s writings and are probably all fictitious

The other argument for the dramatic location is connected with the question of the dramatic date of the dialogue. At 931 d-e Lucius refers to a recent total solar eclipse, saying: if you will call to mind this conjunction recently which, beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from many parts of the sky ⋯[*] Ginzel[*] identified this eclipse with the one which occurred on 20 March a.d. 71, for he found that all other solar eclipses visible in Chaeronea during Plutarch’s lifetime fell too far short of totality to permit the appearance of

So much for the dramatic date. There is no reason

4. The structure of the De Facie is complicated. The whole of the work is narrated by Lamprias who speaks in the first person and quotes those who took part in the conversation, including himself, some few times in indirect discourse (e.g. 933 F) but for the most part directly. The last part of his narration (chaps. 26-30 [940 F 945 D] consists entirely of Sulla’s myth given in Sulla’s own words; this myth, Sulla himself says, is a story told to him by an unnamed stranger, whom he quotes first indirectly and then (942 D ff.) directly to the end. The second or eschatological part of the myth the stranger had told Sulla that he had himself heard from the chamberlains and servitors of Cronus (cf. 945 D). Hearing it from Lamprias now, the reader has this part at fourth hand and the geographical introduction of the stranger at third hand.[*]

From 937 C it appears that Sulla had promised to tell his myth in return for an account of what had been said in an earlier discussion about the nature of the face which appears in the moon. Such a compact may have been expressly made in the beginning of the dialogue which is lost, where Sulla may have come upon the company already engaged in reviewing that earlier discussion (see note a, p. 3). So much is no more than conjecture. It is certain, however,

The recapitulation of this fictitious discussion along with the incidental arguments provoked by it contains all that Plutarch would consider to be scientific in the dialogue. At its conclusion Lamprias is ready for Sulla’s myth (chap. 24 init. [937 C - D]); but before Sulla can begin to speak Theon raises the question of the habitability of the moon, contending that, if it is not habitable, there can be no reason for it to exist with the nature or composition that according to Lamprias and Lucius it does have.[*] Lamprias calls Theon’s speech a kind of relaxation after the seriousness of the preceding discussion. In fact, however, Theon has raised the metaphysical problem of the final cause; and to this Lamprias replies at length (chap. 25). He argues first that the moon, constituted as he contends it is, need not, even if uninhabitable, be without a purpose in the universe (938 C - F), and secondly that, even if uninhabitable by corporeal human beings, it may still be inhabited by living beings of an entirely different kind to whom the moon may justly appear to be the only real earth and our earth the slime and dregs of the universe, uninhabitable by creatures that have warmth and breath and motion. Here Sulla checks Lamprias (chap. 26 init. [940 F]) lest the latter encroach upon his myth; and Lamprias was upon the very threshold

5. The main part of the dialogue is of extraordinary interest for the history of astronomy, cosmology, geography, and catoptrics; and this aspect of the work deserves more attention than it has usually received.[*] It is not a technical scientific treatise and

This geographical introduction has aroused the wildest speculations. Kepler was convinced that the trans-Atlantic continent was America, and he tried to identify the islands mentioned in the myth[*]; W. Christ in 1898 still could assert that Plutarch’s continent is obviously America and proves that about A.D. 100 sailors reached the North American coast via Iceland, Greenland, and Baffinland[*]; and in 1909 G. Mair argued that the source of this knowledge of America was reports of Carthaginian seafarers who had penetrated into the Gulf of Mexico, that the Isle of Cronus is Scandinavia, and that the northern geography of the myth derives from accounts of the voyages of Pytheas of Massilia.[*] Even

The discussion of the second part of the myth, the demonology and eschatology, has also been concerned mainly with the problem of Plutarch’s sources. Heinze attempted to prove that this myth had been put together out of material drawn from Xenocrates and from Posidonius and that in the resulting combination the parts that belong to those two authors

Anyone who without a preconceived thesis to defend reads the De Facie will recognize, I believe, that Plato was Plutarch’s inspiration throughout the dialogue but that Plutarch is himself the true author of the whole work and that, while there is in it a distillation of his wide and varied scientific and philosophical reading, he cannot possibly have composed it by copying out any source or combination of sources. I have tried in the exegetical notes to indicate the parallels which will help the reader to understand the dialogue itself by seeing its relation

6. The Facie, which is No. 73 in the so-called Catalogue of Lamprias and No. 71 in the Planudean order, is apparently preserved in only two MSS. of the Bibliothéque Nationale, Grec 1672 (saec. XIV) and 1675 (saec. XV), conventionally called Parisinus E and Parisinus B respectively.[*] These have hitherto been supposed to be independent copies of a single archetype[*]; but recently G. R. Manton has put

I have collated both manuscripts from Photostats which were generously put at my disposal by Dr. William C. Helmbold; and I have recorded under the usual symbols the variant readings of each of them, for I soon discovered that not only is Bernardakis’ report of the mss. untrustworthy, but that the same must be said of Raingeard’s in his recent edition of the dialogue, and that even Treu’s collation (see note b, p. 26) is not free of errors. I have not recorded mere omissions or variations of accent or breathing, however, unless the sense is affected by them; and I have regularized crasis and elision without regard to the manuscripts or report of them,

Those emendations which, so far as I know, are original with me are indicated by the initials H. C. Besides the editions, translations, and articles already mentioned in this Introduction, the chief aids to my study of the text have been the following:

Adler, Maximilian: Diss. Phil. Vind. x (1910), pp. 87 ff. (cf. note b, p. 18).
Wiener Studien, xxxi (1909), pp. 305-309. Zwei Beiträge zum plutarchischen Dialog De Facie in Orbe Lunae, Jahresbericht des K. K. Staatsgymnasiums in Nikolsburg, 1909-1910 (Nikolsburg, 1910).
Wiener Studien, xlii (1920-1921), pp. 163-164.
Festschrift Moris Winternitz (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 298-302.

Apelt, Otto: Zu Plutarch und Plato, Jahresbericht Gymnasium Carolo-Alexandrinum zu Jena, 1904-1905 (Jena, 1905).
Kritische Bemerkungen, Jahresbericht ⋯Jena, 1905-1906 (Jena, 1906).

Chatzidakis, G. N.: Athena, xiii (1901), pp. 462-714.

Cobet, C. G.: Novae Lectiones (Leiden, 1858).
Variae Lectiones (Leiden, 1878).
Collectanea Critica (Leiden, 1878).

Emperius, A.: Emperii Opuscula Philologica et Historica . . . ed. F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1847), pp. 287-295.

Hartman, J. J.: Plutarcho Scriptore et Philosopho (Leiden, 1916), pp. 557-563.

Herwerden, H. van: Lectiones Rheno-Traiectinae (Traj. ad Rhen., 1882).
Mnemosyne, xxii (1894), pp. 330-337, and xxxvii (1909), pp. 202-223.

Kronenberg, A. J.: Mnemosyne, lii (1924), pp. 60-112, and Ser. III, x (1941), pp. 33-47.

Kunze, R.: Rhein. Mus. lxiv (1909), pp. 635-636.

Madvig, J. N.: Adversaria Critica, I (Hauniae, 1871), pp. 664-666.

Mras, K.: Zeitsckrift für die österreich. Gymnasien, lxv (1914), pp. 187-188.

Naber, S. A.: Mnemosyne, xxviii (1900), pp. 329-364.

Papabasileios, G. A.: Athena, x (1898), pp. 167-242.

Pohlenz, Max: Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, xxxii (1912), pp. 648-654.
Götting. Gelehrte Anzeig. clxxx (1918), pp. 321-343.

Sandbach, F. H.: Proc. of the Cambridge Philological Soc., 1943.

Harold Cherniss

Addendum Since this Bibliography was compiled in February 1953 some publications dealing with the De Facie have come to my attention which require a brief notice.

Konrat Ziegler in Plutarch über Gott und Vorsehung, Dämonen und Weissagung (Zürich, Artemis-Verlag, 1952) has written a brief summary of the essay (pp. 42-45) and has translated the myth (940 F 945 D into German (pp. 268-278) with the addition of a few explanatory notes. He makes one noteworthy alteration in the text at 941 A - B: adopting τὸν δὲ βριάρεων ἔχοντα φρονρόν, after which he puts a full stop, he removes the following words, τῶν τε νήσων ⋯παρακάτω κεῖσθαι (?), from their position in the MSS. and places them after κυκλῳ θάλαττα in 941 B three lines below.

The question of the MSS., which is touched upon in the Introduction § 6 supra, has been discussed, though without specific reference to the Facie, by R.

Flaceliére in his article entitled Plutarque et les Èclipses de la lune (Rev. tudes Anciennes, liii [1951], pp. 203-221) is primarily concerned with the interpretation of De Genio Socratis, 591 C, but in connection with this he discusses Facie, 933 D - E and 942 D - E and argues that in the former of these two passages Plutarch depends upon the calculations of Hipparchus (cf. my note in Class. Phil. xlvi [1951], p. 145 referred to in note e on 933 E s.v.).

G. Zuntz in Rhein. Mus. xcvi (1953), pp. 233-234 has proposed several emendations in the text of the essay:

940 E: He is right in assuming that Bernardakis’ ὑμεῖς is a misprint for ἡμεῖς of the MSS., but ὅσαπερ which he condemns and emends is, of course, correct; he apparently misunderstood the construction, ὅσαπερ ἡμεῖς (scil. χρώμεθα) ἄερι.

942 F: After τίς δ’ οὗτός ἐστιν; he would add [ἔφην· ὁ δ’·], thus producing the same effect as did Reiske’s punctuation. cf. on this sentence my note in Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 150-151.

943 D: He would write τὸ ἄλογον καὶ [τὸ] ραθητικόν on the strength of Def. Orac. 417 B (p. 75. 23 [Sieveking]). This would be possible but is unnecessary, since καὶ can here be taken as explicative.

944 C: He suggests Φερσεφόνης οὖδος ἀντιχθόνιος or Φερσεφόνης οὖδος ἀντίχθονος, apparently unaware of von Arnim’s far more probable emendation (see notes d and e on p. 221 s.v.). His further supplement, τὰ δὲ [πρὸς τὰ] ἐνταῦθα, is quite unnecessary.

944 E: To ἔρωτι τῆς περὶ τὸν ἥλιον εἰκόνος he would add [τoῦ ἑνὸς] or [τoῦ νοητoῦ] or [τἀγαθoῦ] on the ground that the phrase as it stands is unintelligible. The following words, δι’ ἧς ἐπιλάμπει κτλ., themselves explain what Plutarch means (see note g on 944 E s.v.), and there is no excuse for any supplement at all.

945 B: He rightly defends Kaltwasser’s alteration of Τυφὼν to Πύθων (see Introduction, p. 12, note b supra).

H. C.
November 1954

To my great regret I have been unable to take account of Professor M. Pohlenz’s edition of this essay in Plutarchi Moralia, vol. v, Fasc. 3 (Leipzig, Teubner, 1955), since it became available only after this volume had already been paged and corrected for printing.

H. C.
February 1956

⋯These were Sullas words.[*]For it concerns my story and that is its source; but I think that I should first like to learn whether there is any need to put back for a fresh start[*] to those opinions concerning the face of the moon which are current and on the lips of everyone.What else would you expect us to have done, I said,[*] since it was the difficulty in these opinions that drove us from our course upon those others? As people with chronic diseases when they have despaired of ordinary remedies and customary regimens turn to expiations and amulets and dreams, just so in obscure and perplexing speculations, when the ordinary and reputable and customary accounts are not persuasive, it is necessary to try those that are more out of the way and not scorn them but literally to chant over ourselves[*] the charms of the ancients and use every means to bring the truth to test.

Well, to begin with, you see that it is absurd to call the figure seen in the moon an affection of vision in its feebleness giving way to brilliance, a condition which we call [bedazzlement]. Anyone who asserts this[*] does not observe that this phenomenon should rather have occurred in relation to the sun, since the sun lights upon us keen and violent (as Empedocles[*] too somewhere not infelicitously renders the difference of the two:

The sun keen-shafted and the gentle moon,

Apollonides broke in and inquired what the opinion of Clearchus was. You are the last person, I said, who has any right not to know a theory of which geometry is, as it were, the very hearth and

Or swell of ocean surging opposite

Be mirrored in a looking-glass of flame.

Apollonides was delighted. What an original and absolutely novel contrivance the hypothesis is, he said, the work of a man of daring and culture; but how did you proceed to bring your counterargument against it? In the first place, I said, in that, although the outer ocean is a single thing, a confluent and continuous sea,[*] the dark spots in the moon do not appear as one but as having something like isthmuses between them, the brilliance dividing and delimiting the shadow. Hence, since each part is separated and has its own boundary, the layers of light upon shadow,[*] assuming the semblance of height and depth, have produced a very close likeness of eyes and lips. Therefore, one must assume the existence of several outer oceans separated by isthmuses and mainlands, which is absurd and false; or, if the ocean is single, it is not plausible that its reflected image be thus discontinuous. Tell me whether for in your presence it is safer to put this as a question than as an assertion whether it is possible, though the inhabited world has length and breadth, that every visual ray when reflected from the moon should in like manner reach the ocean, even the visual rays of those who are sailing in the great ocean itself, yes and who dwell in it as the Britons