Whether fire or water is most useful (intro-4)

There seems to be no reason to discuss this little work in detail, since F. H. Sandbach[*] has shown conclusively that it cannot be genuine. Still more might be added to his proofs, sound and thorough as they are; but this is not the place to slay the slain. It is the more to be regretted that Ziegler, in the article on Plutarch in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, has not had access to Sandbach’s work,[*] though he does refer to Xylander’s athetesis, only to reject it, and might have mentioned Meziriacus’ as well.

Sandbach well observes: To write an exercise on the comparative utility of fire and water may seem so difficult to us moderns who do not have such tasks as part of our education, that we do not recognize how badly the topic is here handled ⋯ While it is possible that Plutarch wrote this work as a parody, or when a schoolboy, or under some strange circumstances, yet ⋯ the most probable view is that a miserable sophistical exercise on the subject Whether fire or water is more useful was fathered on the author of a diversion entitled Whether land- or water-animals are more intelligent, just as the Consolatio ad Apollonium

The text is extremely bad, as may be seen by examining Wegehaupt’s topheavy[*] apparatus in Χάριτεςfür Friedrich Leo (Berlin, Weidmann, 1911)? pp. 158-169- It is possible, to be sure, that part at least of the difficulty of the text is due to the author. Less emendation than that admitted here might not seriously damage what is irreparable nonsense in any case. Some attempt has been made to reproduce the childish style of the original.

The work is no. 206 in the catalogue of Lamprias.[*]

Water is best, but gold is a flaming fire,

And first of all came Chaos into being;

Is not that element the more useful of which most of all, everywhere, invariably, we stand in need as a household tool and, I swear, a friend, ready to help us at any time, in any emergency? Yet fire is

And why do I split hairs by discussing merely human nature? For though there are many, or rather countless, sorts of creatures, man is practically the only one that knows the use of fire, while all the others live and feed without it: they subsist, whether they range abroad or fly or crawl, upon roots or produce or flesh, all without fire; but without water no creature of the sea or land or air ever existed. For even flesh-eating animals, some of which Aristotle[*] says do not drink, nevertheless keep alive by using the fluids in the flesh. That element, therefore, without which no living nature can subsist or endure is the more useful.

Let us pass from the people who use fire to the things that we use, namely plants and produce,[*] of which some are completely devoid of heat, while others have an infinitesimal and uncertain amount. Moisture, however, is the element in nature that makes them all burgeon, growing and bearing fruit. And why should I enumerate honey and wine and oil and all the rest that come to us from the vintage, the milking of herds, or taking off of honey - and it is obvious where they belong[*] - when even wheat itself, though it is classed as a dry food, moves into the category of liquids by alteration, fermentation, and deliquescence?[*]