History and Plutarch 'De Garrulitate'

Abstract

This article examines an anecdote about the loquacity of an imaginary friend of Socrates which Plutarch tells to illustrate the vice of talkativeness at De garrulitate 21. It argues that the anecdote derives more meaning when read against Thucydides Book 8, as Plutarch invites the reader to do. Read thus, the talkative man’s ramblings take on a complexity and menace which they would not otherwise possess. Thus, the article demon­strates the validity of recent models in thinking about historiographical inter­textuality in Plutarch.