I'm going Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Lever Hume Trust, online at

W.W.

History of Philosophy. net. Today's episode, Delphic Utterances Plutarch. This episode is brought to you by the letter E. We'll be discussing topics

like evil, eternity, eclecticism, and ethics. But I'd like to begin with the letter E itself, or rather the Greek letter

epsilon. It would seem that at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, the ancient Greeks had placed not only statues and inscriptions, such as the famous Know Thyself and also Nothing in excess.

They also had models of the letter Epspsilon named a in Greek fashioned out of materials like

wood and bronze which they left to honor Apollo. Why you might ask would they do such a thing?

By the age of the early Roman Empire, the answer to this question was lost in the midst of time,

and the Greeks themselves could only speculate about the origins of the practice.

Among the inquiring minds was a man who had more reason than most to speculate.

He was a priest at Delphi and his name was Plutarch.

Plutarch hailed from Chironaya, not far from Delphi and Boiotia, a region in mainland

Greece.

He was born in 45 AD and died in 125. In that time he traveled widely in Greece and beyond,

winning friends among the aristocracy of the Roman Empire and even, apparently, being granted Roman citizenship.

But he retained a deep attachment to his home, where he was a man of considerable standing.

He could trace his family to the archaic heroes of Boiotia. Plutarch was more than an aristocratic priest,

though. He was also the author of a huge body of writing. A mere list of the titles

smags for interesting reading and survives as a document called the Lampius catalog.

The catalog lists many works that are, like the motive for devoting the letter E to Apollo, lost to posterity.

Still, plenty of Plutarch's output survives.

He remains one of the most valuable ancient sources for Greek and Roman history. But for our purposes, his philosophical writings are the main attraction.

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