«Symposion» and «Philanthropia» in Plutarch - Bad Request ...

Eran Almagorevents as the ‘true’ one 47 .This cruelty exhibited by the king is not at all what we would expectfrom the foregoing narrative. Earlier on (Art. 4.4), he is described as one whoappears φιλάνθρωπος and mild. Specifically, it is stated that the king seems noless generous and kind as a recipient of favours than when he bestows favoursupon others 48 . But here, Artaxerxes emerges as ungrateful to Mithridates, theman who struck down Cyrus and effectively handed him power. Seemingly,by his action the monarch demonstrates that the former description wasfalse 49 . Up to this point in the story, the king had never tortured or sentencedanyone to death. He released Cyrus even though his brother was suspected ofhaving attempted assassination (Art. 3.5-6); he ignored Tiribazus’ insolencewith respect to the royal robe and its mutinous overtones, in a way that couldhave only been interpreted as weakness on the king’s part (Art. 5.4); towardsEuclides, who admonished him publicly, he was temperate (Art. 5.2); he wasrelatively lenient with defectors during the war (Art. 14.3-4); even the Carianwho, like Mithridates, claimed the glory for Cyrus’ death, was not punishedby Artaxerxes himself, but was handed over to Parysatis, the queen mother(Art. 14.9-10). The punishment meted out to Mithridates constitutes thereforea turning point in the revelation of the king’s character. We begin to doubtwhether the former Greek traits describing the barbarian monarch wereaccurate, especially regarding the application of the essentially Hellenic qualityof φιλανθρωπία 50 . Artaxerxes is now seen as a brutal, despotic oriental ruler,whose real personality is exposed by his resort to torture.The narratological significance of the symposium is thus immediately seen.It has already been shown that wine proverbially reveals truth, but Plutarchappears to play with the idea of in uino ueritas. Here it is not merely Mithridates’own truth that his drinking reveals, but also Artaxerxes’ truth. It is the wineimbibed by Mithridates that reveals the true nature of the king, the truth ofwhat the king is 51 .Yet this is only one way of seeing the importance of the Greek banquetin the Life and the role it plays in the characterization of the hero. Anotherview is possible: our symposium may not, after all, lead the way to the truth,47According to B. Lincoln, 2007, pp. 87-94, the punishment of Mithridates was in fact aZoroastrian “judicial ordeal”, involving a careful examination of its outcome and the applicationof pressure in order to disclose the inner moral nature of the accused. If Mithridates was guilty,he would have to be destroyed in the process, and his physical decay would demonstrate hismoral corruption.48ἐν ἀρχῇ δὲ καὶ πάνυ ζηλοῦν ἔδοξε τὴν Ἀρτοξέρξου τοῦ ὁμωνύμου πραότητα ... ἐν τῷδέχεσθαι χάριτας οὐχ ἧττον τοῖς διδοῦσιν ἢ τοῖς λαμβάνουσιν ἐν [δὲ] τῷ διδόναι φαινόμενοςεὔχαρις καὶ φιλάνθρωπος. Cf. Reg. et imp. apophth. 172b.49This may also be seen in the use of the word ἄνθρωπος (Art. 16.7) at the end of the tortureportrayal to mark the gap between the previously attributed trait and reality.50Cf. Phil. 8.1; Flam. 5.7; Lys. 27.7; Pyrrh. 1.4. See H. M. Martin Jr., 1961, pp. 166-8, 174;Cf. R. Hirzel, 1912, p. 25; J. De Romilly, 1979, pp. 279, 303-4; A. G. Nikolaidis, 1986, pp.239-40.51This notion is an expansion of the idea that wine discloses the true character of thedrinker, on which see T. Duff, 1999, pp. 15 n. 6, 32 n. 56.138