A short Plutarch dialogue in which Odysseus, at Circe's island, debates a man-turned-pig named Gryllus over whether animals possess reason and are morally superior to men.
"Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti" ("That Brute Beasts Make Use of Reason") is one of the shorter, stranger pieces in Plutarch's Moralia: a dialogue set on Circe's island after the events of the Odyssey. Odysseus, preparing to leave, asks Circe to restore to human shape any Greeks among the men she has transformed into animals. Circe agrees to let one of them, a man now living as a pig named Gryllus, decide for himself whether he wants to become human again -- and produces Gryllus to make his case in person.
What follows inverts the expected hierarchy. Gryllus refuses the offer and argues, point by point, that animals are not only rational but morally superior to human beings. He walks through the cardinal virtues -- courage, temperance, and practical intelligence -- and for each one argues that beasts practice it more purely and consistently than men do, because animals act from nature rather than from vanity, greed, or opinion. Wild animals fight to the death without surrender out of genuine spirit, he says, while human courage is really "a prudent cowardice" shaped by fear of law and shame. Animals mate and desire only what nature requires, untroubled by luxury, perfume, or the "empty opinion" that drives human excess and abuses like Agamemnon's pursuit of the boy Argynnus. And animals display self-taught skill in medicine, hunting, defense, and even teaching their young, as when partridges train their chicks to feign death.
The dialogue is playful and rhetorically extreme -- Plutarch is clearly enjoying the paradox as much as arguing it seriously -- but it sits inside his genuine philosophical interest (shared with several other Moralia essays) in animal psychology and the ethics of how humans treat other creatures. The text breaks off unfinished, with Gryllus turning Odysseus's own famous cunning against him, comparing him to Sisyphus. It matters as an early, sharp articulation of animal-rights-adjacent argument from within the classical tradition, using satire and myth rather than treatise.
“This man thinks that his ambition ought to become a misfortune not only for himself and his companions, but even for those who have nothing to do with him”
— Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti · read this chapter →
“your courage has been revealed to be a prudent cowardice, and your boldness a fear that has learned to avoid one thing by means of another”
— Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti · read this chapter →
“But now, freed from those empty opinions and purified of them, I disregard gold and silver, passing them by like any other stones”
— Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti · read this chapter →
“But take care, Gryllus, lest it be a fearful and violent thing to deny reason to those in whom no notion of god arises.”
— Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti · read this chapter →
“For I do not think the distance between one beast and another is as great as that between one man and another in intelligence, reasoning, and memory.”
— Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti · read this chapter →
It is a short Plutarch dialogue in which Odysseus, on Circe's island, meets Gryllus, a former shipmate turned into a pig, who refuses to be restored to human form and argues that animals reason and act more virtuously than men.
Gryllus is one of Odysseus's men whom Circe transformed into a pig. In the dialogue he is given the choice to become human again but declines, arguing at length that his life as a beast is morally and rationally superior to human life.
The dialogue is a rhetorical exercise rather than a formal treatise, but it reflects Plutarch's genuine interest in animal psychology found elsewhere in the Moralia; Gryllus's closing claim is that beasts are 'not without a share of reason and understanding.'
It breaks off unresolved: Odysseus warns that denying reason to animals risks impiety, and Gryllus retorts by comparing the supposedly wise Odysseus to Sisyphus.
Circe tells Odysseus that restoration is not automatic and offers Gryllus, as a spokesman for the transformed men, the chance to argue for himself whether he wants to return to human shape -- turning the myth into a philosophical debate rather than a simple rescue.
Moralia: Ad Principem Ineruditum · Moralia: Adversus Colotem · Moralia: Amatoriae Narrationes · Moralia: Amatorius · Moralia: An Recte Dictum Sit Latenter Esse Vivendum · Moralia: An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit · Moralia: An Virtus Doceri Possit · Moralia: An Vitiositas Ad Infelicitatem Sufficia · Moralia: Animine An Corporis Affectiones Sint Piores · Moralia: Apophthegmata Laconica · Moralia: Aquane An Ignis Sit Utilior · Moralia: Comparationis Aristophanes Et Menandri Compendium