A letter of consolation Plutarch writes to a grieving father, Apollonius, on the death of his son, assembling philosophical and poetic arguments against excessive mourning.
The Consolatio ad Apollonium is a prose letter of consolation, part of Plutarch's Moralia, addressed to a man named Apollonius whose son has died. Plutarch opens by acknowledging that pain at a child's death is natural and not something one can simply refuse to feel, but argues that grief carried past due measure is unnatural, the product of a false opinion about what has happened rather than a necessary response to it. The bulk of the letter is a dense anthology of consolatory arguments and quotations drawn from Homer, Euripides, Pindar, Simonides, Menander, Theophrastus, and the Socratic and Platonic traditions, interwoven with anecdotes about famous men who bore the deaths of sons and daughters with composure -- Xenophon on hearing of Gryllus's death in battle, Pericles losing two sons within eight days, Anaxagoras, Demosthenes, and King Antigonus among them.
Plutarch's arguments move through several registers: that fortune is inherently unstable and no one is owed permanent good luck; that life itself is a loan from the gods repayable on demand, so death is not theft but repayment; that death resembles sleep, a journey, or dissolution, and in none of these is it an evil; and that an early death may in fact spare a person from the greater evils of a long life. He tells the story of Cleobis and Biton, and reports Silenus's grim maxim to Midas that the best thing is never to be born, the second-best to die as quickly as possible -- while also noting Plato's arguments in the Gorgias and Phaedo for the soul's survival after death, offering the grieving father hope alongside argument.
The letter closes by urging Apollonius to set aside outward displays of mourning, care for his own body and household, and honor his son through a life well lived rather than through prolonged lamentation. Whether or not the work is genuinely by Plutarch (many scholars consider it possibly a later imitation), it has long circulated as one of the most quoted classical consolation pieces, valued as a compendium of ancient Greek arguments about death, grief, and how a reasonable person should meet loss.
“But to be carried beyond due measure and to increase one's mourning I say is contrary to nature, and arises from a base opinion within us.”
— Consolatio Ad Apollonium · read this chapter →
“Socrates used to say that death resembles either the deepest sleep, or a long and lasting journey abroad, or, thirdly, a kind of destruction and disappearance of both body and soul”
— Consolatio Ad Apollonium · read this chapter →
“We seem, then, to have forgotten that not only, as Euripides says, do "mortals possess no wealth as their own," but strictly speaking nothing of human affairs is truly ours.”
— Consolatio Ad Apollonium · read this chapter →
“I prayed to the gods not that my son be immortal or long-lived”
— Consolatio Ad Apollonium · read this chapter →
It is a letter of consolation Plutarch (or an author writing in his tradition) addresses to Apollonius, a man whose son has just died. It gathers philosophical arguments and poetic quotations meant to move Apollonius from excessive grief toward reasoned acceptance.
No. He explicitly says feeling pain at a son's death 'has its origin in nature, and is not within our control,' and criticizes those who praise total insensibility to loss. His target is grief carried past 'due measure,' which he says stems from a mistaken opinion rather than nature.
Following Socrates, he argues death resembles either the deepest sleep, a long journey abroad, or a complete dissolution of body and soul -- and in none of these cases, he argues, is death actually an evil.
Plutarch cites Xenophon receiving news that his son Gryllus died fighting bravely, Pericles losing his sons Paralus and Xanthippus within eight days, Anaxagoras continuing his philosophical discussion after hearing of his son's death, Demosthenes, and King Antigonus on learning of his son Alcyoneus's death in battle.
Its authorship is disputed; many scholars think it may be a later work written in Plutarch's style rather than by Plutarch himself, though it has traditionally been transmitted as part of the Moralia.
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