Plutarch's short essay arguing that Athens's greatness rests on the deeds of its generals and statesmen, not on the fame of its poets, painters, and playwrights.
De Gloria Atheniensium ("On the Glory of the Athenians") is a short, argumentative essay from Plutarch's Moralia that tackles a single provocative question: did Athens become famous through its arts, especially tragedy, or through the actions of its soldiers and statesmen? Plutarch opens by insisting that writers and artists are parasitic on men of action — take away Pericles's statesmanship, Phormio's naval victories, and Alcibiades's exploits, and the historians who wrote about them (Thucydides, Xenophon, Cratippus) disappear too, since a written account is only "an image and phantom of a deed."
The essay then surveys Athenian achievement in painting and poetry, crediting the city with painters like Apollodorus and Euphranor before turning to its most sustained target: tragedy. Plutarch concedes that Attic tragedy "flowered and won renown," quoting Gorgias's paradox that tragic deception makes "the one who deceives more honest than the one who does not." But he denies that Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus rid Athens of any trouble or won her any real victory, and stages a mock procession contrasting the poets' costumes and stage-machinery with the generals' trophies, walls, and conquered cities. A Spartan's jab that the Athenians "squandered their seriousness on play" anchors a set-piece comparing what tragic productions cost against what feeding an army of rowers cost.
The essay closes by cataloguing the festival calendar itself as evidence: Athens sacrifices to the gods for Marathon, Salamis, Plataea, and Mantinea, not for any victory of Aeschylus or Sophocles. For the modern reader it is a compact case study in ancient literary criticism turned civic polemic — Plutarch weaponizing the deeds-versus-words topos (familiar from his own Parallel Lives) to settle, tongue only partly in cheek, what actually made Athens great.
“Take away Pericles's statesmanship, and Phormio's naval trophies off Rhium,”
— De Gloria Atheniensium · read this chapter →
“those who invent deeds fall as far short of those who record them as those who merely speak lag behind those who act.”
— De Gloria Atheniensium · read this chapter →
“a deception, as Gorgias says, in which the one who deceives is more honest than the one who does not, and the one who is deceived is wiser than the one who is not.”
— De Gloria Atheniensium · read this chapter →
“a Laconian said, not badly, that the Athenians were greatly at fault in squandering their seriousness on play”
— De Gloria Atheniensium · read this chapter →
“not for the victories of Aeschylus or Sophocles, nor for the times when Carcinus staged his Aerope or Astydamas his Hector, but on the sixth of Boedromion, even now, the city celebrates the victory at Marathon”
— De Gloria Atheniensium · read this chapter →
It is a short Plutarch essay arguing that Athens owes its historical glory to its generals and statesmen — Themistocles, Miltiades, Cimon, Alcibiades — rather than to its famous poets and playwrights. Plutarch stages a mock contest between the two groups and finds the men of action decisively ahead.
He acknowledges tragedy "flowered and won renown" in Athens and quotes Gorgias's famous paradox that tragic deception makes the deceiver more honest and the deceived wiser. But he then argues tragedy brought Athens no practical benefit comparable to a general's victories, and tallies the lavish cost of tragic productions against the spare rations of soldiers and sailors.
He recounts how the poet Corinna mocked the young Pindar for showing off rare diction instead of composing proper myths, telling him "one should sow with the hand, not with the whole sack." Plutarch uses the anecdote to introduce his claim that poetry is fundamentally myth-making, and myth is a deliberately false account, one step further from truth than a factual record.
He lists the city's religious calendar of victories: Marathon on the sixth of Boedromion, Chabrias's naval victory off Naxos, the return of the men from Phyle, Plataea, and the battle of Mantinea — not a single day set aside for a tragedian's triumph.
No. It belongs to the Moralia, Plutarch's separate collection of essays on ethics, politics, and literary criticism, distinct from his biographical Parallel Lives, though it shares the Lives' running interest in weighing words against deeds.
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: Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti