La "suavité du langage": la qualité poétique de γλυκύτης et ses prolongements éthiques chez Plutarque

Abstract

While numerous and valuable studies have investigated the quality of πραότης (‘mildness’), which proved to be characteristic of the Plutarchean heroes’ ethical stance, as regards the friend, it seems that Plutarch would rather talk about his γλυκύτης (cf. 67B). A brief survey of the semantics of γλυκύτης/ γλυκύς throughout Plutarch’s Moralia will provide the background against which a cross-examination of De Audiendis Poetis and De Adulatore et Amico, one treatise of poetic hermeneutics and the other of parenetics, may be attempted. In De Adulatore et Amico, indeed, poetic quotations, from Euripides, Homer, and Hesiod, in particular, which have been subject to an acute reading by Plutarch, and woven into his own text, are of great use to illuminate what the speech of a friend to his friend should be.