This book offers a new English translation with commentary of four works from Plutarch’s Moralia, focused on animal virtues, intelligence and the ethics of eating meat. De sollertia animalium (On the Cleverness of Animals, henceforth S.) is a combination of a philosophical dialogue and a rhetorical competition; Bruta animalia ratione uti (On the Use of Reason by Animals, henceforth B.), or Gryllus, is a satirical dialogue between Odysseus and a talking pig advancing compelling arguments; and De esu carnium (On Eating Meat, henceforth E.1 and E.2) is the common title of two consecutive short orations with strong condemnatory and emotional tones.

Stephen Newmyer’s book begins with a preface detailing its methodology, aims and connection to prior editions. Following this, each of the four translated works is presented with an introduction summarizing its content and related scholarly debate, and complemented by clarificatory endnotes. Worthy of appreciation is the inclusion of an analytical index at the end of the book.

Newmyer’s version, more legible than the dated, if still accurate, Loeb translation by W.C. Helmbold (Plutarch’s Moralia, vol. 12 (Cambridge MA and London 1957)), targets not just ‘classical scholars’, but also ‘Greek-less’ readers of ancient philosophy, history of ideas and ethics (xii–iv). It is the culmination of Newmyer’s three-decade commitment to Plutarch’s zoopsychology and moral views on animals, which has been marked by such substantial contributions as Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics (New York NY and London 2006) and Animals in Greek and Roman Thought: A Sourcebook (London and New York NY 2011). Here, as in these previous works, a central aspect of Newmyer’s approach is to reveal the correspondences between Plutarch’s viewpoints, arguments, methodology and rhetoric in matters of animal cognition and vegetarianism and those of today’s animal rights advocates and cognitive ethologists. In this new book, this operation is carried out selectively (rather than exhaustively) through the introductions to individual translations and several endnotes to specific passages.

Among its results of particular value is Newmyer’s overview, in the introduction to E.1, of the parallels between Plutarch’s defences of the choice to be vegetarian and those in present-day vegetarian literature (132–34). This is well structured and highly informative, but, like Newmyer’s other parallelisms, it is not to be read without caveats. One might raise doubts, for instance, about Newmyer’s association of Plutarch’s flowery words against the act of taking away an animal’s ‘soul, the light of the sun, the time of life’ for only a morsel of flesh (E.1 4, 994e, my translation) with today’s criticisms of intensive farming and its practice of depriving animals of sunlight (133 and E.1, n.26).

Naturally, Newmyer also highlights many parallels between Plutarch’s arguments and those in ancient philosophical-scientific texts, enabling the reader to reconstruct the former’s antecedents, sources and posterity. Backed by a rich body of earlier scholarly literature, the result of this endeavour is accurate and extensive, albeit not exhaustive (especially concerning some fragmentary evidence from Carneades and Theophrastus).

Of Newmyer’s reasoned stances on controversial points among Plutarch scholars, most persuasive is his agreement with Helmbold on the ‘overall thesis’ of S. being ‘that non-human animals possess at least a modicum of reason’ (3), together with his claim that Plutarch’s thought on animals maintained consistency across all of his works (an issue linked to the ultimate indemonstrability of whether Plutarch was ever a vegetarian or not, 130–31). On the other hand, when it comes to analysing Plutarch’s rhetorical strategies and argumentative progressions, there are instances where Newmyer’s explanations appear misaligned with the textual evidence and its overt discourse markers. In these regards, it is an infelicitous choice on Newmyer’s part to generally exclude from his translation connective particles such as δέ (‘but’, ‘on the other hand’ or ‘and’), ἀλλά (‘but’) or γάρ (‘in fact’). In at least three passages, their removal makes Plutarch’s argumentation highly ambiguous, or even substantially different from that represented in Helmbold’s translation (see S. 4, 962a–b and 5–6, 963f–964a, and especially E.2 6, 999a–b). Correspondingly, most open to discussion will probably be Newmyer’s reconstructions of Plutarch’s strand of arguments in S., E.1 and E.2 (allegedly) aimed at showing that a covenant of justice naturally exists between animals and humans due to their being ‘akin’ beings united by social oikeiōsis (‘appropriation’ or ‘bonding’; a Stoic concept discussed by Newmyer on page 5 with n.17). In these reconstructions, the logical relations between premises and conclusions appear sometimes to be inverted, and the terms’ interpretations dubious.

Important to consider while reading Newmyer’s book is that technical psychological terms such as φρόνησις, σύνεσις, διάνοια and their cognate forms are not translated consistently (perhaps based on Dyroff’s 1897 claim that Plutarch ‘appears to employ’ these terms ‘interchangeably’, 17 n.21 and S., n.17). It is consequently not always possible for the reader to infer which intellectual faculties are specifically being mentioned across the four texts: for φρόνησις (defined in S., n.1) and cognates, one can read ‘wisdom’, ‘intelligence’, ‘understanding’, ‘thought’, ’prudent’ and ‘mind’; for σύνεσις and cognates (explained in S., n.1; B., n.11; E.1, n.24), ‘intelligence’, ‘understanding’ and ‘sagacity’; and, for διάνοια and διανοεῖν (never defined), ‘thought’, ‘understanding’, ‘intellect’, ‘intelligence’ and ‘to reason’. Some of these translations are also used for terms such as νοῦς, γνῶσις and λογίζεσθαι, while ‘cleverness’ sometimes translates without distinction the terms σοφία, πανουργία, τὸ θυμόσοφον and εὐφυΐα.

All these aspects, including those prompting discussion, confirm the book’s potential to stimulate the rediscovery, appreciation and critical analysis of these captivating ancient texts. Their rhetorical and compositional brilliance was already visible in Helmbold’s translation, but its inclusion in one of the many Loeb volumes of Plutarch’s Moralia surely limited its circulation among non-specialized scholars and students. With this new dedicated book, and a paratext that exudes Newmyer’s genuine enthusiasm for the four works, one can reasonably expect that they will find a much wider anglophone audience and, most importantly, foster new and exciting scholarly discussion on their structures, meanings and implications.