HOW TO PROFIT BY ONE'S ENEMIES (DE CAPIENDA EX INIMICIS UTILITATE)
INTRODUCTION
The essay on turning even one's enemies to some profitable use was an
extempore address which was afterwards reduced to writing. It still retains,
however, some of the marks of its extempore character in an occasional
asyndeton or anacoluthon, in a few repetitions, and in such little slips as
reversing the positions of Domitius and Scaurus (91 d). But minor matters of
this sort cannot obscure the excellence of the essay as a whole, which
contains much good advice, many wholesome truths, and much common sense. To
cite but one example, the statement (91 b) that many things which are
necessary in time of war, but bad under other conditions, acquire the
sanction of custom and law, and cannot be easily abolished, even though the
people are being injured by them, will appeal to everybody except the
confirmed militarist. The essay was written some time after the essay
entitled Advice to Statesmen, which in turn must be placed shortly after the
death of Domitian (a.d. 96).
This is one of the ‘moral’ essays of Plutarch which so
impressed Christians that they were translated into Syriac in the sixth or
seventh centuries. The translation of this essay is rather an adaptation,
many details being omitted as unessential, but even so it gives light on the
Greek text in a few places. The Syriac translation is published in Studia
Sinaitica, No. IV (London 1894)