[p. 245]
ON BROTHERLY LOVE
(DE FRATERNO AMORE)
INTRODUCTION
In this essay Plutarch has arranged his material somewhat more methodically than is his usual practice.
In chaps. 1-7 he shows that Brotherly Love is in
accordance with nature ; in 9-19 he tells us how we
should conduct ourselves toward a brother : (a) while
our parents are alive, (b) when they are dead, (c) when
the brother is our inferior, (d) when our superior ;
and also the reasons for quarrels and the treatment
thereof. He closes with some pleasant tales of
affection for brothers' children.
That Plutarch wrote this work after
De Adulatore
et Amico,
De Amicorum Multitudine,
1 and the
Life of
Cato Minor was demonstrated by C. Brokate (
De
aliquot Plui. libellis, diss. Göttingen, 1913, pp. 17-24,
58; and see the excellent tables on pp. 47, 61).
Plutarch appears to have retained a certain amount
of more or less irrelevant material on friendship from
his recent work on these treatises, and also to have
drawn upon some portions of Theophrastus's treatise
On Friendship.
2
The essay is No. 98 in the Lamprias catalogue.