D’ AgostinoV. D’ Agostino, Archivo Italiano di Psicologia, xi (1933), pp. 21 ff., a useful summarizing article. and others have shown that there is little originality in Plutarch’s animal psychology, while not denying our author considerable vivacity in presentation. While it is true that whole sections, like 976 a-d, are drawn from the identical source that Aelian (De Natura Animalium, viii. 4-6) used, yet one has only to compare the use these authors have made of precisely the same material to recognize the great superiority of Plutarch. The principal sources have been disputedHirzel, Der Dialog, ii, p. 179, n. 1. All of Hirzel’s discussion is worth reading, though there are occasional slips, as when he affirms (p. 173, n. 2) that the story in 969 e f. goes back to Plutarch’s own experience. This is quite unlikely in view of Aelian’s version of the same story; nor has Aelian drawn from Plutarch as some, including Wyttenbach, have thought.: Chrysippus, Theophrastus, Hagnon, Alexander of Myndus,For the difficulty and danger involved in identifying the sources exactly see the lists of authorities furnished by Pliny in his first book. Alexander of Myndus, for example, does not appear at all as a source for books 8-11. Juba, Xenocrates have all been suggested, but there can be little doubt (as with De Tranquillitate See the introduction in the Loeb edition. and many other works) that a considerable variety of sources has been utilized. Now that Schläpfer Plutarch und die klassischen Dichter, Zürich, 1950, especially pp. 59-60. has demonstrated that Plutarch had himself read and meditated upon great sections of classical poetry, critics may perhaps be more willing to allow our author first-hand familiarity with a wider range of prose, and works of reference as well.
