Plutarch: Culture benefits the family, city, nation, whole human race more than war

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Plutarch: Selections on war and peace

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Plutarch
Moralia
On Music*
Translated by Benedict Einarson and Phillip H. De Lacy

The wife of Phocion the Good said that his feats of generalship were her adornment; for my part I hold that not only my own adornment, but that of all my friends as well, is my preceptor’s zeal for letters. For we know that whereas the most brilliant successes of generals end merely in preserving from momentary dangers a few soldiers, a single city, or at most a single nation, but in no wise make better men of those soldiers or citizens or yet of those fellow nationals, culture, on the other hand, which is the substance of felicity and the source of good counsel, can be found useful not merely to a family or a city or a nation, but to the whole human race. The greater benefit conferred by culture in comparison with all military exploits is the measure of the value that belongs to the discussion of it.

*Sometimes attributed to Plutarch.