Scholars concerned in the investigation of the sources used by Plutarch for this discourse have arrived at varying results: someWilamowitz, Hermes, xxix. 152; Schlemm, Hermes, xxxviii. 587 ff. have imagined that Stoic writers were used, othersAllers, De Senecae Librorum de Ira Fontibus, p. 9; Pohlenz, Hermes, xxxi. 321 ff.; accepted by Daebritz, RE, i. 8. 1562. In Hermes, xl. 292, note 1, Pohlenz attempts to refute Schlemm’s arguments. that the Peripatetic Hieronymus of Rhodes was Plutarch’s principal authority. The numerous parallels to Seneca’s De Ira have been used by both parties to substantiate their theories, but it is more likely that Plutarch, while borrowing numerous loci communes and examples from earlier writers,Books on Anger were very plentiful in Cicero’s day (Epp. ad Quint. Frat., i. 1. 37). constructed for himself the main features of the dialogue. The self-portrayal of Fundanus and his cure, the frame-work of the whole discourse, is clearly Plutarch’s own device. The author’s debt to preceding literature is, as always, immense, yet the creation of such a work as this is by selection and arrangement; and for that Plutarch is alone responsible.
The essay was known to Aulus Gellius (i. 26), who relates a pleasant anecdote of Plutarch and a rascally slave who ventured to reprove the philosopher for his anger. Among English writers Jeremy Taylor has made admirable use of the essay by paraphrase and even translation, in his Holy Living, iv. 8.
