intro
The work appears, on the whole, rather immature beside the Gryllus and the De Sollertia Animalium, but the text is so poor that this may not be the author’s fault. In fact the excerptor responsible for our jumbled text, introducing both stupid interpolations (see especially 998 a) and even an extract from an entirely different work (994 b-d), may well have altered Plutarch’s wording in many other places where we have not the means to detect him.
intro
PorphyryIt is, of course, possible that Porphyry used some portion of the missing parts of our work; but this cannot be proved and may even be thought unlikely in view of the fact that he makes no use of any extant portion. (De Abstinentia, iii. 24) says that Plutarch attacked the Stoics and Peripatetics in many books; in this one the anti-Stoic polemic has only just begun (999 a) when the work breaks off. For a more complete assault the reader must turn back to the two preceding dialogues.
