Everything must have a source (if only the author’s ingenuity) and the source here, so far as it can be predicated with any certainty, is the tenth book of the Odyssey seen through the humorous eyes of a young Boeotian.So the sensible Hirzel (op. cit. ii, p. 131); see also Hartman, De Plutarcho, p. 576. Stylometry, however, does not encourage the view that this is an early work (Sandbach, Class. Quart. xxxiii, p. 196). We have here, then, a Boeotian pig instructing the favourite of Athena.Plutarch actually quotes the proverb in his Life of Demosthenes, xi. 5 (851 b) and Mor. 803 d, but does not seem to realize its possible application here. See the note on 995 f infra. It was once fashionable to assert, or imply, that since Plutarch was once a young Boeotian himself, matters could not be so simple, nor could he be the author. But the climate of scholarship is, perhaps, changing. There are few of Plutarch’s admirers who will not claim this lively work for one of his more admirable achievements, written, perhaps, when he was quite young.
