Plutarch was born a Greek and became a Roman. He was a priest in Delphi, where he served the temple of Apollo, but he was also a man of the world: a magistrate, an archon, an ambassador and even a celebrity of sorts, known across the Greek-reading world for his philosophical ponderings and biographies of emperors. He had a thick head of hair and an almost eerily symmetrical face – at least, the bust of him at the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, dating back to the second or third century, presents him that way. His marble forehead is dirty with what looks like ancient mud. Here he is serious, even sullen, and deep in thought.
This is the expression I imagine on his face when his friend Alexander the Epicurean, during a meal one day, asked him “that perplexed question, that plague of the inquisitive. Which was first: the bird or the egg?” Today, we are more specific about which bird – it’s a chicken we’re talking about – but that extra bit of detail hasn’t helped to settle the debate once and for all. Sylla, another friend dining with Plutarch and Alexander, suggested that “this little question” had far-reaching ramifications; indeed, it gestured towards the matter of “whether the world had a beginning”.
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