How 'Sophistic' is Pseudo-Plutarch On the Education of Children?

Abstract

<p>The treatise <i>On the Education of Children</i> appears first in the traditional order of the collection once entirely ascribed to Plutarch and known as the <i>Moralia</i> (<i>Mor</i>. 1A-14C). Recent scholarship doubts Plutarch's authorship of this piece, but agrees that it belongs, like the <i>Moralia</i> in general, to the Second Sophistic period. This treatise, nevertheless, appears to owe more to what was considered in the classical period a traditional approach to education and to Socratics like Plato and Xenophon than to the early Sophists. This may be a result of the context in which the work of the Pseudo-Plutarch was produced.</p>