Plutarch

The model of Roman history and the system of symbols of characters belonging to a heroic past are an essential reference for Jacobin thought and they are present in this perspective in Foscolo's writing during the years of his active political militancy. Plutarch's name appears along with those of other historians in the Piano di Studi of 1796 and the life of the great Roman heroes is evoked as a model in the ode Ai novelli repubblicani; but the time of greatest interest in the historian was at the end of the Jacobin period when the writer planned, but never completed, Discorsi Sopra gli uomini illustri di Plutarco (Discourses on Plutarch's illustrious men). Only the Proemio (Proem), with the date of January 1 1801, remains from these Discorsi and it starts with a significant incipit: “Necessità d’ogni uomo è la conoscenza dell’uomo” ("Every man's need is the knowledge of man"). On the basis of Machiavellian-like reflection, Foscolo considers the use of the historic discourse, starting from the principle that the basic identity of man does not change over time “se non nelle apparenze” (if only in appearances). Therefore, the interest in Plutarch is part of an overall reflection on human nature; the heroic model is not accepted passively as, while admiring the ancient heroes, in this period Foscolo develops a generally pessimistic ideology that still recoups the value of history and national traditions, celebrated years later in the Pavia lectures. Jacopo Ortis devotes himself to reading the "divine Plutarch" as soon as he flees Venice: the “pochi illustri” (few illustrious men) who make up Plutarch's Lives of illustrious men seem able to compensate for the desolation of the present and provide a model of virtuous behaviour, even though Jacopo is aware of the fact that human nature does not tend to the heroic and that even the illustrious men of the past lose a part of their heroism “spogliandoli della magnificenza storica e della riverenza per l’antichità” ("stripped of their magnificence and of the reverence for antiquity", letter of October 18).