The Theory of Moral Sentiments (70 page)

Othello
, title character of Shakespeare’s tragedy that chronicles his rival Iago’s successful scheme to dupe Othello into the jealous murder of his love, and ends with the arrest of the guilty Iago and the suicide of Othello.

Ovid
(43 BC-AD 17), Roman poet, famed for his
Metamorphoses
and love poetry collected in the
Amores
and
Ars Amatoria
.

Parmenides
(early 5th c. BC), Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, and subject of a dialogue by Plato.

Parmenion
(ca. 400-330 BC), chief Macedonian commander under Philip; though instrumental to Alexander’s solidification of his authority after Philip’s death, his resistance to Alexander’s increasingly grandiose ambitions led to his and his son’s executions under the pretext of treason.

Pascal, Blaise
(1623-1662), French philosopher and mathematician associated with the circles at Port-Royal; his major works include the
Provincial Letters
(1656-1657), which criticize the Jesuits and defend the stricter and more rigorous Jansenist ethical view, further developed in the fragmentary set of
Pensée
s, which strikingly develop man’s dependence on God and the anxiety of human existence.

Paulus Aemilius
(Lucius Aemlius Paullus; ca. 229-160 BC), Roman commander and statesman; the peak of his career was his victory over Perseus at Pydna in 168 that ended the Third Macedonian War, and for which he was awarded the triumphal procession in Rome mentioned by Smith.

Perrault, Charles
(1628-1703), French poet and belles-lettrist who espoused the side of the moderns in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns and engaged in a running polemical battle with Boileau in the last two decades of the seventeenth century.

Persaeus
(ca. 306-243 BC), Stoic philosopher and commander, was raised and taught by Zeno.

Perseus
(ca. 213-160 BC), king of Macedonia from 179 to 168 BC, was defeated by the Romans and led in the triumphal procession of Lucius Aemilius Paullus in 167 BC.

Peter the Great
(1672-1725), tsar of Russia from 1682 to his death; his reign witnessed military struggle with Charles XII of Sweden, expansion of Russian influence throughout the Baltic, and the emergence of Russia into European prominence.

Petrarca, Francesco
(Petrarch, 1304-1374), Italian Renaissance poet and humanist famed for his love sonnets to Laura.

Phaedra
, wife of the Athenian king Theseus and stepmother of Hippolytus; the story of her illicit love for her stepson and her ensuing guilt and suicide is recounted in extant tragedies by Euripides, Seneca, and Racine.

Philip of Castile
(Philip I; 1478-1506), king of Castile from 1504 to his death, son of the Habsburg Maximilian I, husband of Joanna (see above), and father of Charles V.

Philip of Macedon
(Philip II; 382-336 BC), king of Macedon and father of Alexander the Great, under whose rule the Macedonian Empire reached its height and asserted its supremacy in Greece.

Philoctetes
, Greek tragic figure and the subject of a surviving tragedy by Sophocles that recounts his abandonment on the island of Lemnos because of an infected snakebite while en route to Troy.

Philopoemen
(ca. 253-182 BC), Greek military commander and general of the Achaean Confederacy whose hard-line policies on Sparta provoked resentment and rebellion, which ultimately culminated in his capture and poisoning.

Phocion
(402-318 BC), Athenian general and student of Plato who sought to preserve Athenian interests in the face of Macedonian aggression; executed following the democratic revolution of 318.

Plato
(429-347 BC), Athenian philosopher, student of Socrates, and teacher of Aristotle; immensely influential on all fields of philosophy, Plato is in
TMS
principally a moral and political philosopher and author of
Republic
and
Laws.

Pliny
(Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, Pliny the Younger; ca. AD 61-112), Roman statesman, orator, and author of a collection of
Epistles
renowned for their rhetorical sophistication.

Plutarch
(ca. AD 50-120), prolific author of dialogues, moral essays, and histories, principally famous for his
Parallel Lives
; Smith draws on his biographical sketches of ancient figures but elsewhere calls him “as bad a critic in philosophy as in history.”

Pompey
(Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Pompey the Great; 106-48 BC), Roman statesman and commander whose foreign military career witnessed many successes but also accusations of seeking to steal glory from Crassus for defeating Spartacus and from Lucullus for defeating Mithradates; he was an early associate of Caesar in the First Triumvirate but ultimately struggled with Caesar until being defeated by him at Pharsalus.

Pope, Alexander
(1688-1744), English poet, translator of Homer, and author of the
Essay on Man
(1734-35), a principal statement of Enlightenment ideals.

Pufendorf, Samuel
(1632-1694), German philosopher of natural law, and author of numerous works on European political and ecclesiastical history in addition to his influential jurisprudential works, which include
De Jure Naturae et Gentium
(
Of the Law of Nature and Nations
, 1672) and
De Officio Hominis et Civis
(
Of the Duty of Man and Citizen
, 1673).

Pyrrhus
(319-272 BC), Greek commander and king of Epirus; waged ambitious struggles with Rome, Macedonia and Sparta.

Pythagoras
(ca. 6th c. BC), Greek philosopher and mathematician whose cosmological theories were grounded in theories of numerical harmony; his school was traditionally assumed to have been an important influence on Plato.

Quinault, Phillipe
(1635-1688), French playwright and librettist; his play
Astrate
(1664) was particularly criticized by Boileau-Despréaux.

Quintilian
(Marcus Fabius Quintilianus; ca. AD 35-100), Roman orator and teacher; his
Institutio Oratoria
was an influential handbook of judgments on classical authors and the teaching and practice of rhetoric.

Racine, Jean
(1639-1699), playwright, royal historiographer, and member of the Académie Française. His greatest plays include
Phèdre
(1677).

Raleigh, Sir Walter
(ca. 1552-1618), English explorer of the New World; he was imprisoned by James I in 1603 for alleged conspiracy, then released to head a second, unsuccessful expedition in search of gold, but tried and executed on his return.

Regulus
(Marcus Atilius Regulus; 3rd c. BC), Roman statesman and general defeated by Carthaginians in 255 BC; according to patriotic legend, he was released from captivity for purposes of negotiation but on returning to Rome insisted that no quarter be given to its enemies, following which he willingly returned to Carthage to face imprisonment, torture, and execution.

Retz, Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de
(1614-1679), Archbishop of Paris and principal figure in a series of political intrigues in France and across Europe, and chronicled in his
Mémoires
(pub. 1717) with a series of character sketches and reflections on the politics of the age of Louis XIV.

Riccoboni, Marie-Jeanne
(1713-1792), French novelist known for her contributions to the growth of sentimental literature; she became an admirer of Smith after their meeting in Paris in 1766.

Richardson, Samuel
(1689-1761), English novelist famed for his epistolary novel
Pamela
(1740) and his
Clarissa
(1748), chief exemplars of eighteenth-century English sentimental fiction.

Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de
(1585-1642), French clergyman and politician; the author of influential works on the catechism, he was also principal minister of Louis XIII, in which capacity he sought to promote royal absolutism and weaken Protestant resistance within France, and to advance French interests abroad.

Robertson, William
(1721-1793), Scottish historian, clergyman, and principal of the University of Edinburgh; with Hume and Gibbon, one of the main 18th c. British philosophical historians and the author of a
History of Scotland
(1759) and a
History of the Reign of Emperor Charles V
(1769), which included his influential “View of the Progress of Society in Europe.”

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
(1712-1778), Genevan philosopher of politics, ethics, education and the arts; his corpus was well known to Smith, who particularly engaged with his key works of the period from 1755 to 1762, including the
Discourse on the Origins of Inequality
(1755), the
Letter to d’Alembert
(1758),
Emile, or On Education
(1762), and the
Social Contract
(1762).

Russell, William, Lord
(1639-1683), English politician prominent in Whig circles, and executed alongside Algernon Sidney for his participation in the Rye House Plot.

Sallust
(Gaius Sallustius Crispus; ca. 86-35 BC), Roman statesman and historian who withdrew from practical political life to write histories of the Catilinian conspiracy and the Jugurthan War.

Santeuil, Jean
(1630-1697), French poet and author of sacred hymns and Latin verses.

Scipio Aemilianus
(Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Minor; 185-129 BC), Roman general and statesman, adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus, and conqueror of Carthage.

Scipio Africanus
(Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major; 236-183 BC), Roman general and statesman famed as the victor over Hannibal in 202.

Scipio Nasica
(Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum; 2nd c. BC), Roman statesman and son-in-law of Scipio Africanus.

Seneca
(Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Seneca the Younger; 4 BC-AD 65), Roman author and advisor to Nero; his political career was dominated by his efforts to moderate Nero’s tyranny, and his prose and poetic works, which included moral treatises, shorter moral epistles, and several tragedies, were marked by an ascetic Stoicism.

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of
(1621-1683), English statesman who found favor under both Cromwell and Charles II, but was forced into exile prior to the accession of James II; grandfather to the third Earl, he employed John Locke as secretary and tutor.

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of
(1671-1713), English philosopher and author of the influential
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
(1711), which included his
Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit
, and which collectively became a key text in eighteenth-century debates over psychological egoism and moral sense theory, classical conceptions of virtue, and deism and Christianity.

Sidney, Algernon
(1623-1683), English politician and author whose practical service and writings (most notably the
Discourses Concerning Government
, pub. 1698) championed republican moral and political principles; he was executed for participation in the Rye House Plot that targeted Charles II.

Simson, Robert
(1687-1768), Scottish professor of mathematics who was both Smith’s professor at Glasgow and later his faculty colleague; known for his work on conic sections and his edition of Euclid’s
Elements
, Hutcheson called him “the best geometer in the world.”

Smith, John
(1618-1652), English philosopher and one of the principal Cambridge Platonists; his chief work was his
Select Discourses
(1660), which examines epistemological questions concerning man’s knowledge of God as well as ethical questions concerning the nature of love.

Socrates
(ca. 469-399 BC), Athenian philosopher whose teachings were memorialized by Plato and Xenophon and who was executed for alleged religious heterodoxy and corruption of the city’s youth.

Solon
(ca. 630-560 BC), Athenian lawgiver and poet famed for moderation in reforming the severe law code established by Draco, including a series of progressive reforms for debt relief and a more democratic distribution of power.

Sophocles
(5th c. BC), Athenian playwright who, with Euripides and Aeschylus, is one of the three principal playwrights of the golden age of Athenian tragedy.

Stewart, Matthew
(1717-1785), Scottish professor of mathematics at Edinburgh, and with Smith a former student of Robert Simson.

Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de
(1559-1641), French administrator who advocated a series of progressive economic reforms as minister under Henri IV; his actions are detailed in his memoirs, published in 1638.

Sulpitius
(Publius Sulpicius Rufus; ca. 121-88 BC), Roman statesman and orator particularly praised by Cicero for his rhetorical abilities.

Swift, Jonathan
(1667-1745), Irish satirist and moralist and Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin; Smith engaged with Swift’s literary masterpieces, including his popular novel
Gulliver’s Travels
(1726), as well as his Anglo-Irish political and economic writings, including
Drapier’s Letters
(1725).