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Plutarch

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Plutarch
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  • Born: 46 A.D.
  • Birthplace: Chaeroneia, Boetia, Greece
  • Died: c. 120 AD
  • Best Known As: Author of Plutarch's Lives

Plutarch is the most famous biographer of the ancient world and the author of a famous collection now known as Plutarch's Lives. Plutarch's original title was Parallel Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans, and that describes his unique approach: the biographies are presented in pairs, the life of one Greek contrasted with that of a similar Roman. Plutarch's subjects were statesmen, generals and public figures including Alexander the Great, Solon, Pyrrhus and Marc Antony, and together the biographies present a basic history of all Greece and Rome up to Plutarch's times. Hence Plutarch has been a favorite of scholars and schoolteachers for centuries. Plutarch's other famous work is the Morals, a collection of essays on topics ranging from religion and zoology to marriage.

Plutarch was for many years a priest at the famous oracle at Delphi.

 
 
Biography: Plutarch

The Greek biographer, historian, essayist, and moralist Plutarch (ca. 46-ca. 120) has been described as one of the most influential writers who ever lived.

Paradoxically, Plutarch the man who was the biographer of many others, had no biographer except for a scant notice in Suidas. What we know of his life is reconstructed from casual references in his own works. Plutarch was apparently born of a wealthy family in Chaeronia in Boeotia, had two brothers, Timon and Lamprias, and a grandfather named Lamprias. His parents' names are uncertain. Some say his father's name was Autobulus, some say Nicarchus, and we do know of a great-grandfather named Nicarchus. Plutarch is believed to have had a liberal education at Athens, where he studied physics, rhetoric, mathematics, medicine, natural science, philosophy, Greek, and Latin literature in 66. Ammonius of Lamptrae, a Plato scholar with religious and Neoplatonic interests, may have been his tutor. To complete his education, Plutarch traveled extensively in Greece and Asia Minor and visited Alexandria, Egypt.

Plutarch married Timoxena, daughter of Alexion (ca. 68), who bore him four sons, Soclarus, Chairon, Autobulus, and Plutarchus, and one daughter, Timoxena. Only Autobulus and Plutarchus survived Plutarch. All evidence indicates a happy marriage and a close family. Other relatives by marriage mentioned as members of the family in the Moralia are Craton, Firmus, and Patrocleas.

Plutarch taught in Chaeronia and represented his people before the Roman governor and in Rome. In Rome he made important contacts and lectured on philosophy and ethics in various parts of Italy. He spent much time in Italy between 75 and 90; he apparently never mastered the Latin language, though he gained the friendship of notable Romans. The latter half of his life, Plutarch enjoyed the intellectual benefits of the Pax Romana, mostly in Chaeronia. He held many civic positions, both high and low; the most notable one - that of head priest of Delphi - he held with distinction for 20 years and elevated to an importance it had not had in his time. During the latter part of his life he is thought to have written most of the Lives and some portions of the Moralia.

His Works

Plutarch is perhaps best known for the Moralia and the Lives, works which have much in common and have had enormous influence on later writers and the literatures of Europe and even America. He was very much concerned with men's moral conduct and individual moral guidance in an age when men were losing their faith in religion and philosophy. The Moralia, written as dialogues, letters, and lectures, is really a collection of 83 treatises on diverse subjects such as vegetarianism; superstition; Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic philosophy; dietetics; divine justice; prophecy; demonology; conjugal relations; family life; mysticism; and helpful precepts.

The Lives (often called Parallel Lives) are biographies of soldiers and statesmen of repute, generally presented in pairs of lives, first a Greek, then a Roman, followed by a comparison. Twenty-three of these have survived and four single lives; that is, four comparisons are lacking. There is no detailed chronology, but the Lives were probably published between 105 and 115. Plutarch utilizes Greek sources primarily and is interested in providing pleasure and guidance for moral and political behavior. Plutarch's language is generally lucid and crisp.

Plutarch was not a profound philosopher but a popularizer in the best and most enduring sense of the word. He did not establish a philosophic system but was eclectic in his use of various systems. He warmly admired Plato and knew Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers. He severely criticized Epicureanism and stoicism but used these systems as it suited him. One critic finds him a humanist par excellence; others see him inclined toward mysticism and monotheism. He was an author of uncommon common sense who influenced Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, John Dryden, John Milton, Robert Herrick, George Chapman, Jonathan Swift, Walter Savage Landor, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Mary Shelley, and H.G. Wells in England; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville in the United States; J.W. von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller in Germany; and French drama of the late 16th and the entire 17th century. Sir Thomas North's English translation of the Lives (1579) provided Shakespeare with the sources for three plays, and it was the translation (1559) by Frenchman Jacques Myot that made Plutarch available to North and through North to the English-speaking world.

Further Reading

The Loeb Classical Library's Plutarch's Lives, translated by Bernadotte Perrin (11 vols., 1914-1926), is indispensable, as is the Loeb's Plutarch's Moralia, translated by Frank Cole Babbitt and others (15 vols., 1927-1969). An exhaustive and still essential study is Bishop Richard C. Trench, Plutarch: His Life, His Lives and His Morals (1873), which remained the primary study until Reginald Haynes Barrow, Plutarch and His Times (1967). C. J. Gianakaris, Plutarch (1970), is a convenient synthesis and appraisal which contains an extensive bibliography. A work on Plutarch's moral interests is George D. Hadzsits, Prolegomena to a Study of the Ethical Ideal of Plutarch and of the Greeks of the First Century A.D. (1906); and on religion, John Oakesmith, The Religion of Plutarch (1902).

Special studies provide powerful evidence of Plutarch's widespread influence: Frederick Morgan Padelford, trans. and ed., Essays on the Study and Use of Poetry by Plutarch and Basil the Great (1902); Roy Caston Flickinger, Plutarch as a Source of Information on the Greek Theater (1904); Charles Frederick Tucker Brooke, ed., Shakespeare's Plutarch (2 vols., 1909); Roger Miller Jones, The Platonism of Plutarch (1916); Edmund Grindlay Berry, Emerson's Plutarch (1961); and Terence John Bew Spencer, ed., Shakespeare's Plutarch (1964). Recommended surveys of classical historiography which include discussions of Plutarch are Michael Grant, The Ancient Historians (1970), and Stephen Usher, The Historians of Greece and Rome (1970).

 

(born AD 46, Chaeronea, Boeotia — died after 119) Greek biographer and author. The son of a biographer and philosopher, Plutarch studied in Athens, taught in Rome, traveled widely, and made many important friends before returning to his native town in Boeotia. His literary output was immense, but his popularity rests primarily on his Parallel Lives, a series of pairs of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. Displaying impressive learning and research, the Lives exhibit noble deeds and characters and provide model patterns of behaviour. The Moralia, or Ethica, contains his surviving writings on ethical, religious, physical, political, and literary topics. His works profoundly influenced the evolution of the essay, biography, and historical writing in 16th – 19th-century Europe, especially through translations such as Sir Thomas North's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes (1579), William Shakespeare's source for his Roman history plays.

For more information on Plutarch, visit Britannica.com.

 

Plūtarch (Ploutarchos) (c. AD 46–c.120), Greek biographer, historian, and moral philosopher.

1.

Plutarch was born at Chaeronēa in Boeotia, of a wealthy and cultivated family, and spent most of his life there. He studied philosophy at Athens under the Platonist Ammonius, a man of practical as well as philosophical ability. He visited Egypt and Italy, lecturing and teaching at Rome, and had a wide circle of influential and cultivated friends. But the last thirty years of his life were centred on Chaeronea and Delphi; he was a citizen of both, and served them with devotion for many years. Neither Pliny the Younger nor Tacitus (his contemporaries) mentions him. Plutarch is one of the most attractive and readable of ancient prose authors, writing with charm, geniality, and tact. An ancient catalogue of his works exists, ascribed to Lamprias. His surviving writings (half his complete works) consist of (i) a series of fifty biographies known as Parallel Lives (Bioi parallēloi) in which he relates the life of some eminent Greek (statesman or soldier) followed by the life of some similar Roman offering some points of resemblance, and then adds a short comparison of the two; and (ii) seventy-eight miscellaneous works now known as the Mōrālia (Gk. Ēthika).

2.

Parallel Lives. These consist of twenty-three pairs of lives, nineteen of them with comparisons attached, and also four single lives. They include lives of Solon, Themistocles, Aristeides, Pericles, Alcibiades, Nicias, Demosthenes, Philopoemen, Timoleon, Dion, Alexander, Pyrrhus, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Mark Antony, Brutus, Julius Caesar, and Cicero. Of the Roman emperors, only the lives of Galba and Otho survive. Plutarch's object is to bring out the moral character in each case, rather than to relate the political events of his time; hence his full treatment of the subject's education and natural disposition, and his relation of anecdotes calculated to reveal the nature of the man, ‘a light occasion, a word, or some sport’ which ‘makes men's natural dispositions more plain than the famous battles won, in which ten thousand men may be killed’. Although Plutarch distorts the truth in order to exemplify virtue or vice, in general he is as reliable as his sources, and sometimes very valuable. He shows no bias or unfairness in his treatment of Greeks and Romans, no flattery of the now dominant power of Rome or vanity in the past glories of his own nation. He believed in the compatibility of Rome the ruler and Greece the educator.

The Lives contain, besides interesting anecdotes, many memorable historical passages: the catastrophe in the Peloponnesian War of the Athenian expedition to Syracuse (Nicias), Pompey's defeat by Caesar and subsequent murder, the death of the younger Cato, and the suicide of Otho. There are also great battle-pieces: the victory of the Roman general Marius over the German Cimbri, the victory of the Corinthian general Timoleon over the Carthaginians at the river Crimisus, the siege of Syracuse (when Archimedes was there) by the Roman Marcellus; and striking descriptions of a quite different kind, of the happy state of Italy under Numa, of Sicily pacified by Timoleon, and of Cleopatra sailing up the river Cydnus in her barge to visit Antony. The most famous translation of the Lives into English was that of Sir Thomas North (1579) made not from Greek but from the French version of Jacques Amyot (1559). It was Shakespeare's major source for Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, and a minor source for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Timon of Athens.

3.

Moralia. These treatises are usually referred to by their Latin titles and their subjects are varied. There is one group of rhetorical works and another on moral philosophy (treated in a popular style) on themes such as ‘On Busy-bodies’ (de cūriōsitāte), ‘On Garrulity’ (de garrulitāte), ‘On the Restraint of Anger’ (de cohibenda ira), ‘How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend’ (quomodo adūlātōr ab amico internoscatur). Plutarach's warm and sympathetic personality is apparent in his ‘Advice to Married Couples’ (coniugalia praecepta) and ‘Consolation to My Wife’ (consolatio ad uxorem) on the death of their infant daughter. There is a religious group, in which Plutarch appears as the interpreter and defender of the old beliefs. It includes the treatise ‘On Superstition’ (de superstitione), in which he regards superstition as the opposite extreme to atheism, and piety as the mean between the two. Plutarch was a (not altogether orthodox) Platonist and was opposed to some of the doctrines of the Stoics, and still more to the Epicurean school and its encouragement of withdrawal from the duties of social life: see his treatises on ‘The Unnoticed Life’ (an recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum), ‘Advice on Public Life’ (praecepta gerendae reipublicae), and ‘Not Even a Pleasant Life is Possible on Epicurean Principles’ (non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum). There is an interesting treatise ‘On the Delays of Divine Justice’ (de sera numinis vindicta) in which he explains the puzzle of the apparent prosperity of the wicked, and another ‘On the E at Delphi’ (de E apud Delphos), i.e. on the letter E inscribed in the temple of Apollo there (for which he offers a Pythagorean explanation, that it is the Greek for ‘Thou Art’, identifying the one eternal principle of the universe); also interesting is ‘On the Cessation of Oracles’ (de defectu oraculorum), which contains a discussion of demons (see DAIMONES), beings intermediate between gods and men, and refers to the legend of the genii of the British Isles.

Plutarch used the dialogue form extensively and often to great effect. The nine books of ‘Table Talk’ (quaestiones convivales) are dinner-party conversations of wise men (rhetoricians, physicians, etc., some of them historical characters) on a multitude of subjects. The treatise ‘On Socrates' Sign’ (de genio Socratis) combines many elements: exciting narrative (the liberation of Thebes), philosophical conversation, and an elaborate myth, in the manner of Plato, on the fate of the soul after death. A different kind of treatise is that ‘On the Face in the Moon’ (de facie quae in orbe lunae appāret), a speculation on the cosmos. Several important antiquarian works have also survived: the ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman Questions’ (quaestiones Graecae, Romanae) are a mine of information about religious antiquities. Plutarch wrote some literary criticism, including a comparison of Aristophanes and Menander, and an essay ‘On the Malignity of Herodotus’ (de malignitate Herodoti; see HERODOTUS), in which Plutarch's complaint seems to be that Herodotus did not conceal the pro-Persian sympathies of the Boeotians. It is noteworthy that Plutarch, in spite of his familiarity with Roman society, history, archaeology, and religion, almost completely ignores Roman literature (his knowledge of Latin appears to have been limited). In his Life of Lucullus he gives a Greek version of a passage from Horace, but never mentions Virgil or Ovid.

4.

Among the Moralia have survived several slightly later works not written by Plutarch but of great importance: ‘On the Education of Children’ (de liberis educandis) was very influential in the Renaissance; ‘On Fate’ (de fato) is valuable as a work of Middle Platonist philosophy; ‘The Lives of the Ten Orators’ (vitae decem oratorum) is an important source for ancient knowledge of the Attic orators from Antiphon to Deinarchus; ‘The Doctrines of the Philosophers’ (de placitis philosophorum) is another important source book; and ‘On Music’ (de musica) is one of the principal sources of modern knowledge about the history of Greek music and lyric poetry.

5.

Plutarch's Moralia were widely read in medieval times and studied by many later authors. They were translated into French by Amyot in 1572, and into English by Philemon Holland in 1603. These and the Lives, perhaps more than the work of any other ancient writer, transmitted to Europe knowledge of the moral and historical traditions of the classical world, and influenced immeasurably its ways of thought.

 

(c. AD 50-c. 120) Greek-born writer and Middle Platonist.Plutarch was born in Chaeronea in Boeotia, studied at Athens, and went to Rome, returning to spend the last decades of his life as a priest at Delphi. His most famous work, the Lives, is intended to illustrate the workings of virtue and vice in the careers of great men, and had considerable influence on Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers. His philosophical writings exhibit the pious transcendentalism of Middle Platonism. Opinions of Plutarch's capacities as a philosopher differ. He departs from orthodox Platonism by acknowledging a positive force of evil in the world (see Manichaeanism, Zoroastrianism), but also anticipates Plotinus in his concern to find a unified and simple supreme principle at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of reality.

 
(plū'tärk) , A.D. 46?–c.A.D. 120, Greek essayist and biographer, b. Chaeronea, Boeotia. He traveled in Egypt and Italy, visited Rome (where he lectured on philosophy) and Athens, and finally returned to his native Boeotia, where he became a priest of the temple of Delphi. His great work is The Parallel Lives comprising 46 surviving biographies arranged in pairs (one Greek life with one comparable Roman) and four single biographies; some 19 short comparisons affixed to the lives are of doubtful authenticity. The English translation by Sir Thomas North had a profound effect upon English literature; it supplied, for example, the material for Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Timon of Athens. A translation by John Dryden was revised by A. H. Clough in 1864. Although Plutarch displays evident pride in the culture and greatness of the men of Greece, he is nevertheless fair and honest in his treatment of the Romans. As a biographer Plutarch is almost peerless, although his facts are not always accurate. Since his purpose was to portray character and reveal its moral implications, his technique included the use of much anecdotal material. Less known, but also of great charm and interest, are Plutarch's Moralia (tr. by F. C. Babbitt et al., 14 vol., 1927–76). They consist of dialogues and essays on ethical, literary, and historical subjects, such as The Late Vengeance of the Deity, On Superstition, The Right Way of Hearing Poetry, and Advice to Married Couples. Plutarch's quotations (frequent and long) from the old dramatists are often our only record of such writings.

Bibliography

See biography by R. H. Barrow (1967, repr. 1979); studies by C. J. Gianakaris (1970), C. P. Jones (1971), D. A. Russell (1973), and A. Wardman (1974).

 
Quotes By: Plutarch

Quotes:

"Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly."

"Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends."

"Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns, for in ceasing to be numbered with mortals he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life."

"A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful? holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. Yet, added he, none of you can tell where it pinches me."

"To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future."

"Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist."

See more famous quotes by Plutarch

 
Wikipedia: Plutarch
Plutarch
Mestrius Plutarchus
Πλούταρχος

Parallel Lives, Amyot translation, 1565
Born: Circa 46 AD
Chaeronea, Boeotia
Died: Circa 120 AD
Delphi, Phocis
Occupation: Biographer, essayist, priest, ambassador, magistrate
Nationality: Greek
Subjects: Biography, various
Literary movement: Middle Platonism,
Hellenistic literature
Debut works: Essay: Moralia
Biography: Lives
Several works misattributed; see Pseudo-Plutarch

Mestrius Plutarchus (Greek: Πλούταρχος; c. 46 AD - 120 AD), better known in English as Plutarch, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist.[1] Plutarch was born to a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia [Greece], a town about twenty miles east of Delphi. His oeuvre consists of the Parallel Lives and the Moralia.

Early life, education and family

Ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where Plutarch served as one of the priests responsible for interpreting the predictions of the oracle.
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Ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where Plutarch served as one of the priests responsible for interpreting the predictions of the oracle.

Plutarch was born in 46 AD[a] in the small town of Chaeronea, in the Greek region known as Boeotia. The name of Plutarch's father has not been preserved, but it was probably Nikarchus, from the common habit of Greek families to repeat a name in alternate generations. His family was wealthy. The name of Plutarch's grandfather was Lamprias, as he attested in Moralia[2]. His brothers, Timon and Lamprias, are frequently mentioned in his essays and dialogues, where Timon is spoken of in the most affectionate terms. Rualdus, in his 1624 work Life of Plutarchus, recovered the name of Plutarch's wife, Timoxena, from internal evidence afforded by his writings. A letter is still extant, addressed by Plutarch to his wife, bidding her not give way to excessive grief at the death of their two year old daughter, who was named Timoxena after her mother. Interestingly, he hinted at a belief in reincarnation in that letter of consolation.

The exact number of his sons is not certain, although two of them, Autobulus and second Plutarch, are often mentioned. Plutarch's treatise on the Timaeus of Plato is dedicated to them, and the marriage of his son Autobulus is the occasion of one of the dinner-parties recorded in the 'Table Talk.' Another person, Soklarus, is spoken of in terms which seem to imply that he was Plutarch's son, but this is nowhere definitely stated. His treatise on Marriage Questions, addressed to Eurydike and Pollianus, seems to speak of her as having been recently an inmate of his house, but without enabling us to form an opinion whether she was his daughter or not.[3]

Plutarch studied mathematics and philosophy at the Academy of Athens under Ammonius from 66 to 67.[4]. He had a number of influential friends, including Soscius Senecio and Fundanus, both important senators, to whom some of his later writings were dedicated.[citation needed] Plutarch travelled widely in the Mediterranean world, including central Greece, Sparta, Corinth, Patrae (Patras), Sardes, Alexandria, and two trips to Rome[b].

"The soul, being eternal, after death is like a caged bird that has been released. If it has been a long time in the body, and has become tame by many affairs and long habit, the soul will immediately take another body and once again become involved in the troubles of the world. The worst thing about old age is that the soul's memory of the other world grows dim, while at the same time its attachment to things of this world becomes so strong that the soul tends to retain the form that it had in the body. But that soul which remains only a short time within a body, until liberated by the higher powers, quickly recovers its fire and goes on to higher things."
Plutarch (The Consolation, Moralia)

He lived most of his life at Chaeronea, and was initiated into the mysteries of the Greek god Apollo. However, his duties as the senior of the two priests of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi (where he was responsible for interpreting the auguries of the Pythia) apparently occupied little of his time. He led an active social and civic life while producing an incredible body of writing, much of which is still extant.

Work as magistrate and ambassador

In addition to his duties as a priest of the Delphic temple, Plutarch was also a magistrate in Chaeronea and he represented his home on various missions to foreign countries during his early adult years. His friend Lucius Mestrius Florus, a Roman consul, sponsored Plutarch as a Roman citizen, and according to the 10th century historian George Syncellus, late in life, the Emperor Hadrian appointed him procurator of Achaea – a position that entitled him to wear the vestments and ornaments of a consul himself.[citation needed]

Plutarch held the office of Archon in his native municipality, probably only an annual one which he likely served more than once. He busied himself with all the little matters of the town and undertook the humblest of duties.[5]

The Suda, a medieval Greek encyclopedia, states that Hadrian's predecessor Trajan made Plutarch procurator of Illyria, but most historians consider that unlikely, since Illyria was not a procuratorial province, and Plutarch probably did not speak Illyrian[citation needed].

Plutarch died between the years 119 AD and 127 AD.[c]

Parallel Lives

A page from the 1470 Ulrich Han printing of Plutarch's Parallel Lives.
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A page from the 1470 Ulrich Han printing of Plutarch's Parallel Lives.


Main article: Parallel Lives

His best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged as dyads to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving Lives contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair containing one Greek Life and one Roman Life, as well as four unpaired single Lives. As he explains in the first paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character — good or bad — on the lives and destinies of famous men. Some of the more interesting Lives — for instance, those of Heracles and Philip II of Macedon — no longer exist, and many of the remaining Lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae, or have been tampered with by later writers. The work Parallel Lives included 23 pairs of lives, 19 of them with comparisons, and four singles. They include Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles, Alcibiades, Nicias, Demosthenes, Philopoemen, Timoleon, Dion, Alexander, Pyrrhus, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Mark Antony, Brutus, Julius Caesar, and Cicero.

Life of Alexander

Plutarch's Life of Alexander is one of the five surviving tertiary sources about the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great, and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source.[citation needed] Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.[citation needed]

Life of Pyrrhus

Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus is a key text because it is the main historical account on Roman history for the period from 293 to 264 BC, for which neither Dionysius nor Livy have surviving texts.[6]

Criticism of Parallel Lives

"It is not histories I am writing, but lives; and in the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue of vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die."
Plutarch (Life of Alexander/Life of Julius Caesar, Parallel Lives, [tr. E.L. Bowie])

Plutarch stretches and occasionally fabricates the similarities between famous Greeks and Romans in order to write their biographies as parallels. For instance, the lives of Nicias and Crassus have nothing in common except that both men were rich and both suffered a great military defeat at the ends of their lives.[7]

In his Life of Pompey, Plutarch praises Pompey's trustworthy character and tactful behavior in order to conjure up a moral judgment that goes against most historical accounts. Plutarch delivers anecdotes with a moral points, rather than in-depth comparative analyses of the causes of the fall of the Achaemenid Empire and the Roman Republic.[8]

In defense of Plutarch, he generally sums up all his moral anecdotes in a chronological sequence unlike his Roman contemporary Suetonius.[8]

Moralia

A bust of the early Greek historian Herodotus, whom Plutarch criticized in On the Malice of Herodotus.
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A bust of the early Greek historian Herodotus, whom Plutarch criticized in On the Malice of Herodotus.


Main article: Moralia

The remainder of Plutarch's surviving work is collected under the title of the Moralia (loosely translated as Customs and Mores). It is an eclectic collection of seventy-eight essays and transcribed speeches, which includes On Fraternal Affection - a discourse on honor and affection of siblings toward each other, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great - an important adjunct to his Life of the great king, On the Worship of Isis and Osiris (a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites)[9], along with more philosophical treatises, such as On the Decline of the Oracles, On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance, On Peace of Mind and lighter fare, such as Odysseus and Gryllus, a humorous dialogue between Homer's Odysseus and one of Circe's enchanted pigs. The Moralia was composed first, while writing the Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch's own life.

On the Malice of Herodotus

In On the Malice of Herodotus Plutarch criticizes the historian Herodotus for all manners of prejudice and misrepresentation. It has been called the “first instance in literature of the slashing review.”[10] The 19th century English historian George Grote considered this essay a serious attack upon the works of Herodotus, and speaks of the "honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity."[11] Plutarch makes some palpable hits, catching Herodotus out in various errors, but it is also probable that it was merely a rhetorical exercise, in which Plutarch plays devil's advocate to see what could be said against so favourite and well-known a writer.[3] According to Plutarch scholar R. H. Barrow, Herodotus’ real failing in Plutarch’s eyes was to advance any criticism at all of those states that saved Greece from Persia. “Plutarch,” he concluded, “is fanatically biased in favor of the Greek cities; they can do no wrong.”[12]

Isis and Osiris

"On the Worship of Isis and Osiris" is a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites[13].


Questions

A pair of interesting minor works in Book IV of the Moralia is the Roman and Greek Questions. The customs of Romans and Greeks are illuminated in little essays that pose questions such as 'Why were patricians not permitted to live on the Capitoline?' (no. 91) and then answers them.[14]

Pseudo-Plutarch

Main article: Pseudo-Plutarch

Pseudo-Plutarch is the conventional name given to the unknown authors of a number of pseudepigrapha attributed to Plutarch. Some editions of the Moralia include several works now known to be pseudepigrapha: among these are the Lives of the Ten Orators (biographies of the Ten Orators of ancient Athens, based on Caecilius of Calacte), The Doctrines of the Philosophers, and On Music. One "pseudo-Plutarch" is held responsible for all of these works, though their authorship is of course unknown.[citation needed] The thoughts and opinions recorded are not Plutarch's and come from a slightly later era, though they are all classical in origin and have value to the historian.

Lost works

The Romans loved the Lives, and enough copies were written out over the centuries so that a copy of most of the lives managed to survive to the present day. Some scholars, however, believe that only a third to one-half of Plutarch’s corpus is extant. The lost works of Plutarch are determined by references in his own texts to them and from other authors references over time. There are traces of twelve more Lives that are now lost.[15]

Plutarch's general procedure for the Lives was to write the life of a prominent Greek, then cast about for a suitable Roman parallel, and end with a brief comparison of the Greek and Roman lives. Currently, only nineteen of the parallel lives end with a comparison while possibly they all did at one time. Also missing are many of his Lives which appear in a list of his writings, those of Hercules[citation needed], the first pair of Parallel Lives, Scipio Africanus and Epaminondas, and the companions to the four solo biographies. Even the lives of such important figures as Augustus, Claudius, and Nero have not been found and may be lost forever.[16][10]

Plutarch's influence

Plutarch's writings had enormous influence on English and French literature. In his plays, Shakespeare paraphrased parts of Thomas North's translation of selected Lives, and occasionally quoted from them verbatim.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by the Moralia so much that Emerson called the Lives "a bible for heroes" in his glowing introduction to the five volume 19th century edition of his Moralia.[17] Emerson also wrote that "We cannot read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: 'A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined.' "[18]

Montaigne's own Essays draw deeply on Plutarch's Moralia and are consciously modeled on the Greek’s easygoing, discursive inquiries into science, manners, customs, and beliefs. His essays contain more than four hundred references to Plutarch and his works.[10]

James Boswell quoted Plutarch's line about writing lives, rather than biographies, in the introduction to his own Life of Samuel Johnson. His other admirers include Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Alexander Hamilton, John Milton, and Sir Francis Bacon, as well as such disparate figures as Cotton Mather and Robert Browning.

Plutarch's direct influence declined in the 19th and 20th centuries, though his influence remains embedded in the popular ideas of Greek and Roman history.[19]

Translations of Lives and Moralia

There are translations in English, French, Italian and German.

French Translations

Jacques Amyot's translations brought Plutarch's works to Western Europe. He went to Italy and studied the Vatican text of Plutarch, from which he published a French translation of the Lives in 1559 and Moralia in 1572, which were widely read by educated Europe.[20] Amyot's translations had as deep an impression in England as France, because Thomas North later published his English translation of the Lives in 1579 based on Amyot’s French translation instead of the original Greek.

English Translations

Plutarch's Lives were translated into English, from Amyot's version, by Sir Thomas North in 1579. The complete Moralia was first translated into English from the original Greek by Philemon Holland (q.v.) in 1603.

In 1683, John Dryden began a life of Plutarch and oversaw a translation of the Lives by several hands and based on the original Greek. This translation has been reworked and revised several times, most recently in the nineteenth century by the English poet and classicist Arthur Hugh Clough.

From 1901-1912, American classicist Bernadotte Perrin produced a new translation of the Lives for the Loeb library series.

Latin Translations

There is one translation of Parallel Lives into Latin, titled "Pour le Dauphin" (French for "for the Prince") written by a scribe in the court of Louis XV of France. Louis XV is said to have commissioned the translation because he wanted his grandson, Louis XVI, to learn the successes and failings of the famous classical leaders, but thought that Greek was not as useful as Latin.[citation needed]

German Translations

Plutarch's Lives were translated into German by Johann Friedrich Salomon Kaltwasser in 1799-1806.


See also

Notes

a.   Plutarch's date of birth probably occurred during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius and between 45 AD and 50 AD, though the exact date is debated.[3][citation needed]

b.   Plutarch was once believed to have spent 40 years in Rome, but it is currently thought that he traveled to Rome once or twice for a short period.[citation needed]

c.   Plutarch died between the years 119 AD and 127 AD.[citation needed]

Citations

  1. ^ "Plutarch". Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. 
  2. ^ Symposiacs, Book IX, questions II & III
  3. ^ a b c Aubrey Stewart, George Long. "Life of Plutarch", Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4). The Gutenberg Project. Retrieved on 2007-01-03. 
  4. ^ Plutarch Bio(46c.-125). The Online Library of Liberty. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
  5. ^ Clough, Arthur Hugh [1864]. "Introduction", Plutarch's Lives. Liberty Library of Constitutional Classics. 
  6. ^ Cornell, T.J. (1995). "Introduction", The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC). Routledge, p.3. 
  7. ^ Plutarch (1972). "Translator's Introduction", Fall Of The Roman Republic: Six Lives by Plutarch, translated by Rex Warner, Penguin Books, p.8. 
  8. ^ a b Livius.Org Plutarch of Chaeronea. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
  9. ^ Plutarch; translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. Isis and Osiris. Retrieved on 2006-12-10.
  10. ^ a b c
  11. ^ Grote, George [1830] (2000-10-19). A History of Greece: From the Time of Solon to 403 B.C.. Routledge, p.203. 
  12. ^ Barrow, R.H. [1967] (1979). Plutarch and His Times. 
  13. ^ "On the worship of Isis and Osiris", [2]
  14. ^ Cornell, T.J. (1995). "Introduction", The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC). Routledge, p.22. 
  15. ^ [1914] "Translator's Introduction", The Parallel Lives, Vol. I, Loeb Classical Library Edition. 
  16. ^ McCutchen, Wilmot H.. Plutarch - His Life and Legacy. Retrieved on 2006-12-10.
  17. ^ Emerson, Ralph Waldo [1870]. "Introduction", in William W. Goodwin: Plutarch's Morals. London: Sampson, Low, p.xxi. 
  18. ^ Emerson, Ralph Waldo [1850]. "Uses of Great Men", Representative Men. 
  19. ^ Plutarch Biography.
  20. ^ "Amyot, Jacques (1513-1593)". Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910-1911). 

References

  • Blackburn, Simon (1994). Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  • Russell, D.A. [1972] (2001). Plutarch. Duckworth Publishing. ISBN 978-1853996207. 
  • Duff, Tim (2005). Plutarch's Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice. UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199252749. 
  • Hamilton, Edith [1957]. The Echo of Greece. W. W. Norton & Company, p.194. ISBN 0-393-00231-4. 

External links

Plutarch's works

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Secondary material


Persondata
NAME Plutarch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mestrius Plutarchus; Πλούταρχος (Greek)
SHORT DESCRIPTION Greek writer- historian and essayist
DATE OF BIRTH c. 46
PLACE OF BIRTH Chaeronea, Boeotia
DATE OF DEATH 127
PLACE OF DEATH

 
 

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