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Plutarch, later named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, c. 46 - 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. Plutarch lived most of his life at Chaeronea, and 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 extensive body of writing, much of which survived. By his writings and lectures Plutarch became a celebrity in the Roman Empire. At his country estate, guests from all over the empire congregated for serious conversation, presided over by Plutarch in his marble chair. Many of these dialogues were recorded and published, and the 78 essays and other works which have survived are now known collectively as the Moralia. Plutarch's best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices. The surviving Lives contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek Life and one Roman Life, as well as four unpaired single Lives. Some of the Lives, such as those of Heracles, Philip II of Macedon and Scipio Africanus, no longer exist; many of the remaining Lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae or have been tampered with by later writers. Extant Lives include those on Aristides, Pericles, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Cato the Younger, Mark Antony, and Marcus Junius Brutus, all of which are included here.
Plutarch's Parallel Lives were written to compare famous Greeks and Romans. This most obvious aspect of their parallelism is frequently ignored in the drive to mine Plutarch for historical fact. However, the eleven contributors to the present volume, who include most of the world's leading commentators on Plutarch, together bring out many ways in which Plutarch invoked aspects of parallelism. They show how pervasive and how central the whole notion was to his thinking. With new analysis of the synkriseis; with discussion of parallels within and across the Lives and in the Moralia; with an examination of why the basic parallel structure of the Lives lost its importance in the Renaissance, this volume presents fresh ideas on a neglected topic crucial to Plutarch's literary creation.
In the Parallel Lives Plutarch does not absolve his readers of the need for moral reflection by offering any sort of hard and fast rules for their moral judgement. Rather, he uses strategies to elicit readers’ active engagement with the act of judging. This book, drawing on the insights of recent narrative theories, especially narratology and reader-response criticism, examines Plutarch’s narrative techniques in the Parallel Lives of drawing his readers into the process of moral evaluation and exposing them to the complexities entailed in it. Subjects discussed include Plutarch’s prefatory projection of himself and his readers and the interaction between the two; Plutarch’s presentation of the mental and emotional workings of historical agents, which serves to re-enact the participants’ experience at the time and thus arouse empathy in the readers; Plutarch’s closural strategies and their profound effects on the readers’ moral inquiry; Plutarch’s principles of historical criticism in On the malice of Herodotus in relation to his narrative strategies in the Lives. Through illustrating Plutarch’s narrative technique, this book elucidates Plutarch’s praise-and-blame rhetoric in the Lives as well as his sensibility to the challenges inherent in recounting, reading about, and evaluating the lives of the great men of history.
This eBook has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans or Parallel Lives is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, probably written at the beginning of the second century AD by Plutarch. Parallel Lives comprises 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals described, but also about the times in which they lived. Volume I contains 13 pairs of biographies from Theseus and Romulus to Cimon and Lucullus, with comparisons.
This book lucidly explains how the Parallel Lives of Plutarch (c. AD 45-120) are more than mere `sources' for history. The Lives offer us a unique insight into the reception of Classical Greece and Republican Rome in the Greek world of the second century AD. They also explore and challenge issues of psychology, education, morality, and cultural identity.
In Plutarch’s Pragmatic Biographies, Susan Jacobs argues for a major revision in how we interpret the Parallel Lives. She integrates the existing focus on moral issues into the much broader paradigm of effective leadership found in Plutarch’s Moralia. There, in addition to moral virtue, the successful leader needed good critical judgment, persuasiveness and facility in managing alliances and rivalries. The analysis of six sets of Lives shows how Plutarch carefully portrayed Greek and Roman leaders of the past assessing situations and solving problems that paralleled those faced by his politically-active audience. By linking victories and defeats to specific strategic insights and practical skills, Plutarch created “pragmatic biographies” that could instruct statesmen and generals of every era.
This edition will be of interest to all Greek scholars, ancient historians, and also the students of English literature since the relevant discussions require no knowledge of Greek.
Plutarch of Chaeronea is one of the great storytellers of antiquity, a writer whose ability to create unforgettable scenes matches the grandeur of his subject matter. The heroes of his Lives were the great men of antiquity, often greatly flawed, but with tragic depth and epic stature. Thomas North's translation, one of the most splendid works of sixteenth-century English prose, presents a vigorous and passionate version of the Lives whose qualities so attracted Shakespeare that he used North as his major source for Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Antony & Cleopatra. This collection includes all the Lives which Shakespeare used and a selection of others which aim to show the variety and range of Plutarch's writing.
The final volume of D'Artagnan Romances: it is usually split into four parts, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la Valliere, and the final portion is entitled The Man in the Iron Mask.