-
[42] 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. -
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.
-
[30] Parallel Lives[edit] Main article: Parallel Lives A page from the 1470 Ulrich Han printing of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives Plutarch’s best-known work is the Parallel Lives,
a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices, thus it being more of an insight into human nature than a historical account. -
It includes anecdotes and descriptions of events that appear in no other source, just as Plutarch’s portrait of Numa Pompilius, the putative second king of Rome, holds much
that is unique on the early Roman calendar. -
Rose writes “One advantage to a modern reader who is not well acquainted with Greek is, that being but a moderate stylist, Plutarch is almost as good in a translation as in
the original. -
[7] As a Roman citizen, Plutarch would have been of the equestrian order, he visited Rome some time c. AD 70 with Florus, who served also as a historical source for his Life
of Otho. -
Plutarch lived centuries after the Sparta he writes about (and a full millennium separates him from the earliest events he records) and even though he visited Sparta, many
of the ancient customs he reports had been long abandoned, so he never actually saw of what he wrote. -
As is explained in the opening paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with history so much as the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives
and destinies of men. -
Rousseau introduces a passage from Plutarch in support of his position against eating meat: “‘You ask me’, said Plutarch, ‘why Pythagoras abstained from eating the flesh of
beasts…'”[51] Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by the Moralia and in his glowing introduction to the five-volume, 19th-century edition, he called the Lives “a bible for heroes”. -
The Moralia was composed first, while writing the Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch’s own life.
-
The third volume, Greek and Roman Lives, published in 1973, presented the remaining biographies and parallels as translated by Halevy.
-
[7] The exact number of his sons is not certain, although two of them, Autobulus and the second Plutarch, are often mentioned.
-
Lost works[edit] The lost works of Plutarch are determined by references in his own texts to them and from other authors’ references over time.
-
In 1770, English brothers John and William Langhorne published “Plutarch’s Lives from the original Greek, with notes critical and historical, and a new life of Plutarch” in
6 volumes and dedicated to Lord Folkestone. -
Rualdus, in his 1624 work Life of Plutarchus, recovered the name of Plutarch’s wife, Timoxena, from internal evidence afforded by his writings.
-
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. -
Life of Alexander[edit] Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, written as a parallel to that of Julius Caesar, is one of five extant tertiary sources on the Macedonian conqueror Alexander
the Great. -
The second volume, Greek Lives, first published in 1971 presents A.
-
[55] 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. -
“[27] Therefore, they do not form a part of the Plutarchian canon of single biographies – as represented by the Life of Aratus of Sicyon and the Life of Artaxerxes II (the
biographies of Hesiod, Pindar, Crates and Daiphantus were lost). -
[37] 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”. -
[38] 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. -
According to Ammonius, the letter ‘E’ written on the temple of Apollo in Delphi originated from the following fact: The Seven Sages of Greece, whose maxims were also written
on the walls of the vestibule of the temple, were not seven but actually five: Chilon, Solon, Thales, Bias, and Pittakos. -
One of his most famous quotes was one that he included in one of his earliest works.
-
[32] Life of Pyrrhus[edit] 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 BCE, for which
both Dionysius’ and Livy’s texts are lost. -
Penguin Classics began a series of translations by various scholars in 1958 with The Fall of the Roman Republic, which contained six Lives and was translated by Rex Warner.
-
[18][page needed] Late period: Priest at Delphi[edit] Portrait of a philosopher, and a hermaic stele at the Delphi Archaeological Museum Some time c. AD 95, Plutarch was made
one of the two sanctuary priests for the temple of Apollo at Delphi; the site had declined considerably since the classical Greek period. -
It is an eclectic collection of seventy-eight essays and transcribed speeches, including On Fraternal Affection—a discourse on honour 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),[34] 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. -
Plutarch’s influence declined in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it remains embedded in the popular ideas of Greek and Roman history.
-
The ‘Catalogue of Lamprias’, an ancient list of works attributed to Plutarch, lists 227 works, of which 78 have come down to us.
-
conclude that Plutarch’s works on Sparta, while they must be treated with skepticism, remain valuable for their “large quantities of information” and these historians concede
that “Plutarch’s writings on Sparta, more than those of any other ancient author, have shaped later views of Sparta”, despite their potential to misinform. -
Even the lives of such important figures as Augustus, Claudius and Nero have not been found and may be lost forever.
-
Spartan lives and sayings[edit] Since Spartans wrote no history prior to the Hellenistic period – their only extant literature is fragments of 7th-century lyrics – Plutarch’s
five Spartan lives and Sayings of Spartans and Sayings of Spartan Women, rooted in sources that have since disappeared, are some of the richest sources for historians of Lacedaemonia. -
[28] “The Caesars’ house in Rome, the Palatium, received in a shorter space of time no less than four Emperors”, Plutarch writes, “passing, as it were, across the stage, and
one making room for another to enter” (Galba 1). -
[52] He also opined that it was impossible to “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. -
Also missing are many of his Lives which appear in a list of his writings: those of Hercules, the first pair of Parallel Lives, Scipio Africanus and Epaminondas, and the companions
to the four solo biographies. -
Latin translations[edit] There are multiple translations of Parallel Lives into Latin, most notably the one titled “Pour le Dauphin” (French for “for the Prince”) written
by a scribe in the court of Louis XV of France and a 1470 Ulrich Han translation. -
[24] Works Plutarch’s surviving works were intended for Greek speakers throughout the Roman Empire, not just Greeks.
-
[33] “It is not histories I am writing, but lives; and in the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue or vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or
a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die. -
He also draws extensively on the work of Lysippus, Alexander’s favourite sculptor, to provide what is probably the fullest and most accurate description of the conqueror’s
physical appearance. -
[23] But a fragmentary hermaic stele next to the portrait probably did once bear a portrait of Plutarch, since it is inscribed, “The Delphians, along with the Chaeroneans,
dedicated this (image of) Plutarch, following the precepts of the Amphictyony”. -
Enough copies were written out over the centuries so that a copy of most of the lives has survived to the present day, but there are traces of twelve more Lives that are now
lost. -
[37][43] Lost works that would have been part of the Moralia include “Whether One Who Suspends Judgment on Everything Is Condemned to Inaction”, “On Pyrrho’s Ten Modes”, and
“On the Difference between the Pyrrhonians and the Academics”. -
[37] James Boswell quoted Plutarch on writing lives, rather than biographies, in the introduction to his own Life of Samuel Johnson.
-
[19] His priestly duties connected part of his literary work with the Pythian oracle at Delphia: one of his most important works is the “Why Pythia does not give oracles in
verse”.[20]. -
There is reason to believe that the two Lives still extant, those of Galba and Otho, “ought to be considered as a single work.
-
[46] The most characteristic feature of Plutarch’s ethics is, however, its close connection with religion.
-
Italian translations[edit] Note: only the main translations from the second half of 15th century are given.
-
A letter is still extant, addressed by Plutarch to his wife, bidding her not to grieve too much at the death of their two-year-old daughter, who was named Timoxena after her
mother. -
Plutarch’s treatise De animae procreatione in Timaeo 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”. -
-
While flawed, Plutarch is nonetheless indispensable as one of the only ancient sources of information on Spartan life.
-
[21] Even more important is the dialogue “On the ‘E’ at Delphi”,[22] which features Ammonius, a Platonic philosopher and teacher of Plutarch, and Lambrias, Plutarch’s brother.
-
[14] Work as magistrate and ambassador[edit] In addition to his duties as a priest of the Delphic temple, Plutarch was also a magistrate at Chaeronea and he represented his
home town on various missions to foreign countries during his early adult years. -
He mentions this service in his work, Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs (17 = Moralia 792f).
-
“[35] Questions[edit] Book IV of the Moralia contains the Roman and Greek Questions.
-
[citation needed] Pseudo-Plutarch Some editions of the Moralia include several works now known to have been falsely attributed to Plutarch.
-
Thus, the ‘E’, which was used to represent the number 5, constituted an acknowledgement that the Delphic maxims actually originated from only five genuine wise men.
-
It has been called the “first instance in literature of the slashing review”.
-
[47] Thus Plutarch sought to combine the philosophical and religious conception of things and to remain as close as possible to tradition.
-
Another person, Soklarus, is spoken of in terms which seem to imply that he was Plutarch’s son, but this is nowhere definitely stated.
-
[8] According to Barrow (1967), Herodotus’ real failing in Plutarch’s eyes was to advance any criticism at all of the city-states that saved Greece from Persia.
-
His treatise on marriage questions, addressed to Eurydice and Pollianus, seems to speak of the former as having recently lived in his house, but without any clear evidence
on whether she was his daughter or not. -
Currently, only 19 of the parallel lives end with a comparison, while possibly they all did at one time.
-
In the introduction to the third volume Halevy explains that originally the Bialik Institute intended to publish only a selection of biographies, leaving out mythological
figures and biographies that had no parallels. -
He is known primarily for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Moralia, a collection of essays and speeches.
-
[47] However pure Plutarch’s idea of God is, and however vivid his description of the vice and corruption which superstition causes, his warm religious feelings and his distrust
of human powers of knowledge led him to believe that God comes to our aid by direct revelations, which we perceive the more clearly the more completely that we refrain in “enthusiasm” from all action; this made it possible for him to justify
popular belief in divination in the way which had long been usual among the Stoics. -
Shakespeare paraphrased parts of Thomas North’s translation of selected Lives in his plays, and occasionally quoted from them verbatim.
-
Whereas sometimes he barely touched on epoch-making events, he devoted much space to charming anecdote and incidental triviality, reasoning that this often said far more for
his subjects than even their most famous accomplishments. -
Sometimes, Plutarch quotes directly from the De Bello Gallico and even tells us of the moments when Caesar was dictating his works.
-
This translation has been reworked and revised several times, most recently in the 19th century by the English poet and classicist Arthur Hugh Clough (first published in 1859).
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Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andylawson/6204049536/’]