Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...

, probably at the beginning of the second century. The lives are arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. While any historically valuable similarities are often forced, these stories of contrasting characters hold great literary value. The surviving ''Parallel Lives'' comprises 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman of similar destiny, such as

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...

and

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

, or Demosthenes and

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

. There are also four singular ''Lives'', recounting the stories of Artaxerxes, Aratus, Galba, and Otho. Traces of other biographies point to an additional twelve single ''Lives'' that are now missing. 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.

Motivation

''Parallel Lives'' was Plutarch's second set of biographical works, following the Lives of the Roman Emperors from Augustus to Vitellius. Of these, only the Lives of Galba and Otho survive. As he explains in the first paragraph of his ''Life of Alexander'', Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, but with exploring the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of famous men. He wished to shed light on the actions and achievements of the Greek men of the distant past through his comparisons with the more recent past of Rome. George Wyndham's introduction in the 1895 publication of the ''Lives'' writes of:

" lutarch'sdesire, as a man, to draw the noble Grecians, long since dead, a little nearer to the noonday of the living...By placing them side by side, he gave back to the Greeks that touch which they had lost with the living in the death of Greece, and to the Romans that distinction from everyday life which they were fast beginning to lose".

Plutarch's interest was primarily

ethical Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...

rather than historical ("For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives."). Because the men he wrote about had been dead nearly 300 years before Plutarch's time, his writing was largely based off of manuscripts of uncertain accuracy. Plutarch himself had little faith in the historic truth found in resources from the past. In his life of Pericles, he states:

"It is so hard to find out the truth of anything by looking at the record of the past. The process of time obscures the truth of former times, and even contemporaneous writers disguise and twist the truth out of malice or flattery."

Translations

The ''Lives'' were circulated enough throughout Rome after their original production that they survived the Dark Ages. However, many of the ''Lives'' which appear in a list of his writings have not been found. Among these are his biography of Hercules and his comparison of Epaminondas of Greece and

Scipio Africanus Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (, , ; 236/235–) was a Roman general and statesman who was one of the main architects of Rome's victory against Ancient Carthage, Carthage in the Second Punic War. Often regarded as one of the greatest milit ...

of Rome. The first printed edition of his ''Parallel Lives'' appeared in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

around 1470, translated into Latin from the original Greek. Several more translations would appear through the end of the fifteenth century, with an Italian translation in 1482 then in Spanish in 1491. A German translation would be written in 1541. The ''Lives'' would gain massive popularity after the 1559 French translation by Amyot, the Abbot of Bellozane. This reproduction of the work was an immediate success. Six authorized editions were published by the Parisian house of Vascosan by the end of 1579, and it was largely pirated. Amyot's translation served as a direct source for Thomas North's 1579 English translation, which phrase for phrase follows Amyot's French version. This rendition would become an important source-material for Shakespeare's ''Coriolanus, Julius Caesar'', and ''Antony and Cleopatra''. In 1683 a new English edition of the ''Lives'' was published, this time translated from the original Greek, unlike North's translation based off of the French version. This translation has come to be known as "Dryden's translation", despite the poet John Dryden only serving as the project's editor and ultimately having no role in the actual translation of the work. It was published by Jacob Tonson. The most popular English translations that exist today are published by Penguin Classics and Oxford World's Classics. Both of these editions provide a solid translation of the entire ''Lives'', as well as introductions, notes, and bibliographies produced by leading experts on Plutarch and the ''Parallel Lives.'' Modern translations of Plutarch's work has made ''Parallel Lives'' accessible and digestible to vast audiences.

Content

Plutarch structured ''Parallel Lives'' by pairing lives of famous Greeks with those of famous Romans. Eighteen of these close with a formal comparison between its characters. Plutarch's focus within the ''Lives'' is to create a neat depiction of character that fits into his comparison to the parallel life. Historical context is neglected in favor of moral analysis in order to create his desired anecdote. This can be seen in his deviation from the sources he used to understand the characters he represented: "His Eumenes is a far cry from any picture of Eumenes he can have found in the historical literature he used. It is an artificial creation to provide a counterpart to his Sertorius and can only be understood against the background of the Sertorius." The ''Parallel Lives'', therefore, need to be understood primarily as literary biographies, not as histories. Within the biographies Plutarch presents both the positive and negative attributes of each character. Rather than speaking of the character’s lives in simple terms surrounding the events of their lives, he describes the moral and psychological motivations behind each figure. He uses them as ‘moral actors’, prompting self-examination and self-improvement from the reader. Even when making judgements on the characters within the text, Plutarch still “poses questions to his readers and suggests alternative trains of thought that might be possible for them to follow”. This encourages the reader to acknowledge and appreciate contradicting viewpoints and broaden their moral perspectives. The table below gives the list of the biographies. Its order follows the one found in the ''Lamprias Catalogue'', the list of Plutarch's works made by his hypothetical son Lamprias. The table also features links to several English translations of Plutarch's ''Lives'' available online. While the four unpaired biographies are not considered to be parts of the ''Parallel Lives'', they can be included in the term ''Plutarch's Lives''. All dates are BC. ; Notes The two-volume edition of Dryden's translation contains the following biographies: Volume 1. Theseus, Romulus, Lycurgus, Numa, Solon, Publicola, Themistocles, Camillus, Pericles, Fabius, Alcibiades, Coriolanus, Timoleon, Aemilius Paulus, Pelopidas, Marcellus, Aristides, Cato the Elder, Philopoemen, Flamininus, Pyrrhus, Marius, Lysander, Sulla, Cimon, Lucullus, Nicias, Crassus. Volume 2. Sertorius, Eumenes, Agesilaus, Pompey, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Phocion, Cato the Younger, Agis, Cleomenes, Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus, Demosthenes, Cicero, Demetrius, Mark Antony, Dion, Marcus Brutus, Aratus, Artaxerxes II, Galba, Otho. # The Perseus project also contains a biography of Caesar Augustus, in North's translation, but not from Plutarch's ''Parallel Lives''
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# Though the majority of the Parallel Lives were written with the Greek hero (or heroes) placed in the first position followed by the Roman hero, there are three sets of Lives where this order is reversed: ''Aemilius Paulus/Timoleon'', ''Coriolanus/Alcibiades'' and ''Sertorius/Eumenes''. # At the time of composing this table there appears some confusion in the internal linking of the Perseus project webpages, responsible for this split in two references.

Reception

Plutarch's ''Parallel Lives'' has received widespread praise from notable figures throughout its centuries of popularity. The 1559 first French edition was hailed by French author and philosopher Montaigne, who commented "We dunces would have been lost if this book had not raised us out of the dirt". Beethoven, with the progression of his deafness, wrote in 1801, "I have often cursed my Creator and my existence. Plutarch has shown me the path of resignation. If it is at all possible, I will bid defiance to my fate, though I feel that as long as I live there will be moments when I shall be God's most unhappy creature ... Resignation, what a wretched resource! Yet it is all that is left to me." British General Gordon wrote "Certainly I would make Plutarch's ''Lives'' a handbook for our young officers. It is worth any number of 'Arts of War' or 'Minor Tactics'."

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionism, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist movement of th ...

called the ''Lives'' "a bible for heroes." The individual biographies have their own receptions in addition to responses to the work as a whole. The life of Antonius has been cited by multiple scholars as one of the masterpieces of the series.. Peter D'Epiro praised his depiction of Alcibiades as "a masterpiece of characterization." Academic Philip A. Stadter singled out Plutarch's Pompey and Caesar as the greatest figures in the Roman biographies. His biography of Caesar has been cited as proof that Plutarch is "loaded with perception". Carl Rollyson's ''Essays in Biography'' states that "no biographer has surpassed him in summing up the essence of a life – perhaps because no modern biographer has believed so intensely as Plutarch did in 'the soul of men'." Within each translation and reiteration of Plutarch's ''Lives'', translators and editors have manipulated his original work in order to put foreword their own ideologies. George Wyndham's 1895 introduction to the ''Lives'' denounces how

"Men cut down the genuine ''Lives'' to convenient lengths, for summaries and 'treasuries'... heyepitomized Plutarch's matter and pointed his moral, grinding them to the dust of a classical dictionary and the ashes of a copybook headline".

Here he is speaking of incomplete republications of Plutarch's original work, which had gained popularity but had been rehashed into brief, incomplete outlines that lacked Plutarch's original depth. Rebecca Nesvet argues that the 1683 translation of the text was constructed with the intention of incorporating a message of religious tolerance. Jacob Tonson, with assistance from John Dryden, republished ''Lives'' confirming Plutarch's paganism and demonstrating clearly that "adherence to a faith outside the one his readers were expected to follow should not disqualify a rational individual from political involvement in leadership". While the original text of ''Parallel Lives'' was produced to progress certain moral ideals, translators of the work have deviated from the original text to incorporate their own ethics. Plutarch's ''Parallel'' ''Lives'' has remained relevant centuries after being authored. His merging of biography and ethical commentary continues to be an invaluable reflection on human nature. Put quite plainly: "We find Plutarch surprisingly relevant today because nothing really has changed in human nature over the nineteen centuries since Plutarch wrote".

Footnotes

References

External links

University of Chicago English text of Plutarch's ''Parallel Lives''.
* * Schettino, Maria Teresa, and Mark Beck. “The Use of Historical Sources.” In ''A Companion to Plutarch'', 417–36. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118316450.ch28. {{Section link, de:Plutarch#Parallelbiographien