Chapter 3 - Plutarch and Roman Exemplary Ethics

Summary

This chapter argues that Plutarch’s moralising works (especially the Progress in Virtue and Parallel Lives) show signs of having been significantly influenced by Roman exemplary ethics. Plutarch brings Roman ideas about exemplary ethics and imitation to bear on the Greek philosophical tradition, and his critique of Platonic mimesis is emboldened by the critical Roman framework which he must have encountered as a lived Roman tradition, not just in the Latin literature that he may have read as a source for his Roman lives and other writings, but also in day-to-day experiences with his Roman friends, such as Sosius Senecio, to whom he dedicates both Progress in Virtue and the Parallel Lives.