Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T08:16:25.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On Reading Plutarch's Lives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

D. A. Russell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This of course was Renaissance enthusiasm. The fame and influence which Plutarch enjoyed in the days of the rediscovery of antiquity could not survive the revolutions in historical and scholarly attitudes that marked the nineteenth century. Instead of being thought of as a mirror of antiquity and of human nature, he became a ‘secondary authority’, to be used where the ‘primary sources’ failed, himself to be quarried by the Quellenforscher and left a ruin. The present neglect of the Lives in education is a consequence of this. And yet it should be obvious that, for the very historical purposes for which the book is now chiefly studied, it is misleading and dangerous to use what is plainly one of the most sophisticated products of ancient historiography without constant regard to the plans and purposes of its author. Fortunately, a good deal has been written, especially in the last twenty years, to redress the balance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , October 1966 , pp. 139 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 139 note 1 e.g. Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, i (Oxford, 1945), 54–84Google Scholar; Dihle, A., Studien zur griechischen Biographie (Göttingen, 1956)Google Scholar; Erbse, H., Hermes lxxxiv (1956), 398 ff.Google Scholar on σύγκρισις; Martin, H., Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 3 (1960), 65–73Google Scholar; Carney, T. F., JHS lxxx (1960), 24–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Marius; Russell, D. A., JRS liii (1963), 21–28Google Scholar on Coriolanus. But of course Leo, F., Die griechischrömische Biographie (Leipzig, 1901) led the way.Google Scholar

page 139 note 2 Written, in its main part, in 1963, and read to the Oxford Classical Society and the Southampton Branch of the Classical Association; I wish to express my thanks to these societies, and to others who have read and criticized. The best conspectus of Plutarchean studies is the article by K. Ziegler in P–W (originally published in 1949); for English readers, Mahaffy, J. P., The Silver Age of the Greek World (Chicago, 1906), 339–402Google Scholar, is still useful. See also Dodds, E. R., Greece & Rome ii (1933), 97–107.Google Scholar

page 140 note 1 Aemilius Paulus, prooemium.

page 140 note 2 Stolz, C., Zur relativen Chronologie der Parallelbiographien Plutarchs (Lund, 1929).Google Scholar

page 140 note 3 Renoirté, T., Les conseils politiques de Plutarque (Louvain, 1951).Google Scholar

page 140 note 4 798 c, cf. C. Gracch. 22.

page 140 note 5 807 d, cf. Solon 15; Ages. 13.

page 140 note 6 809 b.

page 140 note 7 812 c, cf. Per. 7; II; 13.

page 140 note 8 822 a ff.; 822 e.

page 141 note 1 814 c.

page 141 note 2 Sulla 13. 4: ἄπιτε ὧ μακάριοι τοὺς λόγους τούτους ⋯ναλαβόντες.

page 141 note 3 814 b.

page 141 note 4 Moralia 345 c–351 b: perhaps only one side of a rhetorical debate, but it gives the impression of putting forward a view really held.

page 141 note 5 His literary interests are attested also by Pliny, , Epist. i. 13.Google Scholar

page 142 note 1 I doubt if this excuse will serve: cf. Camillus 12.4 and Aristides 7. 8 for Achilles as a heroic model in other contexts.

page 142 note 2 See Alexander I—Plutarch's clearest statement of purpose and method.

page 143 note 1 For Epaminondas, see Nepos' Life and Plutarch's Pelopidas and de genio Socratis. As the great Theban hero, he held a special place in Plutarch's affections.

page 143 note 2 e.g. Theseus 25', Camillus 36; Timoleon 37; Marius 28.

page 143 note 3 Demetrius I, again an important Preface: see Dihle, , op. cit. 74ff.Google Scholar

page 143 note 4 Cf. Bompaire, J., Lucien écrivain (Paris, 1958), 161 ff.Google Scholar

page 143 note 5 e.g. 5; 6; 28.

page 144 note 1 Transposizioni dell'antico (Milan, 1961), 108.

page 144 note 2 See Leo, , op. cit. 178 ff.Google Scholar, Dihle, , op. cit. 60 ffGoogle Scholar. Note esp. E.N. 1103a14 ff., on ᾗθος and ἔθος; ibid. 23 ff. on the part played by ‘nature’ and ‘maturity’.

page 144 note 3 Examples in Aem. Paul. 30; Mar. 28; Lucull. 6. 2.

page 145 note 1 Here again is the theme of Greek humanity and civilization as the cure for the potential barbarity of Rome. We should recall that the violence of Roman armies, bitterly remembered from the Mithridatic and civil wars, erupted again in a.d. 69, and remained a menace. Cf. Galba I, where Plutarch uses a Platonic thought to interpret the situation. Similar themes are common in the Lives: e.g. Cam. 12; Coriol. 15; Numa 3; Marcellus 22.

page 145 note 2 Plu. Per. 38. 2.

page 145 note 3 9. 22–23 (Hannibal).

page 146 note 1 The ⋯τέρα Πραγματεία is not extant, and no recorded title suggests a place where Plutarch may have handled the subject.

page 146 note 2 The second is of course the common ancient view. One thinks of Tacitus' Tiberius, , Ann. vi. 51Google Scholar: in his last degradation suo tantum ingenio utebatur (= τῇ αὑτο⋯ φύσει ⋯χρ⋯το). A recent producer of Timon of Athens (Stratford, 1965) felt (as he reports on the programme) the need to satisfy himself that the generous Timon and the misan thrope could really be the same person; he does so by supposing that bankruptcy and ingratitude revealed Timon's true nature, and that his behaviour in prosperity was simply acting a fantasy. This is to put a modern psychological gloss on the orthodox ancient view.

page 146 note 3 Τῷ δαίμονι συμμεταβαλεῑν τ⋯ ᾗθος—an adaptation of Heraclitus' ἧθος ⋯νθρώπῳ δαίμων (fr. 119).

page 146 note 4 Op. cit. 66.

page 147 note 1 Alcibiades 23; Alcibiades is here represented very much as the ‘flatterer’ (κόλαξ) of de adulatore et amico, 51 d.

page 147 note 2 It must be borne in mind that Plutarch is no more consistent in terminology than most ancient writers. The distinction between ἧθος and φύσις, which I here treat as fundamental, is sometimes blurred: Dion 8; Demetrius 2; Numa 3. 7; Lysander 2 compared with 23.

page 147 note 3 See (besides Dihle, and Leo, , see p. 139 n. i)Google Scholarvon Mess, A. in Rh. Mus. lxx (1915), 337 ff.Google Scholar; lxxi (1916), 79 ff.; Stuart, D. R., Epochs of Greek and Roman Biography (Berkeley, California, 1928)Google Scholar; Osley, A. S., in Greece & Rome xv (1946), 7–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 148 note 1 Roman biography is another story; see Steidle, W., Sueton und die antike Biographie (Munich, 1951).Google Scholar

page 148 note 2 Alexander I.

page 148 note 3 One must always be on the watch for this. One example: Alcib. 15 looks like straight narrative, but the events described in 15. 6 (walls of Patrae) took place two years before the incidents at Argos described in 15. 3–5. The whole chapter is in fact a treatment of a single aspect of Alcibiades' policy, not a narrative.

page 148 note 4 Exceptions include Timoleon and Philopoemen, where earlier biographies existed, and Aratus, whose own memoirs survived.

page 149 note 1 JRS, loc. cit. in p. 139 n. 1.

page 149 note 2 Pelopidas 15–17; Aristides 5; Sertorius 5. 5; add Publicola 21, with Flacelière, R.'s Comments (Budé, ed. [Paris, 1961], 55).Google Scholar

page 150 note 1 Weizsäcker, A., Untersuchungen über Plutarchs biographische Technik (Berlin, 1931)Google Scholar, elaborated the concept of ‘chronological’ and ‘eidological’ elements in the Lives. The distinction is valuable, but the alternation between the two often takes place within very short passages, and it is over-simplification to think of the Lives as made up of alternating masses of these two types of writing.

page 150 note 2 For σύγκρισις as an elementary rhetorical exercise (Προγύμνασμα) see, e.g., Hermogenes, , pp. 18 ffGoogle Scholar. Rabe; Clark, D. L., Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education (New York, 1957), 198 f.Google Scholar

page 151 note 1 Dippel, R., Diss. Giessen 1898 (Quae ratio intercedat inter Xenophontis historiam Graecam et Plutarchi vitas quaeritur).Google Scholar

page 151 note 2 De conscribenda historia, 53.

page 151 note 3 Cf. Aristot. E.N. 1150b25. Plutarch's authority for the fact is Aristotle: Probl. 953a20.

page 154 note 1 A note on editions of the Lives may be useful. The Teubner by Ziegler and others, now being revised, gives the standard critical text. The Loeb, while fairly reliable in translation, gives little help in interpretation; the new Budé, by R. Flacelière, which now extends to three volumes (12 Lives), is much more useful. The old separate editions of Themistocles, Nicias, Gracchi, Sulla, Demosthenes, Pericles, Timoleon, by H. A. Holden may still be of use in schools, but should be used with caution. Of more recent editions may be mentioned Aratus and Dion by Porter, W. H., CaesarGoogle Scholar by Garzetti, A., CiceroGoogle Scholar by Magnino, D., AristidesGoogle Scholar by Limentani, Ida, DemetriusGoogle Scholar by E. Manni (these Italian editions are all in Biblioteca di Studi Superiori, La Nuova Italia).