Plutarch

Plutarch lived from approximately 46 to after 119 CE. He was born in

Chaeronea, in Boeotia. Plutarch came from a well-to-do family, and he
studied in Athens. Plutarch served in various capacities for his hometown and
for the Roman government. He was also priest at Delphi. Plutarch’s primary
identity was that of a Greek philosopher. His philosophical worldview informs
all of his many writings. Plutarch produced treatises, dialogues, short essays
on a wide variety of topics, and series of parallel lives, or biographies of
famous Greeks and Romans. In this last project, he paired up famous Romans
and Greeks from history whose lives he felt had some interesting similarities.

Left: Bust of Plutarch or of another Neoplatonic philosopher.

Right: Headless herm of a votive with the bust of Plutarch, set up by the
people of Delphi around 125 AD. The inscription on the herm reveals that it is
from the people of Delphi and the citizens of Chearonea in honor of Plutarch.
Archaeological Museum of Delphi Image by Odysses/Wikimedia Commons/CC
BY-SA 3.0

Plutarch had ideas about the proper way to do history. One of his works was
a critique of Herodotus, the fifth century Greek historian. His own criteria for
sources was rather vague and not really all that unlike that of Herodotus,
though whereas Herodotus would sometimes include competing accounts,
letting the reader determine which to believe, Plutarch was more inclined to
pick a side.

It is clear from his Lives that he had read and researched extensively and
had consulted sources of several types. In just one chapter of Life of
Cimon he refers to multiple sources such as funeral monuments,
Stesimbrotos (a 5th century BCE author of various types of works, historical
as well as poetical and political), Panaetius the philosopher (c.185-c.110/109
BCE), Melanthius the poet (5th-century BCE), and “some who say” (Life of
Cimon 4; trans. Loeb). From this last we can infer that he was not above
using legends or rumors.

Other sources that he drew upon included the works of other historians,
myths (which he divided into credible and non-credible—Life of Cimon 3),
Aristotle, topographies, the letters of Cicero, Sulla’s memoirs, etc.

Plutarch occasionally explicitly describes his method and the criteria he used
to evaluate sources, as in the following statements which demonstrate:
  Reliance on “notable” and least-contradicted witnesses: “However,
although the history of these times is such a maze, I shall try, in
presenting my narrative, to follow those authors who are least
contradicted, or who have the most notable witnesses for what they
have written about the man.” (Life of Lycurgus 1.3)

 Inclusion of material that was consistent with events of his own day:
“And all this is made credible by that which has happened in our time”
(Life of Aemilius Paulus 25.5)

 Preference for sources that accord best with the relevant chronology:

Now Thucydides and Charon of Lampsacus relate that Xerxes was dead, and
that it was his son Artaxerxes with whom Themistocles had his interview; but
Ephorus and Dinon and Clitarchus and Heracleides and yet more besides
have it that it was Xerxes to whom he came. With the chronological data
Thucydides seems to me more in accord, although these are by no means
securely established. (Life of Themistocles 27.1)

 Inclusion of overlooked events and materials:

[T]hose deeds which Thucydides and Philistus have set forth,—since I cannot
entirely pass them by, indicating as they do the nature of my hero and the
disposition which lay hidden beneath his many great sufferings,—I have run
over briefly, and with no unnecessary detail, in order to escape the
reputation of utter carelessness and sloth; but those details which have
escaped most writers, and which others have mentioned casually, or which
are found on ancient votive offerings or in public decrees, these I have tried
to collect, not massing together useless material of research, but handing on
such as furthers the appreciation of character and temperament. (Life of
Nicias 1.4)

 An interest in character-revealing episodes and details:

It is the life of Alexander the king, and of Caesar, who overthrew Pompey,
that I am writing in this book, and the multitude of the deeds to be treated is
so great that I shall make no other preface than to entreat my readers, in
case I do not tell of all the famous actions of these men, nor even speak
exhaustively at all in each particular case, but in epitome for the most part,
not to complain. For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives; and in the
most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice,
nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of
character than battles when thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or
sieges of cities. Accordingly, just as painters get the likenesses in their
portraits from the face and the expression of the eyes, wherein the character
shows itself, but make very little account of the other parts of the body, so I
must be permitted to devote myself rather to the signs of the soul in men,
and by means of these to portray the life of each, leaving to others the
description of their great contests. (Life of Alexander 1.1-3)

Although in this last passage Plutarch distinguishes between history and

biography, in the Lives Plutarch is firmly in the exemplarity tradition of
historiography, providing positive and negative examples of behavior.

I began the writing of my "Lives" for the sake of others, but I find that I am
continuing the work and delighting in it now for my own sake also, using
history as a mirror and endeavouring in a manner to fashion and adorn my
life in conformity with the virtues therein depicted. For the result is like
nothing else than daily living and associating together, when I receive and
welcome each subject of my history in turn as my guest, so to speak, and
observe carefully "how large he was and of what mien," and select from his
career what is most important and most beautiful to know.

"And oh! what greater joy than this canst thou obtain,"

and more efficacious for moral improvement? Democritus says we ought to

pray that we may be visited by phantoms which are propitious, and that from
out the circumambient air such only may encounter us as are agreeable to
our natures and good, rather than those which are perverse and bad, thereby
intruding into philosophy a doctrine which is not true, and which leads astray
into boundless superstitions. But in my own case, the study of history and
the familiarity with it which my writing produces, enables me, since I always
cherish in my soul the records of the noblest and most estimable characters,
to repel and put far from me whatever base, malicious, or ignoble suggestion
my enforced associations may intrude upon me, calmly and dispassionately
turning my thoughts away from them to the fairest of my examples. (Life of
Timoleon preface, 1-5)

Why Study Plutarch?

Here is a short video on the enduring relevance of Plutarch by Dr. Judith

Mossman, now at Coventry University, Coventry, West Midlands, GB.

The Broader Context of the New Testament

(0:14) Many years ago, the great New Testament scholar Martin Hengel said
there was a danger in young exegetes knowing a great deal about a single
book—the critical edition of the New Testament—and not realizing that there
was a vast library of material in Greek that belonged to that world, and
without which that book was without context.

At the heart of that book lie four texts: the Gospels, which have a
biographical form. They were produced in the late 1st and early 2nd
centuries.

Exactly contemporaneous with the composition of those four texts is another

body of biographies by the great Greek writer Plutarch.

Introducing Plutarch

(1:08) With me I have Professor Judith Mossman, our Professor of Classics.

And you actually are one of the great authorities on Plutarch.
That's very kind, thank you.
Okay, will you introduce to us Plutarch, this other biographer?

With pleasure. Actually, Plutarch, I think, must have been something of a

pleasure to meet. He was well-off, a member of the Greek elite, as we say.
He was born in a little place called Chaeronea, which is in Boeotia, sort of on
the road between Athens and Delphi.

It's not a big place, and he says at the beginning of one of his biographies
that he continues to live there so that it may not become any smaller—which
is a nice example, I think, of a slightly humorous cast of mind.

He was a Roman citizen. His Roman name was Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
and he was acquainted with some very important people in the Roman
Empire. His biographies are dedicated to Sosius Senecio, who was consul
with the Emperor Trajan in a sort of honorary capacity at the beginning of
Trajan's reign.

Plutarch’s Biographical Style

(2:25) Now, Plutarch is best known as a political biographer, and a lot of the
most engaging aspects of him are on display in those political biographies.
It's also very important that they're arranged in pairs.

The full title of them is The Parallel Lives, and in these pairs he takes one
Greek figure and one Roman figure. The Greek figures are from all over
Greece—some Macedonian like Alexander the Great, some Athenian like
Pericles, some Spartan like Lysander—and he pairs them with Romans.
Partly, sometimes on the grounds that their lives have a similar sort of
trajectory or can be given a similar sort of trajectory, but also partly, simply
as far as one can see, because he sees them as similar personalities.

Complexity and Character

(3:23) One of the wonderful things about Plutarch is how complex the
characters that he presents really are. They're not all admirable by any
means. Some of them are extremely dysfunctional. Some of them start well
and end badly. Some of them end less badly than they started out.

The characters are really created through the deployment of a multitude of

anecdotes, some of which have become absolutely iconic. His telling, for
example, of the taming of Bucephalus by the young Alexander is a very
famous scene.

If you look indeed at some of the recent film versions of Alexander, or pretty
much any film version of the life of Alexander the Great, you'll find it heavily
invested with Plutarch's Life.

Plutarch’s Voice and Influence

(4:15) The other thing, though, is that you do sometimes get Plutarch's own
opinions formed in the text or presented in the text, and a very clear
personality of the biographer emerging through his responses to the
anecdotes that he tells.

He gets very annoyed with Cato for wanting to sell on elderly slaves and
says, "I wouldn't do that to a dog, let alone an old man." He gets really quite
annoyed, it seems, in terms of self-presentation, with that attitude.

Theatricality and Literary Style

(4:56) He was also the master of theatricality in all sorts of areas of his
writing. He's responsible for our picture of Cleopatra at the end of her life,
discovered by the Romans lying in the full panoply of Egyptian monarchy.

That is something that Shakespeare found immensely impressive, of course,

and it's something again that we've seen in modern versions of Cleopatra—
not credited to Plutarch, but that's where we get it from.

It's also the case that he uses other genres to enrich his writing—so very
much references to tragedy, references to comedy, but also using his great
historical predecessors, Thucydides in particular, when he's covering some of
the same material.
Legacy and Structure

(6:02) He used to be regarded, I think, pretty much as a treasure house for

authors that we'd lost, and not given enough credit for shaping his material
into really artistic prose and very striking portraits of complex characters.

But I think that's why we enjoy reading him as a biographer today. One of the
things about his biographies is that each life has a certain sequence. It
begins with birth, youth, education, then anecdotes that illustrate the end,
and then the morals.

Yes, he often—though not invariably—concludes a pair with a comparison of

the two characters. And those comparisons, quite short comparisons,
sometimes very much point the moral in a way that sometimes hasn't always
emerged exactly in such stark black-and-white terms from the narratives.

Modern Influence

(7:13) But he is very much, again, the person who's influenced the creation
of modern biography, I think, in terms of very much starting at the beginning
and moving through and ending with the death or with some comment on
the influence of the person who's died.

So at the end of the Cicero, what you get is in fact not poor old Cicero's
miserable end, but much later, a young relative of the Emperor Augustus
embarrassedly hiding a volume.

A Verdict of History

(7:46) Of the speeches of Cicero, Augustus hoists in the book, taking it from
the young boy’s hands and looking at it, saying, “Ah yes, he was a learned
man, my child, and a lover of his.” A sort of verdict-of-history type ending.

That is worth saying because not all ancient biography does that. Suetonius,
for example, does things quite differently and groups stories thematically
rather than chronologically. If Plutarch plays around with chronology—which
he sometimes does—he’s got an agenda, and it’s very important to notice it.

Plutarch and the Gospels

(8:30) Thank you for bringing us through Plutarch, because for many of the
people who read the Gospels, a study of Plutarch’s Lives, both in their
similarities and their differences, is probably one of the best ways that they
can use contemporaneous material to help their own exegesis.
Yes, I think that’s very true. There are some other ancient biographies, such
as Lives of the Philosophers, which might also have some relation to the
Gospels. But actually, in terms of the artistry of the structure, the weight
given to each anecdote, and the complexity of each anecdote, I think
Plutarch probably has more to say to exegetes of the Gospels than any sort
of life of the philosopher that we have.

Which is simply called a biography, as opposed to being a biographical work

—a slightly more complex biographical work—such as the Dialogues of Plato
or the Memorabilia of Xenophon. And I think in terms of comparable length
and structure, Plutarch is closer to the Gospels than either of those
portrayals of Socrates.

(Transcript provided by YouTube. Organized by Copilot, 2024)