Plutarch - Revision history

Irlandos: /* References */

2009-07-20T06:36:01Z

References

Irlandos: /* ''Parallel Lives'' */

2006-01-05T15:27:50Z

''Parallel Lives''

Irlandos: /* The ''Moralia'' */

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The ''Moralia''

Irlandos at 15:25, January 5, 2006

2006-01-05T15:25:38Z

Irlandos at 15:25, January 5, 2006

2006-01-05T15:25:07Z

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'''Mestrius Plutarchus''' (ca. [[46]]- 127) was a [[Ancient Greece|Greek]] [[historian]], [[biographer]], and [[essayist]].

Born in the small town of [[Chaeronea]], in the Greek region known as [[Boeotia]], probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, Plutarch travelled widely in the [[Mediterranean]] world, including twice to Rome. Due to his parents' wealth, after [[67]], Plutarchus was able to study philosophy, rhetoric and mathematics at the Academy of Athens.

He had a number of influential friends, including Soscius Senecio and Fundanus, both important Senators, to whom some of his later writings were dedicated. He lived most of his life at Chaeronea, and was initiated into the mysteries of the Greek god [[Apollo]]. However, his duties as the senior of the two priests of Apollo at the [[Oracle of Delphi]] (where he was responsible for interpreting the auguries of the Pythia or priestess/oracle) apparently occupied little of his time - he led an active social and civic life and produced an incredible body of writing, much of which is still extant.

==Work as magistrate and ambassador==
In addition to his duties as a priest of the Delphic temple, Plutarch was also a magistrate in Chaeronea and he represented his home on various missions to foreign countries during his early adult years. His friend Lucius Mestrius Florus, a Roman consul, sponsored Plutarch as a Roman citizen and, according to the [[10th century]] historian George Syncellus, late in life, the Emperor [[Hadrian]] appointed him procurator of [[Achaea (province)|Achaea]] - a position that entitled him to wear the vestments and ornaments of a consul himself. (The [[Suda]], a medieval Greek encyclopedia, states that Hadrian's predecessor Trajan made Plutarch procurator of Illyria, but most historians consider that unlikely, since Illyria was not a procuratorial province, and Plutarch probably did not speak Illyrian).

==''Parallel Lives''==
His best-known work is the ''[[Parallel Lives]]'', a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged as dyads to illuminate their common [[moral]] virtues or failings. The surviving ''Lives'' contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair containing one Greek Life and one Roman Life, as well as four unpaired single Lives. As he explains in the first paragraph of his ''Life of Alexander'', Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character — good or bad — on the lives and destinies of famous men. Some of the more interesting Lives — for instance, those of [[Heracles]] and [[Philip II of Macedon]] — no longer exist, and many of the remaining Lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae, or have been tampered with by later writers.

===''Life of Alexander''===
His ''Life of Alexander'' is one of the five surviving tertiary sources about the Macedonian conqueror and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.

==Other works==
===The ''Moralia''===
The remainder of his surviving work is collected under the title of the ''[[Moralia]]'' (loosely translated as ''Customs and Mores''). It is an eclectic collection of seventy-eight essays and transcribed speeches, which includes ''On the Fortune or the Virtue of [[Alexander the Great]]'' - an important adjunct to his Life of the great general, ''On the Worship of Isis and Osiris'' (a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites), and ''On the Malice of [[Herodotus]]'' (which may, like the orations on Alexander's accomplishments, have been a [[rhetoric]]al exercise), wherein Plutarch criticizes what he sees as systematic bias in the Herodotus's work, 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 Ulysses and one of [[Circe]]'s enchanted pigs. The ''Moralia'' was composed first, while writing the Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch's own life.

Some editions of the ''Moralia'' include several works now known to be pseudepigrapha: among these are the ''Lives of the Ten Orators'' (biographies of the [[Ten Orators]] of ancient [[Athens]], based on [[Caecilius of Calacte]]), ''The Doctrines of the Philosophers'', and ''On Music''. One "pseudo-Plutarch" is held responsible for all of these works, though their authorship is of course unknown. Though the thoughts and opinions recorded are not Plutarch's and come from a slightly later era, they are all classical in origin and have value to the historian.

===''Quaestiones''===
A pair of interesting minor works is the ''Questions'', one on obscure details of Roman habits and cult, one on Greek ones.

==Quotations==
"Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life."

"It is a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors."

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."

"But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy."

==See also==
* Other surviving classical histories of Alexander mentioned in [[Alexander_the_Great#Ancient_sources]]

==External links==

*[http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/home.html Plutarch page at LacusCurtius] (20th century English translation of most of the ''Lives'', ''On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander'', ''On the Fortune of the Romans'', ''Roman Questions'', and other excerpts of the ''Moralia'')
*[http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch.htm Plutarch of Chaeronea] by Jona Lendering at Livius.Org
*[http://www.usu.edu/history/ploutarchos/index.htm The International Plutarch Society]

==References==
*''Plutarch's "Lives"'' by Alan Wardman ISBN 0236176226
*''Plutarch's "Lives: exploring virtue and vice"'' by Timothy E. Duff (Oxford UP: 2002 pb) ISBN 0199252742.
*''"The Echo of Greece"'' by Edith Hamilton. The Norton Library, W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. 1957. p. 194. ISBN 0393002314. (Quote)

[[Category:45 births]]
[[Category:120 deaths]]
[[Category:Ancient Greeks]]

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 ==''Parallel Lives''==
-His best-known work is the ''[[Parallel Lives]]'', a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged as dyads to illuminate their common [[moral]] virtues or failings.  The surviving ''Lives'' contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair containing one Greek Life and one Roman Life, as well as four unpaired single Lives. As he explains in the first paragraph of his ''Life of Alexander'', Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character &mdash; good or bad &mdash; on the lives and destinies of famous men. Some of the more interesting Lives &mdash; for instance, those of [[Heracles]] and [[Philip II of Macedon]] &mdash; no longer exist, and many of the remaining Lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae, or have been tampered with by later writers.
+His best-known work is the ''[[Parallel Lives]]'', a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged as dyads to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings.  The surviving ''Lives'' contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair containing one Greek Life and one Roman Life, as well as four unpaired single Lives. As he explains in the first paragraph of his ''Life of Alexander'', Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character &mdash; good or bad &mdash; on the lives and destinies of famous men. Some of the more interesting Lives &mdash; for instance, those of [[Heracles]] and [[Philip II of Macedon]] &mdash; no longer exist, and many of the remaining Lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae, or have been tampered with by later writers.
 ===''Life of Alexander''===

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:25, January 5, 2006
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−	'''Mestrius Plutarchus''' (ca. [[46]]- 127) was a [[~~Ancient~~ Greece\|Greek]] [[historian]], [[biographer~~]],~~ and [[essayist]].	+	'''Mestrius Plutarchus''' (ca. [[46]]- 127) was a [[Greece\|Greek]] historian, biographer and essayist.

	Born in the small town of [[Chaeronea]], in the Greek region known as [[Boeotia]], probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, Plutarch travelled widely in the [[Mediterranean]] world, including twice to Rome. Due to his parents' wealth, after [[67]], Plutarchus was able to study philosophy, rhetoric and mathematics at the Academy of Athens.		Born in the small town of [[Chaeronea]], in the Greek region known as [[Boeotia]], probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, Plutarch travelled widely in the [[Mediterranean]] world, including twice to Rome. Due to his parents' wealth, after [[67]], Plutarchus was able to study philosophy, rhetoric and mathematics at the Academy of Athens.

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 ==Other works==
 ===The ''Moralia''===
-The remainder of his surviving work is collected under the title of the ''[[Moralia]]'' (loosely translated as ''Customs and Mores''). It is an eclectic collection of seventy-eight essays and transcribed speeches, which includes ''On the Fortune or the Virtue of [[Alexander the Great]]'' - an important adjunct to his Life of the great general, ''On the Worship of Isis and Osiris'' (a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites), and ''On the Malice of [[Herodotus]]'' (which may, like the orations on Alexander's accomplishments, have been a [[rhetoric]]al exercise), wherein Plutarch criticizes what he sees as systematic bias in the Herodotus's work, 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 Ulysses and one of [[Circe]]'s enchanted pigs. The ''Moralia'' was composed first, while writing the Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch's own life.
+The remainder of his surviving work is collected under the title of the ''[[Moralia]]'' (loosely translated as ''Customs and Mores''). It is an eclectic collection of seventy-eight essays and transcribed speeches, which includes ''On the Fortune or the Virtue of [[Alexander the Great]]'' - an important adjunct to his Life of the great general, ''On the Worship of Isis and Osiris'' (a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites), and ''On the Malice of [[Herodotus]]'' (which may, like the orations on Alexander's accomplishments, have been a rhetorical exercise), wherein Plutarch criticizes what he sees as systematic bias in the Herodotus's work, 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 Ulysses and one of [[Circe]]'s enchanted pigs. The ''Moralia'' was composed first, while writing the Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch's own life.
 Some editions of the ''Moralia'' include several works now known to be pseudepigrapha: among these are the ''Lives of the Ten Orators'' (biographies of the [[Ten Orators]] of ancient [[Athens]], based on [[Caecilius of Calacte]]), ''The Doctrines of the Philosophers'', and ''On Music''. One "pseudo-Plutarch" is held responsible for all of these works, though their authorship is of course unknown. Though the thoughts and opinions recorded are not Plutarch's and come from a slightly later era, they are all classical in origin and have value to the historian.