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Plutarch

Lucius Mestrius PlutarchusThe name Mestrius or Lucius Mestrius was taken by Plutarch, as was common Roman practice, from his patron for Roman citizenship|citizenship in the empire; in this case Lucius Mestrius Florus, a Roman consul. (Greek language|Greek: Μέστριος Πλούταρχος), ''c.'' AD 46 - 120, commonly known in English as '''Plutarch''', was a Roman historian (of Greek ethnicity), biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonism|Middle Platonist. Plutarch was born to a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia, a town about twenty miles east of Delphi. His oeuvre consists of the ''Parallel Lives'' and the ''Moralia''.

Early life

Plutarch was born in AD 46 in the small town of Chaeronea, in the Greek region known as Boeotia. The name of Plutarch's father has not been preserved, but it was probably Nikarchus, from the common habit of Greek families to repeat a name in alternate generations. His family was wealthy. The name of Plutarch's grandfather was Lamprias, as he attested in MoraliaSymposiacs, Book IX, questions II & III. His brothers, Timon and Lamprias, are frequently mentioned in his essays and dialogues, where Timon is spoken of in the most affectionate terms. Rualdus, in his 1624 work ''Life of Plutarchus'', recovered the name of Plutarch's wife, Timoxena, from internal evidence afforded by his writings. A letter is still extant, addressed by Plutarch to his wife, bidding her not give way to excessive grief at the death of their two year old daughter, who was named Timoxena after her mother. Interestingly, he hinted at a belief in reincarnation in that letter of consolation. The exact number of his sons is not certain, although two of them, Autobulus and second Plutarch, are often mentioned. Plutarch's treatise on the Timaeus of Plato is dedicated to them, and the marriage of his son Autobulus is the occasion of one of the dinner-parties recorded in the 'Table Talk.' Another person, Soklarus, is spoken of in terms which seem to imply that he was Plutarch's son, but this is nowhere definitely stated. His treatise on Marriage Questions, addressed to Eurydice and Pollianus, seems to speak of her as having been recently an inmate of his house, but without enabling us to form an opinion whether she was his daughter or not. Plutarch studied mathematics and philosophy at the Academy of Athens under Ammonius of Athens|Ammonius from 66 to 67.. He had a number of influential friends, including Quintus Sosius Senecio and Fundanus, both important Roman Senate|senators, to whom some of his later writings were dedicated. Plutarch travelled widely in the Mediterranean world, including central Greece, Sparta, Corinth, Patrae (Patras), Sardes, Alexandria, and two trips to Rome. Plutarch stretches and occasionally fabricates the similarities between famous Greeks and Romans in order that he may write their biographies as parallels. The lives of Nicias and Crassus, for example, have nothing in common except that both were rich and both suffered great military defeats at the ends of their lives. In his ''Life of Pompey'', Plutarch praises Pompey's trustworthy character and tactful behaviour in order to conjure a moral judgement that opposes most historical accounts. Plutarch delivers anecdotes with moral points, rather than in-depth comparative analyses of the causes of the fall of the Achaemenid dynasty|Achaemenid Empire and the Roman Republic, and tends on occasion to fit facts to hypotheses rather than the other, more scholastically acceptable way round. On the other hand, he generally sets out his moral anecdotes in chronological order (unlike, say, his Roman contemporary Suetonius) and is rarely narrow-minded and unrealistic, almost always prepared to acknowledge the complexity of the human condition where moralising cannot explain it.

''Moralia''

The remainder of Plutarch's 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 Fraternal Affection'' - a discourse on honour and affection of siblings toward each other, ''On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great'' - an important adjunct to his Life of the great king, ''On the Worship of Isis and Osiris'' (a crucial source of information on Ancient Egypt|Egyptian religious rites), 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 Odysseus 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.

''On the Malice of Herodotus''

In ''On the Malice of Herodotus'' Plutarch criticizes the historian Herodotus for all manners of prejudice and misrepresentation. It has been called the “first instance in literature of the slashing review.” The 19th century English historian George Grote considered this essay a serious attack upon the works of Herodotus, and speaks of the "honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity." Plutarch makes some palpable hits, catching Herodotus out in various errors, but it is also probable that it was merely a rhetorical exercise, in which Plutarch plays devil's advocate to see what could be said against so favourite and well-known a writer. According to Plutarch scholar R. H. Barrow, Herodotus’ real failing in Plutarch’s eyes was to advance any criticism at all of those states that saved Greece from Persia. “Plutarch,” he concluded, “is fanatically biased in favor of the Greek cities; they can do no wrong.”

Questions

A pair of interesting minor works in Book IV of the Moralia is the Roman and Greek Questions. The customs of Romans and Greeks are illuminated in little essays that pose questions such as 'Why were patricians not permitted to live on the Capitoline?' (no. 91) and then suggests answers to them, often several mutually exclusive.

Pseudo-Plutarch

Pseudo-Plutarch is the conventional name given to the unknown authors of a number of pseudepigrapha attributed to Plutarch. 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. The thoughts and opinions recorded are not Plutarch's and come from a slightly later era, though they are all classical in origin.

Lost works

The Romans loved the ''Lives'', and enough copies were written out over the centuries so that a copy of most of the lives managed to survive to the present day. Some scholars, however, believe that only a third to one-half of Plutarch’s corpus is extant. The Lost work#Classical world|lost works of Plutarch are determined by references in his own texts to them and from other authors references over time. There are traces of twelve more Lives that are now lost. Plutarch's general procedure for the Lives was to write the life of a prominent Greek, then cast about for a suitable Roman parallel, and end with a brief comparison of the Greek and Roman lives. Currently, only nineteen of the parallel lives end with a comparison while possibly they all did at one time. Also missing are many of his Lives which appear in a list of his writings, those of Hercules, the first pair of Parallel Lives, Scipio Africanus and Epaminondas, and the companions to the four solo biographies. Even the lives of such important figures as Augustus, Claudius, and Nero have not been found and may be lost forever.

Influence

Plutarch's writings had an enormous influence on English Literature|English and French literature. William Shakespeare|Shakespeare in Shakespeare's plays|his plays paraphrased parts of Thomas North's translation of selected ''Lives'', and occasionally quoted from them in verbatim.Honigmann 1959. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalism|Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by the ''Moralia'' — so much so, in fact, that Emerson called the Lives "a bible for heroes" in his glowing introduction to the five-volume 19th century|19th-century edition. He also opined that it was impossible to "read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: 'A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined.'" Michel de Montaigne|Montaigne's own ''Essays (Montaigne)|Essays'' draw extensively on Plutarch's ''Moralia'' and are consciously modelled on the Greek's easygoing and discursive inquiries into science, manners, customs and beliefs. ''Essays'' contains more than 400 references to Plutarch and his works. James Boswell quoted Plutarch on writing lives, rather than biographies, in the introduction to his own ''Life of Samuel Johnson''. Other admirers included Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Alexander Hamilton, John Milton, and Francis Bacon, as well as such disparate figures as Cotton Mather and Robert Browning. Plutarch's influence declined in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it remains embedded in the popular ideas of Greek and Roman history.

Translations of ''Lives'' and ''Moralia''

There are translations in English, French, Italian and German.

French translations

Jacques Amyot's translations brought Plutarch's works to Western Europe. He went to Italy and studied the Vatican text of Plutarch, from which he published a French translation of the Lives in 1559 and Moralia in 1572, which were widely read by educated Europe. Amyot's translations had as deep an impression in England as France, because Thomas North later published his English translation of the Lives in 1579 based on Amyot’s French translation instead of the original Greek.

English translations

Unrespected,disobedient. Plutarch's Lives were translated into English, from Amyot's version, by Sir Thomas North in 1579. The complete Moralia was first translated into English from the original Greek by Philemon Holland (q.v.) in 1603. In 1683, John Dryden began a life of Plutarch and oversaw a translation of the Lives by several hands and based on the original Greek. This translation has been reworked and revised several times, most recently in the nineteenth century by the English poet and classicist Arthur Hugh Clough which can be found in The Modern Library Random House, Inc. translation. From 1901–1912, American classicist Bernadotte Perrin produced a new translation of the Lives for the Loeb library series.

Latin translations

There are multiple translations of Parallel Lives into Latin, most notably the one titled "Pour le Dauphin" (French for "for the Prince") written by a scribe in the court of Louis XV of France and a 1470 Ulrich Han translation. Erik the User:Erik the Red 2|Red 2 (User Talk:Erik the Red 2|AVE·Special:Contributions/Erik the Red 2|CAESAR) 14:12, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

German translations

Plutarch's Lives and Moralia were translated into German by Johann Friedrich Salomon Kaltwasser:
- Johann Friedrich Salomon Kaltwasser: ''Vitae parallelae. Vergleichende Lebensbeschreibungen ''. 10 Bände. Magdeburg 1799-1806.
- Johann Friedrich Salomon Kaltwasser:''Moralia. Moralische Abhandlungen''. 9 Bde. Frankfurt a.M. 1783-1800. New German translations: Biographies
- Konrat Ziegler (Hrsg.): ''Große Griechen und Römer''. 6 Bde. Zürich 1954-1965. (''Bibliothek der alten Welt''). Moralia
- Konrat Ziegler (Hrsg.):''Plutarch.Über Gott und Vorsehung, Dämonen und Weissagung'', Zürich 1952. (''Bibliothek der alten Welt'')
- Bruno Snell (Hrsg.):''Plutarch.Von der Ruhe des Gemüts - und andere Schriften'', Zürich 1948.(''Bibliothek der alten Welt'')
- Hans-Josef Klauck (Hrsg.): ''Plutarch. Moralphilosophische Schriften'', Stuttgart 1997. (''Reclams Universal-Bibliothek'')
- Herwig Görgemanns (Hrsg.):''Plutarch.Drei Religionsphilosophische Schriften'', Düsseldorf 2003. (''Tusculum'')

Notes

a. Plutarch's date of birth probably occurred during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius and between 45 AD and 50 AD, though the exact date is debated.
b. Plutarch was once believed to have spent 40 years in Rome, but it is currently thought that he traveled to Rome once or twice for a short period.
c. Plutarch died between the years 119 AD and 127 AD.

Citations

References

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- Honigmann, E. A. J. "Shakespeare's Plutarch." ''Shakespeare Quarterly'', 1959 in literature|1959: 25-33.
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External links

Plutarch's works

- Works of Plutarch in etext at the University of Adelaide Library.
- Plutarch at LacusCurtius (the ''Lives'', ''On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander'', ''On the Fortune of the Romans'', ''Roman Questions'', ''Isis and Osiris'', "On the Face in the Moon" and other excerpts of the ''Moralia'')
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- A biography of Plutarch is included in: , 18th century English language|English translation under the editorship of Dryden (further edited by Arthur Hugh Clough).
- De Defectu Oraculorum
- Isis and Osiris
- The ''Lives'', North's translation (PDF format).