Plutarchus
（
Πλούταρχος). A Greek writer of biographies and
miscellaneous works, who was born at Chaeronea, in Boeotia, about A.D. 50. He came of a
distinguished and wealthy family, and enjoyed a careful education. His philosophical training
he received at Athens, especially in the school of the Peripatetic Ammonius (of Lamptrae in
Attica), who is identified with Ammonius the Egyptian. After this he made several journeys,
and stayed a considerable time in Rome, where he gave public lectures on philosophy, was in
friendly intercourse with persons of distinction, and conducted the education of the future
emperor Hadrian. From Trajan he received consular rank, and by Hadrian he was in his old age
named procurator of Greece. He died about 120 in his native town, in which he held the office
of archon and of priest of the Pythian Apollo.
His fame as an author is founded principally upon his
Parallel Lives
(
Βίοι Παράλληλοι). These he probably prepared in Rome
under the reign of Trajan, but completed and published late in life at Chaeronea. The
biographies are divided into connected pairs, each pair (which makes a
βιβλίον) placing a Greek and a Roman in juxtaposition, and generally ending with
a comparative view of the two; of these we still possess forty-six: Theseus and Romulus;
Lycurgus and Numa; Solon and Valerius Publicola; Themistocles and Camillus; Pericles and
Fabius Maximus; Alcibiades and Coriolanus; Timoleon and Aemilius Paulus; Pelopidas and
Marcellus; Aristides and the elder Cato ; Philopoemen and Flamininus; Pyrrhus and Marius;
Lysander and Sulla ; Cimon and Lucullus; Nicias and Crassus; Eumenes and Sertorius; Agesilaus
and Pompeius; Alexander and Caesar; Phocion and the younger Cato ; Agis and Cleomenes and the
two Gracchi; Demosthenes and Cicero; Demetrius Poliorcetes and Antonius; Dion and Brutus. To
these are added the four specially elaborated lives of Artaxerxes Mnemon, Aratus, Galba, and
Otho; a number of other biographies are lost. The sequels which follow most of the lives give
a sort of balanced judgment (
σύγκρισις) of the two men
compared.
Plutarch's object was not to write history, but out of more or less important single traits
to form distinct sketches of character. The sketches show, indeed, a certain uniformity,
inasmuch as Plutarch has a propensity to portray the persons represented either as models of
virtue in general, or as slaves of some passion in particular; but the lives are throughout
attractive, owing to the liveliness and warmth of the portraiture, the moral earnestness with
which they are penetrated, and the enthusiasm which they display for everything noble and
great. For these reasons they have always had a wide circle of readers. More than this, their
historical value is not to be meanly estimated, in spite of the lack of criticism in the use
of the authorities and the manifold inaccuracies and mistakes, which, in the Roman lives, were
in part the result of a defective knowledge of the Latin language. There are a large number of
valuable pieces of information in which they fill up numerous gaps in the historical
narratives that have been handed down to us. Besides this work eightythree writings of various
kinds (some of them only fragments and epitomes of larger treatises) are preserved under the
name of Plutarch. These are improperly classed together under the title
Moralia
(ethical writings); for this designation is only applicable to a part of them. The form of
these works is as diverse as their tenor and scope: some are treatises and reports of
discourses; a large number is composed in the form of Platonic or Aristotelian dialogues;
others again are learned collections and notices put together without any special plan of
arrangement. A considerable portion of them are of disputable authenticity or have been proved
to be spurious. About half are of philosophical and ethical tenor, and have for the most part
a popular and practical tendency, some of them being of great value for the history of
philosophy, such as the work on the opinions of the philosophers (
De Placitis
Philosophorum) in five books. Others belong to the domain of religion and worship,
such as the works
On Isis and Osiris, On the Oracles of the Pythian Priestess,
and
On the Decay of the Oracles; others to that of the natural sciences, while
others again are treatises on history and antiquities, or on the history of literature, such
as the
Greek and Roman Questions and the
Lives of the Ten
Orators. This last is undoubtedly spurious. One of the most instructive and
entertaining of all his works is the
Table-talk (Quaestiones Conviviales) in
nine books, which deal
inter alia with a series of questions of history,
archaeology, mythology, and physics. But even with these works his literary productiveness was
not exhausted; for, besides these, twenty-four lost writings are known to
us by their titles and by fragments. In his language he aims at attaining the pure Attic
style, without, however, being able altogether to avoid the deviations from that standard
which were generally prevalent in his time.
The entire works of Plutarch are edited by Reiske
(12 vols. 1774-79); and in
the Didot Collection, by Dübner-Döhner
(5 vols. 1846-55). The
best text of the
Lives is that of Sintenis in the Teubner series
(5 vols.
Leipzig, 1874-81); of the
Moralia, by Bernardakis, still in course of
publication. The
Lives are annotated by Held, Leopold, Siefert-Blass, and
Sintenis-Fuhr, all in German; and by Holden in English. Translations in English are those of
Langhorne, Dryden, and others
(re-edited by A. H. Clough in 5 vols., 1874); and
of the Roman lives by George Long. The
Moralia are translated in a revision by
Goodwin
(Boston, 1874-78). See Trench,
A Popular Introduction to
Plutarch (London, 1873).
