Plutarch Lives Greek Text
Nguyet Edmondson
As he explains in the first paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, but with exploring the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of famous men. He wished to prove that the more distant past of Greece could show its men of action and achievement as well as the more recent past of Rome.[4] His interest was primarily ethical, although the Lives has significant historical value as well. The Lives was published by Plutarch late in his life after his return to Chaeronea and, if one may judge from the long lists of authorities given, it must have taken many years to compile.[5]
Two of the lives, those of Epaminondas and Scipio Africanus or Scipio Aemilianus, are lost,[7] and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers.[citation needed]
Plutarch's Life of Alexander is one of the few surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great, and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.[citation needed] Plutarch has been praised for the liveliness and warmth of his portrayals, and his moral earnestness and enthusiasm, and the Lives have attracted a large circle of readers throughout the ages.[5]
Plutarch structured his Lives by pairing lives of famous Greeks with those of famous Romans. After each pair of lives he generally writes out a comparison of the preceding biographies.[a] The table below gives the list of the biographies. Its order follows the one found in the Lamprias Catalogue, the list of Plutarch's works made by his hypothetical son Lamprias.[8] The table also features links to several English translations of Plutarch's Lives available online. In addition to these 48 Parallel Lives, Plutarch wrote an additional four unpaired biographies that although not considered part of Parallel Lives, can be included in the term Plutarch's Lives. The subjects of these four biographies are Artaxerxes, Aratus, Galba, and Otho.[i]
John Langhorne, D.D. and William Langhorne, A.M.'s English translation, noted that Amiot, Abbe of Bellozane, published a French translation of the work during the reign of Henry II in the year 1558; and from that work it was translated into English, in the time of Elizabeth I. No other translation appeared until that of John Dryden.[19]
G: Project Gutenberg contains several versions of 19th-century translations of these Lives, see here and here. The full text version (TXT) of the revision of Dryden's translation by the English poet Arthur Hugh Clough is available (via download) Gutenberg here. These translations are linked with G in the table below.
P: The Perseus Project has several of the Lives, see here. The Lives available on the Perseus website are in Greek and in the English translation by Bernadotte Perrin (see under L above), and/or in an abbreviated version of Thomas North's translations. This edition concentrates on those of the Lives that Shakespeare based plays on: North's translations of most of the Lives, based on the French version by Jacques Amyot, preceded Dryden's translation mentioned above. These translations are linked with P in the table.
No apologies are needed for a new edition of so favourite an author asPlutarch. From the period of the revival of classical literature inEurope down to our own times, his writings have done more than those ofany other single author to familiarise us with the greatest men and thegreatest events of the ancient world.
The great Duke of Marlborough, it is said, confessed that his onlyknowledge of English history was derived from Shakespeare's historicalplays, and it would not be too much to say that a very large proportionof educated men, in our own as well as in Marlborough's times, have owedmuch of their knowledge of classical antiquity to the study ofPlutarch's Lives. Other writers may be read with profit, withadmiration, and with interest; but few, like Plutarch, can gossippleasantly while instructing solidly; can breathe life into the dryskeleton of history, and show that the life of a Greek or Roman worthy,when rightly dealt with, can prove as entertaining as a modern novel. Noone is so well able as Plutarch to dispel the doubt which all schoolboysfeel as to whether the names about which they read ever belonged to menwho were really alive; his characters are so intensely human andlifelike in their faults and failings as well as in their virtues, thatwe begin to think of them as of people whom we have ourselves personallyknown.
His biographies are numerous and short. By this, he avoids one of thegreatest faults of modern biographers, that namely of identifyinghimself with some one particular personage, and endeavouring to provethat all his actions were equally laudable. Light and shade are asnecessary to a character as to a picture, but a man who devotes hisenergies for years to the study of any single person's life, isinsensibly led into palliating or explaining away his faults andexaggerating his excellencies until at last he represents him as animpossible monster of virtue. Another advantage which we obtain by hismethod is that we are not given a complete chronicle of each person'slife, but only of the remarkable events in it, and such incidents aswill enable us to judge of his character. This also avoids what is thedreariest part of all modern biographies, those chapters I mean whichdescribe the slow decay of their hero's powers, his last illness, andfinally his death. This subject, which so many writers of our own timeseem to linger lovingly upon, is dismissed by Plutarch in a few lines,unless any circumstance of note attended the death of the persondescribed.
Without denying that Plutarch is often inaccurate and often diffuse;that his anecdotes are sometimes absurd, and his metaphysicalspeculations not unfrequently ridiculous, he is nevertheless generallyadmitted to be one of the most readable authors of antiquity, while allagree that his morality is of the purest and loftiest type.
The first edition of the Greek text of Plutarch's Lives appeared atFlorence in the year 1517, and two years afterwards it was republishedby Aldus. Before this, however, about the year 1470, a magnificent Latinversion by various hands appeared at Rome. From this, from the Greektext, and also from certain MSS. to which he had access, Amyot in theyear 1559 composed his excellent translation, of which it has been wellsaid: "Quoique en vieux Gaulois, elle a un air de fraicheur qui la faitrejeunir de jour en jour."
Amyot's spirited French version was no less spiritedly translated by SirThomas North. His translation was much read and admired in its day; amodern reviewer even goes so far as to say that it is "still beyondcomparison the best version of Parallel Lives which the English tongueaffords." Be this as it may, the world will ever be deeply indebted toNorth's translation, for it is to Shakespeare's perusal of that workthat we owe 'Coriolanus,' 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and 'Julius Caesar.'
North's translation was followed by that known as Dryden's. This work,performed by many different hands, is of unequal merit. Some Lives arerendered into a racy and idiomatic, although somewhat archaic English,while others fall far short of the standard of Sir Thomas North's work.Dryden's version has during the last few years been re-edited by A.H.Clough, Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.
The translation by which Plutarch is best known at the present day isthat of the Langhornes. Their style is certainly dull and commonplace,and is in many instances deserving of the harsh epithets which have beenlavished upon it. We must remember, however, before unsparinglycondemning their translation, that the taste of the age for which theywrote differed materially from that of our own, and that people whocould read the 'Letters of Theodosius and Constantia' with interest,would certainly prefer Plutarch in the translation of the Langhornes tothe simpler phrases of North's or Dryden's version. All events, comic ortragic, important or commonplace, are described with the same inflatedmonotony which was mistaken by them for the dignity of History. Yettheir work is in many cases far more correct as a translation, and theauthor's meaning is sometimes much more clearly expressed, than inDryden's earlier version. Langhorne's Plutarch was re-edited byArchdeacon Wrangham in the year 1819.
In 1844, thirteen Lives were translated by that eminent scholar the lateMr. George Long; and it is by way of complement to these Lives that thepresent version was undertaken with his consent and his approval.
Those translated by Mr. Long were selected by him as illustrating aperiod of Roman history in which he was especially interested, and willtherefore be found to be more fully annotated than the others. It hasseemed to me unnecessary to give information in the notes which can atthe present day be obtained in a more convenient form in Dr. Smith'sClassical Dictionary and Dictionary of Antiquities, many of the articlesin which are written by Mr. Long himself. The student of classicalliterature will naturally prefer the exhaustive essays to be found inthese works to any notes appended to Plutarch's text, while to those whoread merely "for the story," the notes prove both troublesome anduseless.
In deciding on the spelling of the Greek proper names, I have felt greathesitation. To make a Greek speak of Juno or Minerva seems as absurd asto make a Roman swear by Herakles or Ares. Yet both Greek and Romandivinities are constantly mentioned. The only course that seemed toavoid absolute absurdity appeared to me to be that which I have adopted,namely to speak of the Greek divinities by their Greek, and the Latinones by their Latin names. In substituting a k for the more usual c, Ihave followed the example of Grote, who in his History spells all Greeknames exactly as they are written, with the exception of those withwhich we are so familiar in their Latin form as to render thispractically impossible; as for instance in the case of Cyprus orCorinth, or of a name like Thucydides, where a return to the Greek kwould be both pedantic and unmeaning.