How reliable is Plutarch?
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How reliable is Plutarch in his "Plutarch's Lives?"
I recently read a posting wherein a reader stated that Polybius,
Thucydides, and Seutonius tell the facts, but that Plutarch rewrote
history.
(I am a novice seeking to study the classics, and am trying to figure
out if Plutarch is a good "primer.")
Much thanks,
Max
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Tiberius
>Hi Folks,
>
>How reliable is Plutarch in his "Plutarch's Lives?"
>
Sometimes he's dead wrong, but not always. Just read him with a wary,
questioning eye, and you should fare OK.
>I recently read a posting wherein a reader stated that Polybius,
>Thucydides, and Seutonius tell the facts, but that Plutarch rewrote
>history.
>
Know that Suetonius does not always report the God's honest truth, as
you may have been lead to believe; he is a gossip-monger who knows how
to entertain.
Joe Bernstein
forti...@fas.harvard.edu (Tiberius) wrote:
Furthermore, Polybius and Thucydides were both deeply involved in the
events they wrote about. There is a blistering treatment of Polybius
in that regard, as well as others, by Peter Green, in his <Alexander to
Actium>. The book as a whole is a long one, and I at least couldn't
finish it, but the essay on Polybius is short and is enlivened by
venom.
(Actually, venom is more the reason than length why I couldn't finish
Green's book. I ran into tangential library trouble that made
sustaining the relevant reading project, familiar to
soc.history.ancient readers from the reviews I wrote, difficult. At
the time, Green's book constituted the bulk of the reading, and I found
that continuing to read it didn't really appeal enough to get me
through the difficulty. He depicts a huge canvas of people and places
and institutions and so forth, but somehow manages to find all through
it only a few themes, all of them depressing and over the hundreds of
pages increasingly tiresome as Green keeps finding and decrying them in
every sphere of human activity, when you'd rather he just got on with
the depiction. So while you should certainly read Green on Polybius,
you should also take *Green* with a grain or two of salt... I am
reminded of a remark on Robert Graves, that it was very peculiar how he
only translated works he loathed.)
In general, I haven't seen any denunciation of Thucydides as nasty as
Green's of Polybius, and he is better spoken of by other historians and
classicists in general. But no ancient historian can be taken as
gospel, nor of course no modern.
Didn't Plutarch at some point compare Herodotus and Thucydides in a way
extremely hostile to one of the two? Only I can't remember which.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer fisht...@these-survive.net
Speaking for myself alone http://www.these-survive.net
Thomas H Chance
> Hi Folks,
>
> How reliable is Plutarch in his "Plutarch's Lives?"
>
> I recently read a posting wherein a reader stated that Polybius,
> Thucydides, and Seutonius tell the facts, but that Plutarch rewrote
> history.
Plutarch is a Platonist, and so is concerned with the moral import of
his writing. Establishing ethical paradigms is more important for him
than getting his facts right, which, after all, is more a concern of
modern, positive history than ancient history.
regards,
thc
Mike Dale
I'm led to believe, via the introduction to the Penguin edition of
Plutarch's lives of those concerned with the fall of the Roman Republic,
that whilst he is generally accurate in historical outline, he is
annoyingly vague in terms of the detailed mechanics of political
manouverings, etc.
To quote the translator, Rex Warner: "One may say indeed that, though it
is as a dramatic artist that Plutarch excels, this ability of his is by
no means a disadvantage to a historian. He gets a few dates wrong; he is
almost unaware of the necessity for that revolution which was carried out
by Caesar; he has not the extraordinary intellectual power and passion of
Thucydides; he lacks the all-embracing curiosity and zest of Herodotus,
and the experience of Xenophon; yet he too is a Greek and a historian
with his own peculiar importance and with his particular charm." And
again "He has not only a keen eye for a dramatic situation but shows a
very modern interest in individual psychology."
Plutarch is also a good guide to some of Shakespeare's historical works,
of course!
(I use the name Shakespeare in the traditional sense, not wishing to
become involved in the longstanding argument about whether he did
actually write the works attributed to him, which in any case is not a
valid subject for this group.)
Mike
Robert Stonehouse
...
>How reliable is Plutarch in his "Plutarch's Lives?"
>
>I recently read a posting wherein a reader stated that Polybius,
>Thucydides, and Seutonius tell the facts, but that Plutarch rewrote
>history.
That overdoes it. Probably nobody but a political propagandist
actually sets out to rewrite history (Res Gestae Divi Augusti?).
What Plutarch says is that he wants to tell you what kind of man
someone was, not to narrate events. So he would rather put in a
characteristic saying than a major historical turning-point.
Plutarch on his own does not give you a full history.
>(I am a novice seeking to study the classics, and am trying to figure
>out if Plutarch is a good "primer.")
The subject-matter is attractive, but I wonder if Plutarch's
language and style are really suitable for this. He can be difficult
- very difficult to translate without unwinding and cutting up the
long sentences.
So of course is Thucydides, but Xenophon is fairly straightforward
and writes good Attic on the whole. The Anabasis is a good story.
Herodotus is Ionic; he is interesting in a similar way to Plutarch;
his sentences are long, but clause follows from clause much as in
English without elaborately constructed periods. But perhaps the
Ionicism makes him unsuitable.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
Neville Lindsay
was to harmonise Roman-Greek relationships and this agenda does produce its
own distortions. However he has access to sources now lost and uses them to
good effect. It is hard to pick him of the information he gives if you can
sidestep the moral undertones. His omissions are frustrating, but what he
includes is good if you combine him with other sources.
As for the others you mention, they stand out for their research and
treatment of evidence amongst others such as Xenopon (treat with great
caution), Diodorus Siculus (with even greater caution except where he is
plagiarising a real historian) and the Roman hacks and eulogists before
Tacitus.
NL
Robert Stonehouse <ew...@bcs.org.uk> wrote in message
news:38ddb1b4...@news.cityscape.co.uk...
Richard M. Alderson III
(Robert Stonehouse) writes:
> So of course is Thucydides, but Xenophon is fairly straightforward and writes
> good Attic on the whole. The Anabasis is a good story.
> Herodotus is Ionic; he is interesting in a similar way to Plutarch; his
> sentences are long, but clause follows from clause much as in English without
> elaborately constructed periods. But perhaps the Ionicism makes him
> unsuitable.
A decade ago, when I was thinking about returning to grad school, I thought I'd
try brushing up my Greek, just to see whether it would be worth trying. After
working through an older textbook that was full of readings from _Anabasis_, I
signed up for the Greek reading class offered through the UC Berkeley Extension
Division. (The other students in the class had just finished two semesters of
beginning Greek via Pharr's _Homeric Greek_.) The reading material was
_Selections from Herodotus_ by Amy L. Barbour (Paperback; August 1977; Univ of
Oklahoma Pr (Txt); ISBN: 0806114274. Amazon.com says it is on back order, to
ship in 3-5 weeks).
Herodotos is fairly easy to read, even with the Ionicisms (mostly just _E:_
instead of _a:_ after _i e r_--less bothersome to me than Hellenistic _ginomai_
and _ginO:skO:_ for _gignomai_ and _gignO:skO:_). And by the time you get to
O~: ksei~n, ange'llein toi~s Lakedaimoni'ois ho'ti
tE:i~de kei'metha hrE:'masi keinO:~n peitho'menoi
it grabs you by the heart in a way that "Tha'lassa! Tha'lassa!" never will...
Rich Alderson
"Of course, that's just my opinion--I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
Richard A. Schulman
Alderson III) wrote:
>Herodotos is fairly easy to read, even with the Ionicisms (mostly just _E:_
>instead of _a:_ after _i e r_--less bothersome to me than Hellenistic _ginomai_
>and _ginO:skO:_ for _gignomai_ and _gignO:skO:_). And by the time you get to
>
> O~: ksei~n, ange'llein toi~s Lakedaimoni'ois ho'ti
> tE:i~de kei'metha hrE:'masi keinO:~n peitho'menoi
>
>it grabs you by the heart in a way that "Tha'lassa! Tha'lassa!" never will...
Herodotos is excellent as an intermediate prose text but not as a
beginner's text to be read all the way through. Xenophon in the
Anabasis, like Caesar in the Gallic Wars, has a good story to tell and
does so in fairly simple sentences. For this reason there are sound
pedagogical reasons for Xenophon and Caesar traditionally coming early
in the study of Greek and Latin.
---
Richard Schulman
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Robert Stonehouse
>(Robert Stonehouse) writes:
>> So of course is Thucydides, but Xenophon is fairly straightforward and writes
>> good Attic on the whole. The Anabasis is a good story.
>
>> Herodotus is Ionic; he is interesting in a similar way to Plutarch; his
>> sentences are long, but clause follows from clause much as in English without
>> elaborately constructed periods. But perhaps the Ionicism makes him
>> unsuitable.
>Herodotos is fairly easy to read, even with the Ionicisms (mostly just _E:_
>instead of _a:_ after _i e r_--less bothersome to me than Hellenistic _ginomai_
>and _ginO:skO:_ for _gignomai_ and _gignO:skO:_). And by the time you get to
>
> O~: ksei~n, ange'llein toi~s Lakedaimoni'ois ho'ti
> tE:i~de kei'metha hrE:'masi keinO:~n peitho'menoi
>
>it grabs you by the heart in a way that "Tha'lassa! Tha'lassa!" never will...
I'm an admirer of Herodotus and fairly often do battle with the
'father of lies' school on various newsgroups. What I meant was that
he could have an undesirable effect on a beginner's Greek prose
composition.
By the way, my text (Hude's) has:
O: xein' angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti te:ide
keimetha, tois keino:n rhe:masi peithomenoi.
ew...@bcs.org.uk