Plutarch’s Lives
Maryetta Worm
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.
I cover the question of best Plutarch translation in my inaugural podcast, so if you prefer that medium, check out the first episode. I have also covered other resources like maps and timelines on the Plutarch Resources page.
The Loeb Classical Library issued an English translation from Bernadotte Perrin, which has now thankfully fallen into the Public Domain. Those translations are available online hosted by the University of Chicago, or downloadable pdfs hosted at DownLoebables. You can read them alongside the Greek at the Perseus website, which has all the Lives.
Oxford World Classics publishes three editions of the Lives: Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman. I list the lives included below in the chart. Overall the quality of the paper and binding means the physical copies will last longer.
Thankyou very much. Excellent advice on which of the translations to read: I have the Loeb Bernadotte Perrin one for Sertorius, Eumenes etc and some of the Penguin translations which, certainly, make the best reading in translation into English. Plutarch is not all long sentences. He also does shorter ones with terrific effect.
In the summer of 2006, at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., I had the pleasure of working with a dozen Los Angeles high school teachers, test-driving the classics in the curriculum. Part of a three-year National Endowment for the Humanities project, the two-week workshop explored lessons and resources for high school classrooms, connecting antiquity to the here and now. I learned a lot from those teachers, including where the classics can better fit into history and English lessons. But when I reflect on our time together, what really stands out is one memorable June afternoon meeting centered on Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.
The Lives present a challenge for teachers, as do other classical works: Gladiators may have some student appeal, as the success of the recent film 300 suggests, but the classics' more typical fare is a tougher sell. Teachers often wonder if classical stories and the role models they hold up have much bearing on contemporary student life. In addition, Plutarch's language is daunting. Even short extracts in translation are challenging. Worse, they sometimes elicit hostility from teachers, especially among those who want to feature contemporary issues and new heroes. All in all, Plutarch's reputation is not what it used to be. Today, many regard his work as the musty old thing in the attic.
The Lives were the most ambitious biographical project in the ancient world. The biographies were written about 100 A.D., after Rome had conquered the Mediterranean and Europe. Many are lost, but enough remain, about 50 of them, varying in length up to 30,000 words, to fill volumes and volumes.
The Lives were immensely popular throughout the Roman Empire. They were a revived "hit" in the Elizabethan era. There is no telling how many of Shakespeare's Julius Caesars are being read in classrooms across America on any given day, but the whole story comes, replete with quotations, from Plutarch. Harry Truman claimed his first source of political wisdom came from Plutarch, read to him by his father. Mary Shelley's self-aware monster explains in a beautiful passage how Plutarch has given him humanity. Plutarch's Lives and the Bible were the two most widely read books in America between 1750 and 1900.
The Lives were more than a handbook of public leadership, although they were that. Before Sigmund Freud, psychology, and self-help books, for many generations and countless people, Plutarch provided a guide to probity and time-honored clues to a successful life. Plutarch admired steadiness and condemned rashness, illustrating its perils repeatedly though his examples. As he tells his stories, he comments on the attitudes, personalities, styles, manners, winning ways, and character defects that animate the great and move them toward success or failure.
From the Renaissance to modern times, kings and courtiers read Plutarch for guidance on conduct and public affairs. In time, people of all backgrounds and classes read Plutarch for self-improvement, for self-help, and for insight into human character. Plutarch had an enormous influence on the 18th-century revolutions. George Washington modeled himself on Plutarch's old heroes, and Napoleon considered the Lives a manual of military and civil rule. Regarding character formation, Plutarch may be ancient, but he is far from musty. The Lives offer role models that are truly timeless.
In the late 18th century, spurred by classical ideas, Americans established a republican government modeled on Greek and Roman principles. This was a form of government that cherished liberty, using ancient models to try to reform government, protect individuals, advance liberty, and constrain tyranny. As Brown University historian Gordon S. Wood observes, "Such classicism was not only a scholarly ornament of educated Americans; it helped to shape their values and their ideals of behavior." Classicism was filtered through the experience of the Enlightenment, inspiring leaders in American thought and culture for several generations. For Americans, the "traits of character most praised were classical ones" and the classics were "crucial to their attempt to understand the moral and social basis of politics."
Eighteenth-century American revolutionaries were looking for keys to successful government. In an age of kings, republican examples were few. The American Founders wanted to protect citizens against monarchical rule. For the Founders, the ancient opponents of tyranny and monarchy portrayed in Plutarch's Lives provided illustrations of heroism. In addition, the revolutionaries admired antiquity's unprecedented achievements in political order ("government by the governed"), especially Roman models of law and jurisprudence ("the rule of law"). These, said the Founders, were the foundations of enlightened liberalism, and as such, deserved popular respect and knowledge. The Greeks and Romans had debated and developed the principles of justice, the rule of law, and due process over the course of centuries, the Americans knew, and what had resulted were the first versions of democracy and citizenship.
Plutarch's account of Cato the Younger, adapted by the great 18th-century playwright Joseph Addison, impressed George Washington as did no other classical story. To spur morale, he produced the play for his troops at Valley Forge. Facing the encroaching Caesar and his split forces, in the Addison version, Cato makes the following speech on liberty: