PARALLEL LIVES: Second volume (2 of 4)

LIFE OF PELOPIDASLIFE OF MARCELLUSTHE COMPARISON OF PELOPIDAS WITH MARCELLUSLIFE OF MARCUS CATOCOMPARISON OF ARISTEIDES AND CATOLIFE OF PHILOPŒMENLIFE OF TITUS FLAMININUSCOMPARISON OF PHILOPŒMEN AND TITUSLIFE OF PYRRHUSLIFE OF CAIUS MARIUSLIFE OF LYSANDERLIFE OF SULLACOMPARISON OF LYSANDER AND SULLALIFE OF KIMONLIFE OF LUCULLUSCOMPARISON OF KIMON AND LUCULLUSPlutarch (c. AD 40 – 120) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Moralia, a collection of essays and speeches.Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was possibly named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus.The Parallel Lives is a series of 48 biographies of famous men written in Greek by the Greco-Roman philosopher, historian, and Apollonian priest Plutarch, probably at the beginning of the second century. The lives are arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings.The surviving Parallel Lives comprises 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman of similar destiny, such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, or Demosthenes and Cicero. There are also four singular Lives, recounting the stories of Artaxerxes, Aratus, Galba, and Otho. Traces of other biographies point to an additional twelve single Lives that are now missing.It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals described, but also about the times in which they lived.Plutarch structured Parallel Lives by pairing lives of famous Greeks with those of famous Romans. Eighteen of these close with a formal comparison between its characters.Plutarch's focus within the Lives is to create a neat depiction of character that fits into his comparison to the parallel life. Historical context is neglected in favor of moral analysis in order to create his desired anecdote. This can be seen in his deviation from the sources he used to understand the characters he represented: "His Eumenes is a far cry from any picture of Eumenes he can have found in the historical literature he used. It is an artificial creation to provide a counterpart to his Sertorius and can only be understood against the background of the Sertorius." The Parallel Lives, therefore, need to be understood primarily as literary biographies, not as histories.Within the biographies Plutarch presents both the positive and negative attributes of each character. Rather than speaking of the character’s lives in simple terms surrounding the events of their lives, he describes the moral and psychological motivations behind each figure. He uses them as ‘moral actors’, prompting self-examination and self-improvement from the reader. Even when making judgements on the characters within the text, Plutarch still “poses questions to his readers and suggests alternative trains of thought that might be possible for them to follow”. This encourages the reader to acknowledge and appreciate contradicting viewpoints and broaden their moral perspectives. Read more