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As he explains in the first paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character — good or bad — on the lives and destinies of famous men, and he wished to prove that the more remote past of Greece could show its men of action and achievement as well as the nearer, and therefore more impressive, past of Rome.[citation needed] The interest is primarily ethical, although the lives have significant historical value as well. The Lives were published by Plutarch late in life after his return to Chaeronea, and, if one may judge from the long lists of authorities given, must have taken many years in the compilation.[1] Contents Third Volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch's Lives, printed by Jacob Tonson The chief manuscripts of the Lives date from the 10th and 11th centuries; the first edition appeared at Florence in 1517.[citation needed] Jacob Tonson printed several editions of the Lives in English in the late 17th century, beginning with a 5-volume set printed in 1688 and subsequent editions printed in 1693, 1702, 1716, and 1727.[citation needed] The most generally accepted text is that of the minor edition of Carl Sintenis in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana (5 vols., Leipzig 1852-55; reissued without much change in 1873-75).[citation needed] There are annotated editions by I. C. Held, E. H. G. Leopold, Otto Siefert and Friedrich Blass and Carl Sintenis, all in German; and by Holden, in English.[1] Several of the lives, such as those of Epaminondas and Scipio Africanus are lost[2], and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers.[citation needed] His Life of Alexander is one of the five 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, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.[citation needed] Plutarch is criticized for his lack of judicious discrimination in use of authorities and the consequent errors and inaccuracies, but he gives an abundance of citations and incidentally a large number of valuable bits of information which fill up numerous gaps in historical knowledge obtained elsewhere.[citation needed] He is 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.[1] Biographies Text document with red question mark.svg This article may contain inappropriate or misinterpreted citations that do not verify the text. Please help improve this article by checking for inaccuracies. (help, talk, get involved!) (July 2013) Plutarch structured his Lives by alternating lives of famous Greeks ("Grecians") with those of famous Romans. After such a set of two (and one set of four) lives he generally writes out a comparison of the preceding biographies. The table below links to several on-line English translations of Plutarch's Lives;[1] see also "Other links" section below. The LacusCurtius site has the complete set; the others are incomplete to varying extents. There are also four paperbacks published by Penguin Books, two with Greek lives, two Roman, rearranged in chronological order, and containing a total of 36 of the lives. Key to abbreviations D = Dryden Dryden is famous for having lent his name as editor-in-chief to the first complete English translation of Plutarch's Lives. This 17th-century translation is available at The MIT Internet Classics Archive. Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, written in the late 1st century.[not verified in body] The surviving Parallel Lives (Greek: Βίοι Παράλληλοι Bíoi Parállēloi) contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives.[citation needed] It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals biographized, but also about the times in which they lived.[not verified in body] |
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