Ancient Historians · Part 22 · Later historians · B1–B2
Plutarch’s Parallel Lives
Part 22 of Ancient Historians: Plutarch, a Greek priest at Delphi, wrote fifty biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, in pairs, each Greek beside a Roman: Alexander with Caesar, Demosthenes with Cicero. He said he was writing lives, not histories: a joke or a small habit could show a person’s character better than a great battle. His stories of Alexander taming Bucephalus, Caesar laughing at pirates, and Antony and Cleopatra in Alexandria inspired Shakespeare. Comparing people (both… and, neither… nor, similar to, whereas, just as… so…), and the language of character and anecdote, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight’s historian hasn’t been born yet either, Philo. In about fifty years, in a small Greek town called Chaeronea, a boy called Plutarch will grow up to become a priest at Delphi, and the most loved biographer who ever lived.
Someone who writes the story of a person’s life, Marcos. Plutarch will write fifty of them, in pairs: a famous Greek beside a famous Roman, so readers can compare them. And he will tell us that a small joke can reveal more than a great battle. Tonight we compare people: how they are alike, and how they are different.
Plutarch (about 46–120 CE) came from Chaeronea in central Greece. He studied in Athens, travelled to Alexandria and Rome, and for the last thirty years of his life was a priest of Apollo at Delphi. He wrote dozens of essays on morals, religion and education (the Moralia), and the Parallel Lives: twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pairing a Greek and a Roman, such as Alexander and Julius Caesar, or Demosthenes and Cicero, often followed by a short comparison.
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