Reflections on living in Greece during the summer of 1988.

This collection of sixteen essays, as the subtitle indicates, aims to explore the role of fictionalization in biographies composed in Greek and Latin.

This book is a learned study of biographical texts from both the Greek and the Roman traditions, ranging in time from the Greek Classical period to the Second Sophistic.

This volume was inspired by a colloquium on Plutarch’s Table Talk (or Quaestiones convivales, QC), but the editors seek to do more than present a simple miscellany of conference papers. The eight essays, along with the brief introductory and concluding essays by the editors, are intended ‘to mark a new departure’ for interpreting the QC and to ‘p…[Read more]

In this essay, I argue that in Odyssey 19, when Eurycleia recognizes Odysseus despite his disguise, she does so not simply because she sees the scar but because she has shared with Odysseus a meaningful experience in the past. The recollection of this experience plays a central role in the larger scheme of disguise and recognition that is…[Read more]

This chapter explores two central themes that appear in the prologue to Plutarch’s Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero, that virtue is independent of environment and that self-knowledge is critical to success. I argue that these themes establish a framework for the contents of the book, and I show how they are elaborated in the pair of Lives.

An overview of how Plutarch describes the sexual activities and erotic desires of his biographical subjects in the Parallel Lives to demonstrate their character and, in part, to explain the trajectory of their political careers.

Many students in introductory myth classes assume that Greco-Roman myth is comprised of a canonical collection of well-known stories, and that those stories might be entertaining but ultimately have little relevance to the modern world. This essay explores ways to address these assumptions and help students to understand the complexity of myth,…[Read more]

The chapter compares Plutarch’s Sertorius to other Late-Republican Lives (Lucullus, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar) to explore Sertorius’ character, and especially to establish the context for his decision to withdraw from civil war and to attempt to live peacefully in Spain.

A compelling monograph about the exposition of ethics in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, this book engages with the most recent scholarship on and approaches to Plutarch’s Lives in order to address the question of which pairs of statesmen are presented as ‘positive’ (θετικά) and which as ‘negative’ (αρνητικά) examples.

Basil’s Address to Young Men on How to Read Greek Literature is often read as an imitation of Plutarch’s How to Study Poetry. Exploring the authors’ connections more generally, I suggest that Basil has relied on Plutarch’s approach in both the Moralia and the Lives to make the central argument of his essay, which is a justification for the reading…[Read more]

This article considers how three “Rubicon narratives” from the early empire use Caesar’s crossing to raise larger historical and ethical questions about the fall of the republic. It argues that Cicero’s angry response to the outbreak of civil war is echoed by Lucan’s Patria but ignored by Suetonius.

This volume includes 23 papers that were presented at the conference ‘Plutarch and the Hellenistic Age’, held at Florence in September 2004. According to the book’s preface, the conference was part of a larger effort to co- ordinate and promote research in Plutarch among European scholars. The majority of the chapters are written in Italian, Frenc…[Read more]

This article argues that the programmatic statements in Nepos’ preface to the Lives of Foreign Generals and in some of the Lives themselves help establish that his biographies emphasize the virtues of his subjects and not their res gestae. References to unlearned readers, often taken as an indication of the general igno- rance of Nepos’ aud…[Read more]

This essay compares two episodes from Plutarch’s Alexander: the wedding of Philip and Cleopatra (9) and Alexander’s attack on Cleitus (50-51). The wedding episode, in which an angry, drunken Philip attacks Alexander, foreshadows Alexander’s own attack on Cleitus, but it also marks an important turning point in the development of the young Alexa…[Read more]

The article examines briefly Plutarch’s representation of the erotic connection that exists, or might exist, between a husband and wife. It looks at one essay from the Moralia, the Amatorius, to uncover Plutarch’s philosophical view of the proper role of eros in a marriage. Then it surveys three examples from the Parallel Lives: Brutus and P…[Read more]