Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Plutarch's Lives, which represent a valuable ancient source for the more interesting periods of Greek and Roman history. However, it is not as a historian, or even as a biographer in the modern sense of the word, that Plutarch has been so highly valued. Rather, those who regard Plutarch as among the greatest of ancient authors appreciate him principally as a moralist and as a purveyor of political wisdom. To understand what kind of biography Plutarch was writing (or thought he was writing), the chapter considers what the art of biography was like in Plutarch's lifetime. Plutarch is in large measure responsible for the importation of ethical concern into the biographical genre. The chapter then looks at the Lives of Aristeides and Cato. While Cato is wholly admirable for his ability to be satisfied with the absolute minimum, his virtue is somewhat tainted, as far as Plutarch is concerned, by an excessive interest in commercial enterprise and by an obsession with money. For this reason, Aristeides is more virtuous and more nearly divine.

Life of Marcus Cato

28(1). Marcus Cato belonged to a family that, it is said, came from Tusculum. Before he embarked on his military and political career, however, he resided in and supported himself by means of an ancestral estate in the territory of the Sabines. Although his ancestors are generally regarded as having been entirely without distinction, Cato himself extols the bravery and martial expertise of his father Marcus and he claims that his paternal great-grandfather often won prizes for valor and on five occasions, when his charger was killed out from under him in battle, he was awarded from the public treasury the cost of the steed on account of his ...

Commentary

1: Plutarch often begins a pair of Lives with some general reflections and with a consideration of his reasons for comparing the two men he has chosen (see, for example, Pel. 1-2, Per. 1-2, Sert. 1, Thes. 1-2). Here, however, as at the beginning of ...

Life of Aristeides

1. Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus, belonged to the tribe Antiochis and came from the deme Alopece. Of the varying accounts that have circulated concerning his wealth, one has it that he spent the whole of his life in straitened circumstances and that, after his death, he left two daughters who remained for a long time unmarried on account of their ...