| Plutarch | |
|---|---|
| Birthplace | Chaeronea, Boeotia |
| Occupation | Biographer, essayist, priest, ambassador, magistrate |
Born circa A.D. 46, in Chaeronea, Boeotia; died circa 127. Ancient Greek writer, historian, and moralistic philosopher.
Plutarch received an encyclopedic education in Athens, where he was later granted honorary citizenship. He traveled throughout Greece and visited Rome and Alexandria, but he spent most of his life in his isolated native town, where he was involved in public and educational activities, consciously demonstrating an almost hopeless fidelity to the outmoded ideal of patriotism toward one’s city-state. According to sources that are not entirely clear, toward the end of his life Plutarch was granted some kind of special authority by the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, making it possible for him to limit the arbitrary authority of the Roman governors in Greece.
As a philosopher, Plutarch adhered to the tradition of Platonism, paying tribute to the Stoic and Aristotelian schools but above all to Pythagoreanism. Thus, he conformed to the spirit of late classical eclecticism. Like other moralists of his time, he viewed philosophy less as a systematic discipline than as an instrument of self-education for the dilettante seeking all-around development. However, unlike the Epicurean and, particularly, the Stoic and Cynic moralists, who commonly drew a sharp distinction between the meaningless practices of everyday life and their own doctrines of salvation, Plutarch often defended existing human relationships that had been shaped by history. This explains his revulsion against doctrinaire, narrow views (for example, his polemic against the Stoics) and his somewhat philistine respect for everything that was generally accepted.
For Plutarch, the ethical norm was not an abstract theory but an idealization of life in the Greek city-states, with its civic spirit, openness, sociability, and sense of moderation in the details of everyday life. Consequently, his philosophical works abound in anecdotes, historical examples, literary quotations, and autobiographical confessions. For the same reason, Plutarch wrote not only treatises and dialogues but also a cycle of biographies presenting the same ethical ideal.
Plutarch’s nonbiographical works are traditionally combined under the title Moralities (Moralia). Although the title does not accurately describe the contents, it reflects Plutarch’s predominant interest in moral problems. The structure of his biographical cycle is reflected in its title, Parallel Lives. Each biography of a famous Greek is “paralleled” by the life of a famous Roman. (For example, Alexander the Great is paired with Julius Caesar, and Demosthenes with Cicero.) Each pair of biographies concludes with a comparison, in which the characters and destinies of the two subjects are correlated in terms of a single ethical and psychological pattern. As a whole, the collection of biographies paints a monumental picture of the Greco-Roman past. In contrast to other biographical collections of the Hellenistic period, whose subject matter is characterized by moral detachment, Plutarch’s collection presents heroes chosen according to moral criteria. The list of personages in the Parallel Lives may be described as a canon of model heroes of the past.
The ideals of Hellenistic humanism and civic responsibility developed by Plutarch were widely adopted during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Montaigne was impressed by Plutarch’s hostility to asceticism and doctrinairism, and J.-J. Rousseau by his attention to the “natural” features of human psychology. Plutarch’s civic spirit won him enormous popularity among the leading thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries, from the fathers of the Great French Revolution to the Russian aristocratic revolutionaries, the Decembrists.
S. S. AVERINTSEV