Essays on Plutarch's Lives

by Scardigili, Barbara Scardigli

Overview

This volume brings together the work of a wide range of international scholars on the most important themes in Plutarch's Greek and Roman Lives. It includes contributions on Plutarch's life and cultural milieu; his methodology; the chronological order of composition and the cross-references from one Life to another; on the possibility that several biographies were edited simultaneously; the methods Plutarch adopted to summarize his own reading and research; the choice of subjects and of sources; Plutarch's compositional techniques; and the criteria for selecting the Greek and Roman pairs. An introduction discusses the traditions of historiography which influenced Plutarch, and the background to Graeco-Roman biography, analysing Plutarch's sources and assessing how he used them. At the cusp between literature, philosophy, and history, Plutarch's biographies and these studies of them are of unique interest to scholars interested in all aspects of the ancient world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198140764
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	04/28/1997
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.75(h) x 1.16(d)

About the Author

University of Sienna

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
1.	Plutarch as Biographer	47
2.	On Reading Plutarch's Lives	75
3.	Towards a Chronology of Plutarch's Works	95
4.	Plutarch's Adaptation of his Source-Material	125
5.	Plutarch's Comparison of Pericles and Fabius Maximus	155
6.	Plutarch's Parallel Lives: The Choice of Heroes	165
7.	Plutarch, Alcibiades 1-16	191
8.	Tragedy and Epic in Plutarch's Alexander	209
9.	Hellenic Culture and the Roman Heroes of Plutarch	229
10.	Plutarch's Method of Work in the Roman Lives Postscript	265
11.	Plutarch and Roman Politics	319
12.	Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus	357
	Index of Sources	373
	General Index	395

Editorial Reviews

"The essays...offer a rich resource to the Plutarch scholar. They inform, guide, and challenge Plutarch's readers to read him within the context of his own time, with criteria drawn from his world....every student of the New Testament needs to read Plutarch, for which reading this volume provides excellent backround information and aid."—Religious Studies Review

From the Publisher