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Plutarch of Chaeronea, a Greek scholar and priest at Delphi in the time of the Roman Empire, wrote biographies of the great men of Greece and Rome in pairs…
Plutarch of Chaeronea, a Greek scholar and priest at Delphi in the time of the Roman Empire, wrote biographies of the great men of Greece and Rome in pairs, each Greek matched with a Roman whose life seemed to echo his: Theseus with Romulus, Lycurgus with Numa, Pericles with Fabius Maximus, Alexander the Great with Julius Caesar, Demosthenes with Cicero. He tells their battles and their politics, but he is most interested in character, which, he writes, is often revealed better by a small act, a phrase or a jest than by the greatest battles.
Context and significance
The Lives were among the most influential books of the Renaissance and after: Shakespeare took the plots of his Roman plays from them, and Montaigne, Rousseau and the founders of the United States read them as lessons in public virtue. This is the translation made under John Dryden in 1683, revised by the poet Arthur Hugh Clough. Compare Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
About the author
Plutarch (c. 46–after 119) lived in the small town of Chaeronea in Greece and served as a priest at the oracle of Delphi. He was a philosopher, a teacher and a tireless writer who knew the Roman elite of his day while remaining devoted to his home town.
His Parallel Lives pair famous Greeks and Romans, Alexander and Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero, to compare their characters, and his many essays on morals cover everything from anger to the education of children. Shakespeare took the plot of Julius Caesar from Plutarch, as did many writers after him.