Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

After more than two years chipping away at the colossal classic, finished reading Plutarch’s Lives. This was the Castalia Library leatherbound edition, limited to 750, and uses the Bernadotte Perrin translation. Two years may seem like a while for a recommended pair of books, but these tomes total something like 1600 pages, so even turning a page every day, this is how long it will take, so a considerable commitment for all but the fastest readers. Many of these biographies are of exciting, admirable statesmen, and so it is no wonder that in centuries past, Plutarch was enjoyed by boys for the battlefield action, good examples to follow, and witticisms. After a few lives of semi-legendary Greek and Roman founders, this is almost all drum-and-trumpet history, and more often than not, the subject meets a violent death! Even the rhetoricians who make it in end up little more than propagandists for some power-hungry faction. Clearly, the Lives as a whole are much too long for practical use in instruction; it would be challenging to fit them into a single academic year, and even then there would be gaps. Besides, after a while, the Lives start to blend together, and it can feel like you‘re reading about a compsoite or averaged Greco-Roman marching his troops around, swapping wives, and saying amusing things, so the most distinctive Lives should be set apart, as the student will have a better chance of retaining the information. For an advanced placement high school course, or a 100 or 200 level college course, I think these ten select Lives would give students a rich taste of classical history, while more than holding interest and providing fruitful inspiration to greatness in our times: —Lycurgus and Numa, wise founding lawgivers —Alexander and Julius Caesar, unparalleled conquerors —Agis & Cleomenes and the Gracchi, attempted restorers in a decadent age —Timoleon and Brutus, supernatural intervention in human affairs? In English translation, Plutarch is the canonical writer I have read who most closely follows one of the standards of writing that was most drilled into us in my school days: the thesis statement. Because the Lives are mostly paired, Plutarch usually includes prefatory remarks to explain why the two belong together, and then follows the biographies with a comparison. Plutarch himself occasionally shows up in the narrative. He is an ethnic Greek hailing from Boeotia, and mentions the region and his connection to the history that happened there several times. One of the most interesting remarks comes in the Life of Antony, a source for many of the details that show up in the epic film Cleopatra; not only were these details about the lavish banquets aboard the ships accurate, Plutarch learned them from his grandfather, who had learned them from a friend who was there when it happened. For the most part, of course, Plutarch relies on primary or secondary written sources, and helpfully cites many works which are now lost; for students, he is a model of basing his histories on a variety of sources, and not just leaning on one authority. At one point in the Life of Alexander (on whether Alexander met with the Queen of the Amazons, or not), Plutarch lists his sources, and astoundingly, is familiar with at least twenty of them, that take sides as to whether this meeting happened or not. One thing in Plutarch which left a sour taste in my mouth was the treatment of marriage, particularly in Rome. Political marriages are one thing, but across multiple Lives, marriages are not just arranged, they are dissolved, and the wives given to other men as bargaining chips. A favorite “personal life” character was Demetrius, who loved women and had five wives; his comparison, Antony, takes heavy flak for womanizing despite being a Roman. Another Roman bias that shows up often is Plutarch’s republicanism; while he acknowledges that Rome was fated to become a monarchy, he takes almost at face value the praises of Timoleon, Dion, Publicola, Brutus, and others who grin widely as they draw the blood of “tyrants”, expect to be loved and rewarded for making violent revolution and defending democracy. That, and the way he honors suicide: another reason I liked Demetrius is that he was a rare ruler who submitted when defeated in battle, lived out his last three years in peaceful captivity: Plutarch finds this dishonorable, praising those who fall on their swords rather than submit. If anything, these deficiencies ably show how for all Rome’s virtues, a vast improvement in morals was needed, which is one reason why the rise of Christianity was so welcome a development. #Plutarch #PlutarchsLives #CastaliaLibrary #AncientGreece #Greece #Greek #AncientRome #RomanRepublic #RomanEmpire #Roman #Rome #classics #biography #literature #books