Plutarch was a Greek writer who lived in the Roman empire a century or so after the birth of Christ. He wrote one of the three extant biographies of Alexander the Great (who lived four centuries before him), the other two being written by Arrian and Quintus Curtius Rufus. Much of what we believe we know about the Macedonian and about Julius Caesar is owed to the writing of Plutarch.
His principal work, Parallel Lives , consists of 23 pairs of biographies, each pair juxtaposing one Greek and one Roman individual based on perceived similarities.
For instance, Plutarch clubs Alexander and Caesar together — the most famous pairing in the book — because both are warrior-leaders and the most renowned conquerors of their era. What makes the work unusual is that Plutarch does not want to write a straight chronological history of these 46 men. (And unfortunately his subjects are all male.) What he wants to do instead is present their character to the reader. He does so principally through anecdote.
So why should we read it today? To find out what the ancients thought made for good and bad character. Plutarch’s work has survived the centuries because for all this time, what he has described in his opinion has been held up as exemplary. The other reason is that it is extremely entertaining. Plutarch is not a dull writer, and because of his focus on the anecdotal, he is able to bring the individuals to life.
Reverse role play
For example, consider this episode. As a young man, Caesar is captured by pirates, Plutarch tells us, and the pirates demand a ransom of 20 talents. Caesar bursts out laughing, saying they have no idea who they’ve captured, and offers to pay 50 instead. He is rude to them, telling them to shut up when he is sleeping, ignoring the danger to himself. For 38 days in captivity he joins in their games and exercises “as if he were their leader instead of their prisoner.”
He writes poems and speeches that he recites to them, and when they do not applaud or admire his writing he calls them illiterate savages to their face. He laughingly says he will have them hanged when he is free. When the ransom arrives and Caesar is freed, he promptly finds the pirates and has them crucified. It is this sort of material that brings Caesar the man alive. Some of the subjects Plutarch deals with are mythical characters who never existed or existed only in fable. One example is Theseus, a founder-hero of Athens and slayer of the Minotaur. He is compared to Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome.
Many of the others are about people who are much less famous today than they were in the time of Plutarch. For example, Alcibiades, the very handsome and dashing nobleman and naval officer, is compared with Coriolanus, the Roman general on whom Shakespeare would write a play. Two of these are also lost to us. One of Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal, scourge of the Romans. The other of Epaminondas, the Theban general who fought in the Battle of Leuctra, which ended the domination of Sparta.
Not for money
A remarkably large number of biographies were written in this period some 2,000 years ago, and many have survived. This is why we know so much more about the ancient Greeks and Romans than we do about any other part of the world from that time. Biographical details of Socrates can be gleaned from the writings of Plato and Xenophon, composed centuries before Christ. Diogenes Laërtius chronicled the lives of the philosophers of his time a few hundred years later, and this work is the source of much of what we know today about Greek philosophy and its practitioners.
These works were not written for money because there was no publishing industry in that time. They were written because of the curiosity of the authors and their desire to pass along what they had heard and known.
Plutarch was a bureaucrat who served the Roman empire as a magistrate. His last few decades were spent working at the temple of Delphi (famous for its oracle) as a priest. His writing mostly happened after he retired and went back to his hometown of Chaeronea. He took his writing seriously and looked down upon those who wrote history before him, especially Herodotus, whom he referred to as “the father of lies”. But, as this highly entertaining work shows, Plutarch may not have been above telling a fib or two himself.
The writer is a columnist and translator of Urdu and Gujarati non-fiction works.
