Plutarch's Lives : Exploring Virtue and Vice

by: Duff, T.

Price: 195,00 EURO

(in stock)

Plutarch's Lives
Exploring Virtue and Vice
Tim Duff
The first monograph on Plutarch's Lives since 1974.
It aims to rehabilitate Plutarch as an author worthy of serious study.

Description
The Parallel Lives of Plutarch (c. AD 45-120), a vast retrospective series of biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen, have always been one of the most widely read of the works which survive from classical antiquity. They were written when Roman imperial power was reaching its height, and are sophisticated examples of a renaissance classicism, both linguistic, literary, philosophical and historical, which formed a Greek reaction to Roman domination. The Parallel Lives thus offer us a unique insight into the reception of Classical Greece and Republican Rome in the Greek world of the second century AD. They also explore and challenge issues of psychology, education, morality, and cultural identity. In this new study discussions of Plutarch's literary techniques and moral conceptions are combined with case studies of a number of paired Lives (Pyrrhos - Marius, Phokion - Cato Minor, Lysander - Sulla, and Coriolanus - Alkibiades). As the author demonstrates, the parallel structure of the Lives is not only vital to their interpretation but also reflects a Greek attempt to appropriate and make sense of the pasts of both Greece and Rome.

Editions and Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1 (12)
I. THE MORALIZING PROGRAMME
The Programmatic Statements of the Lives
13 (39)
Moralism in Plutarch's Lives
52 (20)
The Soul of a Plutarchan Hero
72 (29)
II. EXPLORING VIRTUE AND VICE: THE CASE STUDIES
The Lives of Pyrrhos and Marius
101 (30)
The Lives of Phokion and Cato Minor
131 (30)
The Lives of Lysander and Sulla
161 (44)
The Lives of Coriolanus and Alkibiades
205 (38)
III. WRITING IN PARALLEL
Synkrisis and the Synkriseis in the Parallel Lives
243 (44)
The Politics of Parallelism
287 (23)
Appendix 1: Plutarch and Ancestors 310 (2)
Appendix 2: Plutarch and Chronology 312 (3)
Bibliography 315 (38)
Indices 353

Plutarch's Lives : Exploring Virtue and Vice

by: Duff, T.

• ISBN-13: 9780198150589 / 978-0-19-815058-9
• ISBN-03: 019815058X / 0-19-815058-X
• Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999

Price: 195,00 EURO

(in stock)