Plutarch’s Lives

Parallelism and Purpose

edited by Noreen Humble

Book cover: Plutarch’s Lives

Extent: 300 pages

Publisher: The Classical Press of Wales

Subjects: Classical Studies

Series: Roman World

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(December 2010)

ISBN: 9781905125418

6.1 x 9.17 inches

Price: $85.00

In stock

PDF (Published)

(December 2010)

ISBN: 9781910589236

Price: $85.00

Plutarch’s Parallel Lives were written to compare famous Greeks and Romans. This most obvious aspect of their parallelism is frequently ignored in the drive to mine Plutarch for historical fact. However, the eleven contributors to the present volume, who include most of the world’s leading commentators on Plutarch, together bring out many ways in which Plutarch invoked aspects of parallelism. They show how pervasive and how central the whole notion was to his thinking. With new analysis of the synkriseis; with discussion of parallels within and across the Lives and in the Moralia; with an examination of why the basic parallel structure of the Lives lost its importance in the Renaissance, this volume presents fresh ideas on a neglected topic crucial to Plutarch’s literary creation.

1. Why Parallel Lives? - W. Jeffrey Tatum 2. Parallels and contrasts: Plutarch's Comparison of Coriolanus and Alcibiades - Simon Verdegem 3. Plutarch's Themistocles and Camillus - Timothy E. Duff 4. Dion and Brutus: philosopher kings adrift in a hostile world - John Dillon 5. Asemotatos or autokrator? Obscurity and glory in Plutarch's Sertorius - Jeffrey Beneker 6. Plutarch, 'parallelism' and the Persian-War Lives - John Marincola 7. A life unparalleled: Artaxerxes - Judith Mossman 8. The rhetoric and philosophy of Plutarch's mirrors - Alexei V. Zadorojnyi 9. Parallels in three dimensions - Philip A. Stadter 10. 'Plutarch's tale of two cities: do the Parallel Lives combine as global histories?' - Christopher Pelling 11. Parallelism and the Humanists - Noreen Humble

  • Edited by Noreen Humble