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 CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. Plutarch’s method of work in the Roman Lives

2. Plutarch and Catiline

3. The Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum and Plutarch’s65

Roman Lives

4. Plutarch’s adaptation of his source-material

5. Plutarch and Thucydides

6. Truth and fiction in Plutarch’s Lives

7. ‘Making myth look like history’: Plutarch’s Theseus–Romulus

8. Dionysiac diagnostics: some hints of Dionysus in Plutarch’s

Lives

9. Plutarch and Roman politics

10.The moralism of Plutarch’s Lives

11.Plutarch’s Caesar: a Caesar for the Caesars?

12.‘You for me and me for you’: narrator and narratee in

Plutarch’s Lives

13.Aspects of Plutarch’s characterization

14.Childhood and personality in Greek biography

15.Rhetoric,paideia, and psychology in Plutarch’s Lives

16.Synkrisis in Plutarch’s Lives

17.Is death the end? Closure in Plutarch’s Lives

18.The shaping of Coriolanus: Dionysius, Plutarch and

Shakespeare

Bibliography

Index of names

Index of Plutarch passages

Index of passages in other authors

Index of topics
 PREFACE

Any ambitious young academic knows what to do. You pick an

interesting but manageable topic, polish off the thesis, write it up

promptly into the first book, then start on the second book – on

a different topic, but not too different – before you are thirty. I,

however, am still on my thesis topic after thirty-one years of

research. That thesis was a commentary on Plutarch’s Caesar,

completed between 1970 and 1974 under Donald Russell’s

supervision. Except that neither ‘commentary’ nor ‘completed’ is

quite the word: had I but known it, I was challenging in a pre-

post-modern way any notion of organic unity, coherence, or

closure, but sadly only in execution, not in conception. It turned

out to be more introduction than commentary, with the bones of

five chapters of this book (1, 2, 4, 6, and 9) lurking in two

hundred and fifty pages of prolegomena and appendices, and the

commentary not reaching even half way into the Life.

The examiners (Ewen Bowie and David Stockton) were

indulgent, and I am thankful. A generation or so later publishers

are being indulgent too, and I am most grateful to Anton Powell

for suggesting and encouraging this collection; as a Welshman

who learnt my Greek and Latin at Cardiff High School, I am

particularly proud and delighted that it should be published by

the Classical Press of Wales. At the same time I am completing a

commentary on Caesar for the O.U.P. Clarendon Ancient

History series. This second project explains some of the absentees

from this book, as the material of several papers seemed more

suited for the commentary: a short piece in which I tried to

identify two fragments from the lost end of Alexander and

beginning of Caesar (1973), two papers of varia on Caesar

(1984a and 1984b), one discussing Plutarch’s presentation of

Caesar’s fall (1997e), and two forthcoming pieces, one exploring

the difficulties of writing about Caesar without crossing generic

boundaries and one discussing Plutarch’s presentation of wealth

in Roman politics (forthcoming, a and b). A further article on

Plutarch’s presentation of Hellenic culture (1989) has, I think,

been rendered obsolete by distinguished work by Simon Swain,

and that too is omitted. I have also left out material which first

appeared in book form, not merely my two commentaries on

Antony (1988) and Philopoemen–Flamininus (1997a) but also my

introduction to Francesca Albini’s edition of Coriolanus–

Alcibiades (1996) and the chapter on Plutarch in my Literary

Texts and the Greek Historian (2000).

Doubtless anyone interested could plot something like

intellectual development. It is no coincidence that the early

papers tend to form the first chapters: they were more concerned

with basic questions of how Plutarch worked, how far he

manipulated his sources, what freedoms he took with what we

might reasonably call the truth. As time went on my interest

turned more to questions of conceptualization and self-

presentation, and the influence of narratology began to be felt

(that will be especially clear in ch. 12). Instead of sources I

became more interested in intertextuality, allusion, and

reception. Shakespeare too came into the field of vision, and as a

way of recovering points about Plutarch as well as about

Shakespeare himself. The style changed as well, to something

rather less crabbed and formal: a symptom is the growing

acknowledgement of subjective input with lots of ‘I’s and ‘we’s, a

usage which, in an even more self-absorbed way, I at one point

explore and deconstruct (p. 278). But the development has been

anything but linear, and the most recent paper to be written

(chapter 3) reverts to the interests of the earliest; nor, I am sure,

will the cross-grained reader (p. 276) find it difficult to collect

crabbed formalities in papers old and new. I see no reason why

the interests in substance and in rhetoric should not co-exist, and

the less inhibited criticism of the later papers often goes back to

exploit some of the earlier findings. A reviewer of Scardigli 1995,

where several of these papers (1, 4, and 9) were reprinted, was

kind enough to suggest that ‘Pelling’s early papers’ (now there’s a

sign of age) were of interest to historians as well as to literary

critics. I am glad if that is so, but I would be even more pleased if

the later ones were of interest too, as the ways in which Plutarch

fashioned himself and read his audience are seen to be of

conceptual importance for the intellectual history of imperial

Greece.

I have revised all the papers to take into account more recent

work, adding a paragraph or a sentence here and (many) a

footnote there. But I have resisted any temptation to rewrite

completely; often this would have been just as easy, but that

provides a nightmare for anyone citing a paper or looking up a

particular point, and I did not think users would thank me for it.
In two cases I have added postscripts to respond to important

new research, one to Christopher Gill’s fascinating work on

Greek conceptions of personality (pp. 321–9) and one to several

recent publications on synkrisis (pp. 359–61). In one further case

(ch. 7) I have expanded the original paper so substantially that it

is virtually a new publication. Three of the papers (chs. 3, 11,

and 12) appear here for the first time.

It would be thoroughly depressing if I had not changed my

mind on anything in the course of those thirty-one years. It

would be just as depressing if I were confident that these changes

of mind were always for the better, and therefore in some cases I

have allowed the initial formulations to stand, while adding a

footnote to express the reservations I now feel; this is particularly

true when those statements have provoked responses and

corrections from others. I suppose that most of my changes of

mind have been in the direction of crediting Plutarch with

greater subtlety, and I can at least claim that most of my rasher

statements figured in papers which, at the time, were already

arguing for more subtlety than was usually allowed. In one or

two cases I was trying to head off scepticism by granting that in

some Lives a feature was indeed not very interesting, whereas in

others – the ones I was interested in – it was more so; that was

particularly true in some things I said about synkrisis in 1986 (pp.

349–53). The direction of later research has been towards

finding that feature more interesting everywhere; hence I now

regret the concession, but some of the best criticism (e.g. that of

Larmour 1992 and Duff 1999) has taken what I said as its target,

and it would be weak-spirited to try to suppress it now. In early

articles I also tended to take statements in Plutarch’s text at face

value, for instance the suggestion in the Comparison of Nicias and

Crassus (35(2).3) that he had simply forgotten to include an item

in the narrative. Perhaps I was right; or perhaps this is a more

disingenuous piece of self-fashioning by Plutarch, conveying the

impression of a more informal and extemporizing approach than

he in fact pursued. There were in fact good reasons for omitting

that item from the narrative of Crass. 15: see p. 42 n. 142. But I

suspect that more readers may agree with my earlier

simplemindedness than with my present doubts, and I have again

allowed that passage to stand (p. 21), adding my reservations in a

footnote. The same goes for my airy confidence in 1979 that the

preparation of twelve elaborate Lives would take months rather

than years (p. 25). That was written by a bright-eyed young

person who had yet to realize what barriers life tends to place in

the way of steady research. This tattered middle-aged man knows

better.

Most of the material here was first delivered as lectures or in

seminars; it would take too long to list these various locations or

count the miles where Plutarch has paid for my ticket, but I am

still most grateful to countless audiences for hospitality and

discussion. One particular type of occasion does call for special

mention, as no fewer than ten of these chapters were delivered in

some form to meetings of the International Plutarch Society or to

conferences closely linked with it; two more were written for

I.P.S. collections to replace papers I had given at the conferences

but already promised to publish elsewhere. Over fifteen years the

work of Frances Titchener (Utah State University) has kept this

society vigorous, and produced a genuine international Plutarch

community; we have all learnt a great deal from the scholarly

assumptions and habits of our various cultures, and without

Frances’ long-suffering, patient, and (almost always) good-

humoured organization none of it would have happened.

Other friends have been very generous with their time.

Writing on Plutarch has never been the same since Donald

Russell’s seminal articles in the 1960s, and my own work would

certainly not have been the same without his supervision; he

must take a lot of the blame for how it has turned out. I am

immensely grateful, and I hope he has noticed that my interests

have gradually grown more like his own. Something like half of

the chapters were also read before publication by Philip Stadter

and Judith Mossman, and have been greatly improved by their

suggestions. I have been fortunate too in having close contact

with the work of an extraordinary sequence of scholars when

they were graduate students. Only a few of them have worked on

Plutarch, but all have affected the way I think about historical

writing: Peter Scott, Owen Watkins, Richard Burridge, Alison

Sylvester, Carolyn Hammond, Matthew Fox, David Levene,

Simon Swain, Franco Basso, Philip Moore, Thomas Schmidt,

David Gribble, Rhiannon Ash, Emily Whitehead, Peter O’Neill,

Tim Rood, Chris Burnand, Lynn Fotheringham, Luke Pitcher,

Karl Woodgett, Charles Smith, and Mathieu de Bakker. Other

friends and colleagues have been very helpful for one or another

paper, and in many cases for several: alphabetically, Francesca

Albini, Ewen Bowie, Frederick Brenk, George Cawkwell,

Katherine Clarke, Michael Comber, Helen Cooper, Tim Cornell,

Carolyn Dewald, Francis Dunn, Irene de Jong, Tim Duff,

Harriet Flower, Michael Flower, Don Fowler, Christopher Gill,

Miriam Griffin, Edith Hall, Simon Hornblower, Richard

Jenkyns, Lisa Kallet, Barbara Kowalzig, Chris Kraus, Mansur

Lalljee, David Lewis, Andrew Lintott, John Marincola, Mary

Ann McGrail, Lynette Mitchell, John Moles, Teresa Morgan,

Tasos Nikolaidis, Peter Parsons, George Ray, Deborah Roberts,

Richard Rutherford, Scott Scullion, A.N. Sherwin-White,

Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, David Stockton, Fran Titchener,

Mark Toher, Luc van der Stockt, Catherine Whistler, Thomas

Wiedemann, Jonathan Williams, Tony Woodman, and Alexei

Zadorojnyi. I owe much to all of them. Finally, Anton Powell

and Ernest Buckley have gone far beyond anything which can be

expected of publishers in helpfulness and forbearance when

faced, yet again, with an author behaving badly.

A book’s first victims are always the author’s family; a book

which collects the work of thirty years has certainly grown

through others’ suffering, and from spousal and paternal

grumpiness as much as from absenteeism. In those years the two

whose childhood coincided – though it was doubtless no

coincidence – with my interest in paideia have grown, one

turning into a philosopher (perhaps a disputatious nature was

predictable since his first word was ‘no’), and one about to read

social anthropology. The third, my wife and partner, has moved

from research astrophysics through public service into, now,

creative literature. It is a commonplace that critics grow more

like the authors they work on – a commonplace normally uttered

in hope by the critics themselves, and usually all too false.

Plutarch in any case has a range of interests which no critic could

match. But Plutarch approved of families too, and, as a family,

we may come a little closer. To those three comrades in battle

(inevitably in several senses) the book is dedicated.

C.B.R.P.

1 September 2001
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The original versions of the papers appeared – or, in the case of

chs. 3, 11, and 12, are due to appear – in the following

publications. I am most grateful to all the editors and publishers

for their permission to produce revised versions here.

Ch. 1: Journal of Hellenic Studies 99 (1979) 74–96: repr. here by

permission of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic

Studies. Postscript: Essays on Plutarch’s Lives (ed. B. Scardigli,

Oxford 1995, 312–18; repr. here by permission of Oxford

University Press.

Ch. 2: Hermes 113 (1985) 311–29: repr. here by permission of

the Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart.

Ch. 3: to appear in the Proceedings of the Leuven Symposion on

Plutarch’s compositional methods, 5–7 July 2001, edited by L.

van der Stockt and P.A. Stadter. This version appears by

permission of the editors.

Ch. 4: Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980) 127–40, repr. here

by permission of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic

Studies.

Ch. 5: Plutarch and the Historical Tradition (ed. P.A. Stadter,

Routledge, 1992) 10–40; repr. here by permission of

Routledge.

Ch. 6: Antonine Literature (ed. D.A. Russell, Oxford 1990) 19–

52; repr. here by permission of Oxford University Press.

Ch. 7: expanded version of ‘ “Making myth look like history”:

Plato in Plutarch’s Theseus–Romulus’, in Plutarco, Platón y

Aristóteles (Acta of Madrid/ Cuenca Plutarch conference, May

a
1999) ed. A. Pérez Jiménez, J. Garcia López, and R. M .

Aguilar (Madrid 1999) 431–43. This version appears by

permission of the editors of that volume.

Ch. 8: Plutarco, Dioniso, y el vino (ed. J.G. Montes, M. Sanchez,

and R.J. Gallé, Madrid 1999) 359–68; repr. here by

permission of the editors.

Ch. 9: Past Perspectives; Studies in Greek and Roman Historical

Writing (ed. I.S. Moxon, J.D. Smart, and A.J. Woodman,

Cambridge 1986) 159–87: repr. here by permission of

Cambridge University Press.

Ch. 10: Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell on

his Seventy-Fifth Birthday (ed. D.C. Innes, H.M. Hine and

C.B.R. Pelling, Oxford 1995) 205–20: Italian version (‘Il

moralismo delle Vite di Plutarco’) in Teoria e Prassi Politica

nelle opere di Plutarco, ed. I. Gallo and B. Scardigli (Napoli,

1995) 343–61. Repr. here by permission of Oxford University

Press.

Ch. 11: to appear in Sage and Emperor: Plutarch and Trajan (ed.

P.A. Stadter and L. van der Stockt). This version appears by

permission of the editors.

Ch. 12: to appear in vol. I of History of Ancient Greek Narrative

(ed. I. de Jong and A. Bowie). This version appears by

permission of the editors.

Ch. 13: Illinois Classical Studies 13.2 (1988) 257–74: repr. here

by permission of the editor of Illinois Classical Studies.

Ch. 14: Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature

(ed. C. Pelling, 1990) 213–44: repr. here by permission of

Oxford University Press. The postscript incorporates some

material from the closing pages of ‘Plutarch: Roman heroes

and Greek Lives’, in Philosophia Togata I (ed. M. Griffin and J.

Barnes, Oxford 1989) 191–232, repr. here by permission of

Oxford University Press.

Ch. 15: ‘Rhetoric, paideia, and psychology in Plutarch’s Lives’, in

Rhetorical Theory and Praxis in Plutarch (ed. L. van der Stockt,

Leuven 2000) 331–9: repr. here by permission of Luc van der

Stockt.

Ch. 16: Miscellanea Plutarchea (ed. F.E. Brenk and I. Gallo,

Ferrara, Quadernidel Giornale Filologico Ferrarese 8, 1986) 83–

96: repr. here by permission of the editors.

Ch. 17: Classical Closure: Endings in Ancient Literature (ed. D.H.

Roberts, F.M. Dunn, and D. Fowler, Princeton, 1997) 228–

50: repr. here by permission of Princeton University Press. Ch.

18: Plutarch’s Shakespeare (Poetica 48 (1997) ) ed. M.A.

 McGrail, 3–32: repr. here by permission of Poetica and Mary

Ann McGrail.

Ch. 18: Plutarch’s Shakespeare (Poetica 48 (1997) )ed. M.A.

McGrail, 3–32: repr. here by permission of Poetica and Mary

Ann McGrail.
 1

PLUTARCH’S METHOD OF WORK

IN THE ROMAN LIVES

This chapter is concerned with the eight Lives in which Plutarch describes the final years of the Roman

Republic: Lucullus, Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Caesar, Cato Minor, Brutus, and Antony. It is not my

main concern to identify particular sources, though some problems of provenance will inevitably arise; it

is rather to investigate the methods which Plutarch adopted in gathering his information, whatever his

sources may have been. Did he, for instance, compose each biography independently? Or did he prepare
1
several Lives simultaneously, combining in one project his reading for a number of different works?

Did he always have his source-material before him as he composed? Or can we detect an extensive use of
2 3
memory? Can one conjecture what use, if any, he made of notes? And can we tell whether he usually

drew his material from just one source, or wove together his narrative from his knowledge of several
4
different versions?

I start from an important assumption: that, in one way or another, Plutarch needed to gather

information before writing these Lives; that, whatever may be the case with some of the Greek Lives, he

would not be able to write these Roman biographies simply from his general knowledge. The full basis

for this assumption will only become clear as the discussion progresses: for example, we shall find traces

of increasing knowledge within these Lives, with early biographies showing only a slight knowledge of

some important events, and later ones gradually filling the gaps. It will become probable that Plutarch

knew comparatively little of the detail of Roman history before he began work on the Lives, and that

considerable ‘research’ – directed and methodical reading – would be necessary for their composition.

This thesis must not be overstated: Plutarch would have read the standard Greek histories of the
5
Roman world some time before he began the Lives. If (and it is a big ‘if ’ ) On the Fortune of the

Romans is a youthful work, he already knew Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and probably Polybius, at that
6
time. A knowledge of the outline of Roman history was a natural expectation in an educated Greek of

the day. But at the same time it is clear that the Roman Lives have, in important respects, a different

texture from the Greek; and one striking aspect of this is relevant here. No one can doubt that Plutarch

had all his life read widely and sensitively in Greek literature, and that, even before he started work on
7
the Lives, his memory was full of anecdotes concerning the Greek heroes he described. In writing

Pericles, for instance, he could exploit his recollections of the comic poets, of philosophers (especially
8
Plato), of Theophrastus, of Ion of Chios. In no sense had he read these authors ‘for’ the Pericles; he had

read them for their own sake, and probably read them many years before. But they filled his mind with

recollections and allusions, and these furnished some valuable supplements to his historical sources: he

could fill a whole chapter with anecdotes of Aspasia which, he could say, ‘just came to mind’ as he
9
wrote.

10
Matters were different when he turned to Rome. He had learnt his Latin fairly late in life; he

evidently did not read Latin literature for pleasure, and therefore had no such ready fund of Latin

recollections. We might have expected some quotations from Augustan poetry in Antony – in the
11
descriptions of Cleopatra, perhaps, or the notices of Roman public opinion; there are none. Plutarch

never mentions Virgil; nor Catullus, relevant for Caesar ; nor Ennius, though cunctando restituit rem
12
would have been a useful ornament for Fabius. Not only did Plutarch lack that general knowledge of

the Roman past which a literary background could give: a man who had not read Ennius or Virgil
13
would be unlikely to know his Livy, his Pollio, or his Sallust. It is reasonable to assume that the

reading of the great Roman historians was work which still lay in front of Plutarch, reading which he

would have to conduct ‘for’ the Roman Lives.

The first section of this paper will examine the possibility that several Lives were prepared

simultaneously. Various arguments will suggest that six of these eight Lives – Pompey, Crassus, Caesar,

Cato Minor, Brutus, and Antony – belong closely together, and were probably prepared as a single

project. The second section will consider the manner in which Plutarch collected his information from

the sources.

I. Simultaneous preparation

(a) Increasing knowledge

Lucullus and Cicero seem to be the earliest of these eight Lives. Demosthenes– Cicero formed the fifth

pair in the series of Parallel Lives (Dem. 3.1), and it seems likely that Cimon–Lucullus should be placed
 14
even earlier. The Parallel Lives were clearly produced over a considerable period of time, and it is

natural to think that Plutarch read more widely during their production; it is therefore not surprising

that in Lucullus and Cicero he seems less knowledgeable than in the later Lives. The second half of

Cicero, in particular, is scrappy and ill-informed, and leaves a very different impression from the

detailed later accounts. It is sometimes possible to see specific cases of ignorance: for instance, Plutarch

had presumably not yet discovered the item of Crass. 13.3–4 – Cicero inculpating Caesar and Crassus
15
in the Catilinarian conspiracy, but in a work published after both were dead. Plutarch would surely

have mentioned this in the context of Cic. 20.6–7, where he discusses Caesar’s guilt: he would have

welcomed the erudite allusion to Cicero’s own works (cf. 20.3). Again, had he yet known of Cicero’s

support for Pompey’s cura annonae (Pomp. 49.6), he would probably have included it; after underlining

Pompey’s part in securing Cicero’s recall (Cic. 33.2–4), he would naturally mention Cicero’s grateful

recompense. Lucullus offers fewer possibilities of comparison with later Lives, but at least the

confrontation of Lucullus and Pompey in Cilicia is very curtly dismissed at Luc. 36.4: Plutarch is better

informed by the time of Pompey (31.8–13). Finally, a very clear case is afforded by the accounts of the

triumviral proscriptions. In the brief notice of Cic. 46.5, Plutarch clearly states that Lepidus wished to

save his brother Paullus, but sacrificed him to the wishes of Antony and Octavian. By the time of

Antony (19.3), Plutarch had discovered a different version: that Lepidus was the man who wished to kill

Paullus, and the other two acceded to his wishes. That version came from a source which he could trust,
16
and in Antony he prefers it, noting the Cicero version merely as a variant.

Such signs of increasing knowledge are not surprising; it would indeed be odd if Plutarch had not

read more widely as the series progressed. What is striking is that Cicero and Lucullus stand so firmly

isolated from the other, later Lives. We should expect to discover that Plutarch’s knowledge continued to

increase as his reading widened – that Pompey, for instance, showed more familiarity with the period
17
than Caesar, for we know that Pompey was the later Life to be written; but it is very difficult, and

probably impossible, to detect such a further increase in knowledge. The full support for this negative

thesis cannot, of course, be set out here: only a detailed comparison of every parallel version in every

Life could establish this. But it may be helpful to examine two specific examples, taking sequences of

events which Plutarch several times describes in detail: first, the formation of the triple pact in 60 BC,

and the ensuing consulate of Caesar; and, secondly, Caesar’s assassination.

(i) Plutarch accepted the view of Asinius Pollio: it was the pact of Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar which
18
set Rome on the path to civil war. It was inevitable that several Lives should treat this alliance, and

continue to narrate Caesar’s consulate: and Plutarch duly gives accounts at Luc. 42.6–8, Cic. 30.1–4,

Caes. 13–14, Pomp. 47–8, Cato Minor 31–3, and Crass. 14.1–5. It is immediately clear that the four

later accounts, especially those of Caesar, Pompey, and Cato, are better informed than those of Lucullus

and Cicero. The Lucullus version is very skimpy: a brief and misleading reference to the formation of

the pact, a mention of the fracas in the assembly, then a rather fuller treatment of the Vettius affair. All

this is substantially different from the later accounts: Crassus is never again associated with Cato or

Lucullus, as he is here (42.4); Vettius is never again mentioned. Cicero also passes swiftly over these

events: no mention of the triple alliance, no formal treatment of the year 59 – though a place could

easily have been found among the antecedents of Cicero’s exile, as Caes. 14.17 shows. Only a very few

items are exploited, and those are misleading: the story of Cic. 30.3–5, Cicero’s request for a legateship
19
in Caesar’s army, has something behind it, but this version is very garbled; the anecdote of Cic. 30.5,

Caesar denouncing Cicero in the assembly, is another garbling, this time of the story of Dio 38.17.1–2.

Neither item is exploited in the later Lives. Equally, Plutarch does not yet seem to know some material

which he was later to exploit: he would surely have mentioned the story of Cato 32.8–10, Cicero

prevailing on Cato to take the oath.

In the four later Lives, Plutarch is much richer in narrative detail, and he has evidently discovered a

new store of material in the interval since Lucullus and Cicero. Moreover, these later accounts are
20
extremely similar to one another – the similarities often extend to verbal echoes – and all seem to be

based on the same material. Naturally, different Lives select different material for emphasis, as Plutarch

tailors his material to suit the Lives’ subjects and aims; but literary technique can explain all the

variations, and there is no indication that he made any fresh discoveries during these Lives’ composition.

Literary technique would naturally lead him to be fuller in Pompey than in Caesar on Pompey’s ill-

judged remark in the assembly – Pompey finds room to speculate on his motives (47.6–8); while Caesar

understandably emphasizes Caesar’s brushes with Considius and Cato, which were not relevant for

Pompey. Caesar passes over the role of Lucullus, eschewing the complicating individual, but Pompey has

made much of the Lucullus–Pompey feud and therefore includes the material (48.2, 7, cf. 4). In Caesar

Plutarch finds it useful to treat the two agrarian bills together (‘he immediately introduced laws…’,

εὐθὺς εισ
̀ έφερε νόμους…, 14.2), but in Cato it is necessary to treat them separately, for each led to
21
distinct acts of heroism on Cato’s part which Plutarch wishes to include: the first provoked Cato’s
refusal to swear to the bill (32.4–11), the second the disgraceful episode of the imprisonment (33.1–4).

In this Life, Cato himself dominates all the opposition to Caesar; the role of fellow-opponents –

Bibulus, Lucullus, Considius – is abbreviated or suppressed. Finally, Crassus understandably has the

briefest treatment. Crassus had the smallest (or least public) role in these events, and Plutarch is by then

hurrying on to the more rewarding theme of the Syrian command. The complex events of 60–56 are

dismissed in a single chapter.

One further point confirms the close connection of these accounts: all show similarities with the

version of Cassius Dio (37.54–38.12), and the similarities are best explained in terms of shared source-

material. Pompey and Caesar have the story of Pompey and Crassus in the assembly; Dio has it too, and
22
gives a similar emphasis to Pompey’s outburst. Pompey and Cato have the assault on Bibulus; so does
23
Dio, with similar details. Caesar and Cato are close to Dio in the stress and interpretation given to the
24
election of Clodius, and in the emphasis they lay on the attempt to imprison Cato. Suetonius, too,

shows some contact with this tradition: in particular, his versions of the attempted imprisonment and of
25
the dynastic marriages are close to both Plutarch and Dio. The natural explanation is to suppose that

all Plutarch’s later accounts are informed by the same source or sources, and that this material was also

available to Suetonius and Dio; and this supports the hypothesis that Plutarch’s four later versions are all

based on the same store of material.

(ii) Caesar’s assassination is naturally treated most lavishly in Brutus (7 ff.) and in Caesar (62 ff.). Cicero

had mentioned these events briefly (42); Antony (13–15) has a little material on the murder, then rather

more on the immediate sequel.

Cicero adds little to this analysis. Its account is brief and shows no signs of great background

knowledge; but brevity is only to be expected, for Cicero’s role was so small. Antony is more interesting,

but here too the differences are explained by literary technique. For instance, it is no surprise that

Brutus and Caesar omit the story of Ant. 13.2, Trebonius resisting the proposal to kill Antony, for this

item is only a peg for the more interesting tale, drawn from the Second Philippic – Trebonius had earlier
26
tried to involve Antony in the plot, and Antony had kept the secret. This is an anecdote of some

interest for Antony himself, but it tells us little of Caesar or Brutus, and is naturally omitted from their

Lives. When Antony comes to the sequel of the assassination, Plutarch understandably wishes to

simplify the confusing sequence of events. Here there is only one senate-sitting (14.3); in Brutus 19

there are two. The role of complicating individuals is suppressed: nothing on Lepidus, nor on Plancus,
27
nor even on Cicero’s plea for amnesty. All three are mentioned in other Lives. Nor does Plutarch

mention the items of Brutus 20.1, Antony’s request for a public funeral and for the opening of Caesar’s

will. But none of this abbreviation is hard to understand. Plutarch’s emphasis in Antony is simple: the

brilliance of Antony’s conciliation, the nobility of the solution he could bring – these Plutarch describes

in his most affective language (14.4). Yet this solution is swiftly and characteristically upset by Antony’s

impulse to play for popularity at the funeral (14.5). Had the request for a public funeral been included,

Antony’s demagogy might no longer seem a sudden impulse: it is therefore omitted. The other

individuals who pressed for peace would equally complicate the picture, and they are therefore cut away.

There is certainly no need to suppose that he is less well informed here than in Brutus or Caesar.

Brutus and Caesar themselves pose a more complicated problem. Again, the two accounts show
28
close similarities of language and content where they overlap; but these two Lives have very different

interests and aims, and the selection of material differs greatly. Caesar is a very historical Life. It has

explained Caesar’s career in terms of his popular support: from the beginning, he is the champion and
29
the favourite of the demos, and he easily deceives the short-sighted optimates. But as tyrant he loses
30
his popularity, and it is then that his fortunes waver; and he loses this less by his own errors than by
31
the failings of his friends. This focus on the demos continues in the closing chapters. Their reactions
32
are carefully traced in chs. 60–61 (where Plutarch seems to reinterpret and distort his source-material);

then Caes. 62.1 makes ‘the ordinary people’ ( οί πολλοί) turn to Brutus, whereas in Brutus itself it seems
33
to be ‘the first of the citizens’ who give Brutus his encouragement. Caesar, then, seeks the origins of

the assassination in Caesar’s own actions and those of his friends, and the effect of these on the demos.

Such a reading naturally reduces the interest in the peculiar motives and characters of the conspirators;

indeed, an extended treatment of Brutus and Cassius is delayed to a point where Caesar’s fall already
34
seems inevitable. It is therefore natural for Caesar strictly to follow biographical relevance, and to

suppress most of the material of Brutus which deals with the conspirators’ side of events. Caesar
35
mentions the long-nurtured resentment of Cassius only briefly; and the delicate approaches to possible
36
conspirators, fully described in Brutus, have no place in Caesar.

Brutus, in contrast, is a more straightforwardly moralistic life than Caesar : ‘tyrannicide’ is the theme
37
which links it to its pair Dion. It is less concerned with the historical background than Caesar, and
here Plutarch has nothing of the demos-motif, nothing even of the sequence of outrages such as the
38
Lupercalia which provoked such unrest. He here prefers more ethically promising themes: the

anecdotes of Porcia, the thoughtful justice with which Brutus tried his cases on the morning of the Ides,

or the constancy with which he bore ‘many disquieting things’ ( πολλὰ θορυβώδη). The purer motives

of Brutus are set off by the brooding resentment of Cassius, ‘more a hater of Caesar for his own reasons

than a hater of the tyrant for the good of the state’ ( μα̑ λλον ιδ̀ ίᾳ μισοκαΐσαρ ἢ κοινᾑ μισοτὐραννος,
8.5) – and Cassius is a far more sinister and complex character here than in Caesar. This material could

have had no place in Caesar : it is relevant to the conspirators alone, and Caesar is anyway not that sort

of moralistic Life. There is no hint of increasing knowledge here.

The treatment of the Ides itself largely follows biographical relevance. Caesar describes events from

Caesar’s own viewpoint: the warnings of the soothsayers, of Calpurnia, and of Artemidorus; then the

visit of D. Brutus, with his cogent arguments that Caesar must attend the senate, despite the warnings:

‘what would his enemies say?’ How close Caesar came to escape! – and yet eventually he had no choice,

the pressures of rule forced him to attend: that is the (tragic) emphasis of Caesar. Brutus has no such

theme. The delay on the morning of the Ides is there narrated from the conspirators’ viewpoint, one of

those ‘disquieting things’ which Brutus impressively overcame. The focus rests on the forum and the

conspirators; a message is heard that Caesar is approaching (16.1), but the narrative switches to him

only at the moment of his death. Plutarch here concentrates on Brutus’ own role in the killing: Caesar
39
surrendered to his blows when he saw Brutus, too, among his foes; Brutus, too, was wounded. In the

sequel, Brutus naturally has more detail of the conspirators’ movements; Caesar stresses the general

reaction to Caesar’s death – and, particularly, the recrudescence of the popular fervour which the Life

has carefully traced.

A difficulty remains: the two Lives show one positive discrepancy. Both mention that Antony was

delayed outside the senate-house: but who did the delaying? Brutus, correctly, says Trebonius (17.2), but

Caesar says that it was D. Brutus Albinus (66.4). It is almost certain that Plutarch’s principal source here

named Trebonius: that is the version of Appian, and his account is so similar to Plutarch that they must
40
share the same source-material. It is possible that Plutarch has deliberately distorted his narrative in
41
Caesar by transferring the act to D. Brutus: such techniques are not unknown in his work. But it is

easiest to assume that this is a simple error: perhaps an error of memory, if he did not have his source
42
before his eyes when he wrote; perhaps one of those slips which find their way into the most careful

writing. At least, this cannot be a case of increasing knowledge, or not a significant one: his main source

seems to have contained the truth, and it cannot be the case that he first discovered the correct version

later than Caesar. Whether misremembering or distortion, it at least seems to be misremembering or

distortion of an accurate original.

As in the example of the accounts of 60–59 BC, biographical technique can explain the differences in

the later Lives; and it could also again be argued that they rest on similar source-material. However, the
43
analysis of the sources is here more complicated, and will be left until the second part of the paper.

No further examples will here be pursued, but in other parts of their narrative, too, close similarities
44
among the six later Lives are abundant, and there are no hints of increasing knowledge. Such

differences and discrepancies as are found are always explicable, either as conscious literary devices or as
45
simple and natural errors. The impression is unmistakable: Plutarch’s knowledge of the period

increases greatly between Lucullus and Cicero and the other Lives – and then it seems to stop, with all

the later Lives being based on the same store of knowledge. If this is so, it is natural to suspect that the

later Lives were prepared simultaneously.

(b) Cross-references

The suggestion of simultaneous preparation would be more plausible if it could be shown that Plutarch

worked in this way elsewhere; and some indications of this are afforded by his cross-references – the fifty

or so notices, normally in the form ‘as has been described in the Life of …’ ( ώς ὲν τοι̑ς περι.̀ .
.γέγραπται), which are scattered among the Lives.
46
In discussing these, we should first note that

simultaneous preparation need not imply simultaneous publication – still less simultaneous composition
47
of final drafts, as Mewaldt once proposed. The final biographies are individual works of art, and

Plutarch must have given his total attention to each in turn: if several Lives had been prepared together,

he would presumably complete the final drafts one after another in fairly quick succession. Therefore no

argument against simultaneous preparation can be drawn from Caes. 35.2, where Plutarch refers to his

projected Pompey in the future tense. This shows only that the final draft of Pompey was written later

than that of Caesar. Caes. 35.2 might rather support the notion of simultaneous preparation, for it

shows that Plutarch has already considered in some detail the range of material and the presentation of

the later Life: he can already refer to it as a justification for abbreviating his present treatment. It is no

surprise that he can already regard himself as engaged upon Pompey as well as Caesar, and can a few
chapters later refer to Pompey in the present tense: ‘we tell that story in Pompey’s own Life’, δηλου̑ μεν
ὲν τοι̑ς περὶ έκείνου γράμμασιν, 45.9.
This is relevant to the problem of the contradictory cross-references. The future tense of Caes. 35.2

and the present of Caes. 45.9 are the exception: nearly all the cross-references have perfect tenses, ‘it has

been described’ ( γέγραπται). Such references appear to provide evidence for the relative chronology of

the Lives. For instance, from Cato Minor 54.9, ‘these things, then, have been described in the Life of

Pompey’ ( ταυ̑ τα μὲν οὐν ὲν τοις περί ∏ομπηῒου γέγραπται), it seems to follow that Cato is later than
Pompey ; Pomp. 16.8 should suggest that Pompey is later than Brutus ; and so on. But some of the

references seem to contradict one another. Caes. 62.8 and 68.7 cite Brutus ; Brut. 9.9 cites Caesar. Tim.

13.10 and 33.4 cite Dion ; Dion 58.10 cites Timoleon. Cam. 33.10 quotes Romulus, and Thes. 1.4

and Rom. 21.1 quote Numa ; but Numa twice quotes Camillus, at 9.15 and 12.13. Simple excision or
48
emendation does not seem adequate to solve the problem. Nor does Mewaldt’s suggestion, that several
49
Lives were published simultaneously, seem satisfactory; that theory anyway implies a simplified idea of

ancient ‘publication’, for it is hard to see why Plutarch should not have circulated a work among friends

and pupils as soon as it was complete.

However, Mewaldt may still have been on the right track, for simultaneous preparation is more

likely to afford an explanation. It certainly seems that the ‘publication’ dates of the three pairs Lyc.–
50
Numa, Them.–Cam., and Thes.–Rom. were close to one another, exactly as we should expect if they

had been prepared together. This would be a sensible procedure, for Numa, Camillus, and Romulus
51
would all involve research of a very similar type, perhaps based on the same sources. The same applies

to Dion and Timoleon; and we have already noticed the close similarities between Caesar and Brutus,

which suggest that they are based on the same material.

If each of these three groups was the product of simultaneous preparation, two alternative

explanations of the contradictory cross-references are possible. (i) Suppose, exempli gratia, that Dion–

Brutus was composed earlier than Alexander– Caesar. The second pair would then be issued only a short

time afterwards; there might then be only a small number of copies of Dion–Brutus in existence,

circulating among Plutarch’s acquaintances. It is quite possible that Plutarch himself subsequently

inserted the cross-reference at Brut. 9.9; ancient publication is a much more continuous process than its
52
modern equivalent.

The same would apply to the offending references in the other groups. (ii) But it is better to assume that

the references were already included in Plutarch’s first ‘published’ version. By the time he wrote Brutus,

he was fairly sure of what he would include in Caesar ; he may even have had some sort of draft for the
53
later Life. He might refer to this later treatment as easily as, in Caesar itself, he would refer to the

planned Pompey – or as easily as a modern editor, producing a work in fascicles, would refer to a

passage in a future volume with the same formula as for one already published. The use of the perfect

‘has been described’, γέγραπται, in such references is still odd, especially in view of the scrupulous

future tenses at Caes. 35.2 (and at Mar. 29.12 and On Herodotus’ Malice 866b); but it is not really

much odder than the characteristic epistolary use of past tenses, relating an action to the viewpoint of
54
the reader.

It is worth digressing to point an important consequence of this. Whatever their explanation, the
55
contradictory cross-references remain important; for (as Joseph Geiger observes ) they greatly impugn

the reliability of the other cross-references as a criterion for establishing the sequence of the Lives. On at

least three occasions, the cross-references do not refer back from a later to an earlier Life; and it is hardly

likely that these are the only such ‘forward-looking’ – or ‘sideways-looking’ – references. In these three

instances, other cross-references happen to show that the natural chronological inference would be false.

Most of the other references have no such control; many stand as the only such indication of the

sequence of two Lives, with no references elsewhere to confirm or impugn the chronological inference.

Cato Minor 54.9 uses a perfect tense to refer to Pompey : but there, too, Plutarch might have added the

reference subsequently or (more probably) might be using a past tense to refer to a projected Life. It is

likely that a past tense should refer to a Life which, if not already in circulation, was at least expected

soon; but that is all. It is clear that the relative chronology can only be established within wide limits,
56
and that attempts to establish a detailed sequence on this basis are not plausible.

A convenient solution, then, is afforded to the problem of the cross-references if we assume that

Plutarch often combined his preparation of several Lives. If the contradictory cross-references were

included in Plutarch’s original versions, it seems that when composing one Life he already had a firm

idea of what a later Life would contain; in that case, the instance of Caes. 35.2, where Plutarch has

already considered the content of the projected Pompey, would not be an isolated example. Even if some

of the references are subsequent additions made by Plutarch himself to the text, they still confirm that

he issued a sequence of closely related Lives in quick succession. This in itself does not prove that they
were prepared together, but it is certainly just what we should expect if they had been so prepared. If he

followed the procedure of simultaneous preparation elsewhere, for instance in the cases of Romulus,

Numa, and Camillus, it is natural to suppose that he might do the same with Caesar, Pompey, Cato

Minor, and the rest; and it is no surprise to find that one set of contradictory cross-references, those of

Caesar and Brutus, relates to this group.

(c) ‘Cross-fertilization’

A further indication may be combined with that of the cross-references. It is natural to expect signs of

‘cross-fertilization’ in the Lives – Plutarch discovering an item when working for one Life, then

remembering it and exploiting it in his later writings. For instance, it was presumably when working for

Cicero that Plutarch came across the story of Cic. 34, Cicero’s attempt to destroy the records of

Clodius’s tribunate: he remembered this, and repeated it, in the later Cato Minor (40). Cicero had

mentioned the devotion felt by P. Crassus for Cicero: Publius even managed to reconcile him to his

father Marcus (Cic. 33.8). That is remembered, and used, in Crassus (13.5). Numa had involved

Plutarch in some reading about the complexities of the Roman calendar; he later exploited some of this

knowledge at Caes. 59.3–4. There are a fair number of such cases, identifiable with some probability.

Again, one would expect these to give an indication of the Lives’ relative chronology.

We duly find such cross-fertilization among this group of Roman Lives: for instance, Pomp. 10.7–9

makes an astute criticism (and one which suggests first-hand knowledge) of the writings of C. Oppius, a
57
work which Plutarch surely read ‘for’ the Caesar. But these indications are found in a very bewildering

fashion, one which seems to exclude the possibility of ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ research. Take, for instance,

two anecdotes included in both Pompey and Cato Minor. The first is the story of Demetrius of

Antioch, with the popular courting of this freedman of Pompey and Cato’s dignified reaction (Cato 13,

Pomp. 40). The second is the tale of Pompey’s offer of intermarriage with Cato. Pompey offered to

marry Cato’s elder niece himself, and give the younger niece to his son; the women were delighted with

the proposal, and they resented Cato’s refusal – but they later recognized that he had been wise (Cato

30, Pomp. 44). Both stories are likely to come from the reading for Cato : both focus on Cato as the

wise and sober champion of political rectitude, while Pompey is in the first story incidental, in the
58
second the butt and villain of the piece. The items are presumably gleaned from that ‘Catonian’
59
literature which was abundant in the early Empire, and the prominent role of Munatius Rufus in the

intermarriage story suggests that it is ultimately drawn from his Memoirs, whether or not Plutarch knew
60
them directly. The natural conclusion would be that Pompey is later than Cato, and exploits material
61
gathered for the earlier Life; yet, if the earlier analysis of the cross-references is correct, the reference to

Pompey at Cato 54.9 shows that Pompey was at least already planned and expected soon, if not alreAdy

written, and its range of material had already been considered. A similar case is found in Brutus : Brut.

33, telling the story of Theodotus the Chian, seems certainly based on material collected for Pompey
62
(cf. Pomp. 77). This should suggest that Brutus is the later Life; yet Pompey refers to Brutus at 16.8,

and it is anyway difficult to find room for Agesilaus–Pompey before Dion–Brutus, the twelfth pair to be
63
published.

Even if the cross-references are neglected in this argument, the bewilderment is no less: for the last
64
chapter of Cato exploits material on Porcia which seems to have been gathered for Brutus. This poses

a familiar type of dilemma: the Demetrius and intermarriage stories suggest that Pompey is later than

Cato; the tale of Theodotus suggests that Brutus is later than Pompey ; yet the Porcia anecdote suggests

that Cato is later than Brutus. The natural escape from the dilemma is to suppose that all three Lives

were prepared together: in that case, each might exploit the whole range of the reading which Plutarch
65
had undertaken. Let us take another example: the explanation of Caesar’s fall found in Brutus (35.4)

and again in Antony (6.7) – Caesar himself behaving in an equitable manner, but destroyed by the

excesses of his friends. This seems to be taken over from Caesar, where it formed an important part of
66
the Life’s political analysis; and Brutus seems further to take over some material from the preparation

for Antony (28.1, 50 = Ant. 22.6, 69.2), despite the cross-reference to Brutus at Ant. 69.1. This implies

a sequence of Caesar, then Antony, then Brutus. Yet the last chapter of Caesar shows knowledge of

material which seems certainly gleaned from the reading for Brutus; and some of the assassination

account in Caesar seems informed by the work of Bibulus and the memoir of Brutus’s friend Empylus,
67
both works which were surely read ‘for’ the Brutus. The conclusion should again be the same: Caesar,

Antony, and Brutus were prepared together, and then issued, together with their pairs, in quick

succession. We cannot know what precise sequence their publication followed.

The conclusion should by now be firm. Nothing has been found to counter the assumption that

Cicero and Lucullus were composed early in the sequence, and they stand apart from the six later Lives;

but those six Lives – Pompey, Cato Minor, Crassus, Caesar, Brutus, and Antony – stand closely together,
68
and show peculiarities which are best explained in terms of simultaneous preparation. One last point:
five of the six Greek pairs of these Lives – Agesilaus, Dion, Phocion, Alexander, and Demetrius – come

from the fourth and very early third centuries. The earlier Greek Lives had been fairly widely spread, but

had tended to concentrate on the fifth century and earlier. These are Plutarch’s historical interests of the

moment: the fall of the Roman Republic, and the fourth century of Greece.

II. The collection of material

(a) The range of first-hand sources

However, it is still unclear what ‘simultaneous preparation’ really implies. If, for instance, most or all of

the material of these Lives were derived from a single narrative source, ‘simultaneous preparation’ would

simply be a grand way of saying that Plutarch read through the whole of this source before beginning to

compose. If, on the other hand, it could be shown that he consulted a wider range of material – or even

if the Lives were largely based on earlier biographies, as nineteenth-century researchers tended to assume

– the hypothesis of simultaneous preparation would be far more substantial. It is not my concern to give

a comprehensive discussion of the Lives’ sources, but it may be possible, even in a brief and selective

study, to gain some notion of the width or narrowness of his research. He quotes some twenty-five

sources by name in the six later Lives, and a further half-dozen in Lucullus and Cicero; but it is clear

that he does not know all these authors at first hand, and no criterion will tell us exactly which sources
69
he knows directly and which quotations are tralatician. The purpose of this discussion will simply be

to establish an inescapable minimum of types of literature which we must assume that Plutarch knew at

first hand.

First, it is clear that the six later Lives are not based merely on a sequence of earlier biographies. The

great similarities among these Lives, both of language and of content, have already been noted: these are

odd in themselves, if Plutarch had consulted only a series of individual biographies, but perhaps not
70
inexplicable. More important is the regular contact which these Lives show with the narratives of

other authors. Time and again, we find an identical narrative structure and articulation in Plutarch and

in another account; or a regular tendency to reproduce the same items; or even a series of verbal echoes.
71
One example of such contact is Plutarch’s closeness to Dio in narrating Caesar’s first consulate.

Similarly, from the year 58 onwards, Plutarch’s later accounts show regular contact with the version of

Appian, both in the Civil Wars and in the fragments of Celtica. Most of the parallels between the two

authors can be traced in Kornemann’s convenient tabulation, and there is no need to labour the point
72 73 74
here. Dio, too, often shows contact with this tradition; so, rather more rarely, does Suetonius. One

possible explanation of this systematic contact might be that the later writers had read Plutarch himself;

and it is indeed quite likely that these authors, especially Appian, did know Plutarch, and that some of
75
the verbal parallels arise from echoes of Plutarch’s own words. It is, however, impossible to think that

all the points of contact are explicable in this way, that Appian, Suetonius, and Dio all systematically

used Plutarch as a historical authority. It is easy to show that both Appian and Dio would have to know

all of Plutarch’s six versions. Such a combination of biographies would be an odd procedure for any

historian; for both of them, independently, it is quite impossible. So regular a contact must arise from a

shared inheritance from a common source, whether or not the later authors knew that source directly;

and, again, it must surely be a historical source which Appian and Dio are using, not a combination of

biographies.

This is one occasion where the source – at least, the ultimate source – can be identified: it is surely

Asinius Pollio. It was suggested earlier that Plutarch encountered a rich store of new information after

Cicero and Lucullus, but before the later group of Lives. This new material appears to begin with the

years 60–59: it is natural to suppose that Plutarch has encountered Pollio’s work, beginning ex Metello
76
consule, or at least a work based on this. Many more indications point the same way: these have long
77
been recognized, and there is no point in going over old ground here. We shall never know whether
78
Plutarch knew Pollio at first hand, or at least in translation; but, even if he did not, it at least seems

certain that he derived Pollio’s account from a historical, rather than a biographical, intermediary. All six

of these Lives include material from this provenance, and it is hard to believe that Plutarch consulted six

different biographies, each one of which chanced to be dependent on the same original account. It must

be a historical source, and this seems to have been his principal authority for the fifties, forties, and

thirties. For that period, something like three-quarters of his material shows contact with the detailed

account of Appian, and seems to be owed to this source.

However, it cannot be this ‘Pollio-source’ alone which informs these Lives. Plutarch must have

supplemented this, at the very least, from some biographical material. In cases where Plutarch has no

such biographical source, it is normally the opening chapters of the Life which make this clear: for

instance, Fabius, where he finds little to say about his subject’s early life, and reaches his first consulate

by the beginning of ch. 2; or Camillus, which is similar; or Coriolanus, where his source’s few hints
79
about Coriolanus’ youth are laboriously expanded. In the present group of Lives, too, we occasionally
find something similar: for instance, the early chapters of Crassus are unusually generalized and feeble,

as Plutarch makes the most of a few odd tales – tales of his marriages, of his love of wealth, of his

ambition, and so on. By ch. 4 we have reached the time of the Sullan civil wars, and material which
80
could come from a historical source. Antony, too, suffers from some early discomfort. Plutarch there

wishes to introduce some dominant themes as soon as possible – in particular, military excellence

compromised by debauchery and weakness of will; but, as we shall see, he can do no better than
81
elaborate some hints from the Second Philippic. However, the other Lives are considerably richer in

early detail. Caesar is one example: much of its early material has the flavour of a biographical source –

the escape from Sulla, the trip to Nicomedes, the pirate adventure, the study under Apollonius, the early

rhetorical successes at Rome. It is probable, too, that the initial lacuna contained some further details of
82
Caesar’s boyhood. Some material later in the Life, especially in 17, appears to have a similar

provenance: there Plutarch quotes the work of C. Oppius for one of the anecdotes, and seems to draw

several more from the same origin. Plutarch elsewhere criticizes Oppius in a way which suggests first-
83
hand knowledge of his writings, and it is likely that all this biographical material is drawn from him.

The other Lives are similarly rich in biographical items. Cato Minor is especially full of such personalia,

and that material is likely to derive from the memoirs of Munatius Rufus; Munatius’ account was
84
probably transmitted to Plutarch in the biography of Thrasea Paetus. Pompey shows similar traces of
85
the work of Theophanes.

Brutus, too, is rich in personal detail, but here it may be misleading to think of a straightforward

biography as a source. This will become clearer if we revert to the example of Caesar’s murder, and try to

detect the provenance of that material. A large proportion of Plutarch’s narrative shows contact with
86
Appian, and the two authors are often very close indeed. This is no surprise: the contact is presumably

due, as usual, to a shared inheritance from Pollio. But the amount of non-Appianic material in

Plutarch’s accounts is appreciably greater than usual – comparison, for instance, with the earlier chapters
87
in Caesar leaves no doubt of this; and this is odd, for Appian’s account of these events is impressively

full and detailed. It seems that Plutarch is here contaminating his Pollio-source with a larger supply of

extraneous information. It will be useful to list some of these extraneous items: they include the earlier

quarrels of Cassius and Brutus (Brut. 7.1); the ‘Brutus will wait for this flesh’ story (Brut. 8.3, Caes.

62.6); Caesar’s especial fear for ‘those men who are thin and pale’ (Brut. 8.2, Caes. 62.10, Ant. 11.6);

Cassius’ personal reasons for enmity with Caesar (Brut. 8.6–7, cf. Caes. 62.8); Caesar baring his neck to
88
a hostile crowd, and bidding his enemies strike (Caes. 60.6, Ant. 12.6); the stories of Porcia (Brut. 13,

15.6–9, 23.4–7); the version that it was Artemidorus who handed Caesar a letter revealing the

conspiracy (Caes. 65.1–4, where the rival version of App. BC 2.116.486 is mentioned as a variant); and

several details of the senatorial proceedings in the days following the murder – honours for the

tyrannicides, Brut. 19.1; a separate session on the day after their descent from the Capitol, and the

details of their provinces, Brut. 19.4–5; and the decision ‘to honour Caesar as a god’, Caes. 67.8.

Some of this material may have been transmitted by Appian’s source, and suppressed by Appian

himself. It would surprise no one familiar with Appian’s technique if, after exploiting the story of

Brutus’ contention with Cassius over the urban praetorship, he dispensed with the similar item of the
89
pair’s earlier quarrels. But one cannot believe that the source contained all these items. That source

seems elsewhere to have had less taste for personalia and anecdote than this material suggests; in

particular, Appian’s account of the senatorial debate of 17th March is too detailed and well informed to
90
be reconciled with the errors and confusions of Plutarch’s extraneous material. These mistakes surely

come from elsewhere, and Plutarch has grafted them on to the more accurate version he found in the

Pollio-source.

The nature of this extra material suggests a source favourable to the tyrannicides: particularly

eloquent is the exaggeration of the honours and support they received from the senate. The Porcia

stories seem to be drawn from the ‘small book of stories about Brutus’ (βιβλιδ̀ ιον μικρòν
ἀπομνημονευμάτων Bροὐτου) written by her son Bibulus. Plutarch mentions and quotes the work in

telling these very tales (Brut. 13.3, 23.7), and there is no reason to doubt that he knew this source at
91
first hand. But Bibulus may not have provided all the items: the debate in the senate, the past of

Cassius, the Artemidorus story – these seem alien to such ‘stories about Brutus’. Here we should rather

think of the work of Empylus of Rhodes, mentioned at Brut. 2.4 in terms which strongly suggest first-

hand knowledge: Empylus left a ‘small but not at all bad composition about Caesar’s killing, under the

title “Brutus”‘ A work ‘about

92
Caesar’s killing’ – even one entitled ‘Brutus’ – suggests a wider scope than those ‘stories about Brutus’.

Plutarch seems also to have read Brutus’ own letters, or at least a selection of them: these would furnish
93
some background material and some adorning quotations. But Brutus’ letters hardly provided the

mass of the picturesque and inaccurate extraneous material: that is surely owed to Bibulus and Empylus.
 Elsewhere, too, Plutarch shows knowledge of similar memoirs; and he seems especially to favour

such literature at the richest and most intense moments of his narrative – moments, indeed, of an

intensity similar to the assassination of Caesar. These, of course, are precisely the moments when

Plutarch might well be tempted to seek picturesque detail from elsewhere to augment Pollio’s account.

The battle of Philippi is one example. As Brutus approaches the battle, we again find a sudden increase

in non-Appianic material, and it again seems clear that Plutarch is supplementing the Pollio-source from

other accounts. The extraneous material includes most of the omens of 39 and 48; Cassius and Brutus

discussing the ethics of suicide, 40; the mission of Clodius, who just failed to warn Brutus of the vital

success at sea, 47; most of the account of Brutus’ death, 51–2; and many details of the fighting in both
94
battles. In at least one case this material is inconsistent with Pollio’s account. It surely comes from

elsewhere, and its provenance is not hard to guess. Plutarch quotes the memoirs of Messala Corvinus

several times for the details of the fighting, and then the obscure work of P. Volumnius for the omens

and the story of Brutus’ death; and both Messala and Volumnius have a tellingly prominent role in these
95
events. They, surely, were the sources (at least the ultimate sources). It is of course possible, if Plutarch

drew Pollio’s account from a historical intermediary, that it was this writer rather than Plutarch who

combined Pollio with Messala and Volumnius, but it is much more likely that the combination is due to

Plutarch himself: this seems another instance in which he chose to supplement the Pollio-source with

dramatic detail from elsewhere.

Plutarch’s two accounts of the Parthian Wars are likely to be similar instances: the campaign of

Carrhae, described at Crassus 17–33, and the later war of Antony (Ant. 33–50). Pollio, whose concern

was the civil wars, is unlikely to have been so detailed on Crassus’ war: it is more likely that Plutarch has
96
consulted at least one supplementary source, though it is hard to suggest names. Names are easier

when it comes to Antony’s Parthian campaign, on which Plutarch again lavishes considerable dramatic

art: the recurrent evocation of Xenophon’s Anabasis, in particular, is surely Plutarch’s own skilful
97
addition. Pollio, again, is unlikely to have treated the campaign in detail, and Plutarch has probably
98
consulted at least one other version. The most likely source is Q. Dellius, the infamous desultor

bellorum civilium (‘circus-jumper of the civil wars’) – a man who always knew the time to change his

allegiances. We know that he wrote of the war, and he was clearly an important authority: at Ant. 59.6

Plutarch refers to ‘Dellius the historian’ and expects his readers to recognize the man. It is not surprising

that the one item attested for Dellius’ Parthian account is consonant with Plutarch’s version (Ant. 49.4–

5 ~ FGrH 197 fr. 1). Once again, we shall never be quite certain that Plutarch knew Dellius at first

hand, but it does seem very likely. Much of the rest of Antony, too, appears indebted to sources other

than Pollio, particularly the imaginative final scenes. Pollio’s history may have concluded with Actium
99
(if not before), and Plutarch might anyway now have to go elsewhere. The physician Olympus is

quoted at 82.4, and perhaps provided some of the material; but there are clearly other possible sources,
100
and it is likely that Plutarch consulted several authorities for these moving events. One of these may

again have been Dellius: it is possible that he extended his history to include Actium and Alexandria, or
101
wrote a further work on those campaigns. Few of the participants were better qualified – and it

would be no surprise if some of the treatment were extravagant or scandalous.

It would be easy to extend this list. It seems likely, for instance, that Plutarch knew the work of Livy.

At Caes. 47 he quotes Livy for some omens which accompanied Pharsalus: the item is unlikely to have

been included in the Pollio-source, who had already finished with omens (cf. 43.4). Nor did Pollio

exhaust Plutarch’s taste for portents when he approached the Ides of March: at Caes. 63.9 he adds, as a

variant, Livy’s version of Calpurnia’s dream. In other Lives, too, traces of Livy can be found – in Pompey
102
and in Crassus, at the very least. Perhaps Plutarch found these items in an excerpt of Livy, or in

another writer’s quotation or adaptation; but elsewhere, in Plutarch’s treatment of earlier Roman history,
103
it is likely enough that he knew Livy’s accounts at first hand. In the present group of Lives, one could
104
further suggest the use of Sallust, of Fenestella, and perhaps of others. But it is more profitable to

turn from these secondary sources to those occasions on which Plutarch seems to know some

contemporary material of the period.

Here there is a contrast between the early Cicero and the later group of Lives. Cicero seems to show

knowledge of many of Cicero’s own writings. A large portion of the account of Catiline seems to be

based on Cicero’s essay ‘On his Consulship’ ( περὶ ὐπατείας); there are also quotations from the letters
105
and speeches; and there is more besides. Nor is it just Cicero himself: Plutarch seems to know some

of Brutus’s letters, and he also mentions Antony’s reply to the Second Philippic ; and it appears likely
106
that part of the account is drawn from the work of Tiro, both the biography and the de iocis. Once
107
read for Cicero, this material might be recalled, and exploited, in later Lives. Yet it is striking that

Plutarch seems rarely to have felt the need to undertake any further research of this type. There is no

sign, for instance, that he knew Caesar’s commentarii at first hand, though he certainly knew of their
 108
existence (Caes. 22.2). He refers to the speeches of Caesar, of Crassus, of Cato, of Brutus, and of

Antony – but there is no suggestion that he has read them, though many were in circulation. At Cato
109
Minor 23.3 he notes only that ‘they say that this is the only speech of Cato to survive’. Letters of
110
Caesar and of Antony were available: Plutarch makes no use of them. (He does use those of Brutus,
111
but these had probably been read for use in Cicero. ) It may be that Plutarch did not have access to all
112
this material (though this argument should not be pressed); we should still have expected him to look

up the works in a library during his visits to cultural centres, especially Athens. The reason is

presumably a simple one – that Plutarch was so pleased with the Pollio-source that he excused himself

from any further research into primary sources. Cicero clearly had no such satisfactory narrative source,

and Plutarch must himself have felt the inadequacy of some of his material: hence, for instance, the

unusual number of apophthegmata, which could usefully fill out the second half of the Life. It is very

likely that, when preparing Cicero, he had undertaken this wide reading of primary sources for precisely

that reason. There was no satisfactory chronological and synoptic source, and the narrative would

otherwise have fallen to pieces. After he had read Pollio’s account, the problem was solved, and the later

Lives could be built around this.

113
Only once do we find the later Lives making extensive use of primary sources. The first thirty

chapters of Antony show a resounding similarity to the Second Philippic, so close that we should
114
assume a direct use of the speech, and a use primed by recent re-reading. Here Plutarch naturally

wished to foreshadow and introduce the Life’s important themes: themes such as Antony’s luxury, his

weakness of will, and his susceptibility to subtle schemers, offset by his natural nobility and military

brilliance, and by the popularity which these qualities could excite. Ability and popularity could emerge

from the historical sources, when they touched on the first episodes of Antony’s life: the campaign in

Syria, for instance, of ch. 3, or his authoritative demeanour after the Ides of March (14–15), or his
115
command at Philippi (22); or even, with some straining, his exploits in the Pharsalus campaign. But

the historical sources would have less to say about the more private themes; nor, it appears, did Plutarch
116
know a satisfactory biography of Antony. He had probably read the Second Philippic some time ago,

when preparing Cicero; if he recalled that it contained suitable material, he might naturally go back to

it, and exploit its rich fund of obloquy. It is no surprise that he revises Cicero’s material in a way which

will suit the economy of the Life. At 2.4–8, for instance, he represents Antony as far more of Curio’s

dupe than Cicero (Phil. 2.44–7) had done: Cicero had portrayed Antony as no less debauched than

Curio himself – but Plutarch will later make much of Antony’s vulnerability to others’ wiles, first to

Fulvia (10.5–6), then of course to Cleopatra and her flatterers. It is useful to anticipate the theme here.

Again, some of the Second Philippic material is delayed until after Cicero’s death (Ant. 21, exploiting

Phil. 2.67–9). No other account suggests that Antony’s excesses were especially evident at that stage, just

after the proscriptions, but Plutarch finds it useful to exploit the themes here, with 22 proceeding to

stress the glory of Antony’s command at Philippi and his noble treatment of Brutus’ corpse. Private

excesses and yet brilliant ability: the contrast is programmatic, and excellently prepares the emergence of

Cleopatra, Antony’s ‘final curse’ ( τελευται̑ον κακóν, 25.1). Such adaptations of the Second Philippic are
eloquent, for they suggest that Plutarch did know the work at first hand: the rewriting is so clearly

tailored to the interests and themes of the present Life. Whoever revised the original material did so in

the service of precisely those points which Plutarch will later stress, and the reviser is clearly more likely
117
to be Plutarch himself than any intermediate source.

These Lives, then, are not just informed by the Pollio-source; an admixture of biographies, memoirs,

histories, and even first-hand contemporary material gives depth and colour to Pollio’s account. And

two last types of material should be mentioned. First, there is a sense in which Plutarch, when

composing the six later biographies, would sometimes be using his own earlier work as his source. Some
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points remembered from Cicero and Numa have already been mentioned, but there are times when

the whole narrative of the later Lives is so close to the language and articulation of Cicero that we

should assume that he looked again at his earlier version and perhaps the draft he had written for that

version, and wrote the later accounts on that basis. One example might be the account of the final

Catilinarian debate, and I shall explore that in the next chapter; another the account of the Bona Dea
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scandal in late 62.

Secondly, it is very likely that oral traditions and sources played a considerable role. At the

beginning of Demosthenes Plutarch lists the advantages to the historian of living in a great city: not

merely an abundance of books, but also access to ‘those stories which the written sources have passed

over, but which are still recalled in the popular memory’ (Dem. 2.1). He would have discovered some of

these stories himself, during his visits to Rome and elsewhere; others would have been passed on to him
120
by his Roman friends and acquaintances. At Caes. 26.8 Plutarch tells an anecdote of Caesar’s final

battle with Vercingetorix: at the beginning things did not go well with the Romans, ‘and the Arverni
still point to a small sword hung in one of their shrines as a spoil from Caesar’

The Arverni ‘still point to’ the sword:

that item cannot be derived from a source. Plutarch heard of the sword and its associated local tradition,
121
and skilfully wove it into his narrative.

122
The Antony is likely to be especially rich in this material: indeed, two substantial anecdotes are

explicitly attributed to oral tradition within Plutarch’s own family, the sumptuous banqueting in 41 BC

and the hardships of Greece after Actium (28.3–12, 68.6–8). ‘Greece’, indeed, plays an important role

in Antony. Antony’s love for Greece is emphasized shortly after Philippi, ‘he behaved towards the Greeks

in a way that was not at all out of the way or objectionable, at least at first’ (23.2), and the theme soon

recurs (33.7). But that ‘at least at first’ ( ó τ γε πρω̑ τον) has introduced an ominous note, and the

eventual sufferings of Greece, ‘Greece which had suffered so much’ (62.1, quoting Euripides), are given

a corresponding emphasis in chs. 62 and 68. Antony’s love of Athens may remain unshaken (72.1), but

to this extent has Greece, too, been reduced by Antony’s Eastern extravagance and luxury. Little of this

Hellenic material or this emphasis emerges in the other ancient accounts. It is likely that the

development of the theme is Plutarch’s own, with its material drawn from surviving oral traditions.

(b) The method of writing

This treatment has inevitably been selective, but it should be enough to suggest that Plutarch drew on a

fairly wide range of material. Yet this conclusion poses its own problems. For it is still clear that the

greater portion of these Lives is based on the Pollio-source alone: even on those occasions such as

Caesar’s murder where Plutarch has other sources, it is still Pollio’s account which provides the basic

narrative articulation, and Pollio’s account which provides most of the facts. The extraneous material is

not more than one quarter of the whole of Plutarch’s narrative. This wide reading of other sources is

surprisingly unproductive: it seems to provide only a few stray supplements and additions, and

occasionally to replace the Pollio-source where that account was unsuitable. This is undeniably odd: if

modern researchers had read so widely, they would weave items from all these sources into a composite

and independent narrative, owing little more to any one account than to any other. As a matter of
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course, they would apply the technique of ‘breakdown and reconstruction’ (as T.J. Luce calls it ) of

their sources’ accounts. Plutarch has no hint of this.

Yet this problem is not confined to Plutarch, nor to biography. Time and again, we find Greek and

Roman historians claiming a wide range of reading, and deserving to be believed; yet, time and again,

we find them demonstrably basing their narrative of individual episodes on a single source. Cassius Dio

is one example: he claims to have read ‘nearly every book’ on Roman history – but, as he goes on to say,
124
he ‘did not write up all his material, but only a selection’. We can see what he means. It is true that

we can no longer regard him as a close and faithful follower of Livy in the Republican books; that thesis
125
was demolished by Manuwald. But there are times when Dio’s faithfulness to a source can be traced

in detail: for instance, his accounts of Caesar’s campaigns are ultimately based on Caesar’s commentarii,
126
and there is little indication of the use of any supplementary material; while his account of Catiline

shows contact with Plutarch’s Cicero, which is best explained if both authors derive closely from a
127
common source (probably the ‘On his consulship’).

Or consider Livy. He claimed to have read widely: he can, for instance, speak of the ‘very many
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Greek and Roman authors’ whom he has read. Nor is there any strong reason to doubt these
129
claims. Yet, when we can obtain some control of his use of sources, he has one principal authority for

each section of his account, and uses the rest of his reading merely to supplement this principal narrative

source. This is most clear in the later surviving books, when Polybius informs nearly all Livy’s account of

events in Greece and Asia: there are intrusions from Roman sources into these Polybian sections, but
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those intrusions are very limited. In the earlier books, too, we often see systematic contact with the

version of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which demonstrates that, for individual episodes, they both
131
depend on a single authority. Everything here supports Luce’s conclusion: Livy read widely, but

nevertheless followed a single source for a single section; within these sections, he would occasionally

add supplementary items from other sources, but he would not use a number of versions to weave
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together a coherent and independent account of his own. Moreover, the contact with Dionysius in

the early books is as important for Dionysius as it is for Livy. Dionysius quotes widely among his

authorities (some thirty names in the first few books) – but he, too, seems generally to be faithful to a

single source in narrating an episode. And even Tacitus seems to be similar. He was quite evidently a

conscientious and wide-ranging researcher; but, on the few occasions when we can control his own
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choice of items – most clearly in the first two books of the Histories – he seems generally to draw the

mass of his information from a single source at a time.

 This seems less strange if we remember the circumstances in which these writers composed. It is

known, and it is not surprising, that authors often collected all their material and read all their literature
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before beginning to compose. What is more surprising is the lengths to which some authors took this

procedure. Cassius Dio first spent ten years collecting his material, and then took twelve years to write it

up; Dionysius took twenty-two years to familiarise himself with the Latin language and gather the
135
material for his history. If Plutarch chose to read all the materials for his six Lives before beginning to

write, his methods were not unusual. The curious fidelity to a single source for individual episodes is

most easily understood if we make a simple assumption: that, following this initial wide reading, an

author would generally choose just one work to have before his eyes when he composed, and this work

would provide the basis of his narrative. In Plutarch’s case, this work would normally be the Pollio-

source; but when this was in some way unsuitable – for the early life of a figure, perhaps, or for the

Parthian Wars – it would temporarily be replaced by another work, such as Oppius or Dellius. Items

from the earlier reading would more widely be combined with the principal source, but a writer would

not normally refer back to that reading to verify individual references, and would instead rely on his

memory, or on the briefest of notes. Alternatively, it may be that an author, immediately before
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narrating an episode, would reread one account, and compose with that version fresh in his mind.

This procedure might better explain such cases as the confusion between Brutus Albinus and Trebonius

at Caes. 66 (above, p. 7), which can now be a simple slip of the memory. On either view, the important

point is to explain the peculiar position of one source by the peculiar use to which it was put. Stray facts

and additions would be recalled from the preliminary reading, but it would be a very different matter to

recall the detail of an episode’s presentation, and combine versions independently and evenly.

Such a procedure seems less perverse in view of the physical difficulties of working with papyrus

rolls. These were hefty and unmanageable things; and indexing, chapter-headings, and even line- and
137
column-numbering were rudimentary or non-existent. It would be easy to read a roll continuously, at
138
the stage of the preliminary reading; but reading was a two-handed business, and it would be difficult

to have more than one roll under one’s eyes during composition itself. Even if (for example) a slave held

a second roll for an author to compare accounts, or the author himself used a book-rest, combining

versions would still be awkward. If two accounts did not deal with events in the same sequence – if, for

instance, one narrated chronologically, while the other ordered events thematically – it would be a

cumbrous business to roll back and forth to find the parallel account. There were probably no chapter-

headings to help. Systematic comparison of two accounts might still be possible; no doubt it was
139
sometimes done. But it would be very inconvenient, and it would not be surprising if authors

preferred to rely on their memory.

And signs of the use of memory are duly found, especially when Plutarch exploits a non-

chronological genre, such as speeches or letters – the sort of literature in which he had read widely

before writing Cicero. In genres such as these, the relevant information might be found anywhere in the

roll, and one would hardly expect a writer always to check his references. Plutarch’s memory is inevitably

sometimes imprecise: thus a story from Pro Plancio is garbled and emasculated at Cic. 6.3–4, and the

quotations from Brutus’ letters at Brut. 22 provide a pastiche of several different passages from two
140 141
different letters. We should not infer that Plutarch did not know the works at first hand, but he is

certainly unlikely to have had them under his eyes when composing. Elsewhere, too, we can detect the

use of memory when Plutarch seeks to supplement the material before him. In the Comparison of

Nicias and Crassus (35(2).3) he mentions an anecdote which he had forgotten to include in the

narrative of Crassus itself: ‘this escaped our attention during the narrative’

Had that story been included in the source before his eyes, he would hardly have forgotten it: this is

rather an item culled from the wider preliminary reading. But for the slip of his memory, he would
142
silently have inserted it into his main source’s narrative.

A different type of example is found in the account of the Gallic Wars. Caes. 22.1–5 tells of Caesar’s

slaughter of the Usipetes and Tencteri: 400,000 barbarians were killed. Appian too has 400,000 dead

(Celt. fr. 1.12, 18.1), and this was presumably the figure given in the shared source. But both Cato

(51.1) and the Comparison of Nicias and Crassus (37(4).2) briefly mention the same incident, and both

give the figure as 300,000. There is no need to emend; still less, to give the lower figure any
143
authority. In Cato and in the Comparison Plutarch has not referred back to the source, and has

misremembered the detail. In writing Caesar, Plutarch presumably worked carefully through the Pollio-

source’s account of the war, and had it before him in composing; in Cato or in Crassus, he would skim
144
this part of the narrative, and wind through the roll quickly. It is not surprising that he did not hunt

carefully for the reference, but preferred to add it from memory. A similar case is Brut. 27.6, where

Plutarch says that ‘two hundred’ were proscribed: this is apparently another misremembering, for Ant.

20.2 gives ‘three hundred’, and this was apparently Pollio’s figure (App. BC 4.7.28). In composing
Antony, he presumably read Pollio’s version thoroughly; but the proscriptions were less central for

Brutus, and he might again wind through the account more quickly.

Elsewhere, of course, his memory would furnish him with items recalled from much further back,

items which he had encountered in a different context, and had probably known for years: perhaps from

the reading for Cicero, perhaps from his work for other Lives or essays, perhaps simply from his general
145
knowledge.

This reconstruction implies that he made little use of notes, for notes on different authors, made in

a codex of parchment, of papyrus, or of wax-tablets, might easily be combined into an independent

146
pastiche. He might perhaps have taken such notes when working in libraries during his visits to

cultural centres – enjoying that ‘abundance of every type of book’ which he talks about at Dem. 2.1. He

would then have known that he might not use the material for months or years; note-taking would be a
147
natural safeguard. It is harder to believe that he took detailed notes when composing from books
148
which were at hand. He used the Pollio-source so extensively that note-taking would be superfluous:

it would be far more convenient to have the account under his eyes during composition. It might seem

more sensible to take notes on his preliminary reading, works such as Volumnius or Messala or Bibulus;

but we should be careful not to exaggerate the time taken in composing these Lives, which (as we shall

see) have their signs of haste. The whole process may have taken only a few months, and the preliminary

reading would still be relatively fresh in his mind when he came to compose. Even in old age, he

doubtless retained an extraordinarily good memory, and an extensive use of notes might well seem an

unnecessary and time-consuming luxury. If he took notes at all, they would probably form the briefest

aide-mémoire, with headings and a few important details of some good stories: it is possible, though not

I think very likely, that some were similar to the extant Apophthegmata, whether or not those works are
149
genuine. Such notes were perhaps taken in notebooks of wax-tablets, rather than papyrus or
150
parchment: so Quintilian advises his pupils, in the interest of speed and fluency; and such notes

would have only a temporary use, so that reusable tablets would be a sensible economy. (Writers such as

Dio or Dionysius, and perhaps Livy, who needed more long-term notes, might more naturally use
151
parchment or papyrus. )

More extensive notes seem to belong at a later stage of composition, the production of the

ὑπόμνημα, the ‘draft’. The most usual method of writing seems to be that reflected by Lucian How to
152
Write History 47–8: the historian should first collect his material from the most reliable sources,

… and when the writer has collected everything or nearly everything, he should first weave together a

draft, a body of material which is still inartistic and uncoordinated; then he should impose structure,

give the work its beauty, use diction to add colour, and give form and rhythm.

This ‘inartistic and uncoordinated draft’ was clearly an important stage of the composition, but it is

hard to know how close to the final version it would be. Its precise form surely varied from author to

author. Some ancient writers speak of it as if it were a mere collection of chapter-headings, others as if it
153
were a fairly finished version, merely needing to be ‘translated’ into the correct literary style. Plutarch,

too, doubtless wrote some sort of ‘draft’, ὑπóμνημα, before proceeding to the final versions of these

Lives, but we cannot know its form. He may have written several ‘drafts’, one for each Life, but he may

well have preferred to construct just one which would serve for all six works – almost a draft history of
154
the period, though one peculiarly rich in biographical diversions. We should certainly remember this

stage of composition when we consider the extreme verbal similarities among the accounts. Some of

them are doubtless inherited from Pollio, but the six Lives may also represent elaborations of the same

draft, and it would be natural for the language of that draft to leave its mark on each of Plutarch’s

versions.

It is interesting here to compare van der Stockt and van Meirvenne’s reconstruction of Plutarch’s
155
methods in the Moralia. They too posit a hypomnema stage, embodying ‘a more or less elaborate

train of thought, involving material previously gathered and certainly written in full syntactical

sentences… On the other hand, the ὑπóμνημα does not yet display literary finish (cf. Plutarch’s apology
for the lack of καλλιγραϕία (‘fine writing’) in 464f–5a)’ (van der Stockt 1999a, 595). As van der Stockt
goes on to comment, such a ‘rough draft’ is very similar to the historical hypomnema which I suggest

here and in chapters 2 and 3. It may also be that we should reconstruct Caesar’s procedure similarly for

the Commentarii. Thus Bömer suggested that first Caesar composed a preliminary, fairly elaborate

commentarius, a ‘Dienstbericht’ or ‘Kriegstagebuch’, and this served as a draft for the more literary
156
commentarii (in a different sense) which survive as BG and BC.
 On this theory, then, there were three stages in the preparation of these Lives. (a) The preliminary

reading, which would embrace the whole range of Plutarch’s sources. (b) The production of the ‘drafts’

(or ‘draft’): this would normally be guided by the Pollio-source, but when that account was unsuitable

Plutarch might prefer another authority, such as Oppius or Dellius. (c) The writing of the finished

versions. At the stage of the draft he would already have given thought to the narrative strategy of the

Life and the pair, and so the draft would presumably already reflect the interpretative emphases on

which he had decided; but the last stage of stylistic beautification would still be in the future. Doubtless
157
this model, stated so baldly, is too schematic; but, as a model, it may still serve.

The discussion has so far been simplified in an important respect, for Plutarch would certainly have

his slave and freedman assistants. Pliny Ep. 3.5, describing how the elder Pliny spent his studious days,

shows how greatly he exploited such aides: he would have a lector to read to him while he was in the

bath, or taking a walk; a notarius would be at hand in case he wished to dictate. Pliny was perhaps

exceptional, but Plutarch may well have enjoyed some similar assistance. It is likely that much of the

first stage, the preliminary reading, was read out to Plutarch by a lector: this procedure might be less
158
time-wasting than it seems. It is likely that any preliminary notes, and then the draft itself, would be

dictated to a slave or freedman; as reading a roll required both hands, dictation would be the most

convenient method. It is likely, too, that the final version, after Plutarch had considered it carefully, was
159
dictated as well. And slaves, or more likely freedmen, might prove useful in other ways. Some authors

used them very widely: Josephus exploited ‘helpers in the Greek language’ to aid the production of his
160
final draft. Plutarch did not need ghost writers, but he may certainly have used freedmen as research

assistants, to consult the more recherché sources, report interesting stories from them, and perhaps
161
produce epitomes. The sparse traces in the Lives of such writers as Livy and Strabo may well be owed

to such helpers. A whole factory of work may lie behind every ancient writer’s production, and we
162
should not expect a master to ‘acknowledge’ his servants’ help.

Such helpers would greatly ease the production of the Lives; and, artistically finished and

systematically researched though they are, we should not exaggerate the diligence of Plutarch’s methods.

Time and again, we find signs of hasty production: the confusions over the casualty figures or the

numbers proscribed; the muddle over Trebonius and Brutus Albinus (above, p. 7); perhaps also the

awkward intrusion of the item ‘which I had forgotten to include in the narrative’ in the Comparison of

Nicias and Crassus. Sometimes he forgets what he has, or has not, included: at Brut. 13.3 he mentions

Porcia, who ‘was Cato’s daughter, as I have said’ – but he has not in

fact mentioned this at 2.1, though he doubtless meant to. A different type of example is found in Cato,

which contrives to describe the triple alliance of 60 BC without mentioning Crassus; then Plutarch

introduces Crassus into the account of Luca as if his role were quite familiar (41.1). Elsewhere, at

Timoleon 13.10, he refers to a passage in Dion which does not exist. He probably meant to include the

item in Dion, but finally omitted to do so (see n. 53). Other, more trivial, awkwardnesses are frequent:

two examples will suffice. At Caes. 24.3 he does not make it clear that ‘Cicero’ is Quintus, not Marcus:

the reader, or listener, unfamiliar with the period would flounder. And at Ant. 19.1 the mention of ‘the

three’ coming just after a sentence which links Caesar, Antony, and Cicero, would bemuse an audience
163
which did not know of the alliance of Caesar, Antony, and Lepidus. Plutarch’s research for these six

Lives was systematic, sensible, and quite extensive; but the whole production might still be a

comparatively speedy process. Even allowing for the parallel composition of the pairs to each Life, the
164
whole business probably occupied months rather than years.

Finally, I stress that this analysis has been confined to a few Roman Lives; and these anyway provide

a special case, for so extensive a use of simultaneous preparation cannot be traced elsewhere. It is not at

all clear how much one can generalize from this study to infer his procedures elsewhere, especially in the

Greek Lives. Methodical reading was necessary before writing the Roman Lives, but at least some of

their Greek counterparts could be produced much more easily. In many Greek instances, particularly

those drawn from the fifth century, he might be able to dispense with the preliminary general reading,

for he would already be sufficiently familiar with the material. He might still have a historical source

before his eyes: in writing Themistocles, for instance, he seems to have been heavily dependent on

Herodotus and Thucydides. He would certainly still exploit his memory to add supplementary items,

but it would be more usual for these to be remembered from years before, and they would often be facts

which he had known since his youth. The whole process of composing a fifth-century Life could be far

less methodical, and it might be misleading to speak of ‘research’, or of ‘reading for a biography’, at
165
all. Equally, some of the later Greek Lives – Philopoemen, perhaps, or Timoleon, or Pyrrhus – might

be more similar to the Roman biographies: periods where his general knowledge might carry him less
166
far, where more systematic research would be necessary. As so often in the study of the Lives, each

group of biographies must have posed different problems, and may have been approached in different
167
ways.
 Perhaps this study has a more general application. Far too often, we tend to specify ‘the source’ of a

passage, in Plutarch or elsewhere, with no further qualification; yet this tells us little. What sort of

source, and how was it used? Was it a work read for the writer by an assistant? Was it a work read some

time before, and perhaps noted, in a library? Was it a work read in the preliminary stage of general

reading? Or was it before the author’s eyes in composition? All these classes of material contribute to

Plutarch’s work, but all contribute very differently; and, until we know how an author used a particular

source, we know very little indeed.

Postscript (1995)

This study first appeared in 1979, and on the whole provoked acquiescence rather than dissent. It was

however strongly criticized by Hillard 1987 and by Steidle 1990, and the publication of Barbara

Scardigli’s collection Essays on Plutarch’s Lives (Scardigli 1995) allowed me to make this brief reply.

My article argued for simultaneous preparation of six Lives, but acknowledged that Cicero and

Lucullus belonged to an earlier stage, when Plutarch was less well-informed about the period. Hillard

and Steidle attack different aspects of the thesis. Hillard rejects the notion of simultaneous preparation;

Steidle takes issue with the idea of expanding knowledge, and claims that the Cicero shows the same

awareness of the period as the later Lives. Both scholars rest part of their case on general considerations.

Hillard feels that the notion of simultaneous preparation does not leave enough room for the

independent artistic creation of each Life, Steidle suggests that the frequent cross-references imply that

the series was conceived from the outset as a coherent entity, and that even when writing Cicero

Plutarch was consciously assuming knowledge, or avoiding treatment, of material which he would treat

elsewhere.

They are unlikely both to be right. The implication of Steidle’s argument would be to include

Cicero in the group of Lives researched and prepared together, and it is precisely that notion which

Hillard rejects. It is, I hope, also plain that the general arguments do not take us far. Simultaneous

preparation is of course compatible with an acceptance that the finished biographies are individual
168
artistic and thematic creations; the final drafts were presumably written separately and in sequence.

Most scholars are used to working on material which they will later write up in several separate papers or

books. And Plutarch may well have already envisaged his early biographies as part of a series of works
169
which would mutually supplement one another. It does not follow that he already knew exactly
170
which biographies he would go on to write, still less that he had already completed all the relevant

reading and research.

Steidle’s detailed criticisms centre on pp. 2–3 above, where I suggest that Plutarch’s knowledge of the

period increased between Cicero and the later group of Lives. He is sceptical of arguments from silence
171
from Cicero, arguing (quite correctly) that artistic reasons can often explain omissions; in particular,

he claims (1) that Plutarch could already have known of the ‘work’ ( ó λ γος) in which Cicero inculpated
Caesar and Crassus, for in Cicero he already knows that both men were suspected, and he has the same
172
view of Caesar’s long-term ambitions (Cic. 15, 20); (2) that in Cicero Plutarch could readily have

passed over Cicero’s support for Pompey’s cura annonae (Pomp. 49. 6), for it does not illuminate

Cicero’s character; (3) that the discrepancies over Paullus’ death between Cicero and the later Lives (p.

3) are of the same type as certain discrepancies within the group of later Lives (such as those I discuss on

pp. 21–2); (4) that my description of the second half of Cicero as ‘scrappy and ill-informed’ is subjective

and hasty, for Cicero is no more ill-informed than Brutus or Antony on the fifties, and Plutarch’s weight

falls on the same high-spots of Cicero’s career as are stressed by other ancient authors – the consulship,

the exile and the return, the final years. He adds (5) that Cicero shares some errors with the later Lives,

which he thinks odd if Plutarch’s knowledge genuinely expanded.

I find these points unconvincing. (1) Of course Plutarch already knew about the suspicions about

Crassus and Caesar; the Cicero account is already quite well-informed about the conspiracy, and

Caesar’s long-term ambition was a familiar commonplace. The knowledge of Cicero’s own later

inculpating ‘work’ is what is in point. My argument was that Cic. 20, discussing variant versions of

Caesar’s guilt and Cicero’s attitude towards him, could naturally have mentioned that work if Plutarch

already knew of it. It would have been a striking point to make, and it would have fitted the tone of the

context. Notice that Plutarch has already referred to Cicero’s own writings once in that chapter, at 20.3

– presumably in that case the ‘On his consulship’.

(2) I do not understand why Steidle thinks Cicero’s support for Pompey would have cast no light on

his character. It might evidently have illuminated his gratitude for Pompey’s part in his return, and

could readily have contrasted with the vindictiveness towards Clodius (Cic. 34). It certainly seems to

illuminate Cicero’s character more than Pompey’s, despite its appearance at Pomp. 49.6.

(3) There is some force in Steidle’s third point, but those discrepancies among the later Lives tend to

be easier to explain, either in terms of slips of memory (pp. 24–5) or of the various compositional
 173
devices which I discuss below at pp. 91–6. The Paullus instance seems different: at Ant. 19.3

Plutarch carefully calls attention to the existence of variant versions, and there is evidently no

carelessness there; he prefers a different version in Antony and explicitly rejects the one he had followed

in Cicero, but there seems no artistic or compositional reason why he should have preferred one version

rather than another in either Life. As we know that Antony is the later Life, it seems most economical to

suppose that he had simply come across a version which he thought more reliable.

(4) It is hardly surprising that Brutus and Antony are skimpy on the fifties; neither Brutus nor

Antony was then a major actor. The ‘scrappiness’ of the second half of Cicero is different. It is not the

concentration on the familiar high-spots which is relevant, but the perfunctory nature of the transition

between them, for instance the speed with which he advances from 56 to 52 at Cic. 35.1 (cf. Moles

1988, 47 and 183). Steidle’s appeal to other ancient authors does not wholly support his case: Appian

and Velleius are too thin on the fifties to allow any conclusions, but we might notice Dio 39.18.1 and

20.2, tracing through the saga of Cicero’s house and various clashes involving Cicero, Milo, and Clodius

in the mid-fifties; or 39.59.2–60.1, on Cicero’s brushes with the triumvirs in 55; or 39.62–3, on his part

in the various Gabinius trials.

(5) The persistence of certain errors in the later Lives is evidently inconclusive. Expanding

knowledge need not mean perfect knowledge. In any case, not all of Steidle’s examples are cogent. He

puts particular weight on the misdating of Octavian’s arrival in Rome at Brut. 22.1; Cic. 43.8 also

misdates it, though not to the same point. But Steidle neglects Ant. 16.1, where the arrival is put in the

correct chronological sequence. In fact, it is probably wrong to think of the Brutus and Cicero passages

as ‘mistakes’: in each case the positioning of the item allows Plutarch to switch the narrative focus to

Octavian, and he does this at whatever point seems most convenient in each Life. The procedure of

Appian, BC 3.9.30 is very similar. In that case, the instance provides no evidence either way for the

present issue.

Much of the rest of Steidle’s article is devoted to a treatment of Plutarch’s narrative in Cicero and

Pompey, emphasizing his readiness to abbreviate and adapt for artistic purposes. We differ on several

details, but his general point is common ground between us, and is, I think, no longer controversial.

The thrust of Hillard’s article is to stress that the character of each Life was largely determined by

the available source-material. I think he underestimates Plutarch’s capacity to rewrite and remould

material; but even if he is right, it does not affect the issue of simultaneous preparation. That thesis can

still allow that particular material affects the texture of particular Lives; the available material on Cato,

for instance, has certainly influenced Plutarch’s portrayal of the man in Cato Minor. My argument was

simply that, even if such reading was conducted primarily ‘for’ one Life, we can often detect traces of it

elsewhere, and in patterns which are most easily explicable if we think that all the preparation of the

later six Lives was complete before any one of them was written up (cf. pp. 10–11). Hillard does not

address this point.

Hillard argues that I underestimate the impact of biographical material on the Lives. It may well be

that in 1979 I made too much of the Pollio-source, though this still seems to me the most economical

thesis; but the persistent verbal contact with Appian, and to a lesser extent with Dio, anyway seems to
174
point to an important mainstream historical source, whether or not this was Pollio. How far an

individual Life can be based on such a source will evidently vary; but it is misleading to speak as if the

availability of biographical matter is the only factor to influence Plutarch’s choice of source-material.

Just as important will be the question how far a person’s story intersects with, and in extreme cases is

identical with, the central political and military history of the period. Plutarch may well have known

just as much ‘biographical’ material on Pompey and Caesar as on Crassus and Brutus; but the story of

Pompey and Caesar fundamentally is the central history of the period, and therefore biographical

material leaves much less distinctive a mark on Plutarch’s version.

Hillard also points out that the arguments for simultaneous preparation are not equally strong for
175
each of the six Lives; in particular, not many of the arguments bear on Crassus. I accept that point,

and the case for including Crassus among the six is less strong than for the others. In itself that is hardly

surprising: Crassus’ part in the history of the period was less conspicuous than that of any of the others,

and his Life consequently offers less material for direct comparison with the other Lives. The speed with

which Plutarch passes from 59 to 56 (Crass. 14) allows no inferences as to his knowledge of the

mainstream history of the period: Crassus’ own part in those years was simply too difficult to trace, no
176
matter how much Plutarch knew. Still, the Lives’ relative chronology suggests that Crassus was
177
written at much the same time as the other relevant Lives, and that might create a presumption in

favour of including it among the six. If so, a negative argument becomes more telling: it is hard to see

any material in the other Lives which might naturally have found a place in Crassus but is omitted, or

any material in Crassus which might naturally have been included in other Lives but is not. In that case,
it is easiest to assume that it rests on the same body of knowledge and research. That impression is
178
confirmed by the series of verbal parallels between Crassus and the other five later Lives; Crassus, like

the others, shows some contact with the narrative of Appian, which suggests awareness of the same
179
mainstream historical source; there are even some signs of cross-fertilization, for Crass. 7.5 uses the

story of the young Caesar’s adventure with the pirates, an item which would naturally come from the
180
reading ‘for’ Caesar. The cumulative case for including Crassus among the six is therefore a

substantial one.

Notes

1
ź
Simultaneous preparation is suggested by Gomme, HCT i. 83 n. 3, and Bro ek 1963, 68–80; cf. Stoltz 1929, 18–19 and 67. Mewaldt

1907 had already postulated simultaneous preparation in arguing for simultaneous publication.

2
A large use of memory is suggested by Zimmermann 1930, 61–2; cf. Russell 1963, 22 = Scardigli 1995, 359; Jones 1971, 87; Hamilton

1969, xliii–iv; Gomme, HCT i. 78–81; Stadter 1965, 138; Piccirilli 1977, 1010–1 and 1980, 1760; Heftner 1995, 13–14 and nn. 54,

61.

3
For varying views of the importance of notes, cf. works cited in previous note. The whole issue of note-taking is now illuminated by a

Herculeaneum papyrus (PHerc. 1021), which enables us to detect Philodemus’ preliminary note-taking for his History of the Academy:

see Dorandi 1997, 2000, and below, n. 146. Plutarch does seem to have kept some commonplace book (hypomnemata) in his

philosophical studies (Tranquillity of Mind 464f, cf. On Controlling Anger 457d). In the original version of this paper I suggested that

this told us little of his methods in the Lives, but the important work of Luc van der Stockt and Birgit van Meirvenne has now

illuminated the role of hypomnemata in the Moralia, and I now think this extremely relevant to the Lives as well: see chapter 3.

4
A combination of different sources is strongly argued by Theander 1951, especially 42 ff.; cf. Stadter 1965, 125–40. – Since the original

version of this paper was published in 1979, it has become much less controversial to hold that Plutarch regularly combined material

from a number of sources: see for instance the survey of Scardigli 1995, 1–46 and the introductions to various commentaries, Frost

1980 on Themistocles, Pelling 1988 on Antony, Moles 1988 on Cicero, Sansone 1989 on Aristides and Cato Maior, Stadter 1989 on

Pericles, Konrad 1994 on Sertorius, Heftner 1995 on Pompey, Shipley 1997 on Agesilaus, Georgiadou 1997 on Pelopidas, and many of

the contributors to the Lorenzo Valla and Rizzoli series, including my own work on Philopoemen and Flamininus (1997a). (A lone

dissenting voice is Delvaux 1988, 1989, and 1996, who assumes that Plutarch has taken over many quotations and much discussion at

second-hand.) How Plutarch combined that material, and how thoroughly he interwove the items from different sources, is less agreed.

5
That assumption of youthfulness is largely based on the work’s exuberant ‘rhetorical’ style, but it is arguable that this manner is

appropriate to content and genre, and need not in itself point to any particular stage of Plutarch’s intellectual development: cf. Moles

1978, 80 and Frazier in Frazier and Froidefond 1990, 15–17. For a recent discussion of this ‘rhetoric’, see Cammarota 2000, who

accepts an early date; in the same volume Prandi 2000 similarly accepts an early date for the essays on Alexander, which pose a parallel

problem. Frazier prefers to make it a relatively youthful but not adolescent work, perhaps datable to Vespasian’s reign; similarly Brenk

1987, 158–9. Swain 1989b, 504 n. 3 is also inclined to accept an early date on grounds of content, but he stresses that many of the

work’s leading ideas are not incompatible with the Lives if one takes into account generic differences. I now tend to the view that On the

Fortune of the Romans may be quite a late work, dating from the time when Plutarch was already engaged on the Parallel Lives: below,

p. 84 and n. 63.

6
Most of that work is clearly drawn from Dionysius (note especially the inherited error at 318e–f ); non-Dionysian material seems largely

derived from oral traditions at Rome, especially those associated with surviving monuments. (On this type of material cf. Theander

1951, 2–32 and 1959, 99–131.) Plutarch quotes Polybius ‘in the second book’ at 325f, and elsewhere book-numbers seem to imply

first-hand knowledge of a work: Jones 1971, 83.

7
Cf. Frost 1980, 47–9; Stadter 1989, xlvii. Plutarch’s wide reading is abundantly clear: cf. especially Ziegler 1949, 277–91; Duff 1999, 8,

with bibliography in his n. 37.

8
Comic poets: Per. 3.5–7, 8.4, 13.8–10, 24.9–10, al. Plato: 7.8, 13.7, 24.7, Cf. 8.2, 15.2. Other philosophers: 4.5, 7.7, 27.4, 35.5.

Theophrastus: 38.2. Ion: 5.3, 28.7. Some of these quotations may be inherited; it is hard to believe they all are. Cf. Meinhardt 1957, 9–

22 and passim; Stadter 1989: lviii–lxxxv.

9
ἐπελθóντα τῃ̑ μνήμῃ κατὰ τη̑ ν γραϕήν, Per. 24.12. – Naturally, there is also literary artifice here, as Plutarch projects an impression

both of Aspasia (the woman people told stories about) and of himself (the man who loved stories and knew a lot of them). But there was

little point in constructing this narrator – this well-read ‘Plutarch’ – unless he could also deliver a text which was rich in such stories;

and those stories must come from the well-stocked brain of the real person, Plutarch as well as ‘Plutarch’.

10
Dem. 2.2. On the weary question of Plutarch’s Latinity, Rose 1924, 11–19, is still sound. For the contrast between the preparation for

a Greek and for a Roman Life, see also Piccirilli 1980, 1763–4.

11
Cleopatra: Latin quotations would have been apposite especially (but not only) at 27.2–5, 56.6–10, and in the description of Actium

(especially 66.5–8); note also 29.1, 36.1–2, and 62.1, where quotations from Plato and Euripides, rather than Latin poetry, lend stylistic

height. Roman public opinion: e.g. 36.4–5, 50.7, 54.5, 55, 57.5.

12
The reference to Horace at Lucull. 39.5 is an exception, so isolated that one suspects the quotation to be tralatician (Russell 1993,

427), but it at least shows that quotations from Latin poets were not excluded by any generic ‘rules’: cf. Zadorojnyi 1997b. Had

Plutarch known his Horace, a mention of him might be expected in Brutus, perhaps at 24.3, perhaps in the account of Philippi. – The

contrast between Caesar and Suet. Div. Iul. is here eloquent, for Suet. is rich with material similar to that used by Plutarch for Pericles:

quotations from contemporary pamphlets and lampoons, Calvus, Catullus, Curio, etc. Plutarch has nothing like this in Caesar.

13
He may have glanced at Pollio or Livy when engaged on his Life of Augustus, but even this is unlikely: ‘the Lives of the Caesars, to

judge from the remains, were not the fruit of deep research’ (Jones 1971, 80).

14
Jones 1966, 67–8 = Scardigli 1995, 108–11 places Cim.–Luc. in one of positions II–IV; Theander 1958, 12–20, in position IV; cf.

Stoltz 1929, table at p. 135. The principal indication is that Pericles, which occupied position X (Per. 2.5), itself quotes Cimon (9.5);

Dem.–Cic. occupied position V, and, on Jones’s analysis, positions VI–IX are already filled by other pairs. For reservations about this

type of analysis, see p. 9; but the early position of Lucullus is adequately demonstrated by its content.
15
Presumably the ‘Theopompean’ de consiliis: so e.g. Strasburger 1938, 108, Brunt 1957, 193; Marshall 1985, 287 ad loc.; Moles 1982:

see n. 172 and p. 50 below.

16
The Antony version is shared by App. BC 4.12.45 (cf. Dio 47.6.3), and probably derives from Asinius Pollio.

35.2 refers to the projected Pompey in the future tense, ὡς ἐν τοι̑ς περι ̀ ἐκείνου γραϕησομένοις τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον
17
Caes.

δηλωθήσεται (‘as will be shown in detail in the work which will be written about him’): cf. pp. 7–8.
18
For Pollio’s view, Horace Odes 2.1.1; cf. Caes. 13.4–6, Pomp. 47.4, Cato Minor 30.9. Henderson 1997, 59–65 = 1998, 109–14

implies that the ‘Metellus’ dateline of Odes 2.1.1 might summon up the consulship of Q. Metellus Numidicus in 109 as well as that of

Q. Metellus Celer in 60: I find that harder to believe.

19
Cf. Cic. Att. 2.18(38).3, 2.19(39).5.

20
Verbal similarities: e.g. Caes. 14.2 stigmatises the cf. Pomp. 47.5,

, and Cato ἃ γὰρ οἱ θρασυτάτοι

Minor 32.2,

δήμαρχοι καί ὀλιγωρότατοι πρὸς χάριν ἐπολιτεύοντο τω̑ ν πολλω̑ ν, ταυ̑ τ’ ἀπ’ ἐξουσίάς ὑπατικη̑ ς αἰσχρω̑ ς καί τάπεινω̑ ς
ὑποδυόμενος τὸν δη̑ μον ἔπραττε. Crass. 14.4, like Cato 33.5, speaks of the Gallic command establishing Caesar ὥσπερ εις
άκροπολίν; Caesar and Pompey are close to each other in their descriptions of Pompey and Crassus in the assembly (Caes. 14.3–6,
Pomp. 47.6–8); and so on.

21
It is thus unnecessary to assume, with Taylor 1951, 265 (cf. Meier 1961, 72–3), that Plutarch went to a new source when composing

Cato, and there found the distinction of two separate bills. Note the plural νόμους in Caesar ; but Plutarch there finds it stylistically

useful to speak as if the bills were debated simultaneously. The procedure of Appian (BC 2.10.35) is exactly similar. Such conflations are

common in Plutarch: I examine this technique below at pp. 91–2.

22
Pomp. 47.6–8, Caes. 14.3–6; Dio 38.4.4–5.5.

23
Pomp. 48.2, Cato Minor 32.3; Dio 38.6.3.

24
Clodius: Caes. 14.16–17, Cato Minor 32.10, 33.6; Dio 37.12.1–2. Cato’s imprisonment: Caes. 14.11–12, Cato 33.1–4; Dio 38.3.2–

3. The two authors give this story a different context, but seem to reflect the same original item. It was probably narrated ‘out of time’ in

the shared source, and both authors chose to exploit it where they thought best. Cf. Marsh 1927, 508–13 and Meier 1961, 71–9.

25
Suet. Div. Iul. 20.4 (imprisonment); 21 (marriages).

26
Cic. Phil. 2.34. For Plutarch’s use of this speech, see pp. 17–18; Pelling 1988, 26–7 and (on this passage in particular) 147–8.

27
Lepidus: Caes. 67.2. Plancus: Brut. 19.1. Cicero: Cic. 42.3, Brut. 19.1. Cf. Valgiglio 1992, 290. On the version in Antony see further

n. 90 and Pelling 1988, 151–2.

28
Cf. Stoltz 1929, 75–81.

29
Caes. 4.4–5, 5.3, 5.8–9, 6.3–7, etc; deceived optimates at 4.6–9, 5.8, 6.7, 7.5, etc. Cato alone saw the truth (13.3), though Cicero had

earlier felt suspicions (4.8–9). By 14.6 it is too late, and the optimates can only grieve. On the ‘historical’ texture of Caesar see also pp.

55, 103–5, 207–8, and ch. 11.

30
Caes. 56.7, 60.1, 60.5, 61.9–10, 62.1: below, n. 32 and p. 104.

31
Caes. 51, where the ‘slander’ ( διαβολή) earned by the friends – ‘the Romans were very unhappy about these things’, 51.3 – prepares for
this loss of popular support; cf. also 57.2, 57.7, 60.8, 61. See also p. 11 and n. 66; and Pelling 1997e, 216–19.

32
The popular reactions to the regal salutation are traced at 60.3; to the excessive honours at 60.5 (rather uneasily, Plutarch represents

them as shocked at the insult to the senate); to the Lupercalia affair at 61.6; to the tribunes’ imprisonment at 61.9–62.1. App. BC

2.107–9 and Suet. Div. Iul. 78–9, both apparently from the same source, have no such emphasis; nor does Ant. 12. App. 2.109.458

further gives a different reading of the people’s reaction at the Lupercalia. Plutarch stresses their resentment at the attempts to crown

Caesar; for Appian, their dominant emotion was applause for his rejection of the crown. For the rather different account of Nic. Dam.

(FGrH 90) Vit. Caes. 68–79, cf. Jacoby ad loc.

33
Brut. 10.6: this was apparently the version and emphasis of the source (cf. App. BC 2.113.472).

34
Caes. 62, using material treated earlier in the corresponding account in Brutus.

35
Caes. 62.8. As the text stands, a cross-reference directs the reader to Brutus for a fuller treatment, here as at 68.7; cf. Brut. 9.9, similarly

referring to Caesar. See pp. 7–10.

36
Brut. 11–12.

37
Appian’s account suggests that the shared source (pp. 12–13) was much richer in historical analysis: e.g. BC 2.113.474, detail of the

conspirators’ background and connections; 2.120.505–7, an analysis of the urban plebs. Plutarch here suppresses most of this: Brut. 12

is more interested in men who were not involved than in men who were. A terse μιγάδες (‘commingled’ of the mob, a mongrel, motley
gathering) at Brut. 18.12 and a dismissive reference to ‘the masses who are prey to unstable and rapid impulses’ at 21.2 are the only

reflections of the analysis of the plebs.

38
Brut. 9.9 refers to Caesar: see n. 35, and pp. 7–10.

39
Caes. 66.12 notes this item as a λεγόμενον, something people say; Brutus 17.6 is less punctilious. For a similar case, cf. Cinna’s dream:
ὥς ϕασι (‘so they say’) at Caes. 68.3, but no qualification in the more excited Brut. 20.9.
40
App. BC 2.117.490: presumably from Pollio, cf. pp. 12–13.

41
e.g. at Ant. 5.10 Antony and Cassius are given the rabble-rousing speech in Caesar’s camp, though at Caes. 31.3 Plutarch knows that

Caesar made the speech himself (cf. Caes. BC 1.7). See p. 93, and for some possible further cases in the same context pp. 107–8. In the

present instance, note that D. Brutus has already had a considerable role in Caesar whereas Trebonius has not been mentioned.

Elsewhere we can see similar simplifications: for instance, the two names at 67.4 seem to represent a longer list in the principal source, as

App. BC 2.119.500 suggests; and Plutarch may have felt that he had too many individuals already. Ant. 13.4 has a vague ‘some people’
 ( ἐνίους) in this context, though we should expect Trebonius to be named: he has already figured largely in that chapter. That looks like
deliberate fudging, and may be the work of someone who is conscious of the inconsistency between his other two versions.

42
Cf. Russell’s explanation of similar errors in Coriolanus, 1963, 22 = Scardigli 1995, 359. On the possible use of memory, see pp. 20–2.

43
See pp. 14–15.

44
Other parallel accounts where we might expect to find increasing knowledge and do not: the accounts of Luca, Caes. 21.3–6, Pomp.

51.4–5, Crass. 14.6–7; the analysis of Roman kakopoliteia, Caes. 28, Pomp. 54, Cato Minor 47; the debates before the outbreak of the

war, Ant. 5, Caes. 30–1, Pomp. 58–9; Pharsalus, Caes. 42–6, Pomp. 68–73.

45
The literary devices I analyse below in ch. 4; for the errors, cf. pp. 21–2, 24–5.

46
ź
The full list is given by Stoltz 1929, 9. Study of the cross-references led Bro ek, for reasons similar to those given here, to suggest

simultaneous preparation of several Lives (1963, 68–80); cf. also Gomme, HCT i. 83 n. 3.

47
Mewaldt 1907, 567–8; refuted by Stoltz 1929, 63–8.

48
The analysis of Stoltz strongly defended the authenticity of the other, non-contradictory cross-references. Stoltz doubted the

authenticity of Dion 58.10, Brut. 9.9, and Cam.33.10, but even here hesitated to delete. The language of these three cross-references

seems no less Plutarchan than that of the others: cf. Mewaldt 1930. Note also the forceful argument of Geiger, below n. 55.

49
Stoltz 1929, 58–95; in particular, the aorist ἐκδόντες at Thes. 1.4 clearly implies that Lycurgus–Numa had already been published (cf.
also n. 170 below, and, for what such ‘publication’ might mean, Easterling in Easterling and Knox 1985, 20). Flacelière’s defence of

Mewaldt (1948, 68–9) is countered by Hamilton 1969, xxxvi–vii. Jones 1966, 67 = Scardigli 1995, 107–8 adopts a modified form of

Mewaldt’s theory, but is not convincing.

50
So Piccirilli 1977, 1001–4 and 1980, 1753–4. The language of Thes. 1.4 seems to imply that Romulus was written soon after Numa:

so Jones 1966, 68 n. 57 = Scardigli 1995, 111 n. 57 and Bühler 1962, 281. Nor can Numa and Camillus be far apart. Numa twice

quotes Camillus; but Numa itself seems to be an early Life, for Pericles, one of the tenth pair (Per. 2.5), quotes Lysander, and Lysander

quotes Lycurgus (Per. 22.4, Lys. 17.11, with Stoltz 1929, 101–2). If the argument of p. 9 is accepted, some reservations concerning this

type of inference are necessary, and conclusions as precise as those of Jones 1966, 66–8 = Scardigli 1995, 106–11 are not possible; but

this whole group of Lives does seem early. So also van der Valk 1982, 303–7.

51
The Roman Questions, partly based on similar source-material, seem to have been composed at about the same time: Jones 1966, 73 =

Scardigli 1995, 122. They are quoted at Rom. 15.7 and Cam. 19.12. Cf. p. 173 and n. 9.

52
Cf. Ziegler 1949, 264, with Ziegler 1931, 268–9.

53
For the possible nature of such a ‘draft’, see pp. 23–4 and ch. 3. This may help to explain the oddity of Tim. 13.10, referring to a

passage of Dion which does not seem to exist. Plutarch may have included the relevant passage in an early version of Dion, but excised it

ź
from his final draft, forgetting to alter the reference in Timoleon: so Bro ek, art. cit. 76–7. Plutarch may equally, if Tim. is the earlier

Life, have intended at that time to include the passage in the planned Dion, but later have altered his mind or forgotten.

54
Plutarch elsewhere uses such phrases and tenses as ‘C. Marcius, about whom this work has been written’ ( Γάιος δὲ Mάρκιος, ὐπὲρ οὐ
τάδε γὲγραπταί) in the introduction to a Life (Cor. 1.1, cf. Cic. 1.5, Agis 3.3, Gracch. 1.7); but an epistolary flavour is there felt

especially strongly (cf. Arat. 1.5). Flam. 16.6, in mid-Life, is a closer parallel. See Stoltz 1929, 86. – It is of course possible that Caesar

was expected sooner after Brutus than Pompey after Caesar ; if a longer delay was anticipated in the second case, the future tenses at

Caes. 35.2 are more explicable.

55
Geiger 1979, 61 n. 47: ‘The reader will have to decide for himself the statistical probability of Stoltz’s conclusions: some thousand folio

pages contain 45 genuine cross-references; interpolators have inserted three more – each of which happens to be contradicted by one of

the genuine references’.

56
Thus the detailed argument of Jones 1966, 66–8 = Scardigli 1995, 106–11 is not cogent.

57
For Oppius, see p. 13. A similar case may be Mar. 6.3, Marius’ fortitude under surgery, which may also come from Oppius (cf. Plin.

N.H. 11.252): Marius seems later than Caesar (Mar. 6.4 with Jones 1966, 67–8 = Scardigli 1995, 110–1). Cf. Townend 1987, 329–31.

58
So Geiger 1979, 58–9, with additional arguments.

59
For such literature, see e.g. Afzelius 1941, 198–203.

60
So Geiger 1979: probably transmitted by Thrasea Paetus, cf. p. 13 and n. 84.

61
Geiger tends towards this view, but prefers to think that the Pompey passages are based on notes taken for Cato, or a draft (not the

final version) of Cato.

62
Presumably from Pollio, as the contact with App. BC 2.84–5 suggests.

63
Cf. Jones 1966, 66–8 = Scardigli 1995, 106–11, with the reservations expressed on p. 9.

64
Cato Minor 73.6 = Brut. 13, 53.5: some of this is apparently from Nicolaus of Damascus, as Brut. 53 suggests.

65
ἐν αἷς Kαίσαρα ἔκτειναν, οὐκ αὐτòν ἄγοντα καί ϕἐροντα πάντάς
The Brutus passage is corrupt as it stands: (the Ides of March),

άνθρώποὐς, άλλ’ ετερών ίδὐναμίν ντα ταὐτά πράσσοντων. It is important for the logic of the passage to have some reference to
‘friends’: cf. the point of 35.5, άμείνον ην τοὐς Kαίσαρος ϕίλοὐς ὐπομενείν η τοὐς εάὐτων περίοράν άδίκοὐντάς. Perhaps ετερων

conceals ετάίρων. Ziegler’s speculative δὐνάμίν ὐπομενοντά τάὐτά πρασσόντων presumably captures the sense.

66
See pp. 5–6 and more fully Pelling 1997e. Neither Brutus nor Antony is so interested in political analysis, and in Brutus the notice is

purely incidental. It is hardly likely that he would have elaborated this rather unusual analysis for those Lives alone; but, once it had

been developed for Caesar, it might readily be taken over. For a similar instance in Brutus, cf. 18.3: Plutarch there refers to Antony’s

‘easy rapport with the soldiers’ ( ὀμίλία καί σὐνηθεαά προς το στράτίωτίκον), which seems to be borrowed from one of the major

themes of Antony.

67
See pp. 14–15.
68
Delvaux 1995, 108–11 on quite different grounds (which in themselves I find very impressionistic) puts these six pairs, along with

Aristides–Cato Maior, in his positions 12–18. – I omit Sertorius from this analysis because it relates to the very beginning of the relevant

period, and because its content affords little basis for comparison with other Lives. It may well be later than this group of Lives: Scardigli

1971, 33–41 argues for a late date, and a significant detail may confirm this. The early chapters of Demetrius point Demetrius’ ‘natural

gift for clemency and justice’ (4.5), and Plutarch makes the most of what anecdotes he can find: note the expansive treatment of the

tales of chs. 3–4. Yet he omits Demetrius’ pressure to save the life of Eumenes (early 316), an item which he knows at £um. 19.6. This

looks like a case of increasing knowledge: if so, Sert.–Eum. should be later than Demetr.–Ant. Konrad 1994, xxvi–xxix also accepts a late

date for Sert.–Eum.

69
Cf. Jones 1971, 84–6. Second-hand quotation is particularly likely at Caes. 22.1–5, citing Tanusius Geminus and Caesar’s

commentarii: App. Celt. fr. 18, certainly from the same source, retails them in the same manner. Caes. 44.8 and Pomp. 69.7 provide a

similar case: both again quote Caesar, but so does App. BC 2.79, clearly from the same source. See Peter 1865, 120–3, and on an oddity

of the quotation see below, p. 88–9 n. 46. Note also Brut. 41.7 = App. BC4.110.463, both quoting Augustus. But even these cases are

not certain, especially if Appian knew Plutarch directly as well as the source they shared (see n. 75): in that case Plutarch may be quoting

first-hand and Appian tralaticiously. And in some cases authors might well quote the same source independently, especially when it

added the authority of an eye-witness report. Thus Suet. Div. Iul. 30.2 and Caes. 46.1–2 both quote Pollio for Caesar’s remark on the

battlefield of Pharsalus, ‘they would have it so’; Caes. 46.3, Pomp. 72.4, and App. BC 2.82.346 quote him for the numbers of dead

(‘some exaggerating writers put the loss at 25,000, but Pollio.. .says 6000’, App.): Pollio himself may have noted that he was correcting

exaggerated versions (including Caesar’s own figure of 15,000, BC 3.99?), in which case both authors could independently take over the

notice in this way. It need not follow, as Delvaux 1988, 37–8 thought, that Pollio’s text was not known at first hand.

70
See the remarks on the ύπομνημα stage of composition, pp. 23–4, 52–3, and ch. 3.
71
On this contact with Dio see pp. 4–5.

72 4
Kornemann 1896, 672–91; cf. Peter 1865, 125, and many works since then (bibliography at Schanz–Hosius 1914–1935, ii 28–9).

Recently see esp. Gowing 1992, 39–50 on the implications for the criticism of Appian.

73
The following list is very selective: Dio 39.31–2 ~ App. BC2.17–18 ~ Pomp. 51–3, Crass. 15, Cato Minor 41–3; Dio 39.39.5–7 ~

App. 2.18.66 ~ Crass. 16.7–8; Dio 40.52–5 ~ App. 2.23–4 ~ Pomp. 55.6–11, Cato 48.5–10; Dio 41.41.1 ~ App. 2.40 ~ Cato 53.2–3,

Pomp. 61.2; Dio 41.46 ~ App. 2.56–8 ~ Caes. 38; Dio 42.3–4 ~ App. 2.84–6 ~ Pomp. 77–80, Brut. 33; Dio 42.40.4–5 ~ App.

2.90.377 ~ Caes. 49.7–8; Dio 42.57 ~ App. 2.87.367 ~ Cato 57–8; Dio 43.10–12 ~ App. 2.98–9 ~ Cato 62–71; Dio 43.12.1, 13 .4 ~

App. 2.99.414 ~ Caes. 54, Cato 36.5; Dio 44.8–11 ~ App. 2.107–10 ~ Caes. 60–61, Ant. 12; Dio 44.12 ~ App. 2.112.469 ~ Caes. 62,

Brut. 9–10 ~ Suet. Div. Iul. 80.3; Dio 46.49 - App. 3.95.392–3 al. ~ Brut. 27; Dio 47.47–8 ~ App. 4.114–17 ~ Brut. 44–5; Dio 48.38

~ App. 5.73 ~ Ant. 32; Dio 48.39.2 ~ App. 5.76 ~ Ant. 33.6–7. The similarities will be inherited from Pollio, whether or not Dio knew

Pollio at first hand. Two further points are worth making. (a) The persistence of the Dio–Plutarch–Appian contact well past Philippi

supports the view that Pollio continued his history to include at least the mid-thirties, and probably Actium or even Alexandria as well:

so Gabba 1956, 242–3 and Haller 1967, 96–105; contra André 1949, 46–51 and, tentatively, Morgan 2000, 54 n. 18. Hose 1994, 262

avoids committing himself, but accepts that the Plutarch–Appian contact is the vital point in deciding the issue. (b) Millar 1964, 56,

tentatively suggests that Dio used Plutarch’s Brutus as a source. This will now be seen to be unlikely: Dio’s relation to Brutus is parallel

to his relation to the other five later Lives, and is best explained as a shared inheritance from a historical source.

74
e.g. Suet. Div. Iul. 29.1 ~ App. BC 2.26.100–1 ~ Caes. 29.3, Pomp. 58.2; Suet. 30.4 ~ Caes. 46.2; Suet. 31–2 ~ App. 2.35 ~ Caes. 32;

Suet. 36 ~ App. 2.62.260 ~ Caes. 39.8; Suet. 44.2–3 ~ App. 2.110 ~ Caes. 58; and many points of contact in the account of the

assassination.

75
For Appian’s possible knowledge of Plutarch, Gabba, 1956, 225–8 and 1957, 340; Fehrle 1983, 29–32; Pelling 1997e, 231 n. 15. Such

verbal parallels as App. 2.14.51 - Caes. 14.8 (the only two occasions where the word δίάμάστροπεὐεσθάί occurs in Greek, Delvaux

1998, 39–40) and App. 2.27.106 ~ Caes. 30.2 may thus be explained: see Kornemann 1896, 577 for further close verbal similarities. It

is also possible that the elaborate comparison of Alexander and Caesar at the end of BC 2 indicates some relationship to Plutarch, either

a debt to an epilogue of Alexander–Caesar which has been lost (on this question see pp. 377–82) or a response to the absence of such an

epilogue in Plutarch’s original: in Pelling, forthcoming (a), I argue for the second of those possibilities.

76
Ex Metello consule (‘from the consulship of Metellus’, i.e. 60 BC, Horace, Odes 2.1): above, n. 18. Therefore it is odd that the contact

with Appian only begins with the year 58. It is possible that Plutarch drew his accounts of Caesar’s consulate from a different source, one

he shares with Dio (above, pp. 4–5). But it is more likely that Appian, who is capable of exploiting a variety of sources (Gabba 1956,

109–15), did not turn to the common source until 2.15.54. Barbu 1934, 28–40, 81–8, argued on different grounds for a similar view.

In that case, Plutarch and Dio will both reflect Pollio’s version.

77
Cf. e.g. Kornemann 1896; Peter 1865, 124 ff.; Garzetti 1954, xxii–xxxiii; Gabba 1956, esp. 119–51, 229–49; André 1949, 41–66.

78
Sallust’s Histories were translated into Greek in the early second century (Suda s.v. Z ηνóβιος, Adler, cf. Jones 1971, 86), and nothing
precludes the possibility that Pollio was translated as well. But Caes. 46.2 should not be used as evidence for this: Hâussler 1966 is

convincing (more convincing, I think, than Delvaux 1988, 45–7, but Delvaux too does not accept a Greek version of Pollio).

79
Russell 1963, 23–5 = Scardigli 1995, 361–5. For more on childhood, especially that of Coriolanus, see pp. 153–4 and ch. 14

80
Probably Fenestella: cf. Crass. 5.6. All the material of the first chapters may come from the same author: we know that Fenestella

mentioned the fate of the Vestal Licinia (fr. 11 P; cf. Crass. 1.4–6). See Peter 1865, 109. A large use of Fenestella – to my mind, too

large – is posited by Delvaux in several articles, especially Delvaux 1989.

81
Cf. Pelling 1988, 26–7, 33–4, 137–8.

82
In Pelling 1973 I attempted to reconstruct some elements of the lost preface from Zonaras’ excerpt. Flacelière 1975, 130 suggests that

Caesar is complete as it stands, but this is unconvincing: cf. Briscoe 1977, 178.

83
Oppius is quoted at 17.7; comparison with Suet. Div. Iul. 53 leaves no doubt that Oppius lies behind 17.9–10; and he is again

mentioned in the anecdote of 17.11. Pomp.10.7–9 criticizes Oppius’ bias in a way which suggests that Plutarch knows his work.

Oppius’ book is never precisely described as a biography (cf. Strasburger 1938, 30–3), but content is here more important than form.

For the fragments of Oppius’ work, HRR 2.46–9, LXIII–IV; for discussion, Townend 1987.

84
Cf. Peter 1865, 65–9; Flacelière 1976a, 65–6; Geiger 1979; above, p. 10.

85
Cf. Peter 1865, 114–17: Flacelière 1975, 154–6; and esp. Heftner 1995, 53–7.
86
e.g. App. BC 2.109.455 ~ Caes. 57.7; App. 2.110 (cf. 3.25, 77) ~ Caes. 58; App. 2.107.445 ~ Caes. 60.4; App. 2.108–9 ~ Caes. 61;

App. 2.112.466–7 ~ Caes. 62.4–6, Brut. 7–8; App. 2.115–16, 149.619 ~ Caes. 63.5, Brut. 14–16; App. 2.117 ~ Caes. 62.7, Brut. 9–10

(though in this case John Moles may be right in suggesting that App.’s account is itself indebted to Plutarch (cf. n. 75); if so, it is likely

that App. is incorporating the items from memory, without having Plutarch’s words before his eyes).

87
Cf. Garzetti 1954, xxviii–xxix.

88
The item is given a different context in Plutarch’s two accounts. Caesar attaches it to the story of Caesar’s failure to rise before the

approaching magistrates, while Antony links it with the Lupercalia episode. It may be that the item was given no context in the source;

it is more likely that Plutarch deliberately displaces it in Antony, where he does not use the ‘approaching magistrates’ story. For such

displacements cf. pp. 92–3.

89
Urban praetorship: BC 2.112.466–7. But Appian is interested in the conspirators’ motives, and does not portray them favourably: cf.

2.111. If he had had the story of Brut. 8.6–7 before his eyes he would have used it.

90
(a) Honours were not voted to the tyrannicides, as Plutarch claims: this apparently reflects the proposal of Ti. Claudius Nero (Suet.

Tib. 4.1), but Appian knows that this was not carried (BC 2.127.530 ff. – apparently not put to the vote). App.’s version was doubtless

that of the Pollio-source. (b) ‘They voted to honour Caesar as a god’ seems another error: there is no mention elsewhere of divine

honours granted at this juncture, though many had already been voted during Caesar’s lifetime (Weinstock 1971, esp. 281 ff., 287 ff.).

Plutarch seems to imply consecration, which was in fact decreed on or about 1st January, 42 (Weinstock 386). (c) Plutarch’s notice of

the provinces granted to the tyrannicides (Brut. 19.5) is no less confused: Sternkopf 1912, 340–9. (d) Plutarch alone attests a separate

session of the senate, held mainly in honour of the assassins and in the presence of some of them, on the day after their descent from the

Capitol (Brut. 19.4–5). This is surely an error (so Sternkopf 1912, 348–9; Motzo 1933, 26–31; contra e.g. Gelzer 1968, 327). We

should assume that Plutarch found, perhaps in Empylus, a notice of such an honorific session, and combined this as best he could with

the Pollio-source. He knew from that source that the assassins had not been present at the 17th March session, for the sons of Antony

and Lepidus had been sent as hostages to persuade the conspirators to descend from the Capitol, and the source had clearly placed this

mission after the 17th March debate (Brut. 19.2, App. 2.142.594; misleadingly streamlined at Ant. 14.2–4). If these honours, voted in

the assassins’ presence, were to be introduced at all, a separate session was inevitable. On all this see further Pelling 1988, 150–2.

91
Cf. Theander 1959, 120–8.

92
Empylus: FGrH no. 191; mentioned as an orator by Quint. 10.6.4. He was a companion of Brutus (Brut. 2.4), and an enthusiastic

treatment is to be expected. He may not have been reliable for the details of senatorial decisions; and a Rhodian orator might well be

attracted by the role of the Cnidian ‘sophist’ Artemidorus (Caes. 65.1).

93
Cf. Brut. 2.4–8, 21.6, 22.4–6, 24.3, 28.2, 29.8–11, 53.6–7; Cic. 45.2, 53(4).4;Moles 1997. The information which Plutarch derives

from these letters is independent of the historical tradition, and (at least in the case of the Latin letters) seems excellent: like Moles, I

4
regard ad Brut. 24–5 (1.16–17) as authentic. Various collections of Brutus’ letters were published: Schanz–Hosius 1914–1935, i 397.

Plutarch’s quotations, when comparable with extant letters, are close enough to suggest first-hand knowledge: esp. Brut. 22.4–6 ~ Cic.

ad Brut. 24, 25 (1.16, 17); cf. Sickinger 1883, 81–3; Peter 1865, 140–1. The letters may have been read for Cicero, as argued at pp. 16–

17; but there is no indication that Plutarch knew Cicero’s letters to Brutus – note ὥς ϕάσιν (‘so they say’) at Brut. 26.6. See also p. 21
and n. 140.

94
Ch. 47, the fine story of Clodius, cannot be reconciled with App.’s insistence that both sides knew of the sea-battle and its outcome,

BC 4.122.513. App. and Dio agree that Brutus was forced into battle by the reproaches of his officers and men (an obvious

reminiscence of Pompey at Pharsalus), and this was doubtless Pollio’s version. Plutarch might well prefer the Clodius anecdote: the tragic

elements, both of Brutus struggling against an adverse destiny and of his coming so close to being saved, are important to him; and the

picture of Brutus which Plutarch has favoured – e.g. ‘keeping his resolve upright’ ( ορθιον την γνώμην.. .δίάϕυλάττων), 29.3 – would

sit uneasily with Pollio’s description of a man persuaded into a civil battle against his better judgement.

95
For Messala, 40.1 ff., 40.11, 41.5, 42.5, 45.1, 45.7, 53.1, 53.3. For Volumnius,48.1–4, 51.1, 51.3–4, 52.2. For their works, Peter

1865, 137–9, and HRR 2.52–3, 65–7,and LXVII–LXVIII, LXXVIII–LXXXIII.

96
Suggestions have included Nicolaus (Heeren, Gutschmid); Strabo (Heeren); an unevidenced memoir of C. Cassius (Flacelière);

Timagenes (Regling, arguing for a combination of Timagenes with Livy); and, implausibly, Dellius (Adcock): cf. now Zadorojnyi 1997a,

171–2. The possibility of two sources should certainly not be dismissed. Some aspects of Plutarch’s version show close contact with the

Livian tradition, which may here include Dio: e.g. 17.8 ~ Dio 40.13.3–4; 17.9 ~ Oros. 6.13.1–2; 19, 23.1 ~ Obs. 64, Dio 40.18–19,

Val. Max. 1.6.11; etc. Yet most of Plutarch’s details of the fighting cannot be reconciled with Dio or the Livian sources, even when we

take into account Dio’s tendency to revamp battle-descriptions according to his own stereotypes. If there is some supplementation of

Livy from another authority, it is more likely to be due to Plutarch himself than to any intermediate source. Such a combination was

argued (though crudely) by Regling 1899.

97
Most obviously at the explicit 45.12, and at 49.5; but the impression is reinforced elsewhere. The description of the χωρά as ευδάίμων
(49.6) uses a favourite Anabasis locution; so does the mention of κωμάς οίκουμενάς (41.3). The echoes need not be derived from

Dellius (cf. Jacoby on FGrH 197 fr. 1): such allusion is very much in Plutarch’s manner. Cf. Pelling 1988, 221–2, 229–30, 233, 235,

239.

98
It is again possible that two versions are here combined: some of Plutarch’s details look like doublets. Cf. 41 ~ 46–7, 45.3–6 ~ 49.1

(Flor. 2.20.7 attaches the item of 49.3 to the context of 45); and perhaps 47.6 ~ 49.6. Cf. Pelling 1988, 235–6.

99
On the terminus of Pollio’s history, above n. 73.

100
Cf. Russell 1973, 140; J. Griffin 1977, 25–6 = 1985, 46.

101
ο Δελλίος (Casaubon: άδελϕίος codd.) ο του Aντωνιου ϕίλος, συγγράψάς την επί ∏άρθυάίους
Strabo 11.13.3 (523) refers to

άυτου στράτείάν εν η πάρην κάί άυτος ηγεμονίάν εχων (‘Dellius [but the name rests on an emendation] the friend of Antony, who
wrote of Antony’s Parthian expedition after taking part in it and holding a command’). Jacoby (on FGrH nr. 197) concludes that this

historical work was limited to this campaign, but this is by no means certain: Burcklein 1879 had some reason to suggest that Dellius

continued his work at least as far as Actium. Ant. 59.6–7 certainly seems to imply that the tale of Dellius’ desertion in 32 BC is drawn

from his own work (note the present ‘he says’, ϕησίν – usually a sign of first-hand quotation, cf. Frazier 1988b): the item is more likely
to come from a memoir or history than from the epistulae ad Cleopatram lascivae (‘naughty letters to Cleopatra’, Sen. Suas. 1.7). If

Plutarch expected his readers to recognize ‘Dellius the historian’ ( Δελλίος ο ίστορίκος) it seems unlikely that his historical fame rested
on the description of just one campaign. Plutarch also mentions Dellius’ role in Antony’s first meeting with Cleopatra (Ant. 25–6): it is

not unlikely that those splendid chapters are also indebted to Dellius himself. Cf. Russell 1973, 136; Pelling 1988, 28, 185.
102
For Crassus, see n. 96; for Pompey, Peter 1865, 117 n. 1 and 119; and note the suggestive similarities between Pompey’s closing

chapters and Lucan, BC 8. Heftner 1995, 59–62 is more sceptical

103
Cf. Theander 1951, 72–8 and for Flamininus Pelling 1997a, 263–83. For a possible explanation of the sparseness of these traces of

Livy in the present group of Lives, see p. 24.

104
Sallust seems to inform the early chapters of Pompey (cf. Peter 1865, 112–14, Heftner 1995, 48–53), and has clearly influenced the

earlier Lucullus (and underlies most of Sertorius: Scardigli 1971, 33–64, esp. 41 n. 2; Konrad 1994, xliv–v, liii). For Fenestella, see n.

80. Of other secondary sources Nepos, Strabo, Nicolaus, Timagenes, and Valerius Maximus are the most likely to be known at first

hand.

105
περί ὐπάτείάς: cf. ch. 2. Caes. 8.4 clearly implies that Plutarch knew the work at first hand, and Crass. 13.4 similarly seems to show
him taking a pride in his own researches (pace Delvaux 1989, 132–3: cf. pp. 47–8). Letters: Cic. 24.6–9, 36.6, 37.3–4, 40.3. Speeches:

6.3, 24.6, 33.8, 48.6, 50(1).4. More besides: 5.6, 20.3, 24.4–6. Knowledge of Cicero’s Lucullus may possibly be traced at 40.2 (Babut

1969, 200 n. 1), or possibly not (Swain 1990b, 195–6 n. 10). In general, cf. Flacelière 1976b, 56–61; Moles 1988, 26–32; and Geiger

2000, 212–5 (more cautious, but on balance accepting first-hand knowledge of a speech in Cic. 6: cf. also p. 21 and n. 141). Valgiglio

1982 is much more reluctant to accept first-hand knowledge of Cicero, even for the Second Philippic.

106
Brutus: 45.2, 53(4).4 (cf. n. 93). Antony: 41.6. Tiro: cf. Peter 129–35; Flacelière, 1976b, 57; Moles 1988, 29, and below, p. 81 and

n. 50.

107
Most clearly at Pomp. 42.13, 63.2 and Phoc. 3.2: I discuss these cases at pp. 62 n. 38 and 81–2. Cf. also n. 93 above.

108
The quotations at Caes. 22.2 and 44.8 seem inherited: above n. 69.

109
Caes. 3.2–4, Crass. 3.3–4, Cato Minor 5.3–4 and 23.3, Brut. 2.5, Ant. 2.8. For the survival of their speeches until Plutarch’s day, cf.

4
Schanz–Hosius 1914–1935, i 336, 388–9, 396–7, 400, 490. On Plutarch’s lack of first-hand acquaintance with them, Geiger 2000,

and on the case of Cato, Brock 1995, 212.

110
For Caesar’s letters, Suet. Div. Iul. 56.6, Gell. 17.9.1–2; for Antony’s, Suet. Div. Aug. 7.1 al., Ov. ex. P. 1.1.23, Tac. Ann. 4.34.

111
Above, n. 93.

112
Cf. Garzetti 1953, 80; Hamilton 1969, xliii n. 6.

113
For a second, less important example, Crass. 13.4: above, pp. 2–3.

114
For use of the Second Philippic in the early parts of Antony, Pelling 1988, 26–7,33–4.

115
Ant. 8.1–3 seems to be making the most of slight information: 8.1 is a great overstatement of the items of Caes. BC 3.46 and 65,

while 8.2–3 seems a simple inference from Antony’s command of the left wing at Pharsalus.

116
Above, p. 13.

117
If the preparation of these six Lives was simultaneous, it is not surprising that reflections of this rereading of the Second Philippic are

found elsewhere, especially at Caes. 51.2; cf. also Pomp. 58.6, on Antony’s friendship with Curio.

118
Above, p. 10.

119
Catilinarian debate: pp. 49–53. Bona Dea: Caes. 9–10 ~ Cic. 28–9. The adaptation has two curiosities. (a) At Cic. 28.4 the codd.

have Clodius indicted by an unnamed ‘someone’ ( τις); Caes. 10.6 specifies εις τών δημάρχων, ‘one of the tribunes’, (whence Barton

proposed τις < των δημάρχων > in Cic., which Ziegler accepts). But the Caes. version seems a mistake. The affair was raised in the

senate by the praetorian Q. Cornificius, while Clodius’ formal prosecutor was L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus, the pr. 58 and cos. 49. If

Lentulus was now tribune, it is odd that this is not mentioned elsewhere (e.g. at Cic. Att. 1.14(14).6, 1.16(16).3). It is easier to assume

that Caes. is here in error; in that case, we should retain the manuscript reading at Cic. 28.4. (Moles 1988, 175 agrees.) Plutarch has

here carelessly misread his earlier account. (b) At Caes. 10.3 Plutarch uses the vigorous and rare word δίάπτοηθείσων; he had also used
the word, in a quite different context, in the account of the 63 Bona Dea incident (Cic. 20.2). If he had recently re-read Cicero, the use

of the same phrase in Caesar may unconsciously reflect that passage.

120
It is a great merit of Theander 1951, 2–32 and 1959 to emphasize this point. Plutarch will sometimes have picked up such oral

traditions during his visits to particular sites, as he had visited Bedriacum when preparing Otho (cf. Otho 14): on this see Buckler 1992.

In the Greek Lives he also exploits inscriptions, sometimes skilfully (e.g. Arist. 1 with pp. 144–5 below); he understandably uses these

less for the Roman Lives, but Sulla 19.9–10, 34.4 and Flam. 16.5 exploit inscriptions which Plutarch saw in Greece, Otho 18.2 one he

saw in Italy. On inscriptions and other documents in the Lives, cf. also p. 146 and n. 20; Hamilton 1969, xlix; Desideri 1992a; Stadter

1989, lxix–lxxi. – See also pp. 268–9, 271–2 where I approach several of these passages from a different angle, especially Dem. 1–2.

121
Zecchini 1991 identifies the ‘little sword’ with the ‘sword of the Deified Julius’ offered to Vitellius in Gaul in 69 (Suet. Vit. 8.2): that

sword had been ‘removed from a shrine of Mars’, where presumably it had been rededicated. Zecchini also found in this the origin of an

anecdote in an extremely embellished and romanticized passage of Geoffrey of Monmouth (Hist. Reg. Brit. 4.3–4), telling of a sword of

Julius which inevitably carried death to all it wounded, and was buried in Britain (not Gaul) in 54 (not 52). That, evidently, is less

certain. I am most grateful to Professor Zecchini for correspondence and for sending me a copy of his article.

122
Pelling 1988, 29. For other examples cf. e.g. Rom. 15.3, Numa 8.20, Cimon 1.8, Otho 14.2–3 (n. 120 above), and for the milieu

they convey see pp. 268–9.

123
Luce 1977, 143. It will become clear that my approach to Plutarch is very similar to Luce’s treatment of Livy.

124
άνεγνωκά >(συνελεξά coni. Millar) πάντά ως ειπείν τά περί άυτων τισι γεγράμμενά, συνεγράψά δε ου
Fr. 1.2 (Boissevain): <

πάντά άλλ’ οσά εξεκρινά. So at 53.19.6 he refers to ‘the many books which I have read’.
125
Manuwald 1979, 168–254. In the original (1979) version of this paper I was much too ready to accept that Dio derived regularly

from Livy, as Rich 1989, 91 n. 19 observes. – Rich 1989, 91–2 and Gowing 1992, 43–4 are inclined to believe in a more

thoroughgoing combination of sources in Dio. They may be right, and I accept that the case for my reconstruction is less strong with

Dio than with the other authors. But I note that de Blois 1997, 2652–3 and Swan 1997, 2533 still find my original picture persuasive. I

remain uncertain.
126
Cf. Pelling 1982, where I argue that nearly all the additions to, or revisions of, Caesar’s material can be explained by Dio’s own

techniques.

127
See pp. 45–7.

128
29.27.13; cf. e.g. 6.12.2–3, 26.49.2–6, 29.25.2, 33.30.6–11. At 32.6.8 he refers to ‘the other Greek and Latin sources, at least those

whose annals I have read…’ (ceteri graeci latinique auctores, quorum quidem ego legi annales…): thus he admits that he has not read

everything, but evidently claims to have read several accounts other than that of Valerius Antias (quoted at 32.6.5 ff.). In general, cf.

Steele 1904, 15–31.

129
Luce 1977, 158–84, has strong arguments to defend Livy’s wide reading. In particu- lar cf. Trânkle 1971, in defence of Livy’s first-

hand knowledge of Cato.

130
Cf. Trânkle 1976, esp. 28 ff., 59–72.

131
See e.g. Trânkle 1965 for the coincidences between Livy and Dionysius in their accounts of the early Republic. Plutarch offers a

useful control: Romulus, Numa, and Poplicola are at times close to this tradition; elsewhere (e.g. in describing the birth of Romulus and

Remus, Rom. 2–6) they show what divergences were possible.

132
Luce 1977, 139–84, esp. 143–50 and 172 n. 73; Cf. Trânkle 1976, 20: ‘ein kontinuierliches Verweben mehrerer Darstellungen wird

man ihm höchstens in Ausnahmefâllen zutrauen dürfen’; Wiseman 1979, 50–1 puts more stress on the occasional supplementation

from a second source to give alternative details or motivations, but accepts that ‘in the main’ Livy reproduces one authority.

133
Cf. esp. Syme 1958, 180–90, 674–6. Townend 1964 plausibly argues for the use of several sources in these books of the Histories; but

the overwhelming predominance of a single source within a single expanse of narrative remains unimpugned.

134
Lucian How to write History 47–8, quoted at p. 23, with the passages collected by Avenarius 1956, 71–104, esp. 88.

135
Dio 72.23.5, with Millar 1964, 32^0 and Rich 1989, 91; D.H. Ant.Rom. 1.7.2. It is thus plausible to suggest that Livy, too, read

widely in his sources before beginning to compose: Luce 1977, 188–93.

136
Cf. Russell 1963, 22 = Scardigli 1995, 359, who suggests a similar procedure for Plutarch in Coriolanus; Luce 1977, 210 ff., who

makes a similar suggestion concerning Livy.

137
Cf. esp. Birt 1882, 157 ff.; Schubart 1962, 66–71. The relevance of such points was clearly seen by Nissen 1863, 78–9; cf. Briscoe

1973, 10.

138
Birt 1913, 303–4; Knox in Easterling and Knox 1985, 7.

139
e.g. Strabo 17.1.5 (790), who does seem to have collated two (closely similar) versions. And systematic comparison of texts was

regular in the case of δίορθωσίς (‘correction’), with textual variants being noted in a margin. Cf. e.g. Allen 1910, 76–80. In such cases,
either a book-rest or a slave’s assistance (e.g. by dictating one version) was presumably used. But comparison of versions must have been

more complicated for a historian, who had to deal (a) with a wider range of texts, (b) with texts which might order their material in

different sequences, (c) with variants which were generally more substantial, and (d) with variants which were more difficult to note.

(This note is indebted to discussion with Peter Parsons.)

140
Cf. above n. 93. Brut. 22.4–6 has a medley of points taken from Brutus’ two letters, and these points recur in an order quite different

from the original. Apart from one explicit quotation ( οί δε προγονοί…), itself easily memorable, the passage may well be a paraphrase

from memory. Moles 1997, 142 prefers to think of ‘conscious rewriting’, given the skilful structure of Plutarch’s version: perhaps both of

us are right. – For some further signs of inexact memory in the Greek Lives, see p. 119.

141
As Peter 1865, 130 and Valgiglio 1982, 293–5 argued in the case of the pro Plancio passage. Cf. Geiger 2000, 214–15 (above, n.

105), who cautiously accepts that the garbling is owed to Plutarch’s misremembering of Cicero’s original. Valgiglio considers this

possibility, but prefers to think that the story was recast by an intermediate source to put Cicero in a bad light; but the story is not

malicious enough to make that plausible.

142
This analysis takes the passage at face value: cf. Preface, xi. A sceptic might wonder whether Plutarch is being disingenuous, as there

may have been good reasons for omitting the item at that point in the narrative: this ‘forgotten’ story tells of Crassus hitting an

opponent in the face during the election disorders of 56 BC, and at Crass. 15 the emphasis had fallen on Pompey as the aggressive

partner and Crassus as his milder foil. Still, even on that view Plutarch must be presenting a procedure which would strike his readers as

plausible. They would find it more believable if they accepted that Plutarch would be working partly from fallible memory than if they

assumed he was writing out material from a work before his eyes. This projection of ‘fallible memory’ is relevant to Plutarch’s self-

presentation in the epilogues: see pp. 353 and 361.

143
As Gelzer 1961, 49 n. 19 does. The number may originally be derived from Caes. BG 4.15.3, who claims that the enemy had totalled

430,000. Pollio may have reasoned that very few escaped.

144
Or, if we assume that Plutarch composed just one ύπομνημα for all six Lives (pp. 23, 52–3, 79–80), he presumably worked carefully
through this part of the ύπομνημα when composing Caesar, and turned the pages (or tablets) more quickly when writing Cato Minor or
Crassus.

145
From the reading for Cicero or other Lives: pp. 16–18, 49–53. From general knowledge, or from research for other works: e.g. the

digression on the Bona Dea festival, Caes. 9.4–8 (perhaps drawn from work for the Roman Questions; cf. 268d–e); and perhaps such

cases as Ant. 33.2–4 and 53.5–9, absent from other ancient narratives of these events, but exploited by Plutarch in respectively On the

Fortune of the Romans (319d–20a) and How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend (61a–b). Cf. Pelling 1988, 29, 206–7, 245–6.

146
In that case his procedures will be rather different from those of Philodemus, as analysed by Dorandi 2000 (cf. n. 3 above), for his

notes seem to have been excerpts, initially gathered as he read and then rearranged in a more convenient order. Hahm 1992, esp. 4079–

82, reconstructs a similar procedure for Diogenes Laertius. Stadter (forthcoming) reconstructs Plutarch’s procedures in a way which

brings him closer to Philodemus: cf. pp. 68–70. Inch. 3 I revisit this whole question of Plutarch’s ‘notes’.

147
Cf. Gomme, HCTi. 78.

148
Cf. Hamilton 1969, xliv. The elder Pliny’s studious practice, nihil enim legit quod non excerperet (‘he read nothing without

excerpting it’), is noted as a peculiarity: Pliny Ep. 3.5.10.

149
Thus Stadter (forthcoming) suggests that the Apophthegmata Laconica are genuinely Plutarchan, and represent a sort of ὐπομνημά:
he suggests that there may have been at least one further ὐπομνημά side-by-side with this, sketching the general narrative plan and

perhaps including more discursive material. In ch. 3 I sketch an alternative interpretation, arguing that at least the Apophthegmata

Regum et Imperatorum are not themselves a ὐπομνημά, but are based on the narrative, draft ὐπομνημά which I posit for the Lives.
150
Inst.Or. 10.3.31. In general, cf. Roberts 1954, 170–5.

151
In these cases, however, the possibility of marginal jottings in the main source’s account should be considered – very much after the

manner of δίορθωσίς: this is especially likely with Livy. The elder Pliny may be exceptional, but he not merely excerpebat but also

adnotabat (Plin. Ep. 3.5.10), i.e. noted things in a margin, which would be a convenient way of assembling minor divergences, for

instance in numbers. Livy’s (though not Plutarch’s) supplements to his main source are often of this type. But in this case the problems

of using two rolls simultaneously would remain, and we should assume either a book-rest or some assistance from a slave. (This note is

again indebted to Peter Parsons.)

152
See Avenarius’ collection of parallel passages, 1956, 85–104, with the remarks of Millar 1964, 33; on the ὐπομνημά stage see also

below, pp. 52–3.

153
The following references are drawn from Avenarius 1956, 85–9. Ammonius, CIAG iv 1887, ὐπομνηματικὰ δἐ καλοὐνται ἐν οις τὰ
κεφάλαια μóνα ὰναγράφονται (‘writings are called hypomnematika when headings alone are noted down’) suggests a very unfinished

version. But there seems to have been a theory that Thuc. 8 represents a ὐπομνημά rather than a final composition (Marc. Life

ofThucydides 44), which suggests that a ὐπóμνημα could be much more finished; the same impression is given by Jos. Against Apion

1.50. Peter Parsons observes that FGrH 533 fr. 2 may be a ὐπομνημά: if so, it seems close to its final form.
154
I return to this question in ch. 3 (pp. 79–80), and now incline to the view that Plutarch would write separate ὐπομνήματα for each
Life rather than a consolidated multi-Life draft.

155
See chapter 3.

156
Bömer 1953, esp. 247–8.

157
In ch. 3, p. 66 I put this qualification more emphatically.

158
In 1979 I suggested that Plutarch himself might not have read silently, so that the reading-time of an item might anyway be the time

it would take to read it aloud. That was incautious: on silent reading see Knox 1968, Gavrilov 1997, Burnyeat 1997, and Fowler

forthcoming, intr. and ch. 4. But even though Plutarch would read silently, the time he might save by it would not be very great. Even

an experienced reader might sometimes stumble over a manuscript, possibly erratic, possibly not very legible, and anyway written in

scriptio plena so that the eye would continually have to divide words and sentences. It would be a very different process from scanning a

modern printed text.

159
On dictation, Herescu 1956.

160
Against Apion 1.50; cf. Thackeray 1929, 100–24.

161
Cf. Quint. Inst.Or. 10.1.128, on Seneca: ingenium facile et copiosum, plurimum studii, multa rerum cognitio, in qua tamen

aliquando ab iis quibus inquirenda quaedam mandabat deceptus est (‘a ready, fluent talent, a great amount of diligence, and a wide-

ranging knowledge – but in that respect he was sometimes misled by those whom he had given questions to investigate’).

162
Jones 1971, 84–7 has a useful discussion of such assistants.

163
It was understandable that Stegmann, followed by Flacelière, should conjecture < και ̀ Λέπιδον> at Ant. 19.1; but that is more likely
to correct the author than his text.

164
I now think this an overstatement and an underestimate: see Preface, xi.

165
In such Lives, the picture of Gomme, HCT i. 77–81, is likely to be more accurate; cf. above, pp. 1–2.

166
This point is owed to Donald Russell.

167
For further differences among the Lives, cf. ch. 4, esp. pp. 102–7, and Wardman 1971.

168
Cf. pp. 7–8.

169
The idea of a mutually supplementing series is plausible enough; cf. esp. Stoltz 1929, 42–55, who observed that a cross-reference to a

second Life is often used to explain or excuse a brief treatment of a topic; see also pp. 187–8 below on Thes.–Rom.; Mossman 1992,

103–4; Harrison 1995.

170
Thus Thes. 1.4 implies that he decided to write Thes.–Rom. only after publishing Lyc.–Numa. We need not necessarily take that

literally, but such a picture of composition could not have seemed implausible to his audience. Cf also Aem. 1.1 and Geiger 1981, 88 =

Scardigli 1995, 169.

171
But at 166 he misrepresents my argument about the triumviral chapters.

172
Moles 1988, 28, 1992, 247, and 1993a, 153–4 also thinks that Plutarch knew this work at the time of Cic., and indeed drew on it

for Cic. 20.6–7, ‘anyone could see that they were more likely to form an addition to Caesar in safety than Caesar to them in

punishment’: Moles insists that ‘they’ ought here to mean ‘Caesar’s friends’, Crassus in particular, rather than ‘the conspirators’. I am not

convinced either by that interpretation of Cic. 20.6–7 (the notion of punishing those friends would be a jarring intrusion) or by the

source-analysis: App. BC 2.6.20 suggests that such material figured in the mainstream historical tradition.

173
Thus the discrepancy concerning the amnesty of 17 March 44 (Steidle 1990, 169) – was it urged by Antony (Ant. 14.3), by Antony,

Plancus, and Cicero (Brut. 19.1), or by Antony and Cicero (Cic. 42.3)? – is easy enough to explain in terms of the ‘law of biographical

relevance’, given that Antony’s role as consul had to be stressed in each Life, and Brut. had no reason to highlight any one of the

proposers rather than any other.

174
Cf. pp. 12–13.
175
The same point is made by Scardigli 1991, 47. Cf. also Konrad 1994, xxviii n. 17, who feels that thematically Crassus does not

belong with the rest of the group.

176
It is therefore not parallel with the perfunctoriness of the second half of Cicero, pace Steidle 1990, 166.

177
Jones 1966, 68 = Scardigli 1995, 111.

178
Cf. Crass. 11.10–11 ~ Pomp. 21.3, 12.1–3 ~ Pomp. 22.1–3, 12.4–5 ~ Pomp. 23.1–2, 14.4 ~ Cat. Min. 33.5, Caes. 14.2, 15.2–4 ~

Pomp. 51.6–52.5, and the instances collected in the next note.

179
The ‘Pollio-source’, in the terms of this chapter. Cf. esp. 15.6–7 ~ App. BC 2.17.64 as well as Pomp. 52.1–3, Cat. Min. 41.3–42.1;

16.4–8 ~ App. BC 2.18.66; 37(4).2–3 ~ Celt. fr. 18 as well as Caes. 22.4.

180
Below, p. 76.
 2

PLUTARCH AND CATILINE

Plutarch came to the story of Catiline four times. His first account was also his fullest, the lavish

treatment of Cicero (10–23). Some time later, he returned to the subject when he was preparing – if the

argument of ch. 1 is correct, preparing simultaneously – a whole series of Lives of the period, and

included treatments in Caesar (7–8), Cato Minor (22–4), and Crassus (13).

This should give us a useful glimpse of Plutarch’s technique. He considered some items relevant for

one Life, others for the next: what criteria did he adopt for his selection? Did he simply choose the items

most relevant to each of his successive heroes? Or those which presented each of them in the most

favourable light? If he included the same material in different Lives, how did he vary his treatment? And

what sort of points did he wish to make about each subject – does each hero receive a similar type of

treatment, or do Plutarch’s biographical interests vary from one Life to the next? Questions such as these

will occupy the second half of this chapter. First, we might try to gain further insight into his method of

working. There are close verbal similarities among the four accounts: how are these to be explained?

Perhaps Plutarch always went back to the same single source, and exploited this anew for each Life.

Perhaps he simply re-used the items already included in his first account in Cicero, selecting what was

relevant for each new subject. Perhaps he filled out the Cicero material from the other sources which he

must have consulted for the later group of Lives. Or perhaps he made full notes in the first instance,

which he could later exploit in a variety of ways.

I. Method of work

(a) The sources of the version in Cicero

1
This is a weary subject. Sadly, we cannot ignore it. ‘It is universally accepted that the part of Plutarch’s

biography devoted to Cicero’s consulship (10–23) clearly forms a single unit, and, apart from occasional
2
insertions, must be drawn from one source.’ So wrote Lendle in 1967. The arguments adduced for this

view are not, in fact, particularly strong. Of course, this part of Cicero is unified enough, and presents a

coherent picture of Cicero himself; but Plutarch would not be much of a biographer if he could not
3
produce such a unified portrait himself, however many sources he used. Of course, Plutarch is warm in
4
his appreciation of Cicero in these chapters – warmer, perhaps, than later in the Life; but that need not

suggest a different source, for Plutarch himself might reasonably decide that Cicero deserved more praise

for his consulship than for his later career. Lendle’s formulation may still be close to the truth, but

qualifications may be needed: in particular, different parts of the Cicero account may show a rather

different texture; and the number of ‘occasional insertions’– that is, additions made by Plutarch and

drawn from different sources – may be greater than is normally thought.

It will be useful to divide the Cicero narrative into three sections: chs. 10–11, on the background of

the conspiracy; chs. 12–20, the meat of the narrative; 20.4–23.6, the final debate and its sequel. The

second of these sections is marked by its extreme closeness to the account of Cassius Dio (37.25–35).
5
Both Plutarch and Dio naturally impose their own emphases and organization, but the underlying

similarities are unmistakable. The balance of the treatment, the choice of the material, the sequence and
6
articulation of the narrative – all are far too close to be coincidental. It is clear that both authors

ultimately derive from a common source, whether or not they knew it directly. That source is very likely

to be Cicero’s own ‘On his consulship’ (περὶ ὑπατείας), the commentarium consulatus mei graece
7
compositum (‘memoir of my consulship written in Greek’) mentioned at Att. 1.19(19).10. Some of the
8
items included by Plutarch and Dio are explicitly attested for that work, and the whole narrative is

tellingly sympathetic to Cicero.

9
As we shall see later, Plutarch seems to have known the περὶ ὑπατείας
10
at first hand, and he presumably took over his narrative structure directly from that reading. There

may well be a few ‘occasional insertions’ from Plutarch’s other reading and general knowledge – the
11
detail on Lentulus in ch. 17, for instance; but in this section such ‘insertions’ are, it seems, fairly

limited.

The introduction to the conspiracy (chs. 10–11) seems rather different. Here too some of the

material may come from the περὶ ὑπατείας: the account of Catiline’s youthful outrages, perhaps (10.3–
12
4) – though it is difficult to be sure. Other elements are harder to assign to this source. Plutarch

antedates the conspiracy to the year 64, and uses it to explain the aristocratic support for Cicero’s

election campaign (10.1; 11.2–3). It is possible that the περὶ ὑπατείας did the same, but it is not very

likely: Cicero himself would hardly have felt that the enthusiasm for his election required that sort of
13
explanation. These chapters in fact seem to show traces of a different source, one influenced by
Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae. Sallust, like Plutarch, antedates the conspiracy, and thus explains Cicero’s

election (BC 23.5–24.1). Plutarch criticizes those who ‘wished to stir up a revolution’ ἰδίων ἔνεκα
πλεονεξι ω̑ ν, οὐ πρὸς τὸ βέλτιστον (‘for the sake of their own greed, not for the best ends’, 10.2): his
strong words are redolent of Sallust’s famous remark of BC 38.3 – bonum publicum simulantes pro sua

quisque potentia certabant, ‘they pretended it was for the common good; in fact each was struggling to

advance his own power’ – and are slightly odd in their Plutarchan context. Plutarch stresses the

significance of Pompey’s absence in words very close to the phraseology of Sallust (Cic. 10.2; cf. Sall. BC

16.5). There is little trace of Sallust in Plutarch’s subsequent narrative: it does seem likely that these first

two chapters are influenced by a different source.

The end of the account (20.4–23.6) is equally unlikely to be drawn solely from the περὶ ὑπατείας. It
is not perhaps very significant that Plutarch misrepresents the terms of Caesar’s proposal, making him
14
suggest temporary rather than permanent imprisonment (21.1). That seems simply to be his own
15
misunderstanding of an accurate source. But 20.4–6, where Plutarch discusses the possible complicity

of Caesar, is harder to explain: it is very difficult to believe that that delicate theme was treated in the

περὶ ὑπατείας. 16
Cicero’s own speech in the senate is described unsympathetically (21.2–3), and his role

in the debate is really very small: one would have expected the περί ύπατείας to show much more of the
amour propre revealed in Cicero’s correspondence (Att. 12.21(260).1). And the περὶ ὑπατείας would
hardly have preserved the propaganda of the tribunes, proclaiming that they were eager to recall Pompey

‘so that he could destroy Cicero’s tyranny’ (23.4). Yet a great deal remains which can perfectly well

derive from the περὶ ὑπατείας: the entire ch. 22 is gushful in its enthusiasm for Cicero, and Plutarch is
17
careful to stress Cicero’s popularity when he lays down his consulate. It is natural to infer that two

sources are here combined by Plutarch. One is the περὶ ὑπατείας; the other is harder to identify, and

guesswork is profitless. One small clue might be the enthusiastic treatment which this second source

apparently afforded to the role of Cato (cf. 21.4, 23.5–6). ‘Catonian’ literature – biographies,

pamphlets, speeches, and more – was of course ubiquitous in the early Empire, and was doubtless
18
familiar to Plutarch; but equally enthusiasm for Cato soon infiltrated the main stream of historical

tradition, and (for instance) Livy might be the second source here. It does not matter much.

It seems, then, that Plutarch’s account does not simply derive from the περὶ ὑπατείας: most of his

material can still come from that work, but – particularly at the beginning and end of the account – the

material has been supplemented and corrected from other sources.

In this particular case, we can be reasonably sure that it is Plutarch himself who has done this

supplementation and correction: the alternative possibility, that the various sources were combined by
19
some intermediate source whom Plutarch then closely copied, is really much less likely. For, although

Plutarch does not quote the περὶ ὑπατείας explicitly in the Cicero version, he does so twice in the later
Lives, and those passages clearly imply that he knew the work at first hand. The first passage is Crass.
20
13.3–4: Plutarch quotes ‘a certain work’ of Cicero which accused Crassus and Caesar of complicity in

the plot, but points out that this work was published after both men were dead: ‘but in the περὶ
ὑπατείας Cicero says that Crassus came to him at night, bringing a letter…’ – and he goes on to give an
account tellingly similar to the one he had earlier given at Cic. 15. The second of the passages is Caes.

8.3–4, where he reports a tale that Caesar was threatened by ‘many of the youths who formed Cicero’s

bodyguard’ as he left the senate, but Cicero shook his head to stop them from attacking. ‘If this was

true,’ he goes on, ‘I do not know why Cicero did not mention it in the περὶ ὑπατείας. He was later

criticized for losing an extraordinarily good opportunity for attacking Caesar…’ If we take those

περὶ
passages at face value, their implication is evident: Plutarch is familiar with the content of the

ὑπατείας, knowing both what it contained and what it omitted, and is confident enough to exploit his
knowledge in historical argument. That is entirely credible. What is difficult to accept is the alternative,

sceptical view – that Plutarch simply lifted the two references to the περὶ ὑπατείας from an

intermediate source, and did not know the work at first hand. For, if he took over the references in this

way, we must assume that he also took over the entire historical arguments to which the references

contribute. (Why, after all, should any author have commented that ‘the story is omitted in the περὶ
ὑπατείας’ unless he was discussing the historicity of that story?) Yet those arguments do not look as if

Plutarch has simply stolen them from a source. Indeed, they are precisely the sorts of argument that

Plutarch himself produces elsewhere. There is the characteristic use of wide reading, the shrewd sense of

the distortions which bias can produce, the facility in deploying one version against another – and at the

same time a certain naiveté in political judgement, an excessive taste for the argumentum ex silentio, and
21
a wooliness of logical argument. That is particularly clear in the second passage, the one from Caesar:

the omission of the incident from the περὶ ὑπατείας should not have surprised him. Indeed, ‘it is
22
exactly the sort of incident which Cicero might be expected to omit’ – for the very reasons which
Plutarch goes on to discuss. Cicero, criticized for letting Caesar escape scot-free, would have no wish to

remind contemporaries of the incident. This does sound very much like Plutarch himself.

When we talk of Plutarch’s sources, we should remember that he doubtless used different sources in

different ways: sometimes he would have an authority before his eyes as he composed, sometimes he
23
would rely on his memory of a work which he had read at a preliminary stage. The dominant role of

the περί ύπατείας in most of this account might suggest that this, and this alone, was open in front of

him as he composed his own draft. He will have read his other sources during his earlier preparation: it

would not be surprising if he now relied on his memory of their content and used them to supplement

the περὶ ὑπατείας in various ways. Some of these supplements could be quite extensive, as we have seen:
others might be more trivial and fleeting. Consider, for instance, Plutarch’s digression on Lentulus (Cic.

17). Cicero himself would hardly have conveyed all the stray antiquarian knowledge of that chapter; yet

this was Lentulus’ one important excursion into Roman history, and Plutarch must have derived most of
24
his information from his general reading for the conspiracy. He remembered it, and he exploited it. A

few chapters later, Plutarch came to the story of the Bona Dea. He again included some digressions –

one item on the festival itself, one on Terentia’s interest in politics, one on Cicero’s trust in P. Nigidius. It

is possible that the περὶ ὑπατείας included at least some of this material: ‘Cicero himself ’ is quoted for

the Terentia item. But it is likely that at least some of it comes from Plutarch’s earlier, wider reading.

When preparing Cicero, then, Plutarch seems to have proceeded as follows. He first read a number

of sources: guided by this preliminary reading, he decided to base most – but not all – of his account on

the περὶ ὑπατείας; he also noted the particular areas where the περὶ ὑπατείας would require addition
and correction. He then composed: very probably, the περί ύπατείας alone would be open before his
eyes as he dictated or wrote, but he would remember enough from his earlier reading to revise or

supplement that account when it was necessary. One final point: it is very unlikely that, as he stood with

the scroll of περὶ ὑπατείας in his hands, Plutarch proceeded immediately to write his final version. The
normal practice was to write a ὑπóμνημα, a businesslike ‘draft’ of the final version, containing the
25
factual material but lacking the essential artistic finish. Plutarch presumably did the same: he first

dictated the ὑπóμνημα, and then rewrote it, devoting a whole separate stage to the stylistic and literary
refinement which mattered so much.

(b) The later Lives

What did Plutarch do, when he came back to the same subject in his later Lives? Did he laboriously

start from scratch, going back to the original sources and repeating the whole process? Did he simply

base his account on Cicero, rearranging the items he had already amassed? Did he combine his old

material with some new additions, gleanings from his more recent reading? Or perhaps the four

accounts were compiled quite independently, with Plutarch turning to new sources for each new Life?

The last possibility may immediately be excluded, for the four accounts are strikingly similar in their

language and their narrative articulation. This is clearest in their versions of the final debate: a few

examples will be enough.

Caesar has just made his moderate proposal. Cic. (21.2) goes on: οὕσης δὲ τη̑ ς γνώμης ἐπιεικου̑ ς
καὶ του̑ λὲγοντος εἰπει̑ν δυνατωτατου… (‘the proposal seeming a reasonable one, and the speaker

being most eloquent…’). At the same point, Caes. (8.1) has: οὕτω δὲ τη̑ ς γνώμης φιλανθρώπου
φανείσης καὶ του̑ λόγου δυνατω̑ ς ἐπ’ αὐτη̑ ῥηθέντος… (‘the proposal having struck the senate as

humane, and the speech having been powerfully delivered…’). Caesar’s speech has a great impact,ὥστε
καὶ τὸν Σιλανὸν αυ̑ θις μεταβαλὸμενον παραιτει̑σθαι καί λέγειν, ώς οὐδ’ αὐτὸς
(as Cic. 21.3 puts it)

εἴποι θανατυκὴν γνώμην ἐσχατην γὰρ ἀνδρὶ βουλευτῃ̑ ‘Pωμαίων είναι δίκην τὸ δεσμωτήριον (‘so
that Silanus too changed his view, excused himself, and said that not even he had meant to suggest

execution: for the “ultimate penalty” for a Roman senator was prison’). Compare the language of Cato

Minor (22.6):ὥστε καί Σιλενὸν ἒξαρναι ει̑ναι καί λέγειν ὡς οὐδ’ αὐτός εἲποι θὰνατον, ὰλλ’
εἰργμόν ἒσχατον γὰρ ἀνδρὶ ‘pωμαίῳ του̑ το κακω̑ ν ἁπάντων. (‘so that Silanus too denied what he
had implied, and said that he too had not meant death but imprisonment: for this was the ultimate evil

of all for a Roman’). Cato himself soon stops the flood of support for Caesar, and attacks Caesar

personally – καί τῳ̑ λόγῳ σφοδρῳ̑ς συνεπερείσας ὲπὶ τὸν Kαίσαρα τὴν ὐπὸνοαιν (‘in his speech he

pressed home vehemently the suspicions against Caesar’), as Cic. 21.4 puts it: compare Caes. 8.2,

K ατωνος δὲ καί τὴν ὐπόνοιαν ἂμα τῳ̑ λόγῳ συνεπερείσαντος αὐτῳ̑ καί συγκατεξαναστάντος 26

ερρωμὲνως (‘as he spoke Cato pressed home the suspicion vehemently against him, and joined in
confronting him vigorously’: cf. also Cato 23.1).

To bring Crassus into the analysis, we have to go back earlier. The story of Crassus’ night-time visit

to Cicero is very similar in Cicero and in Crassus, and the same impression recurs. Plutarch is too good
an artist to repeat his exact words, but he often comes very near to it. It is not just the close verbal

parallels; it is the organization and articulation of the whole narrative. These accounts could not have

been written independently.

Yet Plutarch did not simply re-read Cicero, and choose his material from the items he had there

exploited. It will be helpful to list the new items which the later versions include:

Caesar

1.Piso and Catulus criticize Cicero for not taking the opportunity to implicate Caesar (7.5): cf. 8.4, the

general ‘blame’ which Cicero incurred. The Cicero account discussed Cicero’s reasons for not assailing

Caesar (20.6–7), but there was no suggestion that Cicero had been criticized for this, and certainly no

hint of the agitation of Piso and Catulus.

2.The arguments used in Caesar’s speech: it would not be right to execute men of such dignity and high

birth without a trial; if they were imprisoned until the crisis was over, the senate would be able to take

its decision with calmness and reflection (7.8–9). Hints of these arguments recur in Cato (22.5).

3.Cicero’s youths threaten Caesar; Curio protects him, and Cicero shakes his head to deter them (8.3–

4).

4.Caesar speaks in his defence in the senate: there are popular demonstrations in his favour (8.5).

5.Cato’s corn-dole (8.6–7).

Crassus

6.Crassus denounced by ‘a certain person’ (13.3).

7.Cicero accused Crassus and Caesar of complicity in ‘a certain work’ published after their death (13.4).

(This was presumably his ‘Theopompean’ de consiliis, mentioned at Att. 2.6(26).2 and 14.17(371).6: cf.
27
Dio 39.10.3).

Cato

8.The arguments used by Cato (23.1–2).

9.Cato’s speech is said to survive because it was taken down by stenographers (23.3–4).

10. Servilia’s letter (24.1–3) – a tale told also in Brut. (5.2–4). While Cato was speaking, a message was

brought to Caesar. Cato was suspicious, and challenged Caesar to read it aloud. Caesar silently passed it

to Cato: it was a love-letter from Cato’s own sister, Servilia. Cato angrily hurled it back at Caesar.

Not all this material need be taken from a source. Plutarch is quite capable of composing the speeches of

Caesar and Cato from his imagination, and indeed there is some indication that this is what he has
28
done. But most of the items must come from somewhere. There are several which Plutarch had
29
probably discovered in his recent reading, and had not known at the time when he was writing Cicero.

He would probably have included the tale of the stenographers in Cicero, had he known it then: it was

exactly the antiquarian item to catch his interest. It is hard, too, to believe that he would have neglected

the de consiliis story in the context of Cic. 20.6–7, when he was discussing Caesar’s complicity: he would
30
have revelled in the erudite allusion to Cicero’s own works (cf. 20.3). Again, the role of Piso and

Catulus was probably mentioned by one of Plutarch’s sources for Caesar. Plutarch has just told the tale

of Caesar’s election as pontifex maximus (Caes. 7.1–4). His source for that story might very well have

concluded by remarking on Catulus’ resentment, that resentment which now became apparent. And,

finally, the story of Servilia’s letter may well have come from the special reading – biographies,
31
pamphlets, and memoirs – which Plutarch undertook for Cato and Brutus.

But a few cases remain: items which show a telling similarity to the material included in Cicero,

items which he knew, but omitted, when writing the earlier Life. One very probable case is Caes. 8.3–4,

the youths’ attack on Caesar and Curio’s timely move to protect him. The story is known to Suetonius

(Div. Iul. 14.2); that part of Suetonius’ account is very similar to Plutarch’s account in Cicero, and surely
32
derives from a source which Plutarch knew at that stage. The same is likely to be true of several of the

other items. The Cicero is well-informed on the senatorial sessions which followed the conspirators’

execution (23–4), and Plutarch may well already have known of the session when Caesar delivered his

apologia (Caes. 8.5): it was not very relevant for his purposes in Cicero, and he might very reasonably

choose to omit it. Again, the ‘Catonian’ nature of some of the Cicero account has already been observed.

Plutarch’s source there evidently stressed Cato’s statesmanship in quelling the ills of the city (Cic. 23.5–

καὶ πάσῃ
6, especially the emphasis on Cato’s activity as a boon ‘both for Cicero and for the whole city’,

τῃ̑ πὸλει…). It would be odd if that source omitted Cato’s corn-dole (Caes. 8.6–7). Compare Cato 26:
it is very similar in its enthusiasm to both the Cicero and the Caesar passages, and it treats the corn-dole
and the proposal to recall Pompey (cf. Cic. 23.4) in close connection. It is very likely indeed that

Plutarch knew of the dole at the time of writing Cicero, and that the omission was deliberate.

It seems, then, that much of the new material in the later Lives derives from the same sources as

Cicero; and the verbal and stylistic closeness of the accounts is quite clear. There are several possible

explanations of this.

1. Perhaps Plutarch simply went back to the same sources as before, and exploited them anew: the

close verbal similarities will then reflect Plutarch’s slavish adhesion to the language of a particular source,
33
closely copied on a number of different occasions. That is not very likely. It would be an oddly

uneconomic procedure, involving a good deal of mechanical repetition of the same labour; and it is very

hard to believe that Plutarch kept so close to the precise language and style of his sources. Where we can

check his stylistic adaptation of his source-material, he does not behave like this: in Coriolanus, for

instance, he takes over a great deal of material from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, but such close verbal
34
copying is hard to parallel. ‘Plutarch naturally felt no obligation to follow Dionysius’ wording or

rhetorical treatment. Even if it stuck in his mind, he did not apparently admire it greatly; generally
35
speaking, he could do much better.’

2. Perhaps he re-read Cicero, based most of his account on that, and inserted odd extra items which

he happened to remember from the research which he had undertaken at that time. This affords a good

explanation of the verbal similarities: it is much more plausible to think that Plutarch kept closely to an

earlier account of his own than to suppose such a mechanical copying of a source. And his memory was
36
evidently very good. It is not hard to believe that (for instance) Cato’s corn-dole lodged in his mind,

and he was able to refer to it years after he first read the story. He may, of course, have come across other

references to it since then; and, if in doubt, he could always go back to check a particular item in its

original source, though that was a more laborious procedure for him than it would be for a modern
37
scholar. All this is perfectly reasonable.

3. But another possibility also deserves consideration, even if it is speculative. That ύπὸμνημα, the

‘draft’ for Cicero which preceded the final version, may have played a more important role. There was no

reason for Plutarch to confine its scope to material which he was certain he would use in Cicero itself.

He must have known that he would be writing other Roman biographies later in the series – even if he

did not know which ones they would be, or how many he would complete. The ύπόμνημα was the

obvious place to jot down any items which he might later need, and it would be an easy matter to refer

back to it when he came to write the other Lives. It was a very rational way to work, and one which

would ultimately save him a great amount of labour. He might very well note in his ύπομνημα the story
of the youths’ attack on Caesar, and Cicero’s warning shake of the head; if he did, he would add a note

that the story was omitted from the περὶ ύπατείας. When he came back to the subject in Caesar, he
38
would find the note, and choose to exploit it.

This may even help to explain the inconsequential nature of the argument (p. 48) – the point that,

despite Plutarch’s puzzlement, it was natural for Cicero to omit the incident from the περὶ ύπατείας,
precisely because he had later been criticized in this way for missing his opportunity. When originally

drafting hisύπομνημα for Cicero, it would be easy enough for Plutarch to note the silence of the περὶ
ύπατείας: that work would be in the top of his mind. But he need not at that time have been thinking
of the later criticisms of Cicero. That theme would be more in his thoughts at the time of writing

Caesar, when he was dwelling more on Caesar as the great man of the people and the opponents who

lost their chance. That would be the natural time to add the further thought that Cicero ‘was certainly

accused later of missing an ideal opportunity of foiling Caesar because of his terror of the ordinary

people’, and he might then take over his earlier περὶ ύπατείας note without thinking through its

implications.

All this is naturally guesswork; and, even if the conjecture is right, we cannot know how detailed

and coherent the draft would be. But this theory would provide another explanation of the verbal and

narrative closeness of the four accounts, for all four would represent elaborations of the same original

draft. It would not be surprising if the language of that draft left its mark upon each of the final

versions.

II. Biographical technique

It is useful for this inquiry that the most detailed account, that of Cicero, is the earliest. We can now be

sure that Plutarch knew all the Cicero material when writing the later Lives, and, if he omits any of the

Cicero items, this must be a matter of conscious decision, not mere ignorance.

Plutarch’s biographical theory provided one unequivocal criterion for selecting or excluding material

for a Life. On several occasions, he says that he will concentrate particularly on the individual hero’s
character, his ἠ̑θος or τρὸπος.
39
Hence, one might think, Plutarch would simply select the items most

relevant to that hero, picking the material most directly relating to the hero’s career, actions, and
40
experience. That is a fairly simple criterion: ‘the law of biographical relevance’.

Some applications of this ‘law’ are quite clear. The scale of the treatment naturally varies: the

conspiracy was central to Cicero’s career, less material to Cato and to Caesar, and barely relevant at all to

Crassus. Cicero consequently gives the fullest treatment – though even there he dismisses the military
41
side swiftly, for Cicero had no part in it. Caesar and Cato limit themselves to the debate in the senate:

they even omit the events immediately subsequent to that debate, Cicero’s final triumphant moments,

the dramatic announcement of the execution, and the exultant homeward procession. Crassus deals only

with the incident of the letters, adding a comment on Crassus’ subsequent relations with Cicero. Even

within these limits, the emphasis inevitably differs. Caesar’s brush with Cicero’s band of youths is

mentioned only in his own Life (8.2–4). Caesar gives the most detail of Caesar’s speech, Cato develops

the arguments used by Cato: both ignore the speech of Cicero, to which Cic. 21.2–3 had given a full

treatment. Plutarch evidently exploits his biographical licence to abbreviate or exclude material.

Yet this is a ‘licence’ rather than a ‘law’. Plutarch often spreads himself in unexpected places. Crassus

called on Cicero at dead of night, bringing a set of letters which incriminated his old acquaintance

Catiline. Crassus may have been acting from nobility of character, or he may have been concerned to

save his own neck: Cic. 15.3 hints at both possibilities. Either way, the story told more about Crassus’

character than about Cicero’s. Yet it is Cicero, not Crassus, which gives the more lavish version of the

tale. Again, some said that Caesar had been involved in the conspiracy, and that was hardly irrelevant to

the delineation of his character. Yet it is Cicero which gives the fullest discussion of the question (20.6–

7); Caes. 7.7 passes very swiftly over the topic – αδηλον εστίν, ‘it is unclear’, and Plutarch hurries on to
the senatorial sitting. During that debate a billet doux was brought to Caesar from Servilia, Cato’s sister:

she and Caesar were having an affair. Indicative of Caesar’s character – but Caesar omits the tale, Cato
42
(24.1–3) and Brutus (5.3–4) include it. Plutarch is indeed always capable of being side-tracked from

his biographical subject. Cicero can accommodate a long digression on the character of Lentulus (17);

Cato includes a distracting item on Cicero’s stenographers (23.3–4).

43
Perhaps, then, Plutarch simply selects the items most favourable to each of his subjects? That view

is closer to the truth: it might at least explain why Caesar omits the affair with Servilia, or plays down

the question of Caesar’s complicity; it might explain why Cato seems less enthusiastic about Caesar’s
44
moderate proposal than Cicero and Caesar. And it is true that Plutarch thought a biographer should

not give too much stress to his subject’s faults or weaknesses: he says as much at Cim. 2.3–5. But there

does seem to be more to it than this. In the same passage of Cimon he makes it clear that he will include

such faults and weaknesses, even if he does not emphasize them, and that does seem to reflect his

biographical practice. In these very Lives, he is prepared to criticize Crassus, for instance, for his greed

and his glory-hunting: indeed, the item immediately preceding the Catilinarian conspiracy is an

unambiguous criticism of Crassus’ unsatisfactory censorship. In Cato, he is normally enthusiastic, but he

passes from the mention of Servilia to discuss the unfortunate way in which Cato treated his womenfolk
45
(24.4–25).

Nor in fact is it true that each Life treats its subject in the most favourable way. Consider, again, the

Crassus. Had Plutarch been genuinely eager to be generous to Crassus, what would he have done? He

would have passed quickly over the question of Crassus’ possible involvement with Catiline; he would

have dwelt on the circumstances in which Crassus passed the letters over to Cicero;he would have

emphasized the contribution which Crassus thereby made to the detection of the conspirators. But he

does none of this. He discusses the complicity question in some detail – much more than he had in

Cicero, where he had simply remarked that Crassus was ‘anxious to clear himself a little of the suspicions

he had incurred through his earlier friendship with Catiline’ (15.3). He passes over the story of the

letters swiftly, mentioning it only as the clinching argument in the complicity question: there is none of
46
the dramatic richness and elaboration he had given the story in Cicero. What interests him here is the

lasting hatred which Crassus and Cicero developed for one another (13.5). The train of his thought is
47
not very clear, but it is anyway not the most generous emphasis to give.

48
Plutarch’s technique is, in fact, rather more subtle. Different Lives have different interests, and he

does not use the conspiracy in the same way in every Life. Caesar, for instance, is not very concerned to

make moral points, whether favourable to Caesar or not: he does not, for example, make much of

Caesar’s affection for his comrades, or his clemency in the Civil Wars, or his personal respect for

Pompey. His concern in that Life is rather different: he wishes to bring out the historical factors which

enabled Caesar to establish the ‘tyranny which he had sought all his life’ (69.1; cf. 57.1), and
49
particularly the support of the urban demos for their champion. The tale of the conspiracy is carefully
woven into this scheme. The introduction is eloquent: the fearful optimates wonder how far Caesar will

lead on the demos (7.4). Piso and Catulus consequently attack Cicero for missing his opportunity:

Caesar might now have been cut short (7.5). But Cicero was said to have stopped his bodyguard from

attacking Caesar – perhaps ‘in fear of the demos’ (8.3): people certainly criticized him for his ‘cowardice

before the demos’ later, as they bewailed the opportunity for crushing Caesar which had been lost (8.4).

Popular demonstrations for Caesar followed, and these are emphasized (8.5). The next item is closely

linked, Cato’s corn-dole, represented as a successful attempt to quell Caesar’s growing power. All this is

clearly relevant to Caesar’s biography – but there is no word of Caesar’s ethos, no attempt to characterize

the man himself. He is seldom said to seek popularity, he merely acquires it. Plutarch is simply

concerned to trace the sources of his coming power.

This immediately explains some of the omissions. If Caesar was involved with Catiline, it would

have illuminated his character. But it was historically unimportant, it did not lead to anything: Caesar

got out in time, and his opponents lost their chance. Plutarch is more interested in Caesar’s defence

against these accusations in the senate (8.5), for that promoted the popular unrest which Cato needed to

calm. Again, Servilia’s letter would have illuminated Caesar’s personal morality; but Caesar shows very
50
little interest in such personalia, and gives very little information on Caesar’s private life. Plutarch

again preferred to omit the story.

Cicero is rather different. There too Plutarch is interested in placing his subject in a firm and

intelligible historical context, and begins with a powerful introduction. He digresses on the Sullan

settlement; he stresses the significance of Pompey’s absence; he gives some idea of the nature of Catiline’s

support; he mentions the Etruscan troubles, and emphasizes that inequality of wealth played a part; he
51
knows the prejudice of the optimates, and the difficulties which confronted a novus homo. Not all the

points are well expressed: the treatment of inequality of wealth is restricted and unimaginative; and he

later introduces the Sullan veterans purely for their electoral significance (14.3). But the interest in the

historical background is quite clear. Such interests, however, are soon submerged, and there is little

attempt to relate the detailed narrative of the conspiracy to any wider framework. These are not the

representatives of an oppressed demos rising to fight their oligarchic masters, they are simply a group of

villains subverting the empire for their own ends. After the first chapters, Plutarch’s main concern is to

tell a good story. And the tale of Crassus was certainly a good story: and so, with a classic story-telling ‘it

happened like this’ ( ἠ̑ν δὲ τοιόνδε), he allows a lavish treatment. A little later, Cicero was debating the
line he should take with the Catilinarian prisoners. His psychology offered ample room for imaginative

speculation, and Plutarch did not resist the temptation (19.6–7). The topic suggested a further

question: why did Cicero not move against Caesar? And this was where the question of Caesar’s

complicity became relevant (20.6–7). These chapters are unusually rich in such imaginative psychology:

here it was an obvious way of adding depth and suspense to the story. It also adds to the picture of
52
Cicero’s agonized vacillation which so often recurs in this Life. It is very unlike the austere Caesar.

The clearest contrast with Caesar is furnished by Cato. As usual in that Life, there is no attempt to

give a wider historical background – certainly nothing as striking as the remarkable analysis of Dio

37.22, representing Cato as a ‘lover of the people’, δημεραστής. Plutarch assumes that the senate’s

vacillation during the final debate was influenced by ‘their fear of the demos’ (Cato 22.6), but makes

nothing of it. He is much more interested in his moralizing, in painting his picture of the unbending

political sage. That moralism is not confined to Cato himself. Plutarch also tells us his view of Caesar.

His policy is disgraceful and self-interested: ‘whenever there was any hint of revolution or commotion in

the city, he saw it as the material for his own ambitions, and sought to foster it rather than see its fire

quenched. And so he made many specious and lenient remarks…’ ( καί πα̑ σαν ἐν τᾐ̑ πόλει μεταβολὴν
καὶ κιν̀ ησιν, ὥσπερ ὒλην ώ̑ν αὐτὸς διενοει̑το, βουλὸμενος αὒξειν μα̑ λλον ἢ σβεννυμὲνην
περιορα̑ ν, ἐπαγωγὰ πολλὰ καὶ φιλανθρωπα διαλεχθείς, 22.5). The vigorous denunciation comes as a
surprise, for the Caesar had not explicitly suggested that Caesar was simply furthering his own long-term

ambitions. Both Cicero and Caesar had given the impression that Plutarch rather approved of Caesar’s

proposal: Cicero had described it as επίείκης (‘reasonable’, Cic. 21.2, quoted on p. 49 above).
53
But in
54
Cato the ethical colouring is consistent, and Caesar is the villain, the perfect foil to Cato himself. In

such a context, it is not surprising that room is found for the episode of Servilia’s letter (24.1–3). Cato

emerges from that story as the champion of morality, with contempt for the despicable Caesar. The

whole Catilinarian story is transmuted to a moral fable, for that is what the texture of the Life requires.

As with content, so with style. The passage on Caesar’s ambitions is obviously striking: the two bold

metaphors, ὒλην and σβεννυμὲνην combine to suggest the ruthless fanning of a perilous fire. The

excited tone had been struck at the beginning: the Catilinarian affair is ‘the greatest and most glorious’,

Catiline plans the ‘fatal and utter revolution’ of the empire, he is ‘stirring up civil conflicts and wars’.

The elevation of the language persists. Cicero’s μεταβαλόμενον is replaced by ἒξαρνον εί̑ναι
δεσμωτήριον gives way to the more picturesque είργμὸν. Legal precision is out of place here, and so

Silanus no longer says, as he said in Cicero, that imprisonment is the ultimate penalty for a Roman

senator ; it is now simply the ultimate penalty for ‘a Roman’. (The passages are quoted on pp. 49–50.)

Then we have the breathless fervour of Cato’s speech (23.1–2): the vocabulary is pungent, the words

tumble out, much too precipitate and rapid to accommodate Plutarch’s usual elegant periods. It is by far

the most unrestrained passage of all four accounts, and it fits the air of the whole piece. Plutarch

concentrates on rousing the audience’s reaction, admiration for Cato and disgust for Caesar. By the

stylistic treatment as much as by the choice of material, he achieves that end.

This artistic sense is ubiquitous. The language of Caesar is lucid, elegant, and periodic, with some

solemn and weighty phrases: note particularly the ponderous words of 8.2 νεανικώ̑ς ἐναντίωθέντων…
συνεπερείσαντος αῢ τῳ̑ καί συγκατεξαναστάντος ἐρρωμὲνως. 55
Such a style is appropriate enough for

its careful political analysis. The Cicero account, by contrast, employs a whole variety of styles,

sharpening and controlling the reader’s reactions to the story. Consider, for instance, his treatment of

the Otho story (Cic. 13). The tale is introduced with a portentous, periodic generalization (13.1),

pompous in content and full of abstractions: τὸ δίκαιον, τό καλὸν, τὸ κολακευ̑ ον, τὸ λυπουν, τὸ
συμφέρον. It reads almost like a parody of Thucydides. The balanced, periodic sentences continue: the
cola remain long and fluent, the solemn Mα̑ ρκος ”Oθων στρατηγώ̑ν maintains the stylistic level. Then

three brief, staccato sentences, with equally abrupt cola (§§ 3–4): these describe the actual events, and

the speed and tension of the moment are admirably conveyed. The story is rounded off with another

long, surging period (§ 4), stressing Cicero’s role: another splendid exploit for the successful consul, who

has calmed the troubled moment. The impression is conveyed by the style as much as by the content.

On a slightly larger scale, one can see the same stylistic variety in Cic. 18–19. First, note the way in

which he uses detail as he introduces the monstrous plans of Lentulus (18.1–3). He is an expert at the

picturesque sharpening of a scene at crucial moments. The assault is planned for ‘a night of the

Saturnalia’; the conspirators hide ‘swords and tow and brimstone’ in Cethegus’ house; the city is divided

into one hundred areas, each one man’s responsibility; there is a plan to block the conduits and murder

anyone bringing water. None of this detail really leads to anything, and certainly none is very relevant to

Cicero’s character. But the reader is left with the sense of a thickening plot, with a ruthless and

meticulous villain who knows exactly what he is about. Then we move on to the revelations of the

Allobroges. The story is told in a slow, heavy, solemn style. Note the anaphora – ‘letters to their senate,

letters to Catiline’ (§ 5), ‘many outside informants, many within the conspirators’ confidence’ (§ 7).

Note the metaphors and the tone of § 7: ‘the conspirators were unstable, they conducted most of their

dealings amid wine and women: Cicero pursued them with his sober calculation and his powerful

intelligence.’ The balance of the sentences is very carefully controlled, and the rolling clauses of § 7

powerfully convey the irresistible combination of so many sources of strength for Cicero’s cause. Then,

in ch. 19, the dénouement. The beginning of the chapter is swift and staccato – again, not merely the

sentences, but the clauses and cola as well. Note especially 19.2 with its rush of hasty cola, ending with

the curt νεοθήκτους άπάσας, ‘all of them newly sharpened’. There is none of the solemn language of

the previous chapter. And Plutarch is again not afraid of the sharpening detail: the individuals are

named, however obscure; room is found for Lentulus’ change of clothing. The speed and vigour of the

narrative are engaging.

On a larger scale, too, the Cicero account is excellently controlled. The narrative is divided into

panels by a series of relaxing diversions: the digression on Lentulus (17), then the leisurely treatment of

the Bona Dea story (19.4–20.3). Such quiet stories are naturally not told with such stylistic elaboration.

The end of the story is marked by a string of apophthegmata (24–8). That part of the Life may strike us
56
as ill-conceived, but it gives a shift of register after the Life’s narrative highlight. Similarly, the

encomiastic flood of the Cato is relieved by the digression on his womenfolk (25–6); the careful analysis

of the Caesar finds a more leisurely complement in the expansive story of Clodius and the Bona Dea (9–

10). Naturally, such stories do not receive such a powerful and elaborate style: everything is more

relaxed.

Plutarch has the faults of his virtues. He can become interested in the strayest items: this gives his

work much of his charm, but it can also distract. The notice of the stenographers is interesting, but it

disturbs the rapidity of Cato’s narrative (23.3–4), and the detail of the end of the debate has to be

incorporated curtly and awkwardly (23.5). It may be fascinating to know that the temple of Jupiter

Stator stands at the beginning of the Sacra Via; but the reader might not want to be told it at Cic. 16.3,

in the middle of the tense narrative of Catiline’s assassination plot and the following senatorial meeting.

Again, he tries to find historical keys, but these are seldom cogent. The views of the Roman demos
57
developed in Caesar and Cicero are not ultimately reconcilable. Social factors are mentioned only

when they affect urban politics – the Sullan veterans coming to Rome for the elections or the Etruscan
reports provoking the senatus consultum ultimum (Cic. 14.1; 15.5). He stresses the Rullan bill (12), but

not as an index of rural discontent: it is simply an example of the vastness of the revolutionaries’ plans.

The virtues remain: and an important element in those virtues is the freedom with which he

operates. The choice of material for each Life may be very wide-ranging, and the Lives can be very

varied indeed in their interests and their principles of selection.

Notes

1
For bibliography, cf. Lendle 1967, 97–8 and then Scardigli’s indispensable survey, 1979, 114–17, supplemented by Titchener 1992,

4146 and Moles 1988, 31–2. Add now particularly Schettino 2000.

2
1967, 96–7.

3
Erbse 1956, 420 n. 2: ‘the favourite inference from unity of composition to unity of source seems self-evident to even the best of source-

critics. No-one bothers even to speak of it. But that assumes a particular answer to the real question – the question of the nature and

form of the unity which we have.’ In that article Erbse convincingly argues that much of the unity of Cicero is owed to Plutarch himself.

4
Scardigli 1979, 195 n. 658.

5
A few examples. At 14.4 Plutarch summarizes a series of omens preserved in several different contexts by Dio (37.9.1–2; 25.1–2; 34.3–

4). At 15.1 he greatly abbreviates the material of Dio 37.30 – the gathering of Catiline’s supporters – because he has already covered so

much of the ground at Cic. 10–11. Dio includes some typical guesses at motivation (37.29.2; 30.5; 33.4, etc.), and transposes

thepactioprouinciarum of Antonius and Cicero (Plut. Cic. 12.3–4) to a later context (37.33.4): that may well be because, with a

characteristically interesting but extravagant piece of historical guesswork, he has decided that the Romans felt no suspicion of Antonius

in the early stages of the conspiracy.

6
Again, a few examples. The order of events in Plut. Cic. 12–13 and Dio 37.25–8 is very similar, but cannot be historical: cf. Cicero’s list

of consular orations, Att. 2.1(21).3. The style, language, and narrative articulation of Plut. Cic. 14.7–8 and Dio 37.22.3–5 is

particularly close, and indeed all the surrounding narrative is very similar in the two authors. The same is true of Plut. Cic. 16.6 and Dio

37.33.2–3. At Plut. Cic. 17.1 and Dio 37.34.1 the switch of attention back to Lentulus is exactly similar in both writers.

7
Cf. esp Lendle 1967. Lendle’s paper has important flaws: his attempt to infer the character of περί ὐπατείας from Cic. Fam. 5.12(22) is
misconceived (like many others, he does not feel the light-hearted and witty tone of that letter: there is some neglected good sense in

Guillemin 1938); and he greatly underestimates Plutarch’s own capacity for independent research and artistic recasting. But he

successfully shows that much of Plutarch’s narrative is wholly consistent with what we know of the περί ὐπατείας. – Forsythe 1992 also
argues that the description of T. Volturcius as K ροτωνιὰτης at Cic. 18.6 and App. BC 2.4.14 refers to Cortona rather than Crotona, and
derives from the περί ύπατείας.
8
Cf. Crass. 13.4 with Cic. 15.3–5 and Dio 37.31.1 (Lendle 1967, 95–7); Serv. ad Ecl. 8.106 with Cic. 20.1–2 and Dio 37.35.4 (Servius

is presumably misdating, though Lendle 1967, 101–3 gives an alternative explanation); and the omens of Dio 37.25.2 (abbreviated at

Cic. 14.4) are close to Cicero’s words in his poem ‘de consulatu’ (cit. Cic. Div. 1.17). Besides Lendle, cf. Buresch 1888, 222–3; Willrich

1893, 45–6.

9
Note the rare compliment of Dio (37.34.1); the enthusiastic treatment of the proagones (Cic. 12–13; Dio 37.25–8); the recurrent stress

on vast crowds of supporters (Cic. 14.7; 16.1) the emphasis on Cicero’s popularity (Dio 37.34.3–4, cf. Cic. 19.4); the tendency to

represent the credit as his alone (esp. Cic. 18.7). Plutarch himself might reasonably have decided that a generous treatment was

appropriate (p. 46) – but the coincidences with Dio are so numerous that the emphasis must go back to the shared source. Dio, of

course, is not usually kind to Cicero: Millar 1964, 46–55.

10
It is less clear whether Dio knew the περί ὐπατείας at first hand. The old theory was that Dio regularly followed Livy, and in this case
Livy may therefore have been drawing on the περί ὐπατείας: thus e.g. Schwartz 1897, 581 ff.; Willrich 1893, 45–51. The Livian thesis
was shown by Manuwald 1979 to be precarious (see p. 19 and n. 125), but there may still have been an intermediate source here, Livy

or another: we cannot tell.

11
See p. 48.

12
Schettino 2000 now makes a strong case for thinking that 10.3–5 is also based on Sallust. If she is right, that supports my argument

here for a Sallustian provenance of Cic. 10–11, though I think that more here is owed to Sallust than she does. She accepts my general

reconstruction of Plutarch’s working method, and she too thinks that he consulted Sallust at the stage of preliminary reading (Schettino

2000, 451: cf. pp. 20–2,48–9 above).

13
So I wrote in 1985, but this gibe at Cicero’s expense now seems to me cheap and unfair: Schettino 2000, 445 n. 8 rightly takes me to

task. For all we know, there may have been other reasons in play, such as the shaping of the whole work around a Catiline–Cicero

chiaroscuro contrast.

14
Lendle 1967, 103–5, here goes astray. – It does seem clear that Plutarch is wrong to make Caesar propose only temporary

imprisonment. (App. BC 2.6.20 agrees, but that part of Appian’s account is probably dependent on Plutarch himself: cf. p. 36 n. 75.)

The other sources give a clear impression that the imprisonment was to be permanent: Sall. BC 51.43; Cic. Cat. 4.8, and Dio 37.36.2

mention an explicit sanctio, setting a punish- ment for anyone who should bring up the question again. The same impression is given by

Cic. Cat. 4.10, aeternis tenebris uinculisque mandare (‘consigning them to perpetual darkness and chains’), and 7, uincula sempiterna

(‘eternal chains’). The confiscation of their property would be very odd, if imprisonment were not to be permanent; and life

imprisonment was ‘not totally unprecedented’, even though it was ‘distinctly unusual’ (Lintott 1968, 169). Cf. Holmes 1923, i. 469 and

n. 14; Vretska 1976 on Sall. BC 51.43. – I go into this in more detail, along with other historical issues, in my forthcoming commentary

on Caesar.

15
Suet. Div. Iul. 14 seems to derive from the same source as Plutarch (p. 51 and n. 32), and he does not mention the possibility of the

case being re-opened. Drummond 1995, 37 n. 14, agrees that it is probably Plutarch himself who has misinterpreted. It is possible that

Plutarch confuses Caesar’s proposal with that of Ti. Claudius Nero, which he omits (cf. Holmes 1923, i. 469); it is just as likely that he

first misinterpreted his source’s account of Caesar’s proposal – then discovered he had no logical space for Nero’s.

16
Strasburger 1938, 121; cf. Willrich 1893, 8.

17
Cic. 23.4; Dio 37.38 (this part of Dio does not seem to derive from περί ύπατείας) by contrast stresses Cicero’s unpopularity.
18
For ‘Catonian’ literature cf. e.g. Macmullen 1967, 1–45; Afzelius 1941, 198–203. For Plutarch’s use of it, above, pp. 10, 13; Geiger

1979.

19
That regrettable view is argued briefly by Gelzer 1964, and at some length by Homeyer 1964. Homeyer argues that Plutarch derives

virtually all his material from a Greek first- century biography, which in its turn was based on a Latin biography by one of Cicero’s

contemporaries – perhaps Tiro, more probably Nepos. Her arguments for this intricate hypothesis are surprisingly weak. She thinks that

Plutarch’s coherent, sympathetic, and acute portrait of Cicero must be the work of an author intimately familiar with Cicero’s own

writings: this cannot be Plutarch, she thinks, because of his deficient knowledge of Latin (Dem. 2.2–4). But (1) Dem. 2.2–4 makes it

perfectly clear that Plutarch did read Latin sources, and it is very likely that he read fairly widely in Cicero’s works when he was

preparing this Life: cf. pp. 16–17; Scardigli 1979, 115. (2) In some ways, Cicero is a peculiarly uneven Life. Plutarch’s knowledge of the

conspiracy is full and rich, but the second half of the Life is scrappy (pp. 2, 27–8). That is easy enough to explain if Plutarch was reliant

on his own independent researches: for the consulship, he had the περί ύπατείας, but he had not yet found a coherent narrative source
for the history of the fifties. But one cannot believe that a contemporary of Cicero could produce a Life like this: Tiro or Nepos, of

course, would have much fuller and better information. (3) Plutarch’s portrait of Cicero is indeed a good one. It need not follow that it

comes from a source (cf. pp. 45–6). More than any other Roman hero, after all, Cicero was Plutarch’s sort of person: he understood him

well. Erbse’s judgement is again good (cf. n. 3): ‘It is certainly astonishing that Plutarch, despite his limited knowledge of Latin, was able

to produce so accurate a portrait. But the astonishing must be accepted’ (1956, 411 n. 3).

20
Probably the de consiliis: pp. 2 and n. 15, 44 n. 172, 50 and n. 27.

21
A sample of passages: Alc. 3.2; Them. 32.4; Ant. 59.1; Pomp. 10.9; Per. 28.3; Arat. 38.12; Arist. 1: similar arguments from silence, Alc.

32.2; Alex. 46.3; Cic. 49.4. Hamilton 1969, xliii–xlix, has a good discussion. See also n. 47 and ch. 6, esp. pp. 144–52.

22
Hardy 1924, 104 n. 1. See further p. 53 for a possible explanation of Plutarch’s inconsequentiality; I also return to this in ch. 3 (pp.

67–8, 75 and 82).

23
The rest of this section is heavily dependent on the view of Plutarch’s methods I develop in ch. 1, esp. pp. 19–26.

24
Though the etymology of ‘Sura’ may perhaps come from Roman oral tradition: cf. Theander 1959, 113.

25
Above, pp. 23–4.

Or συνεξαναστάντος (the reading of LH). The monstrous compound συγκατεξα- ναστάντος (PMC) would admittedly be ἂπαξ
26

λεγόμενον in Greek, while συνεξίστασθαί is amply attested (e.g. Dem. 18.3, 24.1; Gracch. 10.1; Cato Min. 59.9). But the longer
compound has exactly the right meaning: to join (σὐν) in attacking (κατά) Caesar by rising up (ἐξ-ἀνά) to speak against him. It is a

powerful passage, and the word should probably be retained.

27
Cf. p. 2 and n. 15, p. 44 n. 172.

28
It seems that Plutarch is in the wrong over the terms of Caesar’s proposal (above, n. 14): he has misunderstood a source (above, n. 15).

But note that Caesar’s final argument at Caes. 7.9 is directly dependent on that misinterpretation: ‘the senate will be able to debate the

matter later, at peace and at their leisure’. That argument can clearly have no authority, and Plutarch is following the usual custom of

ancient historiography and biography and composing the speech from his imagination. He picked the most obvious argument, resting

on the point he already knew from Cicero: the conspirators’ high social standing. That argument would come easily to a Greek of the

Roman empire (cf. Garnsey 1970, esp. 105–11). But it is doubtless unhistorical. The elaborate speech of Cato at Cato 23.1–2 is unlikely

to carry any more authority, even though distinguished scholars have thought it authentic: Holmes 1923, i. 276; Strasburger 1938, 121;

Gelzer 1969, 99 and n. 297 (and elsewhere); Syme 1964, 73; Earl 1961, 96. True, Plutarch notes that ‘they say’ Cato’s speech was

preserved, because Cicero had it taken down by stenographers. But Plutarch makes no claim to have seen the speech himself: he adds the

fact and circumstances of its survival as a pure curiosity.

29
For similar cases, cf. pp. 2–5: note especially Ant. 19.3, clearly reflecting a later stage of research than Cic. 46.5.

30
See also p. 44 n. 172, against Moles.

31
pp. 10–11, 13–15.

32
Willrich 1893, 37–8; cf. p. 67 below. Note particularly the similar treatment of Silanus’ proposal; also the account of Caesar’s speech,

the stress on the role of Cato, the omission of Ti. Claudius Nero, and the emphasis on the theme of unpopularity with the Roman

people (a plebe Romana inuidia). Suetonius also knows of the suggestion of Caesar’s complicity (17.1).

33
This is the approach of, for instance, Uxkull-Gyllenband 1927, 85.

34
An almost random example: compare Cor. 18 with Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 7.33–6. Individual phrases are sometimes remotely echoed

(cf. Russell 1963, 22 n. 7 = Scardigli 1995, 359 n. 7 for further examples) – but there is nothing like the very close borrowing of style

and structure which we should have to assume to explain the present series of verbal parallels.

35
Russell 1963, 22 = Scardigli 1995, 359–60.

36
Cf. pp. 1 and n. 2, 20–3.

37
p. 21.

38
There may be some further instances, in particular Pomp. 63.2, where Cicero blames Pompey for leaving the city and ‘imitating

Themistocles rather than Pericles’. Here the original source is Cicero himself, who uses the Themistocles comparison in two letters to

Atticus (7.11(134).3 and 10.8(199).4). At pp. 16–18 I suggest that Plutarch read extensively in Cicero’s own writings when preparing

Cicero itself, but did not carry on any further reading for the later Lives. If that is right, then he presumably came across this item when

reading ‘for’ Cicero. He does not use it in Cicero itself, but might well have included it in the ύπόμνημα for that work; he could then

have drawn on this again for Pompey. I return to this instance in the next chapter (pp. 81–2), for the item recurs in the Apophthegmata

collection for Cicero himself (nr. 15 = 205c): I shall there suggest that the Apophthegmata version too is drawn from the ύπόμνημα for

Cicero. The other cases noted at p. 39 n. 107 may also fit here: Pomp. 42.13, the reason for Pompey’s divorce is ‘written in the letters of

Cicero’, and Phoc. 3.2, Cicero’s famous gibe at Cato for ‘speaking as if he was in Plato’s Republic rather than in the sewer of the Roman

people’ (Cic. Att. 2.1(21).8).

39
Cf. esp. Pomp. 8.6–7; Dem. 11.7; for Plutarch’s terminology and categories, see ch. 13; Russell 1966b, 139–54 = Scardigli 1995, 75–

94; Brenk 1977, 179–80 n. 36; Gill 1983, 478–9; Swain 1989a; and now esp. Duff 1999, 72–98.
40
The phrase of Stuart 1928, 78.

41
Cf. Cic. 16.6. 22.8.

42
Cf. pp. 104–5 and n. 58, 260.

43
Scardigli 1979, 116, quoting Bargstadt 1950.

44
pp. 56–7.

45
Cato has other criticisms of its hero: cf. p. 103.

46
p. 56.

47
Plutarch notes that the ‘certain work’, inculpating Crassus and Caesar, was not published until both men were dead; in the περί
ύπατείας Cicero tells of Crassus’ night- time visit with the letters; ‘because of this’ ( διὰ του̑ το) Crassus always hated Cicero, but was

deterred from attacking him because of his son Publius, who greatly admired Cicero. Because of what? Evidently not the publication of

the ‘certain work’, for that cannot affect Crassus’ lifetime; nor is it easy to see why the night-time visit should occasion such hatred.

Presumably Plutarch hints at mutual suspicion and distrust caused by Cicero’s feeling that Crassus was involved, but which only

surfaced in the ‘certain work’ when it was finally published. But he might have made himself clearer. He probably wanted a peg for the

item concerning Publius’ admiration for Cicero (a tale he remembered from Cicero, cf. Cic. 31.1 and 33.8), and thrust it into his

narrative at this point without much concern for logical clarity. For similar cases, cf. p. 95 on ‘fabrication of a context’.

48
I elaborate this point at pp. 102–7.

49
Cf. pp. 5–6, 103–5, 207–8, and ch. 11.

50
pp. 104–5 and 260.

51
Cic. 10–11; cf. p. 208 and n. 8.

52
Though we do have Caes. 32, the very powerful treatment of Caesar’s thoughts at the Rubicon – more powerful for being so isolated

in the Life. See below, pp. 327–8.

53
So also Moles 1988, 169–70, on Cic. 21.2, 21.4, and 21.5, reasonably commenting that the Cicero version implies that ‘Caesar’s

position is the one naturally congenial to Cicero’, and that Cato’s intervention is described in negative terms, leading as it does the

senate to decide a difficult issue in the wrong spirit.

54
Cf. Duff 1999, 136, 151, for the way this fits into the general ‘moralism’ of Cato.

55
Cf. n. 26 above.

56
On the style appropriate to such collections of apophthegmata – brusque and unelabo- rate – see pp. 74–5.

57
The demos is wholly behind Caesar in Caesar ; Cicero could not allow this sort of treatment, for Plutarch has presented Cicero himself

as the greatpopularis: cf. Cic. 8.6–7, 9.2, 9.7. His popularity is accordingly stressed throughout the conspiracy (11.2, 13.4, 22.5–7,

23.3). Consequently Cicero does not here fear Caesar’s popularity, only ‘his friends and his power’ (20.6). Indeed, the Cicero is notably

reluctant to represent the conspiracy as at all popular in texture: Catiline thinks he is strong in the senate (14.6). When Plutarch thinks

of inequality of wealth, he interprets this in terms relevant only to the upper classes (10.5).
 3

THE APOPHTHEGMATA REGUM ETIMPERATORUM

AND PLUTARCH’S ROMAN LIVES

‘Plutarch seems to have kept some “commonplace book” in his philosophical studies (Mor. 464f, cf.

457d), but that tells us little of his methods in the Lives.’ That casual footnote was written over twenty
1
years ago, and reflected the little thought I had then given to the problem. Since then Luc van der

Stockt and his Leuven colleagues, especially Birgit van Meirvenne, have greatly deepened our

understanding of those ὑπομνήματα in the Moralia. 2

In this chapter I hope to be a little less casual.

In chapters 1 and 2 I was sceptical about the possibility that Plutarch took many notes as he read. I

preferred to think that he had a single source open in front of him as he composed, and would

supplement this, sometimes extensively, from his memory of earlier, wider reading. When we can

compare his writing either directly with his source-material or (more often) with other writers who

depend on those sources, we can often see that he owes most of his material and his narrative

articulation to one source at a time. If he had taken full notes, he would more naturally and more

frequently weave material together into an independent pastiche, owing no more to any one previous
3
version than to any other.

In the case of the late Republican Lives, there is often good reason to think that this one main

source was the ‘Polliosource’ which he shares with Appian – either Pollio himself, or a source following
4
Pollio closely. The overlap with Appian is often very close, so close that we have to assume that both

authors are following that source’s articulation and language fairly faithfully, though of course both

impose their own emphases and interpretative tweaks. Given that closeness, I was sceptical of the notion
5
that Plutarch would have taken extensive notes on the Pollio-source itself. That possibility cannot be

totally excluded, for it is a tricky business to specify what note-taking methods make sense and what do

not. Many scholars have known students who solemnly regard ‘note-taking’ as a matter of copying out

long chunks of Syme or Badian or Millar word for word. Many of us have done it ourselves – and, if we
6
had research assistants as Plutarch may have done, we might do it, or get it done, a little more. But it is

still hard to believe that someone as productive and experienced as Plutarch would find it a rational

method. It would be so much easier to have his Pollio-source open before his eyes as he composed, and

supplement it from memory.

Notes, I suggested in chapters 1 and 2 come in at a later stage. Some sort of ὑπóμνημα, what Lucian
calls ‘a draft, a body of material which is still inartistic and uncoordinated’, seems to have been a regular

stage of composition as a penultimate draft; then, as Lucian goes on to explain, in the final version the

writer should ‘impose structure, give the work its beauty, use diction to add colour, and give form and

rhythm’ (How to write History 47–8). It is this ὑπóμνημα which Plutarch would have been writing or

(more likely) dictating as he held the Pollio-source open before him. At that stage he would already have

given thought to the narrative strategy of the Life and the pair, and so the draft would presumably

already reflect the interpretative emphases on which he had decided; but the last stage of stylistic

beautification would still be in the future. Doubtless this model is too schematic. An author with

Plutarch’s stylistic sense could hardly avoid some ‘beautification’ every time he put pen to paper, or

dictated a word; and, given the speed with which he must have produced, it would be odd if some of his

organizational or thematic ideas were not last-minute, involving him in larger-scale rethinking even in
7
his final draft. But, as a simplified model, it is still one which I find attractive.

It is also close to the picture of a ὑπóμνημα which van der Stockt develops for the Moralia: ‘a more
or less elaborate train of thought, involving material previously gathered and certainly written in full

syntactical sentences… On the other hand, the ὑπóμνημα does not yet display literary finish (cf.

Plutarch’s apology for the lack of καλλιγραφία in 464f–5a). In short, it probably took the form of a

rough draft (cf. Pelling 1979, 94–5 (= ch.1 of this volume, pp. 23–4), on historical hypomnemata) not
8
of an “Endfassung, die Reinschrift” (Dorandi 1997, 9).’ Van der Stockt argued this on rather different

grounds from the ones I used myself, and if either of us is right then it may give extra support to the

other. However, van der Stockt’s arguments also confirm that I was indeed too casual in suggesting that

those ‘commonplace books’ told us nothing about the production of the Lives. On the contrary, they

may tell us a great deal.

Thanks to van der Stockt and van Meirvenne, we can now see more clearly what sort of ‘notes’ or

‘commonplace book’ this must have been: not merely compilations from his reading, as scholars used to

believe, but trains of thought that occurred to him at any time, what he thought about as he walked or
talked or bathed. We can see how the same reflections tend to be reused, with sentences or anecdotes or

ideas slightly re-sorted, in recurrent ‘clusters’. We can see too the skill with which each cluster rearranges

to produce an argumentative thrust which suits its context – and sometimes also, even more revealingly

for his methods, some times when the jumble does not quite fit, when a train of thought which made

excellent sense in one context, and presumably in the draft itself, produces inconsequentialities or loose

ends when transposed into its new context. A thought which is marginal in train-of-thought A can

become the whole point of the exercise in train-of-thought B; but when it does some of the other

aspects of train-of-thought A may also find their way into B even though they are no longer very

relevant. Van der Stockt 1999a has a splendid example from How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend, when

the topic of ‘silent flattery’ leads on, very strangely, to two anecdotes which do not illustrate this topic at

all: one of Apelles the painter who rebuked the rich Megabyzus for talking about line-drawing and

chiaroscuro, things of which he knew nothing; the second of Solon’s frank speaking in front of Croesus

(58b–59a). What those stories really illustrate is bold frankness, παρρησία: that is only marginally

relevant to the context in How to Tell a Flatterer, but the point is more apposite in the other context

where Plutarch is deploying the same cluster of ideas, in Tranquillity of Mind (471d–2b). The

Megabyzus anecdote there recurs in the course of an argument that we should all adjust our hopes to

our capacities, and it could not be more pertinent. Van der Stockt reasonably concludes that both

passages are based on a ὑπóμνημα where the argument was similar to that in Tranquillity of Mind, and

in How to Tell a Flatterer Plutarch has not properly smoothed the cluster into a new argumentative
9
context.

Here again we may be able to find something similar in the Lives. In chapter 2 I tried to identify

several items in Plutarch’s later accounts of the Catiline conspiracy, those in Crassus, Caesar, and Cato

Minor, which Plutarch would have known when writing Cicero but omitted from the final version of

that Life. One of these is the story of the young men who formed Cicero’s bodyguard and attacked

Caesar as he left the senate (Caes. 8.3–4): that item is also mentioned by Suetonius (Div. Iul. 14.2) in a

section which is otherwise very close to Plutarch’s Cicero and surely derives from the same source. Even

at the time of Cicero, too, Plutarch knew a source which stressed Cato’s statesmanship in the aftermath

of the conspiracy (Cic. 23.5–6). It would be strange if that source had omitted Cato’s corn-dole; but that

is mentioned in Caesar (8.6–7) and in Cato Minor (26.1), not in Cicero itself. And it is likely that

Plutarch also knew of the senate-meeting a few weeks after the execution, when Caesar delivered a

speech in self-defence. This was not very relevant for Cicero and he omitted it, but he used it in the later
10
Caesar (8.5).

There are several ways in which we might explain Plutarch’s method here. One might be that he

simply remembered these instances from his earlier reading when he came to compose the later Lives,
11
and silently integrated the material with whatever source was then before his eyes. But in chapter 2 I

also wondered whether Plutarch included those items in the ὑπóμνημα he drew up for Cicero, and went
back again to look at that ὑπóμνημα when he prepared the later Lives. There might be an indication of
this, I suggested, in that story of Caesar being threatened by Cicero’s young bodyguards. The account in

Caesar goes on:

They say that Curio threw his toga around him and bundled him away, and Cicero too shook his head

when the young men looked towards him: perhaps he was afraid of the people, perhaps he simply

thought that such a murder was wholly illegal and unjust. But, if this story is true, I cannot understand

why Cicero did not mention it in his account of his consulship [i.e. the περί ὑπατείας]. He was

certainly accused later of missing an ideal opportunity of foiling Caesar because of his terror of the

ordinary people. (Caes. 8.3–4)

This train of thought is hard to follow. The omission of the incident from the περί ὑπατείας is not
hard to explain at all. Indeed, we should expect Cicero to have omitted it, precisely for the reasons which

Plutarch here goes on to give: Cicero, if he was criticized later for letting Caesar off the hook, would
12
hardly wish to remind contemporaries of the incident.

This looks very much like the sort of inconsequentiality which van der Stockt has identified in

Moralia: Plutarch might have noted at a drafting stage that the incident was omitted from περί
ὑπατείας, then incorporated that reflection into his final draft without thinking through the

implications. If so, the drafting stage was surely that of the Cicero ὑπóμνημα, a time when there is good
reason to think he had just read the περί ὑπατείας. 13
Then, at the time of Caesar, his thoughts were

more on Caesar as the great man of the people and on the opponents who lost their chance: that would

be the time when he added the further thought that Cicero ‘was certainly accused later of missing an

ideal opportunity of foiling Caesar because of his terror of the ordinary people’.
 So, as in the van der Stockt case, we must accept the inconsequentiality and note that even the sage

of Chaeronea can occasionally nod, can show some human frailty. We can understand the nod and the

frailty a little better if we accept that he worked in the way that van der Stockt, van Meirvenne, and I all

propose.

So my reconstruction coincides quite closely with that of van der Stockt and van Meirvenne. What it

does not coincide with, however, is an alternative picture which Philip Stadter develops in a fascinating
14
paper. Stadter goes back to the Apophthegmata, in particular the Apophthegmata Laconica, and argues

that those collections allow us a glimpse of Plutarch in action. For him the Apophthegmata Laconica

represent part of the note-taking for the Lives, a ὑπóμνημα or set of ὑπομνήματα initially used for the
final writing-up of the Lives, then separately gathered into a self-standing collection. His picture for the

Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum is a little different, for he there thinks that our version represents a

selection from an earlier, more extensive anecdotal collection, one which would have been similar to the
15
Laconica. Stadter suggests that such a collection may have followed the same lines as we can now trace

for Philodemus at Herculaneum. First Plutarch would make a collection of Lesefrüchte, presumably

garnered as he read and therefore ordered in the sequence of reading; then they could be snipped and re-

ordered in the sequence of the Life itself, which would explain why many of the Apophthegmata
16
orderings are the same as those of the corresponding Life. If so, then these snippets are unmistakably

closer to ‘notes’ than anything of which we have yet found traces.

Stadter is absolutely right to point to the importance of the Apophthegmata, and, although I shall

suggest a different picture of their relevance, there are two important points of common ground.

First, there must indeed be some relationship between the Apophthegmata and the Lives. There is the

point of shared ordering which he stresses. Admittedly, this is more visible in the Apophthegmata

Laconica than in the Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum, where there are many individual variations:

the Alexander and Agesilaus collections in the Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum show a very

different ordering from the Lives, while the Roman ones are much closer; but in any case there are still

enough similarities to demonstrate contact. There is also the extreme closeness in wording between the

Apophthegmata and the Lives, often in cases where Plutarch’s own characteristic vocabulary-choices or

stylistic patterns are in point. We do need some explanation, and that explanation must be a systematic

one: we cannot for instance assume that the closeness comes because the Lives and Apophthegmata

happen in virtually every case to have the same sources (what a coincidence that would be!), and that the

slight deviations are the few exceptions where the sources happen to be different. Even the deviations, as

we shall see, come in cases where the other features of an anecdote show the same closeness between Life

and Apophthegmata as we generally find. We must look for a general explanation which is powerful

enough to explain both the usual closeness and the rare deviations.

Secondly, Stadter does not claim that such a collection would have been the only form of note-

taking or preparation for the Life. Even in the cases of the stories themselves, the Lives frequently have

more detail. In some cases we could doubtless explain this by Plutarch’s own engaging habit of ‘helping

a story along a little’, introducing pieces of circumstantial detail which are owed to his own creative
17
imagination rather than to his sources. There are still too many cases where the additional facts in the

Life overlap with detail found in other, non-Plutarchan accounts of the same events. If Stadter’s overall

picture is right, then perhaps Plutarch found himself remembering these extra details as he came to

write up the Lives; perhaps he went back to the sources again, inspired by the aide-mémoire of these

ὑπóμνημα-like notes; or perhaps he had a second, parallel, narrative ὑπóμνημα, one which might

include more details of these episodes as well as a full-scale narrative skeleton for the Life. And there are

many whole Lives that have no counterpart collections, including some figures who were not bad at the

one-line jest – Cato the younger, Gaius Gracchus, Brutus.

So Stadter does not claim that this is more than a part of the Life’s preparation; still, if he is right it

is an important part, and it would indeed make it more likely that notes of other sorts played a part in

that preparation. For there are many tracts of the Lives which have no such apophthegma-rich episodes,

and therefore have no counterparts in the Apophthegmata collection at all; yet, on a simple view, it

would be surely be those non-apophthegmatic sequences which would require notes more, not less. The

whole point about an apophthegm is that it is memorable, that one can remember it anyway. The

intricacies, say, of Lucullus’ or Pompey’s eastern campaigns are cases where even the most retentive of

readers might need something to jog the mind. If it was worth noting down apophthegmata to aider his

later mémoire, then it was going to be more worthwhile still to jot down other things as well.

So if Stadter is right, it is most important. But is he right? This procedure has a counter-intuitive

ring to it, especially if there are going to be other notes as well: would it really help composition to keep

these two separate files? It is true that we should avoid being too aprioristic about this; what seems to
me a ‘natural’ way of working may not seem natural to the scholar working in the next office, still less to

anyone in a different technological and mental world. But it is worthwhile to play with an alternative

reconstruction, which would still leave the Apophthegmata related to the Lives. I suggest that they are

subsequent to the Lives, not part of their preparation: a collection based on Plutarch’s work for the

Lives, but garnered from those Lives or the work for them, not for them. This is indeed the procedure

which Plutarch himself hints at, if the dedicatory epistle to Trajan is genuine: there he says that ‘you’

already have the Lives, the ‘composition’ ( σύνταγμα) ‘on the most distinguished leaders, law-givers, and
rulers of the Greeks and Romans’ (172c). That epistle has often been taken as spurious, but Mark Beck
18
has recently made a strong case for its authenticity. In any case, I shall argue that comparison of the

works themselves suggests that the Apophthegmata are the later of the two.

This may seem to revert to a view which has long been discredited, for it was once thought that the

Apophthegmata collection could have been made from the Lives, perhaps by Plutarch or more likely by

someone after his death; and, if the second of those views was right, that this could help to explain what
19
was seen as their low stylistic level. Volkmann seemed to have exploded that view: there are too many

anecdotes in the Apophthegmata which do not figure in the Lives, and also vice versa; there is sometimes

divergence of details between the two works; and yet some of those details in the Apophthegmata seem to
20
be authentic, even though any collector could not have got them from the Lives. There is also a

difficulty in the perceived mediocrity of style: why should a collector so systematically have sacrificed the
21
narrative richness of the Lives? But those difficulties can be met if we suppose that the collector used

not, or not only, the finished Lives, but the ὑπομνήματα which Plutarch made for those Lives. We have
already seen that such drafts may have included material which was not included in the final version of
22
the Lives themselves.

Let us take a few test-cases. The first few examples will show some difficulties in the Stadter

reconstruction – or at least show that, if the Apophthegmata did serve as ‘notes’ for a Life, the final

version in that Life can be based on them only to a limited degree. They will also show how difficult it

is to believe the converse thesis, that the Apophthegmata versions are simply ‘based on’ the Lives. That

suggests that we should look for another explanation, presumably that both Apophthegmata and Lives

are based on something else. We need a ‘systematic explanation’, as we have already seen, and that

‘something else’ cannot be defined as a series of shared sources which both versions happen to have in

common; that would be too much of a coincidence, and anyway Plutarch would hardly follow anyone

else’s words so closely and so regularly as we would have to assume. It is better to think of this

‘something else’ as some large-scale gathering of material by Plutarch himself, and that presumably

points to some sort of preparation or note-taking. The next few examples will explore how detailed

these ‘notes’ would be, and how close to the final versions which appear in the Lives. The answer will be

‘pretty close’: that fits the picture of a ὑπóμνημα, a penultimate draft, on the lines I sketched in chapter
1 and van der Stockt and van Meirvenne posit for the Moralia. The final cases will bring out some

further features of the Apophthegmata collection itself, suggesting that the stories are more thoroughly

recast and carefully ordered than is usually acknowledged.

Case 1: Lucullus apophthegm 1 = Lucullus 27.8–9. The Romans are about to fight Tigranes on a

black-letter day, October 6th, the anniversary of the disaster at Arausio. Lucullus replies that ‘I will

make this day too a lucky one for Rome’.

The apophthegm begins with some details of the forces on both sides, 150,000 men for Tigranes,

10,000 hoplites and 1,000 cavalry for Lucullus. Those figures have equivalents in the Life, but there

they are more detailed, and not given in the immediate vicinity of the apophthegm itself. A chapter

earlier Tigranes’ numbers were given as 20,000 archers and slingers, 55,000 horsemen including 17,000

cataphracts, 150,000 hoplites (so the same number as in the apophthegm), and 35,000 labourers (26.7–

8). Lucullus then has ‘24 cohorts, comprising no more than 10,000 legionaries, and all the cavalry and

about 1,000 slingers and archers’ (27.2).

This is not a case where Plutarch might be imaginatively expanding his notes when he comes to

write up the Life. The numbers are too detailed for that, and too integrated into the surrounding

narrative; and anyway it looks as if Plutarch draws these numbers from a source, as those given by App.

Mith. 85.328 for Tigranes are not too different (250,000 infantry and 50,000 cavalry: Appian may well
23
be rounding). Nor does it seem likely that Plutarch added them from his memory, any more than he

could have written up the rest of the battle from memory: once again, there is far too much detail. It is

more likely either that he went back to the original source when composing Lucullus, or – if Stadter is

right – that the numbers formed part of the second, parallel narrative ὑπóμνημα which he postulates.
In that case, however, (a) it seems hard to see why Plutarch should have added these numbers to the

apophthegm- ὑπóμνημα as well, at least if he was still envisaging that ὑπóμνημα primarily as
‘preparatory notes’ for the Life. He would not even be using the numbers in the same context in the

final version; he knew he would have to check back elsewhere for the intricate details of the engagement

itself; and it would be more sensible to rely on finding those numbers again in his source, or in the

narrative- ὑπóμνημα, rather than duplicating them here. And (b) it raises the question how important
the apophthegm- ὑπóμνημα would be anyway as part of the preparatory process. When Plutarch came
to write up the Life, all the details of the engagement would have to come from elsewhere; and the only

element captured in that apophthegm- ὑπóμνημα would be the apophthegm itself, precisely the item

which was most memorable and for which an aide-mémoire would be least necessary.

If we take the alternative view – that the Apophthegmata were based on a (single) draft for the Life –

then there is no problem. The collector, Plutarch or another, could readily extract the important figures

from the preceding story before going on to give the punch-line.

Case 2: Pompey apophthegm 3 = Pompey 10.11–13. Pompey was in a position to execute all the

inhabitants of a Sicilian town. The ‘demagogue’ Sthenius told him that it was unjust to punish everyone

when he, Sthenius, was the only one responsible. Pompey spared both town and demagogue.

In the Apophthegmata the story is told of the Mamertines, in the Life of Himera. ‘Himera’ seems

right: in Cicero’s Verrines (2.2.110–13) the place is ‘Thermae’, i.e. Himeraean Thermae. That makes it

difficult to think that the Life version is based on the Apophthegmata, as a reconstruction on Stadter’s

lines implies. We should have to assume that, when he came to the Life, Plutarch realized that he had

got it wrong in the Apophthegmata and silently corrected it. That is not impossible, for Plutarch may

well have had a more accurate version before his eyes when composing the finished version of the Life

(though if so this again raises the question of how crucial the apophthegm- ὑπóμνημα would be for the
writing of that final version). But it again seems easier to assume that the Apophthegmata version is the

later, and that the error crept in as the Apophthegmata were put together. The collector of the

Apophthegmata, Plutarch or another, may have been misled by the prominence of the Mamertines
24
elsewhere in that chapter of the Life, and may simply have misremembered.

Plutarch told the story again in Advice on Public Life (815e), and there again he erroneously has the

Mamertines. Like many of the examples in Advice on Public Life, he may well be drawing this from his

reading for the Lives, but doing so from memory. If he misremembered it then, it makes it more likely

that it was he himself who was doing the collecting for the Apophthegmata, and misremembered it

similarly again.

Case 3: a similar instance is Cicero apophthegm 7 = Cicero 26.11. Metellus Nepos had a reputation

for bolting: once (so the Life explains) he had departed prematurely from his tribunate at Rome to join

Pompey in the East, then left Pompey and returned just as abruptly. When Metellus buried his teacher

of rhetoric, he put a stone figure of a crow on the grave. ‘How appropriate,’ said Cicero, ‘for he taught

you to fly rather than to speak.’

In the Life the teacher’s name is given as Philagrus; in the Apophthegmata it is Diodotus. Presumably

Philagrus is the original version, and ‘Diodotus’ has come in through some confusion with Cicero’s own
25
teacher Diodotus (Cicero, Brutus 309). Indeed, the phrasing of the Apophthegmata version does not

make it quite clear if the man is Metellus’ teacher or Cicero’s or both.

Once again, it is possible but unlikely that the Life ‘corrected’ the Apophthegmata version, as

Plutarch realized that he had made a mistake. It is more likely that the Life came first, and the

Apophthegmata version introduced the mistake.

Case 4: Pompey apophthegm 8 = Pompey 33.8. Phraates of Parthia sent to Pompey and proposed the

Euphrates as the boundary of the two realms. Pompey replied that the Romans would define the

boundary as whatever was just.

That is the version in the apophthegm; the version in the Life is fuller, and the point is a double

one. There Phraates sends both (a) to demand back his son-in-law Tigranes and (b) to suggest the

Euphrates boundary; Pompey replies (a) that the boy belonged to his father rather than his father-in-

law, and (b) that the boundary would be the just one.

The Tigranes point is evidently the more context-specific, and one needs to know the story-line in

order to give it point; one can understand why Plutarch would use it in the Life, but the Apophthegmata

would drop that element and concentrate on the simpler and more punchy point about the Euphrates.

What, again, is more difficult is to assume that the Apophthegmata version came first, and that Plutarch

elaborated the Life version on its basis. If Plutarch in note-taking had wanted to make certain that he

would remember the Tigranes point as well as the Euphrates one, he would surely have included both in

any ὑπóμνημα-draft. 26
 Case 5: the next apophthegm is a similar instance, but the other way round: Pompey apophthegm 9

= Pompey 48.7. Lucullus had embarked on his luxurious retirement; Pompey gibed that luxurious living

was more unseemly for a man of his age than playing politics. Lucullus replied that elderly good living

was more fitting than to take offices which unsuited one’s age – an evident dig at Pompey’s own

grabbing of offices against the usual age-restrictions.

That is the version of the Apophthegmata. The Life makes it simpler, with just the gibe of Pompey,

‘good living is more unseemly for an old man than politics’. One can see why. By this time of his career,

Pompey is in his mid-forties, and his precocious office-holding is no longer particularly pertinent; and

in the narrative structure of the Life the inappositeness would be clear.

Plutarch also uses the story in two other contexts, where we can see the same pattern. In the

narrative context of Lucullus 38.5 he is content with the single gibe of Pompey at Lucullus’ luxury: there

again we have seen so much of Pompey in the Life that one could no longer count his office-hunting

untimely. In Should an Old Man Take Part in Politics? 785f–6a he keeps the double one, and Lucullus

hits at Pompey’s ‘untimely love of office and honour’ ( τῳ̑ δὲ Πομπηίῳ φιλαρχίαν ἐγκαλου̑ ντα καὶ
φιλοτιμίαν παρ’ ἡλικίαν) just as Pompey hits at Lucullus’ disgraceful old age.
If we take this case and the last one together, we see the difficulty in assuming either that the Life

version is ‘based on’ the Apophthegmata or the other way round. In the one case the Life has the double-

point and the apophthegm the single, in the other it is the reverse. If, however, we say that both are

based on the same original notes, then both cases are equally explicable. In each case the notes will have

had the double-point version, and the final drafts, whether of Life or of Apophthegmata, will have kept

or abandoned the points which were appropriate.

That interpretation can account for any case where the one version is fuller than the other. Normally the

Life is the fuller, and there are too many instances here to need illustration. More interesting are the

cases where the Apophthegmata version has a crucial element missing from the Life. One of those is:

Case 6: Flamininus apophthegm nr. 4 = Flamininus 17.7–8. Antiochus was invading with a vast and

varied force. Flamininus told of a dinner he had once eaten where there were an amazing number of

different sorts of meat; all turned out to be pork, differently spiced. All these different sorts of

Antiochus’ armoury – javelin-carriers, cataphracts, foot-companions, horse-cavalry, and so on – were

just the same, all mere Syrians.

Where did this dinner take place? The Life does not say; the apophthegm does – in Chalcis. That is
27
right: this was the version of Livy (35.49.6) and presumably of Polybius. Presumably, once again,

Plutarch had that detail in his notes, but streamlined it away when he came to produce the version in

the Life.

That is also interesting stylistically, for in the Life the story is told as one of an apomnemoneumata-

cluster – a collection of brief stories, out of time, illustrating the man’s wisdom or wit. Several Lives have

such clusters, notably Themistocles, Pericles, Cicero, and Cato Maior. Stories which figure in those clusters

are much less written up than those which are integrated into the narrative movement of Lives. Indeed,

in the present case there is not much difference in stylistic level or elaboration between the

Apophthegmata version and that in the Life. The Life suppresses some of the more technical vocabulary

καταφράκτους
( and ἀφιπποτοξὀτας); the Apophthegmata version spreads a little more on the

intimidating approach of Antiochus, something which the Life has already made clear in the preceding

narrative; the Life has a little more on the narrated dinner-party – Flamininus ‘taking his host to task for

the variety of the meat-dishes and asking in amazement where he had got hold of such a varied diet’.

But, taken as a whole, one would be hard-pressed to find any systematic difference in level.

That may be significant when we consider whether the Apophthegmata collection itself is really so

mean and ill-finished a production as scholars have often thought. Its level is precisely what is

appropriate to a genre like this, just as it is to those passages in the Lives which generically approximate
28
to such a collection. The watchwords are economy, directness, and simplicity, with everything

subordinate to the forceful direct speech itself. And in that case the view of for instance Simon Swain,
29
holding that the work is simply too mediocre to dedicate to Trajan, looks less plausible.

Let us return to the question we asked at the outset: how similar was Plutarch’s preparation for the Lives

to the procedure which van der Stockt and van Meir-venne are uncovering in the Moralia? If Stadter is

right about the Apophthegmata Laconica, then we seem to be dealing with ‘notes’ of a very different sort

from the ὑπομνἠματα which van der Stockt and van Meirvenne are investigating. If I am right,

however, the procedures may be much more similar. Certainly, the comparison of Apophthegmata

versions and Life versions has much in common with the team’s comparison of Moralia clusters, and

here too we may be detecting an underlying ὑπóμνημα which two passages share. But perhaps this is to
go too fast; all we have so far shown is that there is ‘something else’, some sort of notes which underlie

both versions. In the next few examples we shall try to detect how close those ‘notes’ are to any finished

version, though it would not be surprising if there was no clear or single answer: many scholars are used

to having penultimate drafts which are fairly finished in one paragraph and disgracefully scrappy in the

next.

Relevant here is another feature which reminds us of the Moralia findings of van der Stockt and van

Meirvenne: the odd loose ends of thought or argument. We have already seen one case of this in Caesar,

and I suggested that this instance might go back to a draft in which the item figured in a different train
30
of thought. If so, that at least points to ‘notes’ where full trains of thought were written down: this is

not just a scrappy collection of stray facts. We can also find cases in the Apophthegmata where the story

would be difficult to follow if we just had the apophthegm alone, but we can make sense of it when we

place it in the narrative context. Those again look like cases where the original shaping of the ‘notes’ is

still directing the way the story comes out in this finished form. Consider for instance:

Case 7: Caesar apophthegm nr. 3 = Caesar 10. Caesar’s wife Pompeia has become involved in the

Bona Dea scandal, and Caesar divorces her because his wife should be above suspicion.

The apophthegm introduces the story very allusively. Pompeia is ‘the subject of scandal because of

Clodius’; Clodius is ‘on trial for this’ – for what? Hardly for sexual ‘scandal’! We need the Life to tell us:

for ἀσεβεια (as Plutarch, not very precisely, renders the Latin incestus).
31
Even Caesar’s divorce is

introduced fairly obliquely. He is called as witness at the trial, and said nothing discreditable about his

wife. ‘Why then did you divorce her?’ asks the prosecutor – yet this is the first we have heard of the

divorce. That is not a natural way to tell the story, even after we have taken into account ancient

narrative’s tendency to delay crucial details. It all looks like an over-casual abbreviation of a complex

original, made more difficult because the apophthegm belongs right at the end of the sequence. The

scandal, the nature of the charge, the divorce would all have figured earlier in the ὑπóμνημα version,

and the collector here, picking up the story only in the final stages, has not worked hard enough to
32
clarify what has already happened.

Can we detect anything more about the form such a ὑπóμνημα would take? Stadter’s argument from

the ordering of the Spartan anecdotes

33
makes it likely that any such ὑπóμνημα would come after the

main lines of a Life’s narrative strategy had been fixed: that argument holds good even though we have

different ideas of how the ὑπóμνημα would look.

Stadter implies that, though the ordering reflects a reasonably late stage of the process, the actual

shaping of the anecdote would not. For him the Apophthegmata version would still be in the form in

which Plutarch had gathered it from his preliminary reading, snipped out from its original Lesefrüchte

setting and repositioned in its right place for the Life. I agree with Stadter about the ordering, but will

go further, and argue that we can sometimes see reflections of the Life’s narrative strategy in how the

story is told, not merely where. If so, that suggests that they are more than snippets from the original

reading.

Case 8: Caesar apophthegm nr. 1 = Caesar 2, Caesar and the pirates. We should also notice the

additional detail of Crass. 7.5, surely acquired during Plutarch’s reading for Caesar but suppressed here as

distracting in both Life and apophthegm: at one point Caesar exclaimed, ‘Crassus, how delighted you’ll

be to hear of my capture!’ Plutarch may well have included it in any notes or draft that he took for

Caesar, knowing that it might be useful for Crassus even if he could not use it in Caesar. But we cannot

be sure of that: the item may simply have been remembered by Plutarch when he came to write up

Crassus, whether or not he had ever noted it down.

If we return to the version in the Apophthegmata, we should first notice the dating: ‘when he was

fleeing from Sulla when he was still a meirakion (a man in his late teens), ὅτε Σύλλαν ἒφευγεν ἒτι
μειράκιον ὤν. That coincides with the date given in Caesar itself: in ch.1 Caesar has his brush with

Sulla ‘when he was not quite yet a meirakion ( οὔπω πάνυ μειράκιον ὤν, 1.3), 34
and has his encounter

with the pirates after escaping. But this date is almost certainly wrong. There are good reasons for
35
placing this capture in late 74 or early 73. We can also see why Plutarch might have deliberately

misdated it, bringing it before several episodes which in fact it followed. This allows him to gather

together all Caesar’s early eastern experiences: these then culminate in his rhetorical training at Rhodes

(ch.3); and that training duly sets him up to return to Rome and win glorious successes in the Antonius

and Dolabella trials (Caes. 4.1–4) – trials which in fact took place in 77 and/or 76, some time before the
36
pirate episode. Suetonius has the sequence right (Div. Iul. 2–4), yet his presentation of the material is

otherwise very close here to Plutarch’s own, and it must be highly probable that Plutarch himself has

shifted the pirate episode away from its proper context. That makes it most interesting that the
Apophthegmata version also has that misdating. This suggests that this ordering already figured in the

notes or draft: this therefore already presumes an elaborate degree of narrative articulation.

We might also notice the detail in the two versions. There is a good deal of circumstantial material:

the ‘one friend and two attendants’ who accompanied Caesar (2.2 ~ Suet. 4.1), and also the ‘thirty-eight

days’ which he spent with the pirates (2.3 ~ prope quadraginta dies, Suet. 4.1). Both these items figure in
37
the Life but not in the Apophthegmata: presumably they were there in the draft, and were kept in the

Life version but dropped in the Apophthegmata. In those two cases the items are shared with Suetonius,

and hence we can presume that they go back to a source. Other points look much more like Plutarch’s

own imagination – Caesar’s impromptu poetry recitals, for instance, and the abuse of the pirates for

being such unsophisticated listeners; or his demands for silence whenever he went to bed. Neither

features in any of our other versions of the story, and both will strike seasoned Plutarch-watchers as
38
exactly the sort of minor detail which he happily adds. Both these details occur in the Apophthegmata

version as well as the Life. If they are indeed his own, it again suggests that the draft included a lot of

the creative elaboration which would figure in the final version, even if it lacked its final stylistic

polishing.

Case 9: Caesar apophthegm nr. 4 ~ Caesar 11. Caesar is reading of Alexander’s achievements, and

bursts into tears. He tells his friends that ‘at this age Alexander had conquered the world, and I have so

far achieved nothing’.

This is another case where Plutarch is heavily at work in the Life – not surprisingly, given this

pairing of Alexander and Caesar. There is once more a question of dating, for again Plutarch has moved
39
the story. Suetonius and Dio date it to Caesar’s Spanish quaestorship in 69–8, and that must be the

original version: then Caesar was genuinely ‘at the age when Alexander had conquered the world’.

Plutarch moves it eight years later to Caesar’s Spanish proconsulship in 61–60. Again, one can see why.

This is just before Caesar returns to Rome and launches on the political path which will take him to

glory and power – and to be a match for Alexander. The Apophthegmata also misposition the story in

the same way: it is put after, not before, the story of Clodius and Pompeia, dated to late 62. We must

again agree with Stadter that the reordering of material was already in the ὑπóμνημα, and that the

ordering of the final narrative has already been considered before this ὑπóμνημα takes shape.
The details are also significant. Plutarch’s version is irregular: Suetonius and Dio both have Caesar

weeping, not because he is reading about Alexander, but because he has seen a statue of Alexander in the

temple of Hercules at Cadiz Those extra details have point, for Cádiz was conventionally one end of the

civilized world, and Hercules had traversed that world to west just as Alexander had to east – and just as
40
Caesar had not. Plutarch had his reasons for that alteration, as we shall see in a later chapter. Once

more, that ‘reading’ version is shared by Life and by apophthegm, and we should infer that most of

Plutarch’s tampering had already taken place by the time of the draft.

That point can be elaborated to a more general one if we consider the apophthegmata proper, the pieces

of direct speech which constitute the episodes’ punch-lines. So many of these are extraordinarily similar,

often verbatim, in Apophthegmata and in Life; yet here again Plutarch-watchers will know that he readily

adapts direct speech from his source if it is less forceful than his own tastes would demand. Russell

showed that in his analysis of Coriolanus, bringing out how Dionysius’ laboured rhetoric is regularly
41
improved by Plutarch into a more effective phrase or sentence. Yet in the Apophthegmata it is

Plutarch’s phrasing which we regularly find, not anything more cumbersome. If the Apophthegmata are

keeping the language of the draft, this confirms that a lot of the improvement on his sources had already

happened by the time that draft was composed.

All this suggests that these ‘notes’ for the Lives were indeed quite close to the sort of ὑπομνήματα
which van der Stockt and van Meirvenne have posited for the Moralia – a full, not particularly scrappy,

account, already showing a good deal of thoughtfulness and shape. There is however one big difference.

In a Moralia cluster the original ὑπóμνημα could have taken shape at any time: perhaps when Plutarch
was collecting his thoughts for the first essay where a cluster appears, perhaps simply in a ‘commonplace

book’ at an earlier stage, perhaps even when he was writing a quite different essay which has not

survived. In the Lives we can be more certain about the stage when those notes took shape: it was

presumably during the preparatory work for a particular Life or group of Lives.

It is interesting here to look again at the ordering of the stories, the clue which triggered Stadter’s

analysis. The collections which are most distant from the Lives’ ordering are those where Plutarch may

have been able to rely most on his memory for a rich fund of witty remarks: Alexander, Agesilaus (in the

Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum though not in the Laconica), and among the Romans Cato Maior

and Cicero. The ones which are closest are the cases where most ‘research’ would be needed, directed and

focused preparatory reading: not merely most of the Roman ones, but also Phocion. Those are precisely
the cases where the ὑπóμνημα would be the obvious place to collect the results of that reading. The

collector of the Apophthegmata – Plutarch or another – would accordingly know that this was the place

to find an even richer collection of material than in the finished Life.

It would be fascinating to know whether each Life had its own ὑπóμνημα, or if Plutarch would

sometimes combine his preparation for several Lives into a single draft: given the close similarities when

the same events are described in several Lives, this second alternative must be a possibility. If he ever

proceeded in that way, then he would surely do so when he was writing the great Lives of the end of the

Republic. That is particularly so if I was right in chapter 1 to argue that six of those Lives – Caesar,

Pompey, Cato Minor, Brutus, Antony, and Crassus – were prepared together as a single project. If he did

draft in this way, then that multiple-Life ὑπóμνημα would be almost a draft Plutarchan history of the

whole period, though one rich in biographical excursions – a fascinating prospect indeed.

42
In chapter 1 I left it open whether he proceeded like this. I will once again leave it open here,

though I now incline to think that he did not. One test-case, though an indecisive one, is:

Case 10: Caesar apophthegm nr. 11 = Caesar 44.8 = Pompey 69.6–7. At Pharsalus Pompey ordered

his troops to stand and receive the charge of the Caesarians. Caesar remarked that this was a bad error,

with Pompey losing the tightening of the muscles and the zing and spirit that men generate during a

charge (τὸν ἐξ ἐπιδρομη̑ ς μετ’ ἐνθουσιασμου̑ τόνον καὶ ῥοί̑ζον).

That is the phrasing of the apophthegm. It is similar to that in the Pompey, which does not, sadly,

have ‘zing’ (the nearest equivalent I can find for ῥοί̑ζον) but does have τòν ἐξ ἐπιδρομη̑ ς τόνον (‘the
tightening which comes from the charge’) and goes on to talk of τἡν …ἐνθουσιασμου̑ και ̀ φορα̑ ς

άντεξόρμησιν (‘the responding surge of spirit and momentum’); the language is much elaborated there.
It is rather more distant from the wording in Caesar, which makes the same point but uses rather

different images – the ‘clash together’ ( σύρραξιν) which adds force to blows, the ‘joining to inflame’
συνεκκαίει)
( the spirit which is ‘fanned up’ ( ἀναρριπιζόμενον) by the encounter. It looks as if the
language of apophthegm and Pompey is closer to what Plutarch found in his source, presumably the

usual Pollio-source; in the closely parallel passage Appian also uses the τονος metaphor (‘tightening’, BC
2.79.330).

The natural implication is that this was also the language that stood in the ὑπóμνημα – but which

ὑπóμνημα is that? If it were a simple ὑπóμνημα for Caesar, then reused for the Caesar apophthegmata,
we would have the paradox of Pompey being closer to the Caesar ὑπóμνημα than Caesar is itself. That

would be odd. Should we then prefer to think of a single shared ὑπóμνημα for both Lives, which for his

own reasons he chose to follow closely in Pompey and more distantly in Caesar? That is tempting – but

the argument is inconclusive. If there were different ὑπομνήματα for each Life, we could equally

presume that the two drafts for Caesar and for Pompey might each include the story in similar form, and

that he kept to that form more closely in the one case than in the other.

On the whole there is less evidence for a single, multi-Life ὑπóμνημα than we might have expected
if Plutarch had worked in that way. This is a period where so many great men’s stories intersect, with

none of them reluctant to launch a good line when one offered. If X says something witty about Y, it

might be usable in either X’s or Y’s Life, but it can only appear in X’s collection of Apophthegmata. If

Plutarch was working from a single multi-Life ὑπóμνημα, what we would expect would be a fair degree
of cross-over: that is, cases when a man’s apophthegm cropped up in another Life rather than his own,

but – as the collector worked through a single ὑπóμνημα sequentially – still figured in his own

Apophthegmata. In fact we get a few cases, such as Crassus using the Caesar apophthegm in the pirate-
43
episode, but only a few, and those can be explained by Plutarch’s use of memory, or by his inclusion of

the apophthegm in more than one ὑπóμνημα. It probably is more likely that each Life had a single

ὑπóμνημα, and the Apophthegmata-collector worked through each of these drafts in turn as he gathered

each man’s best remarks.

One further point about this case. This story eventually derives from Caesar’s Commentarii, where

he makes the same point, talking of the natural excitement which is inflamed as one enters battle: quod

nobis quidem nulla ratione factum a Pompeio uidetur, propterea quod est quaedam animi incitatio atque

alacritas naturaliter innata omnibus quae studio pugnae incenditur (‘This seems to me a mistake by

Pompey, for there is a certain stimulation of the spirit and an innate eagerness which is inflamed by the
44
enthusiasm for the fight’), BC 3.92. So Caesar made this criticism in writing, and in both Caesar and

Pompey Plutarch makes this clear by using present tenses, ‘he says’ ( φησιν) in Caesar and ‘he criticizes’

αἰτια̑ ται) in Pompey.

(
45
So indeed does Appian, ‘he blames’ ( καταμἐμφεται). 46
But the Apophthegmata

version gives the impression of an oral comment, perhaps on the battlefield itself, perhaps a repeated
remark
47
– ‘he said’ or ‘would say’, ἔλεγε. We could put this down as simple confusion; but it is more

likely that this version is deliberately recasting it as an apophthegm, making it an anecdote rather than a

source-citation and thereby aligning it more closely with the rest of the collection. If that is so, the
48
recasting into Apophthegmata-form begins to seem quite radical.

These last few cases have been drawn from the later group of six Lives, which I think were prepared

together; even here, then, we should probably imagine one ὑπóμνημα for each Life rather than a multi-
Life shared version. If this is right, it will make Plutarch’s procedure similar to that which we would

anyway posit for the earlier Cicero, where (except for some minor overlap with Lucullus, prepared at

around the same time) he was working only on a single Life from the period. In other ways, though, the

preparation for Cicero looks rather different. The Life itself has several apomnemoneumata-clusters,

especially in chs. 25–6 and 38; once again, as in the case of Flamininus (case 6 above), the stylistic level

in these clusters is not very different from that in the Apophthegmata collections, and in some cases it is
49
the Apophthegmata version which is the more elevated of the two.

The choice of story, however, varies quite a lot between Life and Apophthegmata. If we compare

apophthegms 4–13 with the overlapping collection in Cicero 25–6, there are eight stories which are told

in both, together with a further two about Verres which were used earlier in the Life; a further thirteen

are used in the Life but not in the Apophthegmata. If we then compare apophthegms 15–19 with the

similar cluster in Cicero 38, two are told in both, four just in the Life, and three just in the

Apophthegmata. The obvious explanation is that the ὑπóμνημα gathered a large number of such stories,
and that later two separate, independent selections were made, one by Plutarch for the various clusters

in the Life and one for the Apophthegmata. (Nor is it difficult to guess where most of this material

originally came from: Tiro collected three books of Cicero’s witticisms in his de iocis, and also wrote a
50
biography which presumably included much of the same material. ) That would suggest that in this

case the ὑπóμνημα was rather less close to the final version in the Life than we found likely with the

later Lives.

If we look at those stories which appear in the Apophthegmata but not in Cicero itself, one case is

particularly interesting:

Case 11: Cicero apophthegm 15 = Pompey 63.2. Cicero blamed Pompey for leaving the city and

‘imitating Themistocles rather than Pericles’.

This does not appear in Cicero, but it does crop up in the later Pompey. The original source is Cicero

himself, who uses the Themistocles comparison in two letters to Atticus (7.11(134).3 and 10.8(199).4).

The Pompey version duly uses the present tense, Cicero ‘blames’ Pompey ( αἰτια̑ ται), again indicating

that this is drawn from Cicero’s own writings; and again the Apophthegmata version has the past tense

‘blamed’, ἐμέμψατο, turning it into an anecdote and making it parallel to the rest of the

Apophthegmata.

This use of Cicero’s own writings – primary sources – is striking. In chapter 1 I argued that Plutarch

conducted plenty of this sort of research for Cicero itself, but nothing more when he came to write the

later Lives; I suggested that he found his Pollio-source so full that he dispensed with any further reading
51
of this type. I also suggested, though, that when writing the later Lives he could naturally look back at
52
his earlier research, and exploit again some of that earlier reading in primary sources. We saw earlier a

case where he seems to have done exactly that in Caesar, integrating with his later material something
53
from his earlier reading in Cicero’s own work. This now seems to be a second case, something gleaned

from that primary research at the time of Cicero, included in the ὑπóμνημα but not in the final version
of the Life, and then drawn again from that ὑπóμνημα for use both in Pompey and in the

Apophthegmata collection for Cicero himself.

If this general picture is right, then several further questions can be asked – even if we can only attempt

the sketchiest of answers here.

What, for instance, may have determined the omission of certain good stories from the
54
Apophthegmata? Why should the most famous of all Caesar’s lines be omitted, his hoc uoluerunt (‘they

would have it thus’) on the battlefield of Pharsalus? Plutarch makes a great deal of that in Caesar itself,

even quoting Pollio on the issue whether Caesar delivered it in Latin or Greek (46.2); and so Pollio too

included the dictum, and we can be sure that Plutarch read his Pollio-source before constructing the

ὑπóμνημα for Caesar. 55

And a scan of the other Lives shows many other memorable remarks not used

in the Apophthegmata. It is hard to think that all of them were absent from the ὑπóμνημα that, if I am
right, they shared with their respective Lives.
 Two patterns emerge that might give us a clue. The first is a tendency to drop stories which are

morally discreditable. Take Pompey. In the Life we have the story of his arrogance to the Mamertines:

‘will you not stop reading out laws to us when we have swords at our side?’ (10.3). We have his

disingenuous hypocrisy when voted a command for which he had intrigued, ‘O for all these pointless

trials! It would have been better to be a nobody, if I am never to cease my soldiering…’ (30.7): Plutarch

there goes on to make his disapproval clear. We have Pompey’s response in 59 when Caesar asked for his

support: ‘Indeed, and I will meet those who threaten swords by bearing both sword and shield’ (47.7).

Plutarch adds that this was the most disgraceful thing he had ever said. We have Pompey refusing to

listen to Hypsaeus when he buttonholes him on his way to dinner: ‘you’re spoiling my meal, but

achieving nothing else’ (55.10). And we have him so confident that ‘when I stamp on the soil of Italy,

infantry and cavalry will spring up’ (57.9 = Caes. 33.5). None of these is at all improving; none should

appear in a collection which a reader might find usable for his own purposes – or indeed a dedicatee, for

one would hardly recommend to Trajan that he should treat a supplicant by telling him that he was

spoiling the imperial dinner.

There are times, too, when one can see a story being bowdlerized in the Apophthegmata, even when it is

included:

Case 12: Pompey apophthegm 12 = Pompey 51.7–8. Pompey and Crassus are asked after Luca if they

will stand for the consulship. Pompey says that perhaps he will, perhaps he won’t; Crassus replies ‘more

diplomatically’, saying that he will do whatever is in the public interest. Marcellinus attacks Pompey

vehemently; Pompey calls him the most unjust man alive, as he owes it to Pompey that he has become

eloquent rather than dumb, and a man who can vomit his food instead of a starveling.

That is how it is told in the Life. The Apophthegmata version drops the ‘perhaps he will, perhaps he

won’t’ remark, which Plutarch clearly found offensive (in the Life Crassus is explicitly the ‘more

diplomatic’). It also presents an extraordinarily simplified version of the politics. This is the point ‘when

the rift with Caesar was becoming clear’: that is a travesty of the implications of Luca, when the whole
56
point was that any rift seemed to have been healed. Marcellinus himself is then ‘someone who seemed

to have been brought on by Pompey, and had then gone over to Caesar’. Yet this is the consul of 56, Cn.

Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, who ‘gave general support to the optimate position against Clodius and
57
the so-called First Triumvirate’ : he was not remotely a Caesarian. Even the apophthegmatic tradition

did not usually make him into one: Valerius Maximus has him encouraging the Romans to ‘applaud,

Quirites, while you can; soon you will not be able to do so unscathed’ (6.2.6), again the sort of thing an

optimate would say, not a Caesarian. But here the Apophthegmata turn Marcellinus into a time-server

faithlessly switching his allegiance when the ‘rift’ comes, someone whom Pompey could properly rebuke

for ingratitude, rather than an uncompromising defender of the free state.

This taste for the morally improving is indeed a tendency, no more. There are certainly some

apophthegms which are less creditable, especially with Cicero: his jest for instance, at Voconius and his

ugly daughters, ‘against Phoebus’ will he once begat his brood’ (12 = Cic. 27.4). But even in that case

there is a slight tweak. In the Life Cicero ‘spoke up’ with the remark ( ἀνεφθέγξατο), in the

Apophthegmata he ‘said it softly to his friends’. And in Cicero 25 Plutarch explicitly stigmatises several

stories as sacrificing ‘propriety’ ( ò τ πρέπον), stories like his riposte when Crassus had commented on

how short-lived his family had always been, and added ‘now I wonder why I said that?’ ‘Because’, said

Cicero, ‘you knew it would go down well with the audience, and were playing the demagogue.’ A whole

group of these ‘indecorous’ stories, some half dozen of them (25.1–26.2), is then dropped from the
58
Apophthegmata.

So moral improvement may be one reason for dropping a dictum from the Apophthegmata. There

are also cases where it may be a question of generalizability: when an apophthegm is closely tied to a

particular set of circumstances, it is more likely to be dropped. That may be for presentational purposes,

for the more one has to put a story in context, the more likely one is to lose one’s audience. Or it may be

a question of applicability: if the aim is really to provide apophthegmata which could be appropriated for

a reader’s own purposes, then the more context-specific a story the less usable it is likely to be. That

helps to explain the selectivity in the Phraates anecdote (Case 4, above): a reader – or a dedicatee, if that

dedicatee is an emperor – might well find a time to say that ‘the Romans will use whatever boundary is

just’, but there would not be many opportunities to say that a hostage belonged to his father, not his

father-in-law. No wonder the Apophthegmata kept only the more generalizable as well as the more

pungent part of the remark.

This too may be a broader point. Does it help to explain why the younger Cato and Brutus are

given no Apophthegmata collections? They had their epigrammatic moments too, but the points they

made would be less applicable, or at least less tactfully applicable, to the circumstances with which the

users of the Apophthegmata would have to deal.

 Both our tendencies – to keep the morally creditable and the generalizable – may help to explain the

dropping of hoc uoluerunt. The idea that ‘it was their fault’ might seem a less than dignified comment

on a great national tragedy; and a reader in the early second century would rarely find the right occasion

to say anything like that – even, or perhaps especially, if that reader was Trajan.

There is a good deal more to ask about the Apophthegmata. We could explore their organization,

basically but not entirely chronological as it is: there are times when one can see some artistry in the

ordering within the Apophthegmata, just as we can with the ordering of those apomnemoneutic clusters
59
in the Lives. We could do more to analyse their style, especially in those cases where the

Apophthegmata versions are just as finished as, perhaps even more finished than, their counterparts in
60
the Lives.

Perhaps most rewarding of all, we could trace through the implications of this study for the literary

criticism of the Lives. If the Apophthegmata versions allow us to reconstruct more of what stood in

Plutarch’s penultimate draft for the Lives, that offers new, rich possibilities for exploring what he added

in that ultimate draft. Once again, there is great potential here for further analysis of the type which van

der Stockt’s Leuven group have made their own, and it will illuminate the peculiarities – and peculiar
61
skill – of both Apophthegmata and Lives.

Particularly rich will be those cases where we can also see a story being exploited in the Moralia. A

prime instance will be Caesar’s bold but unsuccessful voyage in a small boat in the winter of 49–8 BC,

eager as he was to get back to Italy and link with his troops (Caesar apophthegm nr. 9 = Caesar 38).

That story is told in On the Fortune of the Romans as well (319b–d), and it looks as if all three versions

are based on the same ὑπóμνημα. That case cries out for a cluster analysis. 62
It would also, incidentally,
63
carry important implications for the dating of On the Fortune of the Romans.

But it is time to finish by drawing out a few, brief further implications.

First, though I have been defining my suggestions in opposition to Stadter’s, it should be stressed

that we are looking at different Apophthegmata. He concentrates on the Laconica, I on the Regum et

Imperatorum, and there do seem clear differences between the collections: the differences in the ordering

of the Spartan anecdotes within the Regum et Imperatorum are enough to show that. It is logically
64
possible that both of us are right, for our respective collections – or indeed that both of us are wrong.

If either of us is right on the collection we have taken, it makes it more likely that the same

reconstruction would work for the other collection as well, but that is not a logical necessity.

Secondly, I have so far avoided committing myself on whether the collection of Apophthegmata was

made by Plutarch himself or by a later ‘editor’. But perhaps that is too cautious. If this reconstruction is

right, then that collector was much more likely to be Plutarch: the person who knows his way best

about his notes and drafts is always the author himself.

If so, then a third conclusion follows too: simply that Plutarch regarded such a collection as a

sensible artistic thing to do. If it were a later collector, it might be merely an exercise of literary curiosity,

born of the delights of access to a wonderful archive: but Plutarch himself was hardly likely to be so

impressed by his own filing cabinets. That, in its turn, makes it more likely that this was indeed a

collection meant for a purpose that the Lives itself could not serve, such as providing some leisure-

reading for a busy man who would not have time to read through the longer work.

A man, indeed, like Trajan… And even if we do not take the dedication too simply, that dedication

is still pointful. It may be less an indication of Trajan as ‘real reader’ or target audience, rather a signal to

the real readers, whoever they may be, that this is the quintessential ideal reader, a man of affairs, a man

with little time on his hands, but a man who still appreciates the wit of the ancients when it is presented

to him in convenient form; a man, in short, whom they would feel both intrigued and flattered to have
65
as their potential fellow-audience.

Notes

1
In the original 1979 version of ch.1, p. 29 n. 3.

2
See esp. van der Stockt 1999a, where the implications for Plutarch’s working methods are drawn out very clearly: see also van der Stockt

1999b and forthcoming, van Meirvenne 1999 and 2001, and van der Stockt and van Meirvenne, forthcoming.

3
So I argued at pp. 19–26.

4
Pollio-source: pp. 12–13.

5
Probably no extensive note-taking on the Pollio-source: pp. 22–3.

6
Research assistants: p. 24.
7
Thus Stadter, forthcoming, convincingly detects a case of last-minute reordering of anecdotes in Agesilaus, after the ὑπóμνημα stage.

The Apophthegmata Laconica generally present Agesilaus anecdotes in the same order as in the Life, but three of the forty are out of

order: two are at the beginning of the Life (ch.2), one at the end (ch. 36). The Apophthegmata probably retain the order of the

ὑπóμνημα, and Plutarch decided in his final draft to move these three items to positions of special prominence. Stadter and I differ on
the nature of that ὑπóμνημα, as will become clear, but this suggestion can hold on either model.

8
Van der Stockt 1999a, 595.

9
Van der Stockt 1999a, esp. 583–4. He finds other inconcinnities too in the How to Tell a Flatterer passage; his argument is subtle and

convincing, but too complex to summarize adequately here. Notice also Ingenkamp, forthcoming, who finds a trace of a similar

ὑπóμνημα cluster at Tranquillity of Mind 11, just before that passage; van der Stockt 1999b, arguing for another just after, involving

Tranquillity of Mind 13, and van der Stockt and van Meirvenne, forthcoming for another in Tranquillity of Mind 16 and possibly 7. –

Tasos Nikolaidis (to whom I am most grateful for a detailed critique of this chapter) puts to me that the How to Tell a Flatterer passage

makes better sense than van der Stockt suggested. Nikolaidis puts weight on the transitional sentence at 58c–d, which talks of the

excessive respect paid to wealth and outward appearance. That is relevant both to the Megabyzus story, with children initially impressed

until the man opens his mouth, and to Solon and Croesus, where Solon’s frankness contrasts with the sycophancy which the king

normally received. That may well be the underlying train of thought, the one which on this reconstruction figured in the ὑπóμνημα; I

am not convinced that it reduces the inconcinnity in the text, for this is a very general point about flattery, one which does not link

closely with what precedes or what follows, nor forms a very satisfactory transition between them.

10
On Caes. 8.3–4 see pp. 48 and 53.

11
For this and other possibilities, including that of the ὑπóμνημα, pp. 52–3.
12
p. 48 and n. 22, quoting Hardy 1924, 104 n. 1.

13
pp. 46–9.

14
Stadter, forthcoming. His paper and mine were delivered at the same conference at Leuven in June 2001, and will both appear in the

proceedings of that conference (van der Stockt and Stadter (eds.) forthcoming).

15
On the face of it this brings his view of the Regum et Imperatorum closer to mine, as both of us think that Apophthegmata and Lives are

both based on the same, earlier ὑπóμνημα. But our reconstructions of that ὑπóμνημα are very different, for in this case too his

ὑπóμνημα is purely anecdotal, mine more complete and finished.

16
As in the case of Agesilaus and the Apophthegmata Laconica (but not the Agesilaus collection in Regum et Imperatorum), with the

interesting exceptions noted above: see n. 7.

17
See pp. 94–5 and ch.5.

18
Beck (forthcoming); see also Fuhrmann 1988, 5–6. Volkmann 1869, 216–17 found the notion of the Lives as a single σύνταγμα
ridiculous, and used this as an argument against authenticity. Ironically, recent scholarship has developed the idea that different Lives

mutually cohere, especially in the pairings but also more widely: cf. pp. 44 n. 169 and 187–8; Mossman 1992, 103–4 on the likelihood

that Pyrrhus and the other Hellenistic Lives presume a knowledge of Alexander; Harrison 1995 on the possibility that Agesilaus–Pompey

and Demetrius–Antony are written against the background of Alexander–Caesar.

19
Volkmann 1869, 210–34, followed by Ziegler 1949, 226–8.

20
For one such instance see case 6, pp. 74–5; more generally, Volkmann 227 on the extra details in the Apophthegmata, and 228–30 on

divergences between Apophthegmata and Lives. If the argument of the present paper is accepted, those divergences admit of varying

explanations. In some cases, they will be simple errors which crept into one work or the other after the ὑπóμνημα stage (e.g. cases 2, 3,
with further instances in n. 26); in other cases, deliberate manipulation of detail in one of the finished versions (e.g. cases 10, 12, with

further instances in nn. 58–9), something which today we will more readily acknowledge than in the days of Volkmann. However, this

evidently needs more systematic analysis.

21
Ziegler 1949, 227 put this even more strongly than Volkmann: ‘Wie kann man glauben, da£ ein Mann, der die Dicta aus den

Schriften P.s heraussuchte und zusammenstellte, den Text in so vielen Fallen willkürlich und meist im Sinne einer Verschlechterung

geândert haben sollte?’ If my argument is correct, this underrates the artistic finish of the Apophthegmata, and fails to pay attention to

the differing stylistic levels appropriate to such gnomologies: see p. 75.

22
See pp. 67–8. This reconstruction is not very different from the underlying view of Fuhrmann 1988, 7: ‘Sans doute a-t-il utilisé des

notes qu’il avait prises au cours de ses travaux ou simplement de ses lectures; sa tâche aura constitué ici à compléter, à mettre en ordre…’

But I will try to give a fuller account of the nature of these ‘notes’. Ziegler 1949, 227 thinks that Plutarch constructed his Lives ‘aus einer

Sammlung von Apophthegmen…, die mit der uns unter seinem Namen erhaltenen nahe verwandt, aber nicht identisch, sondern

umfassender war als sie’. If I am right, the ὑπóμνημα for the Lives would indeed be much ‘fuller’, and would not be a ‘collection of

Apophthegmata’ in any real sense: Ziegler’s view is in fact closer to Stadter’s, at least for the Reg. et Imp. I feel that the Apophthegmata are

less mediocre a work than Ziegler thought (see last note). Stadter is more inclined to accept the mediocrity: cf. below, n. 29.

23
They may well be too large: Memnon FGrH 434.57.4 gives a total of 80,000 men, Phlegon FGrH 257.12.10 40,000 infantry and

30,000 cavalry. But that does not affect the source-question here: indeed, the way that Appian and Plutarch inflate to more or less the

same degree makes it more likely that the two notices have the same provenance.

24
So e.g. Fuhrmann 1988, 304. Münzer, R-E iiia. 2335–6 thought that ‘Sthenius’ or ‘Stenius’ might have been a descendant of the

Mamertines of Messene, and is followed by Heftner 1995, 108. That would explain the confusion, but seems to me over-generous to

Plutarch.

25
So Münzer, R-Exix. 2108 nr. 2.

26
For some other cases where the Life version cannot realistically be based on the Apophthegmata, see case 8 (Caesar and the pirates,

where the Life has some details shared with Suetonius but absent from the Ap. version, p. 77); case 10 (Caesar’s remark about Pharsalus,

where the Ap. version would give the impression that it was something Caesar said at the time rather than included in his Commentarii,

p. 80; Caesar apophthegm 8 = Caesar 35, where Metellus is ἔπαρχος του̑ ταμιείου in Ap. (‘in charge of the treasury’, presumably

therefore quaestor), correctly tribune in Life; Aemilius apophthegm 9 = Aem. 35–6, where his second son dies five days after the triumph

in Ap., three days after in the Life: three days will have been the version of Plutarch’s source (cf. Livy 45.40.7, Val. Max. 5.10.2) –

though the explanation here may lie in textual corruption of numbers.

27
So Briscoe 1981, 213 on the Livy passage. Some other cases where the Ap. version includes a detail lacking in the Life, or seems closer

to Plutarch’s source-material: Lucullus apophthegm 2 = Lucullus 28, where the two versions are close, but the Ap. also has the cry that ‘it

is more trouble to despoil them than to defeat them’; Caesar apophthegm 10 = Caesar 39.8 = Pomp. 65.8, where both Lives have Caesar’s

comment as .. . αί τòν νικω̑ ντ’ είχον; the Ap. has … ἀλλὰ τòν εἰδότα νικα̑ ν οὐκ ἔχοὐσιν, less pungent but apparently closer to the
version Plutarch would have found in his sources (cf. App. BC 2.62.260, … εἰ τòν νικα̑ ν ἐπιστάμενον είχον, Suet. Div. Iul. 36, …
negauit eum uincere scire). See also Volkmann 1869, 227, with n. 20 above.

28
On the gnomological genre cf. Engels 1993, Gemoll 1924.

29
Swain 1990d, 247–8. Stadter, forthcoming, similarly assumes stylistic mediocrity, but prefers to use it as an indication of Plutarch’s

confidence of his relationship with the emperor, someone to whom he did not ‘need to use his best rhetorical technique’. But there are

genres when the ‘best rhetorical technique’ would itself commend an unpretentious, unelaborated style.

30
Above, pp. 67–8.

31
The charge of incestus assimilated, so it seems, the religious outrage to the defilement of the Vestals’ chastity: so Moreau 1982, 83–9,

followed by Tatum 1999, 74–5. Plutarch refers to ἀσέβεια at both Caes. 9.6 and Cic. 28.4. This was the normal Athenian charge for

behaviour prejudicial to the sanctity of festivals: Harrison 1971, 62–3.

32
A few more awkwardnesses and loose ends in Apophthegmata which may be survivals from the fuller draft: Pompey nr. 1, where ‘he was

hated as much as his father was loved’ is awkwardly abrupt: the equivalent in the opening chapter of the Life introduces his father more

smoothly. Caesar apophthegm 8 = Caes. 35, which sets the story (Metellus and the treasury) in context by saying ‘when Pompey had fled

to the sea’: that detail is accurate, for Pompey has not yet sailed at this stage (cf. Caes. 35.2), but it has real point only for those who know

the context. We might have expected a vaguer ‘from Rome’.

33
See p. 68 and also n. 7 above.

34
The contradiction between is more apparent than real.

For Plutarch Octavian is a μειράκιον at 18 (Cic. 44.1, 45.2, 45.5) and a year later οὔπω πάνυ μειράκιον (Brut. 27.3). In Caes. 1 Caesar
is about 18. The pirate episode is anyway a little later.

35
See p. 93 and n. 5.

36
See p. 93.

37
Thus this is another case where the Life cannot simply be based on the Apophthegmata version: cf. above, n. 26.

38
See pp. 94–5, 152–6.

39
Suet. Div. Iul. 7, Dio 37.52.

40
On Plutarch’s displacement and treatment of the Cadiz story see p. 257.

41
Russell 1963, esp. 22 and 26 = Scardigli 1995, 359–60, 368.

42
p. 23.

43
p. 76. Another will be case 11, the use in Pompey of Cicero’s Themistoclean apophthegm.

44
Despite that ‘inflamed’ (incenditur), Caesar’s language is not close enough to either Plutarch version to indicate what was the original

phrasing in (presumably) the Polliosource.

45
Cf. Frazier 1988b for the use of the present tense in citations.

46
Appian oddly says that Caesar makes this criticism ‘in his letters’, ἐν ται̑ς ἐπιστολαι̑ς: there may be some confusion here arising from
the phrasing, whatever it was, in the source. At Caes. 22.2 Plutarch quotes the Commentarii again, there BG 4.11–13, and once more

Appian quotes the same passage (Celt. fr. 18): the pattern of shared quotation confirms that both are using their usual shared Pollio-

source. In that passage Appian has Caesar writing ,

Plutarch ἐν ται̑ς ἐφημερίσι – a way of rendering Commentarii which became fairly regular, and is even found as the title of Caesar’s

works in some of their manuscripts: Rüpke 1992, 202.

47
The imperfect ἔλεγε might indicate a repeated remark, as e.g. with Pericles apophthegm nr. 1, Epaminondas nr. 18, Cato Maior nr. 23;
but there are many cases when it clearly does not, e.g. Cyrus the younger nr. 1, Philip nr. 11, Alexander nr. 23, Antigonus nr. 16, Scipio

Aemilianus nr. 20.

48
Cf. Volkmann 1869, 213 and 219, commenting on the way in which Ap. frequently turns anecdotes – ‘strategemata et πολιτεύματα’ –
into apophthegms. Volkmann was appalled; we might admire.

49
e.g. Cicero apophthegm 5 has two instances of oratio recta where the equivalent in the Life only has one, but 6 is the other way round;

14 puts into oratio recta a remark which the Life left in indirect speech. There are other differences, for instances the tendency of

Apophthegmata to miss out the names of incidental characters whereas the Life includes them (cf. e.g. nrs. 17–18); but that is generically

natural (the Apophthegmata deal in what is generalizable rather than specific), and does not imply any difference in stylistic level.

50
Cf. Quint. 6.3.5, where … Tiro aut alius, quisquis fuit, qui tris hac de re libros edidit (‘Tiro, or whoever else it was who published three

books on this matter’) need not be taken as indicating genuine doubt about authorship: Quintilian archly affects doubt that anyone so

close to Cicero could have done him such a disservice. On Plutarch’s use of Tiro see p. 16; Moles 1988, 29 and 155 on Cic. 5.6.

51
pp. 16–17.

52
The prime case here is the use of the Second Philippic in Antony: pp. 17–18, 94–5,and Pelling 1988, esp. 26–7, 30, 137–40, 169–71.

53
See pp. 67–8.

54
Something which worried Volkmann (1869, 213, 219–21): cf. Fuhrmann 1988, 4–5.
55
Though it is undeniably strange that Appian does not tell this story, e.g. at BC 2.82. (It is less strange that Plutarch omits it in Pompey

72–3: his narrative focus has by then moved to Pompey and to his camp.) A hypersceptic might wonder if Pollio mentioned this not in

his History, but in, say, a separate letter; that suggestion won some approval in discussion at the Leuven conference (n. 14), and Tasos

Nikolaidis suggests to me that it may go back to oral tradition. I think it more likely that Appian left the item out for his own reasons,

not wishing to give space at this point to Caesar’s justifications. If so, that is most interesting for Appian’s technique and ‘ideology’: I

intend to discuss this elsewhere.

56
Cf. Fuhrmann 1988, 305.

57
Broughton, MRR ii. 207.

58
Some other morally discreditable stories which are dropped: several cases in Sulla when he is ungracious, whether to Athens (Sulla 6.5,

24.9) or to Mithridates (24.2) or to Halieis (26.7); several cases concerning Lucullus’ elderly self-indulgence, Lucullus 39.5, 39.6, 41.2,

and especially 41.3 (‘Lucullus is dining with Lucullus’). Another case of mild bowdlerizing is Caesar apophthegm nr. 8 = Caesar 35,

where some of the earlier parts of the story are cut away in the Apophthegmata, especially Caesar’s remark that there is a time for laws and

a time for weapons. One case of alteration rather than omission, which may be explained either by moral considerations or by

generalizability: Pompey apophthegm 7, Pompey burning Sertorius’ correspondence unread even though it implicated leading figures in

Rome. In the Apophthegmata his motive is to give those figures ‘a chance to repent and become better men’, in the Life a more hard-

nosed ‘fearing that he might stir up more violence than the wars that had ceased’.

59
For instance Pompey apophthegm nr. 7 is out of order (it relates to Sertorius, but is put after the story of Pompey’s return from Spain

in nr. 6), The Life’s order must be the chronological one, but the Apophthegmata order makes good artistic sense: nrs 4, 5, and 6 are all

dealing with Pompey’s stupendously precocious rise. Caesar apophthegms 4–5, first the Alexander anecdote, then the ‘tiny city’

( πολίχνίον) in the Alps, are put in reverse order in Caesar 11: in the Life the Alexander anecdote leads well into his ‘thrusting on the

outer sea’ in 12.1 but in Ap. the πολίχνιον leads just as well into his return to Rome. Then apophthegm nr. 7, the rather weak ‘risky and
great enterprises must be done, not thought about’, is dropped from the Life, but in Ap. it gives a neat transition to nr. 8, the Rubicon.

Aemilius apophthegms nrs. 6–8 correspond to Aem. 28.9, 34.3–4, 28.11–12, but the Ap. ordering again gives elegant transitions: in 6

Perseus is defeated, in 7 he is a prisoner, in 8 Aemilius is distributing the proceeds.

60
To the cases in n. 49 could be added e.g. Pompey apophthegm nr. 2 = 10.14; Flamininus nr. 2 = 13, where the Life does write up but it

is not clear that the Ap. version is lower-level.

61
To take some examples from Pompey: apophthegm nr. 5a keeps the narrative focus on Servilius throughout, whereas the Life switches

the emphasis to begin with the soldiers, and a neat link from the preceding item of the procession. nr. 6 also has shift of emphasis: in Ap.

the climax is, appropriately, the direct speech itself, in the Life the onlookers’ reaction to it. nr. 11 is similar. nr. 15 deals with his death:

in Ap. it reads as if he is killed immediately after expressing his fears, whereas in the Life there is a whole page of extra action, including

some further direct speech of Pompey himself (to Septimius: ‘have you not served with me?’). The extra pathos is right for the Life, but

the speed of the Ap. version is also appropriate to give a resonant conclusion to the Pompey collection.

62
Van der Stockt (forthcoming) makes some initial steps to extending the Moralia approach to the Lives, agreeing that when similar

material occurs in Lives and in Moralia the same ὑπομνήματα may be used, and may influence presentation. In that paper he raises the
possibility that, as P. researched for the Lives, he ‘added concrete examples taken from his research for his Lives’: in that case, presumably

added to his notes on moral topics. (How, incidentally, in technological terms? Might this be a case where a new paragraph might be cut

and pasted into a pre-existing roll?) In any case, this is a slightly different picture from that of the Lives’ ὑπóμνημα which I am

developing here, but I do not see why they should be incompatible.

63
Namely, that On the Fortune of the Romans must have been written after the ὑπόμνημα for Caesar, and after Plutarch had first

encountered the Pollio-source (who clearly included this story: cf. App. BC 2.57.235–8). This would put it late, well into the period

when Plutarch was writing the Parallel Lives.

64
Ziegler 1949, 228 interestingly found the Laconica even less impressive than the Regum et Imperatorum: ‘Der Charakter als bloEe,

ungesichtete, nicht irgendwie durchgearbeitete Materialsammlung tritt in dieser Schrift [sc. Laconica ]noch starker hervor als in den Reg.

et imp. ap. .’ If he is right, that could be used to support a suggestion that the apophthegms are less worked over in the Lac. than in Reg.

et Imp., and may reflect a more primitive stage of production. Stadter too thinks that Reg. et Imp. is ‘modestly embellished’, more so than

Lac.; in discussion at Leuven he put considerable weight on this point.

65
Cf. p. 270 on the significance of Sosius Senecio as dedicatee of the Parallel Lives and of Polycrates as dedicatee of Aratus.
 4

PLUTARCH’S ADAPTATION OF HIS SOURCE-MATERIAL

In chapter 1 I argued that six of the Roman Lives – Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cato Minor, Brutus, and

Antony – were prepared as a single project, and rest upon the same store of source-material. If this is so,

it affords a unique opportunity to investigate Plutarch’s techniques. There are substantial variations

among these six versions, both crude inconsistencies of fact and subtler differences of interpretation. It

no longer seems adequate to assume that these are simply inherited from differing source-material; they

must arise from Plutarch’s individual literary methods. Their analysis should therefore illuminate those

methods. How much licence did Plutarch allow himself in rewriting and manipulating detail for artistic

ends? And what considerations would lead him to vary his treatment in these ways?

In the first part of this chapter, I shall examine the literary devices which Plutarch employed in

streamlining his material: conflation of similar items, chronological compression and dislocation,

fabrication of circumstantial detail, and the like. In the second, I turn to the differences of interpretation

and emphasis among these Lives. These suggest some wider conclusions concerning Plutarch’s

biographical practice, which are developed in the final section: in particular, the very different aims,

interests, and conventions which are followed in different Lives, and the flexible nature of this

biographical genre.

I. Compositional devices

I start with some devices for abridging the narrative: first, various forms of simplification.

A characteristic technique here is the conflation of similar items. (i) At Caes. 7.7 Plutarch found it

tedious to distinguish the three final senatorial debates on the Catilinarians. He was, after all, concerned

with Caesar’s role, and that was confined to the final session. He thus gives the impression that the

culprits were exposed (3rd Dec.), and their punishment decided (5th Dec.), at the same debate. But he

certainly knew that the sittings of 3rd and 5th Dec. were distinct (cf. the earlier Cicero, 19.1–4 and

20.4–21.5), and he seems also to have known of the sitting of the 4th (Crass. 13.3).

(ii) At Cato Min. 43 Plutarch clearly distinguishes the lex Trebonia of 55 BC, giving Crassus and

Pompey their provinces, from the subsequent lex Licinia Pompeia, which continued Caesar in Gaul. In
1
that Life Plutarch needs to keep the bills separate, for they brought different reactions from Cato: he

publicly opposed the lex Trebonia, whereas the lex Licinia Pompeia provoked his personal appeal to

Pompey, warning him of the dangers which Caesar threatened. Pompey 52.4 makes much less of this:

‘thenthey introduced laws through Trebonius the tribune’ (ἒπειτα νóμους διὰ Tρεβωνίου

δημαρχουντος είσέφερον…), giving commands to Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey. Pompey thus associates
Trebonius with all three commands; in Cato Plutarch links him with the grant to Crassus and Pompey,

but correctly omits him from the continuation of Caesar’s command. Pompey groups all three

commands together, naming Caesar first; Cato gives the correct sequence, with Caesar’s command being

granted after the other two. Crass. 15.7 similarly takes all three commands together, though Plutarch
2
does not there mention Trebonius.

Similar is Plutarch’s technique of chronological compression, the portrayal of distinct events as closely

linked in time. When two items were linked causally or thematically, it would have been clumsy to

point to a long interval between them; hence Plutarch often connects such events in a way which
3
suggests chronological closeness. There are many examples, and only two need be mentioned here. (i)

At Cato Min. 51 he treats Cato’s proposal to surrender Caesar to the Germans. He tells the same story,

with less detail, at Caes. 22.4–5. In Caesar he places the item in its correct chronological position, the

year 55; Cato delays it to the context of the outbreak of the civil war, where it can conveniently be

linked with Cato’s further attacks on Caesar’s command. The vague sentence at Cato Min. 51.6 conceals

a time-lag of five years: ‘nothing was passed, but it was simply said that it would be a good thing for a

successor to be appointed to Caesar’ (ἐκυρώθη μὲν οὐ̑ν οὐδέν, άλλ’ έλέχθη μóνον ὂτι καλως ἒχει
διάδοχον Kαίσαρι δοθηνάί). (ii) At Caes. 21.8 Plutarch explains why Cato was absent from a debate in
‘for they [the triumvirs] had deliberately spirited him away to Cyprus’ (ὲπίτηδες γὰρ
4
spring, 56 BC:

αυτον εἰς Kὺπρον άπεδιοπομπήσαντο). That naturally suggests a tactic to safeguard this specific piece
of legislation, and one would conclude that Cato had only recently departed. In fact, Plutarch knew that

Cato had been despatched during Clodius’ tribunate, 58 BC (Pomp. 48.9, Cato Min. 34, and the earlier

Cic. 34.2). But, as those passages show, Plutarch thought that Cato’s removal was designed to protect
any legislation which the dynasts might introduce. Here he again wrote as if this logical link

corresponded to a chronological closeness.

Such telescoping is similar to simple chronological displacement; and this brings us to techniques

which, without necessarily abridging the narrative, serve to organize it in a more elegant or suggestive

manner. Displacements may serve to organize into logical compartments, or to give smooth transitions:

(i) At Pompey 62.1 Plutarch briefly tells the story of Caesar and the tribune Metellus: Metellus refused to

allow Caesar to open the treasury, and Caesar bluntly threatened him with death. In Pompey the story is

placed before Caesar’s pursuit of Pompey to Brundisium (62.2 is explicit on the chronological

sequence). The same story is told at greater length at Caesar 35, and there Plutarch puts it in its correct

chronological place, after Pompey has fled from Brundisium and Caesar has returned to Rome. Caesar

can afford to be accurate: its narrative is here controlled by Caesar’s own movements, and the episode

fits neatly into the narrative shift from Brundisium to Spain (36). Pompey organizes its narrative around

Pompey’s person, and it is there convenient to group together all Italian events and place them before

Brundisium. Pompey’s embarkation then moves the narrative decisively to the East.

(ii) The early chapters of Caesar show a more elaborate reordering. It is convenient to group

together Caesar’s early foreign adventures: the trip to Nicomedes (1.7), the pirate adventure (1.8–2.7),

the study in Rhodes (3). The return to Rome (4.1) can then restore the reader to an uninterrupted

treatment of domestic politics. But two separate antedatings were necessary to produce this. Plutarch

associates the pirate adventure with the trip to Nicomedes (80/79); a later date, in 74 or early 73, is

certain.
5
The journey to Rhodes is then dated ‘when Sulla’s power was already on the wane’ ( της Σύλλα
δυνάμεως ἢδη μαραινομένης), i.e. presumably in 79/8; in fact, a date of 76 or later is very probable.
6

Both episodes therefore belong after the Dolabella and Antonius trials, datable to 77/6, which Plutarch

treats in ch. 4. He doubtless knew the true sequence, for Suetonius’ account, clearly resting on similar
7
source-material, is correct. But Plutarch’s arrangement is more elegant, and it has one further effect.

Caesar’s rhetorical successes at Rome are now placed after the study in Rhodes, and it is natural to infer

that they are the result of that teaching: a theme which alike suits Plutarch’s Hellenism and his interest

in education. (We might compare the emphasis on Cicero’s Greek teachers at Cic. 3–4.)

(iii) This last instance suggests that displacements may also make, or reinforce, a causal or logical

point; this, too, is frequent. Cato Min. 30.9–10 puts great stress on Cato’s rejection of a marriage-

connection with Pompey: in this Life, it is that which began the train of events which led to war. When,

immediately afterwards, Plutarch comes to the affairs of 59 BC, he places Pompey’s betrothal to Julia at

the beginning of the account (31.6). This emphasizes the point, but is another displacement: Caes. 14.7

and Pomp. 47.10 put this later, and a date in spring or early summer is confirmed by Cic. Att.
8
2.17(37).1 (‘that sudden marriage connection’).

I pass to a different form of displacement, the transfer of an item from one character to another: this

is an extreme form of a technique often visible elsewhere, the suppression of the role of a complicating
9
extra character. (i) At Ant. 5.10 Antony and Cassius are given the speech to Caesar’s troops before the

crossing of the Rubicon; at Caes. 31.3 Plutarch says that Caesar incited the troops himself. Comparison

with Appian BC 2.33.133 and Caesar BC 1.7 suggests that the Caesar version accurately reproduces the

source. (ii) At Pomp. 58.6 Marcellus is given a proposal which Plutarch knows to be Scipio’s, and a

remark (Caesar as a ‘bandit’, ληστής) which he elsewhere gives to Lentulus (Caes. 30.4, 6). This last

instance seems only one of several such transfers in the accounts of the outbreak of war: see pp. 107–8

below.

We have so far been concerned with ways in which Plutarch has streamlined his narrative. The effect

has usually been to abbreviate his source-material, or at least to arrange it in as simple and elegant a

manner as possible, avoiding duplications, side-tracks, or distracting explanations. The opposite

technique is also visible: the expansion of inadequate material, normally by the fabrication of

circumstantial detail. Russell’s analysis of Coriolanus has demonstrated how much licence Plutarch
10
allowed himself in introducing such inventions. The present group of Lives do not lend themselves so

conveniently to this investigation: when one Life has more detail than another, it is rare that we can be

certain that it is the leaner, not the fuller, account which accurately reproduces the source. But some

instances of fabrication seem adequately clear. (i) At Caes. 9.2–10.11 Plutarch tells of Clodius and the

Bona Dea. He had already told this story in Cicero (28–9), and there are great similarities between the
11
two versions: it is likely that he based the Caesar account on his earlier version. But Caesar does have

many picturesque details absent from Cicero. The doors of the house are open; the maid runs off to

fetch Pompeia; Clodius is too nervous to stay where he is left; Aurelia’s maid is playful – ‘ “Come on,”

she said, “join in the fun”, and it was very much one woman talking to another; Clodius demurred, and

she pulled him out from the shadows’ ( ὠς δή γυνή γυναίκα παίζειν προύκαλείτο καί μή βουλóμενον
εις τò μέσον είλκε…). Aurelia is formidable and decisive; the wives return and gossip to their husbands,
and it is the menfolk who cry out for vengeance. Yet none of this new detail is very substantial, and the

main lines of the account remain unmistakably close to the Cicero version. Plutarch may have had good

information for this new detail, but it is much more likely that he is using his imagination to

supplement an unsatisfactorily spare original.

(ii) In ch. 1 I discussed Plutarch’s use of the Second Philippic in the early chapters of Antony, and

tried to show how he has revised that material to bring out points important to the Life: for instance,
12
Antony’s susceptibility to the wiles of others. We can also see him supplementing the Philippic with

circumstantial detail for which it is hard to believe that he has any independent authority. Ant. 9.6 has

Antony vomiting on his tribunal, an item in which the Philippic had revelled (63): Plutarch adds,

discreetly, ‘with one of his friends holding out his toga to catch it’ (for this seems to be the force of the

ὑπο-in ὑποσχóντος τò ίμάτιον). 13

Ant. 11 has the squabbles between Antony and Dolabella, and

clearly rests on Phil. 2.79–84; again, circumstantial detail is added (e.g. ‘for the moment Caesar

departed, ashamed at their bad behaviour. Afterwards he came forward and announced…’). The

unexpected night-time return of Antony to Fulvia is similarly elaborated (Phil. 2.77–8 ~ Ant. 10.8–9,

with Pelling 1988, 192). Finally, Ant. 13 repays examination. Antony has just failed in his clumsy

attempt to crown Caesar at the Lupercalia. That episode strengthened the conspirators’ hand, and they

considered approaching possible allies. Some suggested inviting Antony, but Trebonius opposed this: he

mentioned an earlier occasion on which he had himself sounded Antony. His remarks again seem based

on the Second Philippic (34): ‘it is well-known that you entered upon this plan at Narbo with C.

Trebonius; and, because of this complicity, we saw you called aside by Trebonius when Caesar was being

killed’ (…quem et Narbone hoc consilium cum C. Trebonio cepisse notissimum est et ob eius consili

societatem cum interficeretur Caesar, tum te a Trebonio uidimus seuocari). In Plutarch, the passage is

transformed. Antony now shares a tent with Trebonius as his travel-companion; Trebonius broaches the

subject ‘in a delicate and cautious sort of way’ ( άτρέμα πως καί μετ’ εὐλαβείας); and Plutarch stresses

what was a very easy inference, that Antony neither joined the plot nor revealed it to Caesar. The details

give the anecdote conviction and interest, but they are again not very substantial. They are much more

likely to come from Plutarch’s imagination than from any independent authority.

This instance brings us to a final category, which we may call the fabrication of a context: the devices

by which Plutarch sought to incorporate additional details, often those which sat awkwardly with his

principal version. (i) The whole context in Ant. 13 is interesting. This is a poor piece of narrative, and
14
the Trebonius item fits uneasily into its context. The explanation of the awkwardness is clear enough:

Plutarch is fitting the item from the Philippic into the framework drawn from his main Pollio-source,

and the joints creak. The main source had described the conspirators’ approaches to possible allies (App.

BC 2.113.473–124.475, Brut. 11–12, etc.): this was the best peg he could find for Trebonius’ sounding

of Antony, and he inserted the item here. But the insertion involved fabrication of detail. The Philippic

mentioned the Narbo conversation and Trebonius’ distraction of Antony on the Ides; that is all. Neither

the Philippic nor any other source confirms that the conspirators now considered sounding Antony, nor

that Trebonius told his colleagues of his earlier conversation. Those items seem to be Plutarch’s

fabrication, as he developed a context for the startling item of Antony’s knowledge of the plot.

(ii) The battle with Vercingetorix, shortly before Alesia, provides a second example. As we saw in ch.

1 (p. 18), Caes. 26.7–8 comments on the ferocity of the battle: ‘in the early stages it looked as if Caesar

was having the worse of it, and the Arverni still display a small sword hung in one of their shrines as a

ἒδοξε δὲ κατ’ άρχάς τι καί σφαληναι. καί δεικνύουσίν Ἀρβέρνοι ξιφίδιον προς
spoil from Caesar’ (

ίερᾡ κρεμάμενον, ὡς δη Kαίσαρος λάφυρον). Caesar himself smiled at the sight of this dagger, and
would not allow it to be removed. Plutarch’s narrative of the Gallic Wars is mostly drawn from Caesar’s
15
Commentarii, even though he probably did not know Caesar’s work at first hand. But Caesar’s account

of this battle (BG 7.66–7) does not include the sword anecdote, nor does it suggest that the Romans at

first had the worse of the fighting. Hence some have assumed that Plutarch’s notice goes back to an early
16
and independent authority. But the sword item must be derived from a source (perhaps an oral

source) much nearer to Plutarch’s own day: note the present ‘they display’ ( δεικνυούσιν). 17
That

anecdote was hard to reconcile with Caesar’s own version, which left no room for such a ‘spoil’. Plutarch

needed to find a stage in the battle when ‘it looked as if Caesar was having the worse of it’, and it was

natural to put this ‘in the early stages’. The revision of his material again arises from the need to find a
18
context for a disparate item.

So much for the compositional devices. We should not, of course, assume that their employment

was always a wholly conscious process. Sometimes, doubtless, Plutarch did revise his narrative in the

most calculated manner, struggling to reshape the source-material before his eyes. At other times, the

flow of his narrative would carry him on more quickly, and it seems that he sometimes relied on his
 19
memory. Conflation, compression, and imaginative embroidery would then arise easily and

unconsciously: such is the nature of story-telling.

II. Differences of interpretation

The most straightforward differences of interpretation among these Lives concern the motivation of

actions. For instance, Pomp. 57.7 tells of the rumours spread in Italy in 50 BC, when Caesar returned to

Pompey the troops he had borrowed three years earlier. These were brought by Appius Claudius, who

encouraged Pompey to believe that, if it came to war, Caesar’s troops would immediately desert to the

republican side. Here there is no suggestion that Appius had been bribed by Caesar to do this: he is

simply mistaken, reflecting the false Italian confidence which the context in Pompey is stressing. Caes.

29.5 has the same item, though Appius is not here named; but here there is a clear hint that ‘those who

had brought these troops to Pompey’ deliberately spread false rumours, and were acting in Caesar’s
20
service. That fits the themes of the Caesar context, which is making much of Caesar’s ubiquitous

corruption. Pollio may have mentioned both possible explanations, for the parallel passage in Appian

has the men acting ‘either through ignorance or because they had been bribed’ ( εἲθ’ ὑπ’ άγνοίας εἲτε
διεφθαρμένοι, 2.30.117). In each Life Plutarch selected the interpretation which suited the run of his

argument.

A more elaborate variation concerns Pompey himself during the fifties: how alert was he to the

dangers which Caesar threatened? Different Lives give different answers. Cato stresses Pompey’s

blindness to the menace: that is not surprising, for in that Life he provides the foil to Cato’s own mantic
21
foresight. At 43.10, for instance, Cato ‘often warned Pompey’ of the danger: ‘Pompey heard these

things often, but paid no attention and let things slide; it was because he believed in his own good luck

and power, and therefore could not believe that Caesar had changed’

. It is only after the consulship of 52 BC that Pompey becomes alert, and

wistfully recalls Cato’s wisdom (49.1–2) – but even then he is ‘full of hesitation and timid delay when it

came to making any attempt to prevent it’ ( ὄκνού κάί μέλλησέως άτολμού προς το κωλύέίν κάί
έπίχείρείν ύποπλέως). Caesar passes quickly over the politics of the fifties, but its summaries seem to

reflect the same analysis: here, too, Pompey is blind. ‘For the entire time of his campaign’ Caesar

deceived him, and he did not notice the growth of Caesar’s political strength (20.3); as war approached,

he had ‘recently’ come to fear Caesar, having until then despised him (28.2).

Pompey itself has a different, more subtle analysis. There, too, Pompey is certainly outsmarted

(51.1): he does not possess Caesar’s grasp of urban politics, and ‘clever as he was, Caesar outmanoeuvred

Pompey right in the middle of the people and the most vital of affairs – and they (or ‘he’) did not

notice’

. But Pompey here realizes the danger earlier, even if he does not meet

it. By the time of Crassus’ death, he too ‘is oiling his hands and rubbing them in the dust’

53.9); in those years ‘he thought that Caesar would not abandon

his power, and so sought to protect himself with the city magistracies, but took no other fresh step; nor

did he want to give the impression of distrust, but rather of turning a blind eye to what was going on

and choosing to overlook it’ ( τοτέ δέ το

Plutarch goes on to narrate the events of 54 BC. In

other words, Pompey’s alertness to the danger is put several years earlier than in Cato, and his neglect is

now a matter of conscious policy rather than political blindness. It is then only in the last months before

the war, with his joyful reception in the cities of Italy, that he genuinely comes to misjudge the danger:

he then lays aside caution, and comes to unqualified disdain of Caesar’s strength (57.5–6). This

enthusiasm of the Italian cities is consequently given extraordinary emphasis: ‘this, so they say, was as

important as anything in causing the war’ ( ούδένος μέντοί τούτο λέγέτάί

This whole reading is quite individual to Pompey,
22
and no other Life gives such emphasis to that moment.

The different emphasis here is partly to be explained by biographical relevance, for the complexity of

Pompey’s changing views is naturally most apposite in his own Life; equally naturally the other versions

may simplify. But there is more to it than this. His alertness to the menace suits the Life’s stress on his

caution, εύλάβεια; 23
it also contributes to the tragic texture of the second half of the Life. The outbreak

of war is presaged by this joy in Italy, an elegant contrast to the bleakness which will be Pompey’s fate:

this ‘most beautiful and brilliant sight’, θέαμα κάλλιστον…καί λαμπρóτατον, will eventually yield to
24
the very different tableaux of the final chapters. ‘Garlands and flowers’ now introduce the events

which lead to Pompey’s fall, and, as Pompey has recast matters, they also causally contribute to that fall.
A false confidence is produced in Pompey, and he casts off that caution which has hitherto protected

him. He is now utterly vulnerable to T υχη, ‘Fortune’, another of the Life’s major themes. 25
Some of this
26
could be formally stated in Aristotelian terms – the hamartia, the events following ‘unexpectedly but

because of one another’ (cf. Poetics 1452a4), and so on; but there is no need to labour the point. The
27
tragic elements are manifest.

There is a further aspect to Pompey’s tragedy, and this may be introduced by another question of

interpretation, Plutarch’s treatment of Clodius. Was he acting independently, or was he a triumviral

agent? In particular, the exile of Cicero, which is treated in several Lives: was that simply, or largely,

Clodius’ own desire, or was it a matter of triumviral policy? There is no clear and consistent answer, but
28
the differences among the Lives are illuminating.

Pompey does imply some arrangement between Clodius and Pompey, but in this Life, surprisingly,

Clodius seems the dominant partner. Pompey needs support to defend his eastern acta (46.7), and is

forced to flee to ‘demagogues and youths’: ‘the most hateful and audacious of these was Clodius, who

took Pompey up and hurled him down before the mob. He had Pompey rolling around in the forum in

a most unworthy way; he carted him around and used him to validate all that he was proposing and

saying to play to the crowd and flatter them’

βεβαιωτη̑ , 46.8). He

even demanded and obtained a reward, the sacrifice of Cicero, as if he were doing him service rather

than bringing him shame. ‘As if ’ he were doing him service – but all these demagogic acts are done on

Clodius’ initiative, who uses Pompey merely as a ‘validator’, βεβαιωτης. Nor has Pompey any wish of

his own for Cicero’s exile; it is solely Clodius’ pressure which achieves this. The analysis represents

Pompey as more powerful than Clodius, and Pompey’s backing is needed to secure what Clodius desires.

But the moving and active spirit is clearly Clodius, not Pompey. By ch. 48, Clodius is quite out of hand.

He has cast out Cicero, he has sent Cato to Cyprus, and he then turns on Pompey himself. In this Life

he is, most certainly, an independent agent.

Cato is rather different. Here Clodius serves the interests of the triumvirs, and receives the exile of

Cicero as his part of the bargain: ‘to get Cicero’s exile as his reward, he directed his whole political line

to fit in with what they wanted’ 33.6).

In Pompey (48.9) Plutarch made Cato’s mission to Cyprus the work of Clodius himself (‘.and he sent

Cato under the pretext of a governorship to Cyprus’), and that mission even worked against Pompey’s

interest. Cato 34.3 agrees that this was Clodius’ idea, but the context (33.6, 34.1) again makes it clear
29
that he was serving the policy of the triumvirs. The exile of Cicero remains the result of Clodius’

pressure rather than the dynasts’, but that is all. Later in the fifties, Clodius temporarily detaches himself

– but he soon ‘slips back to Pompey’ This is a much more subservient

figure than the Clodius of Pompey.

The brief notice of Caesar 14.17 is different again. This time only Cicero’s exile is in point, and

there is no mention of any other services. But here, and here alone, Cicero’s exile is not only the wish of

Clodius: Plutarch’s language suggests that Caesar wanted this as much as Clodius. ‘The most shameful

measure of all during Caesar’s consulship was the election of Clodius as tribune, the man who had

treated him so outrageously in the affair of his wife and the secret ceremonies. He was elected to destroy

Cicero ( έπί τη Kικέρωνος καταλύσει), and Caesar did not leave for his campaign until, in company

with Clodius, he had crushed Cicero and forced him out of Italy.’ Again, there is no hint of this reading
30
in Pompey or Cato?

It is not hard to see why Caesar and Cato take the lines they do. Caesar is denouncing the acts of 59

BC, and the disapproval has a crescendo: Clodius’ election, especially shameful after the Bona Dea affair,

marks the climax. It is natural to blacken Caesar still further by suggesting that Cicero’s exile, too, was

his doing. Cato controls a great deal of its narrative by polarising the struggles of the fifties: Cato is

always the champion of the republic, the triumvirs (especially Pompey and Caesar) are always the
31
threat. It is natural to fit Clodius, too, into this scheme.

The Pompey rewriting is more interesting. The Life has just begun an important new movement.

46.1–4 has stressed that Pompey’s earlier career enjoyed success to match Alexander: how fortunate, if he

had died now! For the future brought him envy in his successes, and irretrievable disaster. He came to

use his power unjustly for others, and gave them strength while reducing his own glory: ‘without

noticing it, he was destroyed by the strength and magnitude of his own power’

46.3). For Caesar rose through Pompey’s strength

to challenge the city, and eventually he destroyed Pompey himself.

 Clodius is then introduced (46.8), and, thanks to Plutarch’s rewriting, he plays out in miniature

much of what is to come. Pompey gives strength to Clodius, and is the ‘validator’ of his measures; but

Clodius ‘uses’ Pompey (46.8), as shortly Caesar will ‘use’ him (47.8), for sheer demagogy. This weakens

Pompey’s reputation (e.g. καταισχύνων, ‘bringing shame on him’, 46.8), and finally the strength given

to Clodius is used against Pompey himself (48.9–12). Pompey himself is slow to see what is happening

(48.8; cf. ‘he did not notice it’, έλαθε, in 46.3). Here there is a more specific foreshadowing of later

events, for Pompey is too wrapped up in his marriage with Julia to notice the political currents (48.8),

and this is what leaves him vulnerable to Clodius. Just so will he neglect affairs later in the fifties, first

with Julia (53.1) and then with Cornelia (55.3–4; cf. 2.10). With Clodius, events do not go too far;

with the help of the senate, Pompey can retrieve his position. Against Caesar, too, he will need the

senate’s help, and he will return to their side. But Caesar will not be so manageable.

The treatment of Clodius is one of several passages in the Life which bring out Pompey’s passivity. In

the politics of the fifties, he is seldom in control: it is extraordinary how little in the Life’s narrative is

initiated by Pompey himself. We hear a good deal of his advisers, both good and bad (49.4, 54.5, 54.9,

57.7–8); his friends, too, are emphasized, excusing his blunders (47.8), discussing his policy with him

(49.3), or giving some indication of his wishes (54.4). He himself reveals little; he is a man to whom
32 33
things happen. Commands are voted to him; he is not said to press for them, or even to desire them.

When pressed, he may answer questions (47.6–7, 51.7–8, 60.6, 60.8) – but normally his answers reveal

a further lack of sureness, and he has little dignity or control. After the outbreak of war, no-one allowed

Pompey to think for himself; all men rushed to him and filled him with their own transient emotions

and fears. ‘Contrary counsels would prevail even at different moments of the same day’

for Pompey was the prey to every false rumour. Hurriedly, he left

the city to its fate. For ten years, we have seen this indecisive man, one who is out of his depth in the

political currents: he is a general lost in politics (a theme introduced earlier in the Life, 23.3–6, and one

which is a favourite of Plutarch, ch. 15). It is, indeed, only on campaign that he acts with his old

briskness and success. His cura annonae (50) shows a different, stronger Pompey than the man we have

just seen humiliated by Clodius; his swift departure from Brundisium (62) shows him a match for

Caesar, again different from the man who has just been the feeble victim of others’ emotions (61). In

Rome and at peace, he is fully himself only with his wives Julia and then Cornelia, who themselves

distract him from public affairs. It is a powerful and sympathetic psychological portrait, and the other
34
Lives’ accounts of the fifties have little hint of it.

Pompey’s lack of decision is reflected in the Life’s treatment of his motives, and here again there is a

difference of interpretation between Pompey and the other Lives. Caesar and Cato stress his calculated

ambitions in the years from 54 to 52 BC. Caes. 28.7 is explicit: ‘Pompey himself was putting on a

respectable show of reluctance, but in fact doing more than anyone or anything else to get himself

appointed dictator’ while Cato’s

speech at Cato 45.7 shows his usual foresight, ‘.. .it is clear that he is using anarchy to court a monarchy

for himself ’ Pollio seems to have had something to say

about this, for Appian has a similar passage (BC 2.19.71, 20.73). But such calculation is foreign to the

Pompey, and that Life cuts the analysis away: simply ‘he allowed anarchy to develop in the city’

, he let it happen – though he himself has just been said to rely

on the city’s archai, ‘magistracies’, not on anarchia (54.2). There is no suggestion of any conscious

plotting. And, as we saw earlier, Pompey’s view of Caesar in Gaul is similar: he realizes the danger, and

yet he does nothing. He is, indeed, a man to whom things happen, and he lets them.

In all this there is a pervasive contrast with Caesar. Pompey is politically inert; Caesar is always at

work, even when men do not realize. His furtive, awful cleverness ( δεινóτης) undermines Roman

politics, even when he is absent in Gaul (51.1); he shows a deviousness quite alien to Pompey’s simple

and generous nature (cf. 49.14). Caesar’s flair for urban politics quite outwits Pompey

(‘.outmanoeuvring Pompey right in the middle of the people and the most vital of affairs’, 51.1, cf. p.

97). This contrast is again a peculiarity of the Pompey (though this is a matter of technique rather than

interpretation). In Caesar Pompey is certainly outwitted (20.3), but that Life concentrates more on the

similarities than the differences of the pair. Both aim at ‘monarchy’ (28.5–7), and both aim to destroy

the other (28.1). Pompey has something of this (53.9–10, cf. 67.2, 67.4–5), but states it less sharply: the

points of contact are here less emphatic than those of contrast.

More important is the preparation which all this affords for the tragedy of Pharsalus. When the war

begins, Pompey again seems to have regained his stature. His strategy of leaving Italy is correct: Plutarch
35
elaborately defends it. The army admires him, and he inspires all with his own vigour (64.3). At

Dyrrhachium, he outmanoeuvres Caesar, and forces him into all manner of hardship; meanwhile ‘every

wind blows’ for Pompey, bringing provisions, reinforcements, and funds (65.6–7). His strategy of delay,

avoiding a pitched battle, is again evidently correct (66.1); Plutarch defends it in the comparative
epilogue (84(4).6). All this is consonant with Pompey’s history of decisive generalship and consistent

victory. But now, fatally, his two worlds of politics and warfare are coming together. Even in this critical

campaign, his political failings are felt, and they destroy him. He is brought down by his inability to

lead or persuade his senatorial lieutenants. In politics, he has never been able to manage men like these,

and he cannot manage them now. He still sees things more clearly than they do (66.6), but he cannot

resist them. He abandons the task of a general, and, conscious of the folly, leads his army to its fate: the

moment inspires Plutarch to great eloquence, 67.7–10 and 84(4). His political unsureness becomes his

decisive failing, and leaves him vulnerable to Fortune. He has no control, and events bear him

inexorably to his fall.

We are, once again, close to tragedy; and Plutarch’s style and imagery adopt an appropriate tone.

The Caesarian troops take their positions ‘like a chorus’ ( ωσπέρ χορος, 68.7) – and indeed the startling
ch. 70, where participants reflect on human blindness and greed, is very much in the manner of a choral

ode. Pharsalus itself is later said to be the ‘theatre’ (84(4).6) – a theatre which Pompey should have
36
avoided. It is a theatre where the armies play out events to an inevitable conclusion. The Pompeian

dandies are no match for Caesar’s veterans (69.4–5, 71.7–8). The empty luxury found in Pompey’s

camp closes the account of the battle (72.5–6), elegantly returning to the vital theme, the manic

optimism of Pompey’s staff: ‘it was thus that they went to war, destroyed by their hopes, weighed down

by stupid over-confidence ( ουτω τάίς And Pompey

the Great, now ‘most like a madman, one whose wits were destroyed’

an Andromache (Iliad 6.389, 22.460) more than a

Hector or an Achilles, is involved inescapably in their fate.

III. Biographical theory and practice

Plutarch introduces the pair Alexander and Caesar with one of his clearest programmatic statements.

The reader of those two Lives should not expect a detailed narrative of all the well-known historical

events. ‘For it is not histories we are writing, but Lives. Nor is it always his most famous actions which

reveal a man’s good or bad qualities: a clearer insight into a man’s character is often given by a small

matter, a word or a jest, than by engagements where thousands die, or by the greatest of pitched battles,
37
or by the sieges of cities’ (Alex. 1.1–2). The point recurs elsewhere: Plutarch feels no responsibility to
38
give a continuous history of events, which the reader can find elsewhere. His interest is character,

ethos. Compare the first chapter of Nicias: Plutarch is ‘not as stupid as Timaeus, who tried to rival

Thucydides’: he has merely tried to collect some less familiar material. ‘Nor is this an accumulation of

useless erudition; I am conveying material that is helpful for grasping the man’s nature and character’
39
Why this interest in character?

Plutarch’s answer is again clear: he hopes that his readers might be led by examples of virtue to become
40
better people themselves. He hopes that a few examples of wickedness, carefully introduced, may deter
41
his audience from evil. And he has himself tried to become a better man for his biographical studies,

‘using history like a mirror, and somehow improving and moulding my own life in imitation of their

virtues’ (Aem. 1.1). The theory is clear and consistent. Biography will often concentrate on personal

details, and may abbreviate its historical narrative; its concern will be the portrayal of character, and its

ultimate purpose will be protreptic and moral.

That is the theory; and the practice often closely corresponds. Pompey itself is one example.

Everything centres on Pompey’s own character, on motifs such as the tension between home life and

public affairs or between politics and warfare; on the strengths and weaknesses which bring success and

then defeat. The explanations of such matters are sought in Pompey’s own personality, and there is no

attempt to relate them to any wider historical background. It is also a moralistic Life, in the sense that

Pompey’s good qualities – the orderliness and good sense of his personal life, for instance, or his diligent
42
provincial administration – receive due praise; political unscrupulousness seldom escapes censure.

Passing morals are intrusively pointed, the most striking example being the ‘choric’ reflections before
43
Pharsalus. And the insight into the vulnerability of a great man carries an awareness of human fragility

which is ‘moralistic’ in another sense, one more concerned to point a truth of human existence than to
44
exhort or to deter (see ch. 10).

Cato Minor is also close to the theory. The Life underlines Cato’s unbending and upright character,

‘not flexible, not susceptible, but firm in everything’ ( ηθος…άτρέπτον κάί άπάθές κάί βέβάίον έν
πάσίν, 1.3). Cato’s austere and energetic demeanour on campaign, his ostentatiously just

administration, his immaculate conduct as a candidate for office, his magnanimity in accepting a
45
personal defeat – these are the points which are stressed. The tradition richly illustrated Cato’s

courageous resistance to unscrupulous and violent opponents: Plutarch revels in it. There were a few

bad points, too, and Plutarch, true to his theory, observes them carefully: his unbending opposition to

Pompey’s agents was perilous, although well-intentioned (26.5); his unpretentious dress and demeanour
detracted from his dignity as praetor (44.1); his divorce and remarriage of Marcia was questionable

(52.8). But the general picture is positive. The climax is reached with Cato’s last days. He is determined

on suicide, but his first thought is for the safety of the people of Utica (58.5, 59.4–8, 65.2, 65.6–7,

70.6–7). They doubt the wisdom of resisting Caesar, but even they come to understand and marvel at

the constancy of Cato’s virtue (64.3).

‘Small matters’, too, receive the stress which the Alexander prologue suggests. The Life is studded

with anecdotes: the infant Cato’s meeting with Poppaedius Silo, the triumphant entry of Demetrius into
46
Antioch, the circumstances in which Cato received Ptolemy, the complicated snub of Juba. Cato’s

quarrel with Munatius is described at length (37), and Plutarch concludes in language very reminiscent

of the Alexander prologue: ‘I have treated this episode at length because I think that this, no less than his

great and public deeds, reveals and illustrates his character’ (37.10). This is indeed a very ‘personal’ Life.

Cato’s love for his brother is emphasized; the difficulties of his womenfolk are a recurrent theme; his
47
fondness for drink is not concealed. There is little interest in the historical background: he can relate
48
the formation of the first triumvirate without even mentioning Crassus. Cato’s resistance to the

dynasts is not brought into any political scheme, and he is one man working on his own. The
49
controlling interest is ethical, not political, and passing ethical truths are duly pointed.

Cato, then, and Pompey are all Plutarch’s theory could demand: personal, moralistic, non-historical.

They are also not very typical. Consider, for instance, Caesar. Plutarch there generates a great interest in

the historical background, and is particularly careful to keep the theme of the coming tyranny before
50
our eyes. The early chapters introduce the theme. 3.2–4 digresses to mention the later period in

Caesar’s life when, ‘striving to become first in power and in armed conflict’, he allowed the highest rank
51
of eloquence to escape him. Abusive political opponents charge him with challenging the state and

aiming at tyranny (4.8, 6.3, 6.6); but the people encourage his ambitions, and promise their support

(5.8–9, 6.9). Later in the Life, little touches show Plutarch’s careful emphasis. At 29.5 the rumour

spreads in Italy that Caesar’s men are likely to desert: ‘that’s how unpopular (they said) he has become

with them because of all those campaigns, and that’s how frightened and suspicious they are of his

monarchic ideas’ The

parallel passage in Pompey (57.7) does not mention ‘monarchy’; nor, to judge from Appian (BC

2.30.116), did Pollio make much of this. At Caes. 30.1 Caesar accuses the optimates of building

Pompey’s tyranny while they destroy Caesar himself; the parallel Pompey 58.5 does not mention

‘tyranny’. The affair with Metellus (Caes. 35.6–11) is also brought into the scheme, and oratio recta

brings out a vital point: ‘You are my property,’ Caesar says, ‘you and all the others I have captured who

took sides against me’

52
Plutarch does not need to labour the point: these are the words of a

tyrant. Such hints thoroughly prepare the way for the final chapters. Caesar’s rule became ‘an
53
acknowledged tyranny’ (57.1), and yet the pressures of that rule forced him to his death. He had spent
54
his life in seeking absolute power, and saw only its name, and the perils of its reputation (69.1).

Caesar became tyrant: Plutarch asks himself how it happened. His answer is again clear and

emphatic. From the beginning, Caesar is the champion of the demos. They support him, and he rises; he

loses their favour, and he falls. Early in his life, it is the people who encourage him to become first in the

state (6.9). He fosters them with shows and games, and they seek ‘new commands and new honours’

with which to repay him (5.9). This generosity to the demos indeed purchases the greatest of prizes

cheaply (5.8, cf. 4.8), and the optimates are quite deceived (4.6–9, 5.8). The theme continues through
55
the Life: even the brief notices of the politics of the fifties are underpinned by references to the demos.

It is when Caesar loses this popular support that his fortunes waver, and the reactions of the demos are
56
important in explaining his fall, but, after his death, the popular fervour again erupts.

This demos–tyrannis analysis dominates Caesar, and it is essentially a historical interest. Other Lives
57
occasionally differ in detail from this analysis, and, more important, they are simply less interested in

offering any such explanation of events. This interest leads in Caesar to the suppression of themes and

emphases which elsewhere typify Plutarch’s work. Caesar’s own ethos, for instance, remains rather

shadowy: there is none of the psychological interest of Pompey, and there are few personalia of the type

we see in either Pompey or Cato. Pompey’s home life was stressed in his Life, and Cato’s womenfolk in

his; here there is very little on Caesar’s three or four marriages. And Caesar’s personal, especially sexual,

habits might afford vast scope for a biographer: one need only glance at Suetonius’ Divus Iulius.
58
Plutarch welcomes such material elsewhere, but here he suppresses it. Even Cleopatra is treated rather

perfunctorily (49.1–3). There are indeed remarkably few of those ‘small matters which illustrate a man’s
59
character’ which the preface to Alexander–Caesar had promised.
 Nor is it a very moralistic Life: we can indeed see Plutarch avoiding points he elsewhere thinks

important to an estimate of Caesar. In other Lives he gives Caesar credit, the ‘gentlest of doctors’ for the
60
evils of his generation (Ant. 6.7, Brut. 55(2).2): not a word of this in Caesar itself. Little stress is given

to Caesar’s ‘reasonableness’ ( έπίέίκέίά) in the Civil Wars:

61
for instance, his generous treatment of the

troops of Afranius and Petreius is stressed at Pomp. 65.3, but omitted at Caes. 36.2. Nor does Plutarch

make negative moral points. There is no explicit disapproval for Caesar’s vulgar demagogy, or his
62
extravagance, or his debts. The moralist does occasionally show through, but these hints are sparse,
63
and seldom important.

But Caesar is no more typical than Cato. Consider another Life, the Antony. In many ways this is

closer to Plutarch’s theory. There is certainly little interest in the history, and the struggle of Antony and

Octavian is not related to any wider background. The origins of the war of Actium are described in
64
terms of antagonistic personalities: in particular, the antagonism of Cleopatra and Octavia. The battle

itself is narrated very hazily, and all centres on the personal demeanour of Antony and Cleopatra. It is,

indeed, a very personal Life. The narrative often stops for powerful characterizing surveys: not just of
65
Antony, but also of Cleopatra, of Fulvia, of Octavia, even of the incidental Timon of Athens. A fund

of anecdotes illustrate Antony’s character, ‘boastful, whinnying, full of empty prancing and inconsistent

ambition’ (κομπωδη κάί φρύάγμάτίάν οντά κάί κένού γάύρίάμάτος κάί φίλοτίμίάς άνωμάλού

μέστον, 2.8). His luxurious private life is a dominant motif, and ‘small matters’ figure as prominently as
66
the Alexander preface would suggest. The Life is also at times extremely moralistic and value-laden, as
67
indeed the introduction to Demetrius and Antony leads us to expect. Antony’s private luxury is
68
criticized; so is his autocratic behaviour in public. The proscriptions are strongly stigmatized (19–20).
69
The final Comparison is heavy with ‘crude and prudish’ moralism. And it is tempting to characterize
70
the entire Life as ‘basically.. .a simple cautionary tale’.

Yet it is perhaps not so simple. Most of these instances have been drawn from the first third of the

Life, before the entrance of Cleopatra (25.1). Cleopatra herself is introduced as Antony’s ‘final evil’

τέλέύτάίον κάκον) – but the story is immediately seized by a new narrative and descriptive vigour, and
(

the nature of Plutarch’s moralism becomes rather different. There are no more intrusive moralizing

remarks; no more explicit denunciations of the actions he describes. Antony and Cleopatra vie with each

other in the extravagance of their entertainment (26–8); Plutarch might have done more than mildly

rebuke Antony for time-wasting (28.1, cf. 30.1). Cleopatra is the mistress of every type of ‘flattery’

κολάκέίά, 29.1), and contrasts tellingly with Octavia’s ‘gravity’ or ‘dignity’ (σεμνοτης, 31.4, 53.5); but
(

it is an essentially artistic contrast, and no explicit moral is drawn. Cleopatra and Antony behave

disgracefully at Actium, ‘betraying’ the whole army (cf. 68.5). Plutarch makes little ethical capital of it:

contrast his remarks on Pompey’s behaviour at Pharsalus (Pomp. 67.7–10). By the end of the narrative,

the interests of writer and audience are far from crude moralism. Octavian is allowed no praise for what

could be seen as noble conduct towards Cleopatra (82.2, 84.3, 86.7); and it is indeed a surprise, when

we come to the comparative epilogue, to discover that Plutarch disapproved of the manner of Antony’s
71
death. Praise and blame are alike irrelevant to the narrative: Plutarch, like his readers, is quite carried

away by the vigour and splendour of the death-scenes.

Plutarch is here doing more than pointing the fate of the flatterer, or noting the effects of the

corruption of passion. His concern is the tragic depiction of a noble and brilliant nature, a man torn by

psychological struggle and cruelly undone by his flaws – by his weakness of will, by his susceptibility to

others, by his sad and conscious submission to his own lowest traits. There is moralism here, certainly,

just as there is usually moralism in tragedy; but it is a subtle and muted type of moralism. It is the

moralism of a sympathetic insight into human frailty; the moralism which, like the tragic aspects of

Pompey, points a truth of human nature. We are some way from the ethical colouring of Cato, with its

explicit protreptic and censure.

One further point is important. Antony disappears from the narrative at 78.1 (his death is

mentioned only in a passing participial clause). The last ten chapters are all Cleopatra’s. Plutarch often

concludes a Life with a brief death-notice, giving the hero’s age when he died and summarizing his

achievement. Here there are two heroes, and they are given a joint notice (86.8–9). In the last analysis,

Antony fits Plutarch’s biographical theory only a little better than Caesar. Its moralism soon becomes

more subtle and less strident, as it is overlaid by the interest in literary artistry; and, by the end, it is not

really a biography at all, or at least not a simple one. By now two lives have become one, and their story
72
– their tragedy – has become one as well.

A writer’s programmatic statements can sometimes be a poor guide to his work, and some Lives fit

Plutarch’s theory better than others. Any account of the Lives must bring out their versatility. It must

find room for Caesar, which is not straightforwardly moralistic or personal but is certainly historical. It
must include Lives which break away from the constrictions of a single man’s Life, as Antony moves its
73
attention to Cleopatra, or as Brutus often divides its interest between Brutus and Cassius. It must find

room for different types of moral interest: the explicit praise and blame of Cato, or the subtler and more

tragic insights of Antony. Other Lives again – Crassus, perhaps, or Sertorius – are simply less ambitious

and less richly textured. This biographical genre is an extremely flexible one, and admits works of very

different patterns.

It is arguable that these different emphases go deeper, and illuminate more puzzling aspects of

Plutarch’s work. He is, indeed, a curiously varied writer. Sometimes he is impressively critical of his

sources, sometimes he seems absurdly credulous. His historical judgements are sometimes insightful,

sometimes strangely unsophisticated. His characterization often impresses with its perceptiveness; it

sometimes irritates with its triviality. His style and imagery are usually sober and restrained, but

occasionally florid, extravagant, even melodramatic. Might such irregularities be related to the different

directions and interests of the Lives? That inquiry would indeed be delicate and complicated; and yet,
74
perhaps, it would have its rewards.

Excursus

The most bewildering example of Plutarch’s simplifications and displacements is seen in his accounts of

the senatorial debates at the outset of the war: Caes. 30–1, Pomp. 58–9, and Ant. 5. The historical
75
accuracy of these accounts has been thoroughly examined by Kurt Raaflaub, and only a few points

need be considered here.

The Pompey account mentions the debate of 1st Dec. 50, but omits that of 1st Jan. 49: Caesar and

Antony have the 1st Jan. debate, but not that of 1st Dec. Plutarch seems quite clear that these are

different sessions, in different years. Thus at Pomp. 59.2 he explicitly notes that Lentulus was

consuldesignatus, and then at ch. 5 marks the moment when he assumed the consulship; at Caes. 30.6

and 31.2, Lentulus is consul throughout. In Pompey it is Curio (tribune until 9th Dec. 50) who

proposes that both Caesar and Pompey should disarm: this proposal is historically well-attested for the
76
1st Dec. debate. But in Antony, and apparently in Caesar, it is Antony, tribune from 10th Dec.

onwards, who makes this proposal. No other ancient source suggests that this proposal was made on 1st

Jan., nor that Antony put it forward at any time. Some features of the chronology seem to be

distinguished in consequence of the Lives’ focus on different sessions. Curio’s enthusiastic reception by

the demos follows the Pompey session (58.9), but precedes that in Caesar (30.2); the same is true of
77
Antony’s insistence on reading a letter from Caesar to the demos (Pomp. 59.3–4, Caes. 30.3, Ant. 5.5).

It does seem probable that Plutarch, in selecting these different sessions for emphasis in the three Lives,

was not simply confused. His choice was deliberate, and we shall examine his reasons in a moment.

Yet the course of the debates themselves is extraordinarily similar. All three Lives have the sequence

of votes (though Pompey simplifies a little): first, those who wished Pompey to disarm; then those who
78
wished this of Caesar; finally, those who preferred the disarmament of both. Both Pompey and Caesar

have similar apophthegmata of the presiding consul: Caesar as a ‘bandit’ ( ληστης) and the need for arms
79
rather than words. In both cases, the senatorial reaction is to change their clothes as a mark of grief

(Pomp. 59.1, Caes. 30.6). It is natural to suspect that these similarities arise from some deliberate

conflation and displacement by Plutarch, and, in the case of the consular apophthegmata, some

conscious displacement seems clear: in Caesar Lentulus is the consul, and he is given the remarks which

in Pompey belong to Marcellus. It is likely enough, too, that the change of clothes belongs after the
80
Caesar–Antony debate, in early January, while Pompey has displaced this to a month earlier.

What are we to make of the rest, and particularly the similar sequences of votes in the two sessions,

and the similar role of the two tribunes? No doubt, as Raaflaub remarks, the two debates did cover
81
similar ground, and no doubt the Caesarian tribunes were active in both. But it requires great faith to

believe that the Caesar account is accurate, and that Antony genuinely revived Curio’s ploy a month

later and gained a similar response. That is Raaflaub’s view; but what we have seen of Plutarch’s

technique shows that this is a flimsy structure to build on his evidence. It is easier to assume that, for

certain reasons, Plutarch chose to stress different debates in different Lives; but, once he had made this

choice, he felt free to select the most spectacular items from either debate, and exploit them in the single

context he had imposed. Such transfers and displacements are anyway visible here, as we have seen: he

has surely done the same with Curio’s proposal and its fate. In Caesar and Antony he delays this to the

new year, and this involved transferring it to the new year’s tribune, just as the apophthegmata needed to

be transferred to the new year’s consul. Plutarch need have no historical basis for this, and provides no

evidence for Antony’s true behaviour on 1st Jan.

 Why, then, did Plutarch stress different sessions in the three Lives? First, both Antony and Caesar

make much of the tribunes’ flight to Caesar’s camp (Caes. 31.2–3, Ant. 5.8–9): in both Lives, this flight

gives the transition to the crossing of the Rubicon. (Pompey omits this flight, and Plutarch there prefers
82
to link events by a different device. ) The transfer of Curio’s proposal to Antony evidently tidies the

sequence, and aids the focus on the tribunes of 49: not merely is their proposal rebuffed, they are even

driven out of the senate-house and forced to the camp of Caesar. Secondly, Pompey makes much more of

the republican opposition to Caesar, and particularly the relation of the optimate extremists with

Pompey. In that Life the canvas is large enough to admit the role of Marcellus, Lentulus, and Cato;

Caesar has only Lentulus. As Marcellus is given three speeches in Pompey (58.6, 58.10, 59.1), it is

worthwhile to distinguish him from Lentulus; once that distinction is made, the marking of the separate

consular years is no great cumbrance. Caesar conflates, and the concentration of all these events into a

single consular year is a natural consequence. Thirdly, the suppression of the December debate in Caesar

leaves, as the first events of the sequence, Curio’s enthusiastic reception by the demos, and Antony’s

reading ‘against the consuls’ will’ ( βίά των ύπάτων) of Caesar’s letter to the people: these are themes

which cohere closely with that Life’s emphasis on the demos of Rome.

Notes

1
Caes. 14.2 and Cato Min. 32–3 form a similar case (p. 4). Caesar treats two bills together, but Cato has to distinguish them, as Plutarch

there wishes to trace Cato’s reactions to both.

2
For similar conflations, cf. e.g. Ant. 5.8 (with Pelling 1988, 129), conflating at least two meetings of the senate in early 49 (Plutarch

knows better at Caes. 30–1); Ant. 14.3, with p. 37 n. 90 and Pelling 1988, 152; Caes. 30.6, where the outburst of ’Lentulus’ combines

two remarks made by Marcellus, Pomp. 58.6 and 10 (pp. 107–8); and Cic. 15.5, combining (a) the two reports from Etruria and (b) the

tumultus decree and the senatus consultum ultimum. Note also that in Coriolanus 3 he appears to combine details of the battles of Regillus

and of the Naevian meadow: Russell 1963, 23–4 = Scardigli 1995, 362–3. For similar instances in Pericles see Stadter 1989, xlviii; in

Cicero, Moles 1988, 37; in Sertorius, Konrad 1994, xl; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 283.

3
Similar instances are collected in Sherwin-White 1977, 177–8; for similar cases in Marius, cf. also Carney 1960, 26–7; in Cicero, Moles

1988, 37; in Pericles, Stadter 1989, xlviii; in Sertorius, Konrad 1994, xl; in Alcibiades, Frazier 1996, 25–7; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a,

283 and 406 n. 196; in Lysander and Alexander, Duff 1999, 313–14.

4
The debate concerned the grant of stipendium for Caesar’s troops. It presumably took place after Luca, but before the debate on the

consular provinces in (?) June: cf. Cic. Prov. Cons. 28. Plutarch’s notice of Cato’s absence is often regarded as a blunder: so e.g. Garzetti

1954 ad loc., and Luibheld 1970, 89 n. 13. But Cato seems to have returned from Cyprus at almost exactly this time, in spring or early

summer, 56 (Oost 1955, 107–8). There is no reason to think that he reached Rome before the stipendium debate, and Plutarch’s version

can stand.

5
See now Ward 1977, 26–36, correcting Ward 1975, 267–8 and itself subsequently corrected in one important particular by Glew 1981,

128–9: cf. MRR ii. 98, 100 n. 6. Suet. Div. Iul. 4.1 puts the pirate episode after the Dolabella trial, and this is confirmed by the precise

reference of Vell. 2.42.3. Caesar there refers the matter to the proconsul of Bithynia and Asia, who seems to be called Iuncus or Iunius

Iuncus (both emendations are due to Nipperdey: Iunium cum codd.). This can only be the ‘Iuncus’ of Caes. 2.6, who apparently held

this unique combination of provinces for a short period in winter 74–3. (On the chronology see Bennett 1961, 460–3; Glew 1981.

Nicomedes’ death is now dated to late 74: coins show he was still alive in October. He bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, and Velleius

implies that Iuncus administered it along with Asia for the rest of his term.) Caesar was held by the pirates for 38 days: his capture

should therefore be late 74 or very early 73.

6
Suet. Div. Iul. 4 again places this after the Dolabella trial, connecting it with the pirate adventure. If that connection is historical,

Caesar would probably have arrived at Rhodes in the early months of 73.

7
Strasburger 1938, 72–3. Strasburger adequately demonstrated the uniform nature of the tradition for Caesar’s early years, though his

more detailed attempts to disentangle particular source-traditions are wild.

8
Meier 1961, 69–79. – Such displacements are very frequent. For further examples, cf. e.g. Ant. 12.6 and Caes. 60.6, discussed at p. 37

n. 88; Ant. 21, where material from the Second Philippic is delayed to a point after Cicero’s death (pp. 17–18 and Pelling 1988, 169);

Pomp. 64.5, where Plutarch displaces the arrival of Labienus in order to include him in his survey of Pompey’s new supporters (contrast

Caes. 34.5); Caes. 11.5–6 and 32.9, using material which the source apparently attached to Caesar’s quaestorship (cf. Suet. Div. Iul. 7–8

and Dio 37.52: see pp. 77, 257, and Pelling 1997b, 200–1); Pomp. 48.9–12, where the amoibaia material is brought forward from 56

BC (cf. Dio 39.19, Cic. Q. Fr. 2.3(7).2), as Plutarch wishes to connect it with events two years earlier; and apparently several

displacements in his account of senate-meetings before the outbreak of war (pp. 107–8). For similar cases in Cicero see Moles 1988, 37;

in Thes.–Rom., Larmour 1988, 272–3 and 1992, 4172; in Sertorius, Konrad 1994, xl; in Pompey, Heftner 1995, 18–19; in Pyrrhus and

Agesilaus, Frazier 1996, 27–9; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 283–4; cf. also Stadter xlviii–ix and n. 47.

9
For instances of this, cf. p. 4; for transfers, pp. 7, 33 n. 41, 228 n. 22. At Brut. 24.7 the watchword ‘Apollo’ at Philippi is transferred

from Antony to Brutus. For similar cases in Cicero, Moles 1988, 37; in Pericles and Aristides, Stadter 1989, xlix and n. 48; in Sertorius (at

least suppressions, if not transfers), Konrad 1994, xl; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 284; in Nicias, below, pp. 120–1 and 135–6 n. 14;

Pelling 2000, 48 and 107.

10
Russell 1963, esp. 23–5 = Scardigli 1995, 361–8. For similar instances in Marius, cf. Carney 1960, 28–9; in On the Virtues of Women,

Stadter 1965, 138–9; in Cicero, Moles 1988, 36–8; in Thes.–Rom., Larmour 1988, 368, 373–5 and 1992, 4169, 4171, 4174; in

Sertorius, Konrad 1994, xli; in Flamininus, Pelling 1997a, 284 and 381 n. 109. For speculation about similar procedures in Nicias,

below, pp. 120–1; in Pericles, Pelling 2000, 107.

11
p. 18, with n. 119.

12
pp. 17–18.

13
For this and other rewritings in the passage see Pelling 1988, 137–9.
14
The suggestion that Antony should be approached comes awkwardly after his subservient antics at the Lupercalia; disturbingly little is

made of the astonishing item of Antony’s knowledge of the plot; the ‘renewed discussions’ at 13.3 are also clumsy; and it is odd that

Trebonius is not named in the final sentence (‘some people’, ένίούς:

cf. p. 33 n. 41).

15
Cf. pp. 17, 35 n. 69. The contact with Appian’s Celtica suggests that Plutarch drew his account from the Pollio-source: pp. 12–13.

16
Especially Gelzer, R-E viiia. 998, and Thévenot 1960, 132, 151.

17
See pp. 18 and 40 n. 121.

18
A further ‘fabrication of a context’ seems to be Brut. 19.4–5, where Plutarch alone attests a senate-meeting for 18th March 44. He

appears to have introduced this separate session in order to include disparate material from a secondary source: p. 37 n. 90 and Pelling

1988, 152. Further examples in Antony may be 33.2–t and 53.5–7: see Pelling

1988, 206–7, 246–7.

19
ch. 1, esp. pp. 20–2.

20
I defend and elaborate this interpretation of the Caesar passage in Pelling 1984a,43–5.

21
Cato’s foresight is stressed at Cato Min. 31.7, 33.5, 35.7, 42.6, 43.9, 45.7, 49.1–2, 51.4–5, 52.1–3; it is given a divine tinge at 35.7,

42.6, 43.3, and 53.3, and is contrasted with Pompey’s blindness at 43.9, 49.1–2, and 52.3.

22
Caesar (28.2, 29.5, 33.5) and Cato Min. (49.3, 52.4) make related points much less extravagantly; in neither Life does Plutarch think

this Italian joy worth mentioning. To judge from Appian (BC 2.28.107–8), Pollio did not make much of it. – On the alertness shown

by Plutarch’s Pompey see also Hose 1994, 288–90, but he misses the differences here among the Lives.

23
Pomp. 57.6 stresses that it was his ‘caution’, ευλάβείά, which had earlier guided to safety his strokes of good fortune, ευτυχημάτά.
Plutarch presumably has in mind such instances as 8.5, 13.2–3, 13.9, 19.8, 21.5–7, 22.4, 26.1, 27.3, 33.5, 36.3, 40.8–9, 43.3; cf. also

2.10, 20.8, 39.2, 42.4.

24
Especially the scenes of Pompey’s death, 78–80; Plutarch’s technique is there extremely visual, describing events from the viewpoint of

Cornelia and the rest of Pompey’s followers, still at sea. – The Italian reception also evokes the procession of ch. 45, a previous turning-

point of Pompey’s life.

25
Esp. 21.3, 21.8, 41.4, 42.12, 46.2, 50.3, 53.8–10, 57.6, 73.8, 74.5–6, 75.1–2,75.5, 82(2).1.

26
Which is not to say that Plutarch necessarily knew the Poetics: that question is difficult. Cf. Sandbach 1982, 208, 229 and Zadorojnyi

1997a, 172–3.

27
Talk of ‘tragic influence’ is of course problematic, and I would prefer to speak only of a tragic affinity : cf. the similar moves made by S.

Hornblower 1987, 110–35, esp. 117–20, in discussing Thucydides. Sensitivity to the ‘tragic’ elements of the human condition has never

been confined to one genre of literature, nor any single art-form, nor to art itself. ‘Tragic’ elements spring from a writer’s vision and

sensibilities: literary experience will have helped to shape those sensibilities, but we cannot hope to gauge the precise impact of just one

of a complex of overlapping factors. I here suggest only that, in Plutarch’s best writing, his sensibilities are given depth and resonance by

an intertextual relationship with Tragedy, the literary genre. (When the literary elements become primary, we are closer to ‘tragic history’

in the debased Hellenistic sense.) Identifying ‘tragic’ suggestions is anything but straightforward: more is needed than, say, tightness of

structure, or a doomed or self destructive character. But e.g. the theatrical imagery of Pompey and Theseus and Antony and Lysander (pp.

101 and n. 36, 197–200, 203–t, 296, 355, or even the strongly visual, ‘scened’ quality of the final scenes of Pompey (n. 24) can

reasonably be taken as pointers to the dramatic genre. – These questions have been much discussed since de Lacy 1952: see Mossman

1988 = Scardigli 1995, 209–28 for a bold and thought-provoking attempt to distinguish epic and tragic elements in Alexander ; Braund

1993 and Zadorojnyi 1997a for ‘tragic’ elements in Crassus; Mossman 1992 and Braund 1997 for Pyrrhus; Frazier 1992, 4527–8 on

Alexander and Pompey; Duff 1999 index s.vv. ‘Tragic’ and ‘Tragedy’, esp. 41–2, 61–2, 123–6; and earlier note the cautious remarks of

Russell 1973, 123 and Wardman 1974, 168–79. I briefly discuss some of the general issues in Pelling 1999, 337–8, in particular the

question why historical writers seem to have a closer affinity with tragedy than with other genres, especially comedy.

28
In using terms such as ‘triumvirate’ or ‘independent agent’, I do not suggest that these categories are appropriate for illuminating

historical fact (both are very problematic); I do suggest that it was in categories such as these that Plutarch approached and understood

the period. – I omit the earlier Cicero from this analysis; the later Lives are better informed on the fifties than Cicero, and we need not

assume that Plutarch then had the same view of events. Cicero in fact represents Clodius as largely independent, with his hostility to

Cicero dating from the Bona Dea affair. That emphasis suits the Life’s interest in Cicero’s private affairs, especially gossip relating to

Terentia (e.g. 20–3, 29.2–4, 30.4, 41.2–3). The triumvirs are at first friendly to Cicero, and their feelings change only when Caesar is

offended over his offered legatio (30.4–5). Caesar then ‘strengthens’ Clodius, and dissuades Pompey from helping Cicero. There is no

more extensive deal between the triumvirs and Clodius, only this casual backing for Cicero’s exile.

29
So Oost 1955, 109 n. 3: ‘Plut. Cato Min. 34 surely can only mean that the triumvirate was behind the silencing of Cato.’

30
Though the Caesar version is closer to that of Cicero (n. 28), and may be a simplification of that Life’s account.

31
For an instance of this, cf. p. 4.

32
There is of course considerable historical acumen in Plutarch’s portrayal: nosti hominis tarditatem et taciturnitatem (‘you know the

man’s slow-moving, silent way’, Cic. Fam. 1.5b(16).2), and cf. e.g. Gelzer 1959, 158–9, 170–1, 175. Gelzer 164 also finds it useful to

contrast Pompey’s phlegmatic conduct of politics with ‘die alte Energie’ on campaigns. It is also likely that some of this portrayal goes

back to Pollio: Pelling, forthcoming (a). In Pelling, forthcoming (b) I explore further aspects of this portrayal in the second half of

Pompey, in particular how many of the leading themes carry on around Pompey without being directed by him: he is almost a passenger

in his own Life.

33
Esp. 49, 54, 55.12, 61.1: contrast the Life’s earlier stress on his ‘desire for office’, φίλάρχίά, esp. 30.7–8. Pompey of course wants to
retain his pre-eminent position (53.9–10), but the nearest approach to desire for a specific άρχη is the hint of 54.8, where he thanks
Cato for his support.

34
The other Lives reflect the dilatoriness and indecision at the outset of the war (Caes. 33.4–6 and, less strongly, Cato 52.4, 53.3); but

there is no similar attempt to prepare this theme in the accounts of the fifties. The psychological depth of Pompey contrasts with the
crude passage at Cato 49.1, where in 52 BCPompey ην οκνού κάί μέλλησέως άτολμού προς το κωλύέίν κάί έπίχέίρέίν ύποπλέως
(‘was full of hesitation and timid delay when it came to making any attempt to prevent it’: see p. 97).

35
Pomp. 64 treats the forces which Pompey gathered during 49 BC, and Plutarch’s argument seems intended to justify the strategy of

leaving Italy. Some praised Pompey’s departure, though Caesar and Cicero uttered dismissive remarks (63.3–2); but Caesar showed in

his actions that he particularly feared ‘time’, τóν χρòνον (63.3–4). ‘In this time ( έν δέ τω χρóνω τούτω) a great force gathered for

Pompey…’, 64.1. The strength which Pompey now acquired contrasts forcefully with his initial weakness (57.6–9, 60.6–8). Plutarch’s

approval of the strategy seems clear; though, in a different train of thought, he later criticizes the decision to abandon Rome (83(3).6–8,

cf. 61.6–7).

36
At 84(4).6 the theatre image is also woven into the texture of the athletic imagery which pervades the Life (cf. esp. 8.7, 17.2, 20.2,

41.2, 51.2, 66.4, 84(4) ): Pharsalus is ‘the stadium and theatre for the contest’; ‘no herald called Pompey to come and fight, if he would

not leave the crown for another’. This is a good example both of the systematic elaboration of Plutarch’s imagery, and of the interaction

of different systems. For the ‘theatre’ motif, we might compare the theatrical imagery in another Life rich in tragedy, the Antony: Demetr.

53.10, Ant. 29.4, 45.4, 54.5, 93(6).4. Antony here echoes and develops the imagery of Demetrius: cf. p. 355 below, de Lacy 1952, 371,

Pelling 1988, 21–2, and Duff 1999, 61–2 and n. 35.

37
It is important to take the passage in context, and relate it particularly to the themes of the pair Alexander–Caesar: that is not

straightforward. See Duff 1999, 14–22; below,pp. 207, 259–60, 276–7; and Pelling, forthcoming (a).

38
Galba 2.5 (cf. Duff 1999, 28–9), Fab. 16.6.

39
On the Nicias passage, cf. below, p. 117; Wardman 1971, 257–61 and 1974, 154–7; and now esp. Duff 1999, 22–30. For the interest

in ethos, cf. esp. Pomp. 8.6–7, Dem. 11.7; for Plutarch’s terminology, p. 62 n. 39 and ch. 10.

40
Cf. esp. Per. 1–2, Aem. 1; Duff 1999, 30–45, and on the Aem. passage below, p. 273.

41
Demetr. 1, with Duff 1999, 45–9. Cf. Cim. 2.2–5.

42
Personal life: Pomp. 18.3, 40.8–9, 53.2. Administration: 39.4–6, cf. 27.6–7, 28.5–7. More praise: 10.10–14, 20.6–8, 49.14.

Criticism: esp. 10.3–5, 29, 30.8, 38.1, 40.6, 44.4–5, 46.3, 47.8, 53.9–10, 55.6–10, 67.7–10. And the comparative epilogue, as usual, is

rich in praise and blame.

43
28.5, man as naturally responsive to kindness; 29.5, the culpable ambition (philotimia) of Achilles; 53.10, Fortune cannot meet the

demands of human nature, for greed is insatiable; 70, blindness and greed; 73.11, ‘oh, how everything is fair for those who are noble!’

44
Despite remarking on another sense of moralism, in this 1980 paper I was still using the words ‘moralist’ and ‘moralism’ in a fairly

simple way. I would stand by the distinctions I drew between the textures of different Lives, but would now wish to elaborate the

distinction between different sorts of moralism: on Antony, I tried to phrase matters in a more nuanced way in Pelling 1988, 10–18, esp.

14–15. For a more ruminative discussion of moralism cf. ch. 10, and now esp. the powerful discussion of Duff 1999, who at 68–70 is

reasonably content with the way I now classify the moralism of Antony.

45
Campaigns: Cato 8.2–3, 9.5–10, 12.1. Administration: 16–18, 21.3 ff., 35–8, 44, 48.8–10. Candidatures: 8.4–5, 20–1, 42.3–4,

49.2–6. Rebuff: 50. For a more thorough treatment of the ‘moralism’ of Cato than that sketched here, see Pelling 1989, 228–30; Frazier

1995, 158–9; Trapp 1999; and especially Duff 1999, 131–60. Duff agrees (135) that the pair Phocion–Cato Minor ‘adhere[s] more

closely than most to the principles set down in the programmatic statements’, and argues (149) that Cato becomes ‘a man to praise, but

not to imitate’.

46
2.1–5, 13, 35.4–6, 57.

47
Brother: 3.8–10, 8.1, 11.1–8, 15.4. Women: 24.4–25.13, 30.3–10, 52.5–9; cf. 73.2–4, on the sexual predilections of Cato’s son.

Drink: 6.1–4, but also note the rejection of the slander at 44.2.

48
31–3; cf. p. 25.

49
7.3, 52.7–9, on married life; 9.10, on ‘true virtue’; 44.12–14, on justice; 46.8, on senseless extravagance; 50.3, on the wise man’s

constancy.

50
Cf. Steidle 1951, 13–24, echoed by Brutscher 1958, 27–31, 89–91; Garzetti 1954, xliii–xlix; and pp. 5–6, 207–8,ch. 11, and Pelling

1997e.

51
I discuss the precise interpretation of this sentence in Pelling 1984a, 34, and trace some of the ironies it introduces into the Life in

Pelling 1997e, 219–26.

52
Dio 41.17.2–3 makes the same point more crudely.

53
Here, once again, there are elements of tragedy, as Caesar is trapped by his own past, a favourite theme of Plutarch: see pp. 5–6, 182,

403–6, and ch. 11; also Pelling 2000, 55. In Caesar’s case a major Shakespearian theme, as so often, may be seen as a brilliant

elaboration of a Plutarchan idea.

54
In Pelling, forthcoming (a) I return to this passage, and trace some of the larger implications for Plutarch’s judgement on Caesar and

for his whole biographical project.

55
Thus Caesar’s meddlings in Rome are ‘demagogy’ (20.2): the unprecedented fifteenday supplicatio was largely directed by ‘the goodwill

towards him of the people’ (21.2); the reaction of the people ( ò τ πληθος) to Favonius’ outburst is traced (21.8–9); the popular emotions
at Julia’s death are emphasized (23.7). Other Lives differ: see n. 57. On this demos theme cf. also pp. 5–6 and chs. 9 and 11.

56
At p. 6 I try to show that this reading involved some reworking of material. On the similarity of texture here to the political analysis of

Gracchi, cf. pp. 207–8.

57
For instance, Pompey is more interested in Pompey’s relations with the senate (pp. 99–102). Thus Pomp. 51–3 gives no stress to the

demos in its account of Caesar’s urban machinations: it is there ‘aediles, praetors, consuls, and their wives’ who are stressed (notice again

the importance of ‘wives’ in Pompey). The Pompey account of Luca closes with Pompey’s clash with Marcellinus (51); the parallel Caes.

21 ends by stressing the reaction of the demos. Pompey gives no hint that the demos theme is important for an understanding of the

period, and there are other places where it cuts away references to the people: Cato, for instance, has more of the popular, as well as the

senatorial, opposition to Pompey (e.g. Cato 42.3–4, 42.7, 43.6–7). Cato itself has material which would be a great embarrassment to the
tidy account of Caesar, particularly some popular enthusiasm for Cato himself and the optimate cause (e.g. 44.12–14 and the passages

mentioned above). That again suits the emphasis of Cato, for the popular reaction reflects Plutarch’s own enthusiasm for Cato. Once

again, Plutarch has in each Life selected the political analysis to suit his interests and themes. – For the different emphases in Cic. and

Caes. in treating the execution of the Catilinarians, cf. p. 63 n. 57; for the differences between Brut. and Caes. in describing Caesar’s

death, pp. 5–6.

58
Cf. e.g. Caes. 8.2, where Plutarch suppresses the ‘naughty letter’ ( έπιστολιον άκóλάστον) brought to Caesar during the Catilinarian

debate: contrast Cato 24.1–3, Brut. 5.2–4. Caes. 49.10 makes little of Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra; and the initial mention of

Nicomedes (1.7) is very tame. Contrast such passages as Sull. 2.2–7, Pomp. 2.5–10, Cim. 4.6–10, Crass. 1. Cf. p. 54 and n. 42, 260.

59
And even these are used to explain Caesar’s charismatic presence and therefore his public success (17, 38, etc): cf. p. 335 n. 78.

60
See also pp. 258–9.

61
Plutarch does make something of this (34.7, 48.3–4, 54.5, 57.4–6), but might easily have made more. On this see further p.263 n.23.

62
Contrast Plutarch’s disapproval of vulgar demagogy at Cato 46.8, 49.6, Aem. 2.6, Advice on Public Life 802d al., Brut. 10.6; of

extravagance and debt at Advice on Public Life 802d, 821f, 822c–3e, and Avoid Debt! – I return to this theme in Pelling, forthcoming

(b).

63
Cf. 14.16–17, 29.5, 48.5, 56.8–9. Note 54.6, a much more measured description of Caesar’s Anticato than the vituperative Cato 11.7–

8, 36.5, 54.2.

64
Ant. 35.2–4, 53^, 56.4, 57.4–5, 59.3, 72.3. Other ancient accounts make far less of Octavia, and this theme seems to be Plutarch’s

own elaboration: cf. Pelling 1988, 202.

65
Antony: 4, 9.5–9, 24.9–12, 43.3–6. Cleopatra: esp. 27.3–5, 29.1–7. Fulvia: 10.5–10. Octavia: cf. 54.3–5. Timon: 70.

66
e.g. dress and demeanour, 4.1–5, 17.3–6; dream, 16.7; comment on Megarian bouleuterion, 23.3; comment on the repeated tribute,

24.7–9; detail of the feasts, 28; fishing anecdote, 29.5–7; dice and fighting cocks, 33; etc.

67
Demetr. 1, esp. 1.6: cf. Duff 1999, 45–9.

68
9.5–9, 21.1–3, cf. 56.8; 6.6–7, 15.4–5, 24.5–10.

69
Russell 1973, 142.

70
Russell 1973, 135.

71
93(6).4. What little ethical colouring there is in the narrative is favourable to Antony: 67.9–10, 75.3: cf. Pelling 1988, 15, 293–4,

307–8.

72
Cf. Pelling 1988, 16, 293–4.

73
‘This Life is, to a large extent, the story not of one man but of two, Brutus and Cassius’, Wardman 1974, 174.

74
I return to some of these suggestions in ch. 6, pp. 148–52.

75
Raaflaub 1974b, 306–11. Further references, both to ancient sources and to secondary literature, may be found in Raaflaub’s paper.

76
Caes. 30.5 has τω̑ ν περί Aντωνιον (lit. ‘those around Antony’, ‘Antony and his people’), but this may well be the later Greek usage,

equivalent to ‘Antony’: cf. Radt 1980, 47–56; Holden on Them. 7.6, Hamilton on Alex. 41.5. Antony is certainly already tribune at the

time of the Caesar debate (30.3).

77
Though there may well be further confusion (or conflation) here. Raaflaub 1974b, 309 may be right to suspect that Plutarch’s notice

in Pompey combines Caesar’s terms of 1 Jan. 49 with the occasion, some weeks earlier, of Ant. 5.3–4.

78
Pompey (the one Life which refers to the 1 Dec. 50 debate, when the triple sequence of votes certainly took place) in fact gives this

sequence least clearly. There Plutarch mentions only two votes, first that Caesar should disarm, secondly that both should do so; and he

makes Curio introduce both motions, suppressing the role of the consuls. But Pompey does correctly have 22 senators oppose the final

motion; Antony and Caesar have all those present support ‘Antony’.

79
Caesar conflates the two apophthegmata, and gives them to Lentulus (30.6); Pompey keeps them separate (58.6, 10), and assigns them

to Marcellus. See pp. 93–4.

80
So Raaflaub 1974b, 308–9. Dio 41.3.1 is a poor witness, but he confirms the uestis mutatio for the 1 Jan. 49 context: Raaflaub 1974b,

307. – Meyer 1922, 284 n. 1, assumed that the Caesar–Antony and Pompey versions were doublets, and this has been the general view:

contra, Holmes 1923, ii. 330 n. 2.

81
Raaflaub 1974b, 307.

82
The device of the false rumour (60.1–2), followed by the truth (60.2). False rumours are important in Pompey: above, pp. 96, 100.

The importance of the tribunes’ flight in Caesar and Antony explains a fact which puzzled Raaflaub (1974b, 307), that Antony’s proposal

(in Caes.–Ant.) failed while Curio’s (in Pomp.) succeeded. Curio’s ploy must be successful, for Plutarch there wishes to pass to an exulting

sequel, the joy with which the demos greeted him (58.9). Antony’s proposal must fall, for the sequel there is the humiliating flight.
 5

PLUTARCH AND THUCYDIDES I

For Plutarch, as for many today, Thucydides was a special case among the historians:

It is time for me to appeal to the reader for indulgence, as I treat the events that Thucydides has already

handled incomparably: in this part of his narrative he was indeed at his most emotional, vivid, and

varied. But do not assume that I am as vain as Timaeus, who thought that he would outdo Thucydides

in brilliance and show Philistus to be totally vulgar and amateurish… Of course, it is not possible to

omit the events treated by Thucydides and Philistus, for they include material that gives an especially

clear notion of the man’s character and his disposition, so often revealed [an alternative reading would

give ‘hidden’] by his many calamities. But I have summarized them briefly and kept to the essentials,

just to avoid the charge of total negligence. I have tried instead to collect material that is not well-

known, but scattered among other authors, or found on ancient dedications and decrees. Nor is this an

accumulation of useless erudition: I am conveying material that is helpful for grasping the man’s nature

and character.

But we should notice exactly what Plutarch there says. Thucydides is special, but not altogether in the

way we expect. Traditionally (at least), we admire Thucydides for his merits as a factual reporter and

analyst, his care, thoughtfulness, and apparent precision; if Plutarch could compete at all, we should

expect it to be through his literary virtuosity and charm. Yet for Plutarch himself it is Thucydides’
1
artistic qualities that make him so incomparable, that brilliant variety, vividness, and emotion.

(Nic. 1.1, 5)

Plutarch will not compete on that level. Instead, he will try to find out new facts: that, he feels, is

the most useful contribution he can make, especially as those facts reveal so much about Nicias himself.
2
This is serious historical enquiry committed to the truth, especially (in this case) when the truth goes

beyond Thucydides.

This desire to supplement Thucydides with new facts is often clear enough: outside Nicias, we

might compare the details of Andocides’ imprisonment in Alcibiades (Alc. 20.6–21.6). That is not

wholly irrelevant to Alcibiades’ story: it is interesting to see another aristocrat acting with a similar self-

seeking shrewdness and concern to save his own skin. But that relevance is still pretty slight, and we can

hardly doubt that the length of the item is partly conditioned by Plutarch’s desire to fill out a story
3
where Thucydides (as Plutarch himself comments ) was oddly reticent about naming names. The same

perhaps goes for that marvellous nest of stories in Pericles, when he comes to discuss the Megarian

Decree and the outbreak of the war (Per. 29–33). Many of the stories suggest highly personal motives on

Pericles’ part, and suggest them at length. True, Plutarch is reluctant to commit himself to their accuracy

or relevance;
4
they are merely ‘what people say’ ( λεγóμενα). But even their mention, especially at such

length, sits uncomfortably with the characterization he has developed of Pericles, this man with such

grand spirit and unselfishness, so far above the normal pettiness of public life. Still, the stories were not

in Thucydides, and they were good ones: Plutarch saw no reason to resist the temptation to include

them.

II

So Plutarch would welcome non-Thucydidean material, but it is often a delicate problem to disentangle

precisely what is owed to Thucydides and what comes from elsewhere. The account of the Sicilian

Expedition in Nicias affords a particularly clear example of the issue and its difficulties. It is quite
5
evident that Plutarch knows Thucydides at first hand, and that most of his information is drawn

directly from Thucydides’ text. It is equally clear that Plutarch does have some extraneous non-

Thucydidean material, which is sometimes quite detailed. It includes items such as the naming of

Demostratus in the great Athenian debate (12.6), various supernatural events (13, 14.5–7, 24.6–25.1),

the mention of Laïs (15.4), the story of the death of Gongylus (19.7), some casualty-numbers (21.11),

the activity of the ‘free youths’ in a sea-battle (24.2), the details of the final debate on the Athenian

prisoners (28), and a fair amount of information on the Syracusan reaction to Gylippus (19.3–7, 28.3–

4).

Nicias 1 (above, p. 117) makes it an easy guess that the new material is largely owed to Timaeus and

Philistus, both of whom he quotes twice (19.5–6, 28.4–5); and that derivation seems fairly secure, even

though he clearly had other information as well – Philochorus, for instance (23.8), even in a way

Euripides (17.4), or simply general cultural knowledge (15.2, 23). In some cases an item’s provenance

can be traced in detail. Thus Philistus FGrH 556 fr. 53 described Demosthenes’ death along the lines of

Plutarch’s account at Nic. 28, whereas Timaeus FGrH 566 fr. 24 made something of Laïs (cf. Nic. 15.4).
It is natural too to suspect that the omens and portents are owed to Timaeus, given the taste for such

things observed at Nic. 1.2–3; also probably the material on Gylippus, in whom Timaeus was clearly
6
interested (Plutarch cites him on this topic at 19.5 and 28.4). Some of this extraneous material also

shows some contact with Diodorus; not that this can help to establish its source, for the current state of
7
Diodoran source-criticism is far too confused. This contact, moreover, is sometimes a little vague.

Diodorus too, for instance, mentions the ‘free youths’, but tells the story in the context of a different

battle (13.14.4); he too has many non-Thucydidean numbers, but in the particular case of Nic. 21.11

his figure is slightly different (13.11.5, 2500 against Plutarch’s 2000); like Plutarch, he makes something

of Ariston of Corinth in a non-Thucydidean setting, but the context is not the same (13.10.2, Nic.

25.4). The Syracusan proposal at Nic. 28.2 looks like the same tradition as Diodorus 13.19.4, but again

there are some mild divergences. The most economical explanation might be that Plutarch, following
8
his usual practice, has only one source ‘open in front of him’, here Thucydides, and supplements that

source from his memory of other writers, doubtless a memory primed by recent re-reading. That would
9
explain why he might transplant some material into a slightly different context, and perhaps why he
10
slightly misremembered a proposal or a figure.

On a rough count, rather over half of Nic. 12–29 seems to come straightforwardly from

Thucydides, but the extraneous, non-Thucydidean material is especially full at the beginning,

particularly ch. 13 with its collection of omens and portents (perhaps from Timaeus); in the discussion

of the eclipse at ch. 23, applying some information about the 413 eclipse itself (for instance the item

from Philochorus, 23.7–8) and also a good deal of general cultural and scientific knowledge; and in the

final scenes at chs. 28–9. The ‘hard-core’ narrative of the campaign itself, chs. 14–22 and 23–7, is rather
11
more distinctively Thucydidean. Often we find fairly close verbal echoes, and the entire narrative

articulation follows Thucydides’ account with suggestive closeness. Another rough count gives over two-

thirds of this hard-core narrative closely from Thucydides, with less than a quarter clearly extraneous,

and about 10% of marginal material – material which could be inference, sometimes fairly extravagant

inference, from Thucydides’ account, but might also be drawn from, or at least influenced by, Plutarch’s

other sources.

These marginal instances make some interesting test-cases. Some can clearly be inferences from

Thucydides, or elaborations of his account, which were well within Plutarch’s range: the summary of

Syracusan topography, for instance (17.2); or the vivid detail that ‘some were already making their way’

towards the crucial Syracusan assembly to discuss surrender (18.12, cf. Thuc. 7.2.1); or the inference

that the valuables in the Olympieion ( χρήματα at Thuc. 6.70.4) were ‘gold and silver dedications’

(16.7) – after all, what else would one expect to find in a temple?

Equally, he was surely able to make up his own mind about Nicias’ strengths and weaknesses, and

the elegant criticism of 14.1–2 looks very much like Plutarch’s own: it was one thing to oppose the

expedition in Athens, but he should not have wrecked it by his apathy, always gazing wistfully

homewards from his ship… Furthermore, we know from elsewhere that Plutarch readily made his
12
points by reconstructing the reactions of onlookers, their praise or their criticism. No surprise, then,

to find ‘the terror of the Syracusans and the incredulity of the Greeks’ at the speed and effectiveness of

the circumvallation (17.2); or indeed ‘everyone’ criticizing Nicias for his poor strategy (16.9). The

dismissive note he injects into a minor campaign can also be his own (15.3–4); so can his praise for

Nicias’ swiftness when he finally turned to action (ibid.). He returns to the theme a few chapters later:

‘Nicias was himself present at most of the actions, forcing his ailing body on…’ (18.1), then ‘struggling

out of his sickbed’ to supervise the defence after Lamachus has been killed: a picturesque and slightly

generous inference from Thucydides 6.101–2, but one of which Plutarch was certainly capable. His

Nicias indeed becomes a rather typed figure, the cautious general who is nevertheless swift and effective

when he finally turns to action. Plutarch knew the type well enough, and at Aratus 10 he insists that this

is a familiar human phenomenon; indeed, the type is rather a hallmark of Plutarch, distinctive enough

to encourage a strong suspicion that here too it is he who is rewriting the material, just as at Arat. 10 he
13
rewrites Polybius to produce this favourite figure.

Yet even here a doubt must remain, for he clearly does have a secondary, non-Thucydidean source

for Lamachus’ death. The circumstantial detail of 18.3, the single combat with Callicrates, is not from

Thucydides, and indeed the whole character of the action is rather different: in Plutarch the Athenians

are carried away by a success (18.2), in Thucydides Lamachus is hurrying to mend a reverse (6.101.5). It

must be a possibility, though perhaps a small one, that the picturesque material about Nicias has the

same provenance.

A similar, but more elaborate, problem is presented by the description of Nicias’ final hours.

There were many terrible sights in the camp, but the most pitiful of all was Nicias himself. Ravaged by

sickness, he was reduced against all dignity to the most meagre of food and the slightest of bodily
provisions, at a time when he needed so much more because of his disease. Yet despite his weakness he

carried on performing and enduring more than many of the healthy. It was clear to all that it was not for

himself that he bore the toil, nor because he was clinging to life; it was for the sake of his men that he

refused to give up hope. Others were forced by their terror and suffering into tears and lamentation, but

if Nicias was ever driven to this, it was clearly because he was measuring the disgrace and dishonour of

the expedition’s outcome against the greatness and glory of what he had hoped to achieve. Nor was it

only the sight of the man that was so moving. They also recalled his words and advice when he had

warned against the expedition, and that made it even clearer how undeserved were his sufferings. They

were dispirited too when they thought of the hopes they might place in Heaven, reflecting how this

pious man, who had performed so many religious duties with such great splendour, was faring no better

than the lowest and humblest of his army. (Nic. 26.4–6)

At first sight that has little in common with Thucydides 7.75–7, yet surprisingly much could be inspired

by that passage. Thucydides had dwelt on the agonized reflections of the men themselves, measuring

their sufferings against their original hopes (75.2, 6–7): elsewhere too we find Plutarch transferring
14
thoughts and actions from others to Nicias himself, and he may well be doing the same here, at the
15
cost of a certain inconsequentiality. Thucydides had emphasized the pitiful state of the camp, in a very

visual register (75); the lamentations can certainly come from him, even though he did not develop the

particular focus on Nicias. But even in Thucydides Nicias had at least been active, making his desperate

speech of encouragement (77): the only hopes he could offer were weak ones, certainly, but that was

scarcely his fault. He was alert and effective too in drawing up his army, 78.1. Yet Thucydides had also

emphasized the disease: he indeed makes Nicias himself refer to it at 77.2, when he points out that he is

weaker than his men. It was not difficult for Plutarch to infer that he ‘achieved and endured more than

many of the healthy’, especially now that provisions would be so miserably deficient; nor, given

Plutarch’s readiness to reconstruct how onlookers would have reacted, to guess how they admired him

for such resilience. Thucydides’ Nicias had also spoken of ‘the hopes from Heaven’ and his own past

religious dutifulness (77.2, 4): Plutarch could guess how his men would respond to that too. And,

whatever precisely Thucydides had meant by it, he had famously commented on the undeserved horror

of Nicias’ fate: ‘most unworthy of all the Greeks, at least those of my own time, to fall into such

ήκίστα δή άξίος ων των γέ έπ’

misfortune, because all his behaviour had been directed towards virtue’ (

έμού Eλληνων ές τούτο δύστύχίάς άφίκέσθάί δίά τήν πάσάν ές άρέτην νένομίσμένήν έπίτήδέύσίν,
7.86.5). It was natural enough for Plutarch to transfer that reflection too to the men under his
16
command; and in this Life, with its stress on Nicias’ religious observation, the shift from Thucydides’

‘virtue’ into ‘piety’ was a very appropriate one. Of course, there may still have been a second source at

play here: certainly Plutarch had such a source for the final scenes, and derived from it details of the

general’s surrender and death. But there is suspiciously little sign of it here, and most is very likely

Plutarch’s own reading of Thucydides.

More questionable is one final example, the exchange of Nicias with Menander and Euthydemus.

Nicias was unwilling to fight a naval battle. Now that so great a fleet was sailing to their help, and

Demosthenes was hurrying to them with his reinforcements, it would be sheer idiocy (he said) to fight

with a smaller force and one which was so badly equipped. But Menander and Euthydemus, newly

promoted to office, were eager to outdo the generals: they wanted to distinguish themselves before

Demosthenes arrived, and to surpass anything that Nicias had managed. Their excuse was the prestige

of the city, which they said would be wholly destroyed and besmirched if they refused battle with the

Syracusan fleet.

(Nic. 20.5–6)

There is nothing like this in Thucydides, in whom Menander and Euthydemus remain fairly colourless

creatures. Perhaps it comes from elsewhere. (Indeed, Diodorus has some non-Thucydidean material on

differences of opinion within the Athenian army, though he concentrates more on the murmurings of

the ordinary soldiers against their generals, 13.12.4, 18.1.) But one can again see how the item could

come from a sensibly imaginative reading of Thucydides.

Nicias was clearly being cautious, and eager to hand over the command: hence he would surely not want

to fight in this interval before Demosthenes and Eurymedon arrived. Yet the battle was fought anyway:

why? It surely ‘must have been’ Menander and Euthydemus who brought it on, for motives that were

not hard to guess. In fact, it will all be like the great initial debate at Athens, with Nicias unable to stand

up to the thoughtless pressures of others for activity; it will be yet another instance where he is

outmanoeuvred by ambitious and energetic leaders, just as before he had fallen foul of Cleon,

Alcibiades, and Demostratus; earlier he had overborne his fellow-commander Lamachus (15), now he

will himself be overborne in his turn, and activity now will turn out no less disastrously than inactivity

then. Indeed, Nicias’ own mistake in asking for new leaders, like so many of his actions, contributes in a
 17
paradoxical way to his downfall: that too fits a pattern which is familiar in this Life. It all in fact suits

suspiciously well. That makes it natural to think that, here again, Plutarch is heavily at work; and, very

probably, heavily at work on Thucydides alone, with no extraneous material beyond his active
18
imagination. The same goes for the continuation of the debate at 21.3–6, which is again very

probably an imaginative elaboration of Demosthenes ‘persuading Nicias and his other colleagues’ in

Thucydides ( πεισάς τον τε Nικίάν κάί τους άλλους ξυνάρχοντάς, 7.43.1). But in both these cases ‘very
probably’ is as far as we may go, and certainty is not possible.

III

Still, perhaps that need not matter, or at least matter much. Whether our sources or Plutarch’s

imagination furnished the non-Thucydidean material, we can be sure that such additions bring us very

close to Plutarch’s own preoccupations, and these will be the main subject of this chapter. Sometimes, as

I have suggested, he may simply be supplementing Thucydides for the thrill of it. A point against

Thucydides was a point worth scoring. But more often, as in the Menander and Euthydemus example,

the points are more profound ones, and touch themes which are central to the Life – Nicias’ uncertain

touch with his fellow-commanders, and the catastrophic and self-destructive quality of his own request

for their appointment.

It is indeed interesting to see where Plutarch includes material which is clearly non-Thucydidean,

whether imaginative or authorized, for he does this with particular frequency at the most intense

moments, those which would be most familiar to his readers. The Athenian decision to mount the

expedition in the first place (where he adds the beautifully visual detail of young and old alike drawing

their maps of Sicily in the dust, 12.1, cf. Alc. 17.4); the Night Battle; the Great Battle in the Harbour;

the retreat and final scenes – all follow Thucydides a little less closely than we might have expected, and
19
the close verbal echoes are seldom in such passages as these. Ironically, Plutarch’s account of the naval

battle of Actium is verbally closer to Thucydides’ Great Harbour battle than the Nicias account of the
20
Great Harbour itself. In Antony, the allusion adds gravity and resonance; in Nicias, it would have been

obvious and banal. These of course were the parts where Thucydides was particularly inimitable.

Plutarch could assume that his audience was familiar with Thucydides, especially these parts of

Thucydides, and he was anxious to avoid a mere rehash.

That familiarity with Thucydides could be exploited in different ways. It can allow him to

abbreviate complicated stories: ‘they were outmanoeuvred by Ariston the Corinthian helmsman in the

matter concerning lunch, as Thucydides describes ( τοίς πέρί το άρίστον, ως έίρηκέ Θουκυδίδης), and
were decisively defeated with many losses’ (Nic. 20.8). The audience will find this incomprehensible

unless they firmly recall the Thucydidean original at 7.40.2: as so often, a quotation excuses or explains
21
an abbreviation that would otherwise be unacceptable.

Other quotations are subtler. Let us consider a few cases in Alcibiades. That at 6.3 might here seem

particularly odd:

Alcibiades was also very susceptible to pleasures: the unconventional nature of his everyday physical

behaviour, mentioned by Thucydides, allows us to suspect this…

Why should Thucydides need to be quoted for this ‘unconventionality’ (or ‘transgressiveness’,

παρανομία)? 22
Surely Alcibiades’ ‘susceptibility to pleasures’ was not really controversial? And

Comparison 41(2).2 is scarcely less curious, quoting Thucydides for the tale of Alcibiades’ trick on the

Spartan ambassadors. Why does Plutarch not simply refer back to his own narrative, where he has just

told the tale (14)? In both cases the explanation is surely the same, that Thucydides’ manner is so

familiar to his audience. He was not the man to bring in private excesses lightly, and would only do so if

they impinged on public life: that indeed is precisely the point Thucydides is making at 6.15, the
23
passage to which Plutarch here alludes (and a passage to which we shall return). This gives particular

weight to the point Plutarch is making. For this, suggestively, is precisely the context where Plutarch

first talks about Alcibiades’ impact on public life. The passage continues:

Still, his flatterers seized hold of his desire for fame and his love of glory, and they thrust him into a

premature ambition to do great things; they told him that as soon as he entered public life he would not

only eclipse all the other generals and popular leaders, but even outstrip the power among the Greeks

and the glory that Pericles enjoyed. (Alc. 6.4)

If we remember the Thucydidean original, then the ironies become clearer: as Thucydides there brought

out, Alcibiades indeed became great and glorious – and yet his standing was wrecked by precisely the

‘unconventionality’ that Plutarch has just mentioned, and the distaste and the tyrannical suspicions that

this private outlandishness inspired. Later in the Life this will be an important theme, for Plutarch will

bring out even more clearly than Thucydides how Alcibiades’ private life wrecked his public career, not
 24
merely in the recall from Sicily but also in the shift of public opinion that led to his second exile. The

two strands that Plutarch is starting here, the dissoluteness and the ambition, will eventually come

together disastrously; and, if we recall the Thucydidean passage, it reminds us how it happened. It is

indeed more of an allusion, summoning up the reader’s recollection of the original, than a

straightforward supporting citation, and the point would be lost if his audience did not know its
25
Thucydides well.

The story of the Spartan ambassadors is a similar but less complex example: the story of Alcibiades’

trick seems far-fetched, but it is not just Plutarch’s story, it is Thucydides’, and in such an author it

carries particular weight. In each case the quotation seems unnecessary, but it is the audience’s

familiarity with the original, and with Thucydides’ characteristic flavour, that gives them point.

IV

That audience familiarity is still relevant when we come to consider Plutarch’s attitude to Thucydides’

historical analyses. Just as he is chary of alluding to Thucydides’ text at the most obvious and familiar

moments, so he is reluctant to echo Thucydides’ insights at the points where the audience would already

know them: that would be old-hat. He clearly knows Thucydides’ suggestions of the importance of the

generation gap in the great debate on Sicily, where Nicias tries to mobilize the older generation in his

support, and Alcibiades successfully counters him (6.13.1, 18.6, cf. 24.3): yet at that point itself he does

not echo them. Instead, he develops the analysis rather earlier in Nicias. Thus at 9.5 the ‘older

generation’ are among those pressing for peace, whereas at 11.3 they form a separable group in the

wranglings about the ostracism. Both passages would seem to prepare for the Sicilian debate, and given

the audience’s familiarity with Thucydides perhaps the preparation is felt; but, if it is, it is only by

intertextuality, for when Plutarch himself reaches the debate he barely follows up the lead that he has so

strongly given. (The old are mentioned at Nic. 12.1, but are just as keen on the expedition as the young,

drawing their maps in the sand: even less is made of them here than at Alc. 17.4.) He instead discusses

what had happened to the ‘well-off ’ ( εύποροι), and why they failed in their support for Nicias (12.3).

That point is evidently of wider significance in the pair Nicias and Crassus, where wealth is such an

important theme, but is not quite what a reader steeped in Thucydides would be expecting.

We can see the same phenomenon in other Lives. For instance, Plutarch evidently knew

Thucydides’ insistence on Pericles’ cautious strategy during the war itself; but in Pericles he prefers to
26
develop the caution theme rather earlier, in treating his pre-war foreign policy. When he reaches the

point where we might expect it, he treats it rather skimpily (33.5–6, ignoring for instance the

importance of the sea as the defensive lifeline which made the strategy possible in a protracted war).

The same point could be made more widely about Nicias itself, if we consider Plutarch’s treatment

of Nicias’ nervous and apprehensive unease before the demos. That theme is familiar from Thucydides 6

and 7; but Plutarch makes less of it in the Sicilian chapters than we might expect. At 19.6 he barely

mentions the letter of 7.11–15; at 22.2–3 he does not conceal Nicias’ famous preference to die in Sicily

rather than as a convicted criminal at home (Thuc. 7.48.4), but he makes much less than we might
27
expect of so disquieting an episode. Nicias’ behaviour is much more conditioned by his problems on

the spot, especially (as we have seen) his wranglings with his fellow-commanders, than by his nervous

glances back towards home. The nervousness before the demos certainly emerges in the Life, but again

we find it in a different, more surprising place: it is strongly developed in the early chapters, where the
28
theme would be much less obvious. It is the leitmotif of the early summarizing passage in ch. 2, where

Plutarch comments that this very nervousness paradoxically contributed to Nicias’ popularity, for the
29
people are flattered by being feared. Then it is used to explain Nicias’ choice of campaigns during the

Archidamian War (6.1–2); in the Pylos debate he is then a rather meeker follower of the people’s will

than he was in Thucydides (7.1–5). This goes with a trivialisation of his political thoughtfulness. In

Thucydides on several occasions Nicias produces lines or ploys in assemblies which eloquently misread

the people: so in the Pylos debate (4.28), so in the affair of the Spartan ambassadors (5.46), and so most

spectacularly when he presses the assembly to increase the size of the Sicilian expedition (6.19.2–24.2).

Plutarch omits this last suggestive story, and here as elsewhere his Nicias does not misread or fail to

gauge the popular temper; he is simply terrified of it. It is a comparatively crude reading, much cruder

than in Thucydides.

It is also rather cruder than in Plutarch’s other Lives of the period: as so often elsewhere, one can see
30
Plutarch changing the detail of his political analysis to suit the texture of the individual Life. In Nicias

the people are a danger not just to Nicias, but to everyone: they are not especially keen on Cleon either

(2.3), and their taunts to him in the Pylos debate reflect a real menacing hostility, at least for the

moment (7.2); they may laugh with him at the end, but they laugh just as they consign him to a
mission in which they expect him to fail (7.6; cf. the similar malicious laughter after the ostrakophoria at

11.6, this time at Hyperbolus’ expense). Then in the ostracism story itself the people ‘were disgusted by

Alcibiades and feared his overconfidence, as is made clearer in his own Life’ (Nic. 11.2). Yet, despite the

cross-reference, what Alcibiades in fact makes clear is something rather different from this ‘disgust’.

There we have a subtler picture, with the people fascinated by Alcibiades and indeed sharing much of

his temper and style. They too are ambitious and volatile, and it is not surprising that they find his

distinctive manner so engaging. These are the men who were so delighted when his quail escaped on his

first public appearance, and bustled around helping him to catch it (Alc. 10.1–2): demos and demagogue

suit one another, and this playfulness strikes a rather different note from the more taunting style of the

demos that we saw in Nicias.

The point is made clear in a more serious register when we reach the main central digressions,

flanking the Sicilian chapters (16 and 23). The first discusses, precisely, what the Athenians made of

Alcibiades, and we shall see that it presents a much more nuanced picture, one which brings out

ambivalent fascination rather than that ‘disgust and fear’ of the Nicias summary (below, pp. 127–8).

The second points out how skilful he was at accommodating his temper to the local style, whether he

found himself in Sparta, Ionia, Persia, or Thrace: it is no surprise that such a man would chime in with

Athens too – especially as this very versatility and flair were foremost among the traits that city and
31
individual shared.

The tale of the Spartan ambassadors makes the point clearly. Both Nicias and Alcibiades make

something of the demos, but in very different ways. At Nic. 10.8 Nicias returns from his Spartan mission

‘fearing the Athenians, resentful and indignant as they were that he had persuaded them to give up so

many good men’ (those captured on Sphacteria); at Alc. 14.8 Alcibiades tells the Spartan envoys, ‘don’t

you see how the demos is proud and ambitious, eager for great deeds…’ ( μέγα φρονεί καί μέγάλων
ορέγεταί). Both passages are expansions, presumably imaginative expansions, of Thucydides;
32
and in

each the treatment of the demos is what it needs to be, especially as the Sicilian expedition looms. In

Nicias the demos is simply a grave brooding body, meet to be feared by any politician; in Alcibiades its

ambition, pride, and confidence are in point. No surprise then that in Alcibiades, but not in Nicias, we

hear of their prior interest in Sicily, even in Pericles’ day and during the Archidamian War (Alc. 17.1).

Such far-flying ambitions are a longstanding feature of Athens, not just one injected momentarily by

Alcibiades, and in this Life we need to know it. Here we see how the style of the man meshes with the

style of the demos, how his flair strikes the right note with them: more needs to be explained here than

in Nicias, and the analysis is correspondingly richer. It is also crucial to one of the most pleasing reverses

of the Life. For all Alcibiades’ chameleon-like changeability, it is the people who with great fickleness

turn against him, and try to recall him from Sicily; and he responds with faithlessness to Athens, and

turns to Sparta. But then he returns, only to confront a demos (this time the one in Samos) eager to turn

against their own fellow-citizens, and play into Spartan hands, rather as he had once done himself; and

he shows great constancy and leadership in arguing them out of it (Alc. 26). Treachery is now afoot in

Athens itself, while he is the constant patriot: the tables are turned; but they can be turned so neatly
33
because city and leader are so like one another, so deserve each other.

It is a thoughtful portrait. In some ways Plutarch owes its inspiration to Thucydides himself, who

brought out how skilfully Alcibiades appealed to Athenian national characteristics – their enterprise,

their self-confidence, their pride; and his Nicias knows that ‘my rhetoric may be too weak to confront

your nature’, κάί προς μέν τούς τροπούς τούς ύμέτέρούς άσθένης άν μού ο λογος έίη (6.9.3). But

Plutarch cares about it enough to feel he can revise Thucydides himself to make the analysis even more

intricate. The crucial passages in Thucydides are 5.43.2 and especially (once again) 6.15.4, where he

discusses the popular reaction to Alcibiades:

The general people were frightened both by the massive lawlessness of his private, physical life and

habits, and of the massive spirit with which he carried through everything he did; they consequently

became his enemies, thinking that he was aspiring to tyranny. He managed public events excellently, but

on a private level everyone became disgruntled with his manner as a person; thus they entrusted affairs

to others – and before long brought the city down.

The last point is especially suggestive, with ‘on a private level’ everyone becoming ‘disgruntled with his

manner as a person’. That fits a favourite Thucydidean theme, the way in which private and personal
aspirations, even egoism, come to interact in an increasingly perilous way with the Athenian
34
democracy: Nicias and Alcibiades both fit that pattern with their selfish preoccupations, and so in a

different way do the people themselves, allowing their private reactions to compromise their perceptions

of public competence. On both sides we are a long way removed from the Funeral Speech, where the

individual reaches the highest fulfilment in Athens, precisely in the service of the state.

But Thucydides’ picture is still a disturbingly blunt one. Everyone individually disgruntled with

Alcibiades’ private habits: that is rather closer to the rough picture of Nicias, where people were

disgusted by Alcibiades’ private life and feared his overconfidence, than to the emphasis that Plutarch

prefers in Alcibiades itself. As we have seen, in the important ch. 16 of Alcibiades Plutarch goes to some

lengths to characterize the ambivalent but basically affectionate reaction of the demos towards him; we

can recognize the same demos who earlier helped him catch his quail. In 16.2 it is the ‘highly-regarded’,

theένδοξοι, rather than the demos as a whole who ‘feel disgust’ (βδέλύττέσθάί, the same word as at Nic.
πάράνομίά) as ‘tyrannical and outrageous’ (τύράννίκά
11.2), and fear his ‘unconventional behaviour’ (

κάί άλλοκοτά). The echo of Thucydides is clear, but also its transformation, as Plutarch limits this
35
reaction to one section of the city, the ‘highly-regarded’ alone. He goes on to explain that the popular

attitude requires closer definition. He first sums it up with the line of Aristophanes, ‘it yearns for him, it

hates him, it wants to have him’ (16.2, quoting Frogs 1425): they were as indulgent as they could be to

his excesses – though the older generation were, once again, unhappy with them ‘as tyrannical and

unconventional’ ( ως τυράννικοίς κάί πάράνομοις). The conclusion is most measured: ‘so unclearly

defined ( άκριτος) was opinion concerning him because of the inconsistencies of his nature’; and once

again the phrasing points to that way in which people’s veering reactions to Alcibiades strangely mirror

the man’s own qualities. And, as we have seen, it will later be the combination of the two, changeable

people and changeable Alcibiades, that will produce such a catastrophic mix.

So Plutarch is turning Thucydides, and doing so subtly. He is echoing him; he is even introducing

cross-divisions of the demos that rest on Thucydides himself, elsewhere in his work – especially that

‘older generation’ division, where he teases out the implications of the speakers’ argumentation during

the debate itself (above, p. 124). He is thus using Thucydides to ‘correct’, or at least refine, Thucydides’

own portrait; and the reinterpretation is surely not unintelligent. As with his judgements of people, so

even in political analysis, he is capable of applying his human insight thoughtfully, and on such

occasions he is confident enough to pit his own judgements even against Thucydides’; and those
36
interpretations are sometimes not at all bad. He similarly wins our respect when he puts more weight

than Thucydides on the religious aspects of the popular reactions to the scandals of the Hermae and the

Mysteries. For Thucydides the Hermae affair ‘served as an omen for the expedition’ (6.27.3), but that is

very brief, and he dwells much more on the way people interpreted the affairs politically, as a pointer to

tyranny. Plutarch brings out both aspects, the political fears and the nervy religious atmosphere, in a

more even-handed way (Alc. 18.4–8 and Nic. 13). And, great though the respect is that we rightly have

for Thucydides, it is hard to be confident that Plutarch was wrong.

In Alcibiades, then, ‘literary’ and ‘historical’ aspects go hand in hand. Plutarch traces the popular

reaction to Alcibiades with more subtlety than Thucydides, and this renders his analysis both more

historically interesting and more artistically arresting. In Nicias we do not need so subtle a picture of the

demos, and so we do not get it: that indeed is a further reason why the interest in the Athenian demos is

so strangely muted in the second half of the Life. The interest is crude enough that it soon becomes

played out, with little more to say. And it is not just that Plutarch makes less here than we might expect

of Nicias’ nervousness before the people; it would also have been possible enough for him to continue

themes from the demos chapters in treating the way Nicias handled his soldiers, the Athenian demos as

represented in the army. That, indeed, is more or less what Thucydides does himself, giving one or two
37
hints of Nicias’ misreading the troops just as he misread the people at home: yet Plutarch fails to pick

up these suggestions.

In Pericles we have a more complicated case. Once again we have an insistent interest in tracing how

the dominant individual and the demos interact; once again, indeed, we have something of the same

effect as in Alcibiades, for we can see how Pericles contrives to instil in the demos something of his own

qualities, especially his spirit and pride. Consider ch. 17, for instance. Pericles is here beginning to

establish his own peculiar brand of great leadership. He has driven out Thucydides son of Melesias, and

can now give up that awkward period of sheer demagogy which came so unnaturally to him (‘contrary

to his own nature, which was anything but populist’, 7.3). So now he incited the people ‘to feel even

more pride and confidence and to think itself worthy of great deeds’ ( έτί μάλλον μέγά φρονέίν κάί
μέγάλων άύτον άξίούν πράγμάτων, 17.1). The invitation to the Panhellenic Congress follows, and

Plutarch rounds off the chapter by saying ‘I have added this as an indication of his pride and confidence

and greatness of spirit’ τούτο μέν ούν πάρέθέμην ένδέίκνύμένος άύτού το φρονημά κάί την
(
μέγάλοφροσύνην, 17.4). That is elegant ring-composition, as Stadter notes on 17.1, withφρονημά
(‘pride and confidence’) picking up φρονέίν, and μέγάλοφροσύνην (‘greatness of spirit’) picking up
both μέγά φρονέίν and μέγάλων πράγμάτων; but it is ring-composition with a difference, for what
were at the chapter’s beginning the qualities he instilled in the demos are by its end the qualities that

typify Pericles himself. The demos and the demagogos are again like one another. And in Pericles too the

theme comes back later, again with piquant ironies. At 33.4 it is the people’s pride and confidence –
38
phronema again, the word so often associated with Pericles himself – that leads them to be so eager to

fight when Archidamus invades, and this of course causes Pericles particular problems. He eventually

has to revert to some of his old demagogic methods to suppress this quality which in the past he has so
39
encouraged: now he has to distribute money and send out a few juicy cleruchies (34.2).

So in Pericles, just as in Alcibiades, characterization of the demos is important; but here, at least in the

first part of the Life, one does not feel the same admiration for the subtlety of the re-emphasis or the

new political analysis. Indeed, in Per. 7–14 (the period when Pericles was acting ‘contrary to his own

nature’, πάρά την άύτού φύσίν), Plutarch’s stress on Athenian two-party politics is at its crudest: on the
one side, the hybristic and irresponsible demos; on the other, the well-meaning and long-suffering
40
oligoi. It is all much cruder than it was in Alcibiades or even in Nicias, where Plutarch had insisted on

those subtler cross-divisions of the demos. In some ways that is a simple matter of historical development

and change, for Plutarch did indeed think that politics changed after 443, with the double split

becoming less fierce and less decisive (Per. 15.1, cf. 11.3). But it is still telling that the two-party analysis

is here hedged around with fewer refinements or qualifications than in the earlier, and really rather
41
slight, Cimon. Whatever Plutarch is trying to do here, it is not to produce a political analysis of the

greatest possible depth.

Yet here too one can understand why this should be, for the polarity of Athenian politics is

important to him. It is a central concern of this Life to explain why an aristocrat like Pericles, with so

much education and ‘spirit too weighty for demagogy’ ( φρονημά δημάγωγίάς εμβριθεστερον, 4.6, cf.

5.1), should have ended as the leader of a militant democracy, the most effective demagogue of them all.

Here there was that bemusing clash between the judgements of the revered Plato and the revered
42
Thucydides, as Gomme remarked; it is true that Plutarch shows no hesitation in preferring
43
Thucydides, but the disagreement was bound to give him pause. Such demagogy would evidently not

have come naturally to Pericles, who would have been more at home in a Cleisthenic mode (that is one

reason why the political settlement of Pericles’ ancestor is mentioned and praised at 3.2). Plutarch wants

to develop, precisely, the contrast between the two sides, the side where Pericles naturally belonged and

the side where he unnaturally found himself: the basically sound conservatives and the basically

unsound demos and demagogues. The temptation to present the contrast in as sharp and polarized a
44
manner as possible was hard to resist; and in 7–14 we duly see the polarity at its starkest, for that is

where Pericles finds himself where he does not belong, with the demagogues. That in its turn gives

especial bite to 15, where we see the harmony with which he reconciles the two sides, and takes
45
further that distinctive grand style that combines elements of both approaches, stirring and pleasing

the demos but also responsibly leading them in the right direction – a direction that, as we have seen,

finally brought them to share many of the best traits of Pericles himself, especially that distinctive ‘pride
46
and confidence’, phronema. That harmonious combination seems all t he more striking for the

sharpness with which the polarity had earlier been presented. Thus, for instance, the popularity of
47
Cimon sits well in Cimon itself, where it crudely redounds to Cimon’s credit; but the theme would

intrude upon the neat two-party schematism that the Pericles portrait demands.

VI

Mme de Romilly has splendidly brought out the way in which Plutarch adapts Thucydides to suit his
48
own biographical focus and interest. I have had little to say about this here, but of course her basic

point remains important and valid. Plutarch does stress aspects of character far more than Thucydides;

not that Thucydides regarded personal character as unimportant, for it mattered considerably that

Pericles was incorruptible, χρημάτων κρείσσων (2.60.5, 65.8); but that emphasis is significantly

expanded in Plutarch, who finds enough material on the topic to fill more than a chapter (Per. 15.3–

16.9, cf. Fab. 30(3).5–6). And, naturally enough, Plutarch is less concerned to weave his characters’

experience into a more global picture of Athenian life. In Stadter’s words, ‘Thucydides was interested in

power, not character, and clear understanding, not temperament, so that the tone of Plutarch’s account
49
often belies its Thucydidean origin’; perhaps an overstatement (Thucydides could be interested in

character too), but only a slight one.

To extend the analysis to Nicias, one could summarize by saying that Nicias is a quite different sort
50
of ‘tragic’ figure for the two authors. For Thucydides, the tragedy in which Nicias is implicated is far
larger than his own. The reasons for Athens’ reverse are more complicated, and we must start with

points about Athens rather than points about Nicias. At most, Nicias’ personality plays a part in a much

larger pattern and causal sequence; it is against this larger background that we must note and

comprehend his individual self-seeking preoccupations, and his inability to recapture more than a part

of the talents of a Pericles. He has a Periclean strategic caution, perhaps, but he does not have the flair,

nor the ability to attract and harness the Athenian civic sensibilities: those are the qualities that descend

to Alcibiades, not to Nicias. But there are several themes here that are fundamental to Thucydides’
51
larger picture of Athens’ development: the growing stress on the individual rather than the city; the

failure, but perhaps the inevitable failure, of Pericles’ successors to secure the remarkable balance of

varying qualities that had typified Pericles himself; the difficulties of carrying through a policy of

Periclean restraint in a city marked by Periclean confidence and civic pride. Nicias falls, and it matters

that he falls in a particularly stirring and undeserved way. But to explain that fall we go back to that

larger pattern, the analysis why Athens was the way it was; and we have to understand how such an

individual figure fits into a city of that character, and at that particular stage of its disintegrating destiny.

In Plutarch the tragedy is much more personal. Nicias’ own actions and character encompass his

own destruction; in a sense that was true in Thucydides as well, but in Plutarch the pattern is much

tighter, and much less dependent on a distinctive and subtle analysis of the character of the city itself. In

Plutarch it is Nicias’ very nervousness that gives him the popularity which wins him commands (2): that

same nervousness that will later condemn him to failure, in the greatest command of all. His

involuntary strengthening of Cleon’s authority creates the political conditions that he will be unable to

manage (8). Then, in the ostracism story, Plutarch stresses that his agreement with Alcibiades was

precisely what leads to the downfall in Sicily: if either Nicias or Alcibiades had been ostracized instead of
52
Hyperbolus, it would all have been so different (11.9). In the Sicilian debate it is then Nicias’

ostentatious caution that gives the Athenians the confidence that, with such a man in charge, it could

not go wrong (12.5). It does all go wrong, of course; but it does so because of Nicias’ own decisions and

policies that all go into reverse, all fall back on his own head. This is indeed distinctively Nicias’ tragedy,

not as in Thucydides an Athenian tragedy in which Nicias plays an elegant and pathetic part.

So, as de Romilly stresses, the biographical focus is vitally important. But it is possible to overstate

this; and, in particular, there is a real danger of underestimating the subtlety of Plutarch’s own political

analyses.

In the passages we have considered, everything was centred for Thucydides on the behaviour and fate of

Athens, but for Plutarch on the behaviour and fate of the individuals he was writing about.

53
Thus de Romilly; but even for the passages she discussed (centring, for instance, on the nature of

Pericles’ authority, or the popular response to Alcibiades) this is a considerable simplification. Indeed,

this formulation tends to diminish both authors, for in both Thucydides and Plutarch it is the

interrelation between individuals and city that is so often stressed. In Thucydides the fate of Athens is

itself bound up with the changing ways in which individuals behave, and in which individualism and

public duty come to clash; in Plutarch the individuals’ fate is so often traced in, precisely, their

relationship with the Athenian demos. For de Romilly, ‘poor Plutarch’ typically loses the intellectual

centre of Thucydides’ analyses; if there is force in the arguments presented here, then at least he replaces

them with some analyses of his own which carry a genuine intellectual interest and depth.

That interest in the relationship of individual and demos can be seen even in Themistocles, not on the

whole one of Plutarch’s most thoughtful or incisive Lives, and one where the manipulation of material

to give a biographical focus is often rather crude. There is little, for instance, on the background to the

exchanges of Themistocles with Aristides (3.1–3, 5.7, 11.1), or even to Xerxes’ invasion (the slight and

anecdotal quality of ch. 6 is very striking); after Salamis, once Themistocles’ own part is completed, the
54
Persian Wars are dismissed with astonishing perfunctoriness (17.2); Themistocles’ role in building the

Athenian empire is hardly treated at all, and the relevant chapters (17–22 on the early 470s) are

notoriously skimpy. But one aspect of Themistocles’ relations with Athens is given some stress, and with

a vein of moral unease that sits oddly in so uncensorious a Life: Plutarch here again emphasizes the way

in which Themistocles contributed to the pattern of two-party strife. Fifty years later it would be

Pericles who would calm matters and bring the city to a sort of harmony, but now it is Themistocles

who does so much to bring the rift about, by his policy of changing the demos into sailors (4.4–6, 19.3–
55
6). The consequence is an unintended one, and simply flows from a step that was necessary to bring

salvation. Athens had to become naval, and Plutarch knew it. But he also insists on the unfortunate

nature of this consequence. That emphasis is eloquent of this recurrent Plutarchan interest in the

relationship between the great man and the demos he leads; eloquent too, perhaps, of the way in which

all these Lives sit together and give a coherent history of the whole period as well as a sequence of
56
biographies.
 VII

That brings us to two final points. If we try to explain this slightly odd emphasis in Themistocles, we

should certainly relate it to the paired Life, the Camillus, where party strife is again a basic theme. The

Struggle of the Orders there furnishes the political background against which Camillus works; and

Camillus is in fact rather ineffective in calming this atmosphere of fierce factional antagonism. In each

case the political strife provides a suggestive counterpoint to the military world in which Themistocles

and Camillus both excel. As generals or admirals they earn our praise; but in politics moral judgement is

much more difficult and delicate. This is hardly the most successful of Plutarch’s pairs, but even here the
57
pairing matters greatly.

And indeed it is clear that many of the points made in this chapter are really points about pairs

rather than individual Lives. Fabius, the pair of Pericles, also develops a crudely two-party view of

politics, with Minucius and Varro very much stage demagogues; but Fabius manages the problem less

successfully than Pericles. In Crassus, the pair of Nicias, the political analysis is again cruder than in

many of the other Lives of the late Republic, just as Nicias is cruder than Alcibiades. Coriolanus, the pair

of Alcibiades, also has a fickle and volatile demos which takes a lot of handling; it is far too hot for

Coriolanus to handle, in fact. But in his case that is because he is so out of tune with them. Alcibiades is

so different, accomplished, educated, stylish, deft; and he is as like the demos as Coriolanus is unlike. Yet

eventually he cannot handle them any more successfully; he too is driven to give himself to the other

side, the ‘best people’ (albeit more fleetingly, 25.5–6, 26.1); and just as surely he falls. It is an extremely

subtle pair, and one where the reversal of the normal Greek–Roman ordering is particularly elegant: first
58
we have the simple case of Coriolanus, then the much more complex one of Alcibiades.

Finally, it is striking that this marvellous pair connects two people of whom Plutarch rather

disapproved. If we are to speak of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ Lives, those that are protreptic and those that

are deterrent, these would certainly be negative and deterrent. But those positive–negative distinctions

never really work. Plutarch can engage sympathetically with an Alcibiades, and try to work out why

such a man is interesting and why, for all his qualities, he nevertheless finally falls. In a quite different

way, Plutarch’s use of Thucydides can illuminate this question too, for it highlights certain points about
59
his choice of heroes. Take the case of Cleon, for instance. Plutarch evidently had enough information

to write a Life; most of it was afforded by Thucydides himself, and Old Comedy and other sources
60
(especially Theopompus) would have furnished some useful supplementation. He even had a pair on

offer, Clodius, on whom he often waxes so eloquent; indeed, when writing of Clodius he several times
61
borrows phraseology from the Greek demagogue stereotype, and particularly from Cleon himself.

Why, then, did he not write a Cleon? Surely it is because Plutarch disapproved of Cleon so strongly, and

had so crude a view of the character of the man and of the authority he exercised, that he could not do

anything at all interesting with him. He needed that degree of sympathetic involvement to produce a

worthwhile biography; and that is what he could generate about a Nicias or an Alcibiades or an Antony,

despite all his moral reservations.

If there is anything in the argument of this chapter, he often extended a similar sympathetic

understanding even to the Athenian demos, despite a similar degree of reservation about its fickleness

and its violence; and that sympathetic involvement was the source of some of his most interesting

deviations from Thucydides. Some of those deviations certainly trivialize, as de Romilly stresses; others

doubtless intrude contemporary assumptions and ideas that can only distort, as perhaps in his treatment
62
of Pericles’ building programme, or of Cimon’s liberality. But some are much more interesting. If

Plutarch stresses Pericles’ rhetorical charm, warmth, and personal relationships as much as his insight as

a source of his authority (a point made clearly by de Romilly); or if he stresses religious as much as

political elements as the important background to the affairs of the Hermae and the Mysteries; or if he

brings out the complexity of the popular reaction to Alcibiades – his view in all these cases is an

interesting one, and well worth serious consideration even in modern terms. That is not necessarily
63
because his views rest on contemporary authority, or at least not in a straightforward way. It is because

they rest on his human insight, a profound and impressive insight that, at least on some occasions, is

likely to have got it pretty well right.

Notes

1
On this passage see further Duff 1999, 22–30, esp. 25 on the textual problem (we must read < άνά>κάλύπτομένην or

< άπο>κάλύπτομένην rather than the manuscripts’ κάλύπτομένην), and Frazier 1996, 32–4.
2
I discuss Plutarch’s commitment to historical truth more extensively in ch. 6, esp. pp. 144–6, where I consider more fully the out-of-

the-way evidence Plutarch contrives to include in Nicias, and suggest that he prefers this approach to extracting every last ounce from

Thucydides’ own account. For Plutarch’s taste for inscriptions and documents, see also p. 40 n. 120.

3
Alc. 20.6, ‘Thucydides failed to name the people who informed, but others give their names as Diocleides and Teucrus’.
4
Per. 30.1, ‘they say’ (Polyalces’ advice to turn the decree to the wall); 30.2, ‘so it seems’ (of Pericles’ private animosity against the

Megarians); 30.3, ‘it seemed’ (of Anthemocritus’ suspicious death); 30.4, the Megarians ‘turn the blame on to Aspasia and Pericles’ (on

this passage cf. p. 269 and n. 6); 31.1, ‘it is not easy to tell how this began…’, of the reasons for the Megarian Decree (but everyone

blames Pericles for not rescinding it); 31.2, the Pheidias story is the most damaging and the best attested; 32.6, ‘these, then, are the

reasons which are given for his refusal to allow the people to give in to the Spartans; the truth is unclear’; Fab. 30(3).1, ‘the war is said to

have been brought on by Pericles’; cf. the earlier ‘they allege’ ( άίτίωντάί) at 25.1, of the alleged part of Aspasia in stimulating war against
Samos. I discuss some of this material more fully at Pelling 2000, 106–11.

5
If argument for this was needed, it was provided adequately and extensively a century ago by Siemon 1881, esp. pp. 28–51 on Nic.; cf.

Littman 1970; Lauritano 1957; Tzannetatos 1958; Marasco 1976, especially 8–9; and, briefly on the general issue, Stadter 1989, lx–lxi,

and de Romilly 1988. Plutarch quotes Thucydides often in the Moralia (Titchener 1995), and in such a way as to suggest intimate

knowledge of the text and its style: that is also the implication of Nic. 1 (above, p. 117), as well as of the many verbal echoes. The last

influential attempt to deny Plutarch direct knowledge of Thucydides was that of Levi 1955, 159–95, but that rested on a very low view

of Plutarch’s capacity to combine different sources. Levi ended by postulating ‘una fonte che ha potuto confrontare il testo di Timeo con

quelli di Tucidide e di Filisto’ (177), marked by ‘l’interesse filosofico, moralistico e scientifico’ (180, though there he does allow that

Plutarch’s own interests may have affected his presentation), and writing some centuries after the events (180). It is hard to find a better

description of Plutarch himself, and it is evidently more economical to suppose that he has himself combined the different strands of

source-material.

6
Timaeus is quoted specifically for the Syracusans’ initial dismissiveness towards Gylippus, and their later discovery and disapproval of

his financial irregularities. That need not preclude admiration for his generalship (so, rightly, Brown 1958, 66, contra e.g. Lauritano

1957, 118–19); Timaeus clearly stressed that Gylippus was important in attracting allies and support, as Plutarch himself brings out

(19.5), and the two emphases need not be contradictory. Nor need it preclude the possibility that Plutarch derived other information

concerning Gylippus from the same source, the mockery of the Athenian soldiers (19.4), or the final hostility of the Syracusans when he

suggested taking the Athenian generals alive to the Peloponnese (28.2). In each case those items come just before the specific Timaeus

citations, but the citations need not, as often claimed, point to a change of source. They simply indicate that the new information is

more striking and perhaps more questionable, so that the critical reader stands more in need of knowing its provenance. On both these

points Meister 1967, 64–5 and 1970 goes astray.

7
For relatively recent treatments cf. Meister’s dissertation and article (1967 and 1970); Pédech 1980. Both build heavily on very weak

assumptions about the flavour of Timaeus and Philistus, and equally weak assumptions about Diodorus’ technique (on which see J.

Hornblower 1981, ch. 2, esp. pp. 49–63; Sacks 1990).

8
If my argument in ch. 1 is correct. Here of course it is also possible that Diodorus followed a similar procedure, and at least some of the

divergences are owed to his misrememberings; the two explanations need not be mutually exclusive.

9
As suggested by Stern 1884, 441, 444–5.

10
But the case of the figure might be simply rounding (though ‘2500’ strikes one as round enough); or perhaps the result of some textual

corruption, possibly in Plutarch or Diodorus, possibly in a text used by one or the other.

11
Cf. especially 14.3 (Thuc. 6.49.1), 16.1 (6.63.3), 16.2 (6.64.3), 16.8 (6.75.2), 18.5 (6.102.2), 18.9 (6.104.1), 19.3 (7.3.1), 19.9

(7.7.4), 21.1 (7.42.1), 21.2 (7.42.2), 21.7

(7.43.5), 26.1 (7.73.3), 26.2 (7.74.2), 27.9 (7.87.5).

12
On this see Pelling 1988, index s.v. ‘characterization by reaction’; Duff 1999, index s.v. ‘Onlookers as mouthpiece for author’.

13
See pp. 288–91.

14
So at 16.2, where Nicias sends the man from Catana on his missions, and at 19.4, where he makes no response to Gylippus’ peace-

offer; at Thuc. 6.64.1–2 it was ‘the generals’, at 7.3.1–2 ‘the Athenians’. At 18.7 Nicias himself transiently turns to hope; at Thuc.

6.103.3 it was the Athenians. Syracusan high morale in Thucydides (7.41.4) becomes Nicias’ low morale at 20.8. A non-Thucydidean

example may be 20.5, where ‘Nicias’ decides not to fight before Demosthenes arrives; Diodorus 13.10.1 has a similar item, but talks of

‘the Athenians’. Cf. Marasco 1976, 17, and for similar techniques in other Lives above, pp. 93–4. In none of the Nicias cases is Plutarch

being unreasonable. In view of his stress on Nicias’ authority (15.1), a decision of ‘the generals’ amounted to one of Nicias himself, and

by 19.4 he is the only general left. In that passage his disdain for Gylippus’ peace-offer anyway required an explanation, and so did the

ease with which Gylippus slipped through the blockade (18.11–12); and that explanation could naturally be in terms of Nicias’ sharing

his men’s over-confidence. Commander and men are, this time, at one. And it would be odd if Nicias were not dispirited at 20.8: 7.42.2,

‘some improvement, given their bad situation’ suggests how bad things had been before ( ως έκ κάκων ρωμη τίς: for ρωμη of morale cf.
7.18.2). In none of all this need we see any source beyond Thucydides (pace Levi 1955, esp. 174, 176–7, 179, 181).

15
In ‘… against the greatness and glory of what he had hoped to achieve’, 26.5. Even if ηλπίζέ is there interpreted more as ‘hope’ than
‘expect’, the emphasis is still an odd one, given Nicias’ persistently dispirited view of the chances of success. The similar transfer at 18.7

(preceding note) leads to a parallel inconsequentiality: Nicias would seem to be the last man to be distracted by such irrational hopes,

and ‘contrary to his nature’ ( πάρά φύσίν) at 18.11 acknowledges the awkwardness. But the catastrophic pattern is still worth the

discomfort. Nicias’ transient hopefulness is as unfortunate in its consequences as his more usual depression. Cf. pp. 130–1.

16
On the importance of ‘others’ in this scene see also Frazier 1996, 67–8, who stresses their value as a contrast to Nicias. – Titchener

2000 suggests that Plutarch transfers Thucydides’ judgement to these observers because his own feelings about Nicias are more negative

(cf. n. 28), and he is therefore reluctant to subscribe to Thucydides’ verdict in his authorial voice. Perhaps; but the narrative is anyway so

powerful that it encourage readers to share the troops’ admiration.

17
See below, pp. 130–1.

18
It is normally assumed without question that Plutarch must have a source for this: cf. e.g. Stern 1884, 442–3, 448–9; Busolt 1899,

293; Pédech 1980, 1725–6. All made more than they should of the contact with Diodorus. Marasco 1976, 159–60, sensibly leaves it

open whether Plutarch derives the matter from a source or from ‘his own reflection’. Littman 1970, 230–1, assumes that it is an

elaboration of Thucydides; that is welcome, for he does not normally allow Plutarch such freedom of elaboration (e.g. in the case of

Menander and Euthydemus he argues that Plutarch’s extra detail is drawn from Philistus,

pp. 212–13).

19
Above, n. 11.
20
Cf. Ant. 66.3, 77.4 with the notes in my commentary (Pelling 1988, 283, 307); the wording of Nic. 25 is more distant. We might

compare the remarks of Hinds 1998, 104–5 on Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Ovid most echoes the Aeneid not when he gives his own version

of Aeneas’ story in Met. 13–14 (‘the least Virgilian thing he ever wrote’), but elsewhere in the poem.

21
That is particularly clear with Plutarch’s cross-referential self-quotations: cf. Stoltz 1929, 43–55.

22
Russell 1966a, 40–1 = Scardigli 1995, 196–7 points out the oddity, and explains that Thucydides’ restrained manner made this

mention of ‘transgressiveness’ all the more telling. As he says, the citation at 13.4 is a similar case, when Plutarch is talking of

Hyperbolus: ‘Thucydides too mentions him as a scoundrel’ ( μέμνητάί μέν ως άνθρωπού πονηρού κάί Tούκύδίδης). Thucydides would
not make such criticisms rashly.

23
See p. 127, where the passage is quoted.

24
At least as Plutarch portrays it, Alc. 36. I discuss this more fully in Pelling 2000, 54–8; cf. also Duff 1999, 238–9; Gribble 1999, 280–

1.

25
I retain the word ‘allusion’ here rather than switching to ‘intertextuality’, though I am ready enough to use the latter term as well.

‘Allusion’ carries more implication of authorial intention, and despite the theoretical minefield this may be helpful, at least in the sense

of the audience’s reconstruction of that intention. (Hence it is better to talk of ‘narrator’, the ‘Plutarch’ whom audience construct, rather

than simply ‘author’.) One of the most distinctive techniques of Plutarch is to encourage a complicity between narrator and narratee (see

ch. 12): the audience response here is not merely to recognize the Thucydidean original, but also to recognize a narrator who expects

them to know it. To exclude narratorial self-characterization in such techniques is to diminish the text. For a sophisticated discussion of

intertextuality and allusion, retaining a scope for the latter word, cf. Hinds 1998, esp. 49–50, 144. Naturally, ‘allusions’ too import

suggestions of the original text and its context into our readings of the later text; good critics have known this for a long time, and

scholars should not pretend that this insight is owed to those who have discovered intertextuality.

26
Cf. the stress of Per. 18.1, 19.3, 20.3–4, 21, 22.2, 23.2; cf. then 33.5–6, 38.4, Fab. 28(1).1. Stadter 1989, 209–10 on 18.1 notes that

Plutarch evinces no interest in the various strategic tricks that Frontinus ascribes to Pericles: these would sit uncomfortably with such a

policy of safety-first ( άσφάλείά), as the wording of 18.1 brings out plainly.

27
So de Romilly 1988, 31. Pomp. 67.7–10 offers a suggestive contrast, where Plutarch waxes indignant at the shortsighted selfishness of

the Roman aristocrats at Pharsalus, and Pompey’s failure to give the strong leadership one should expect (p. 101): a similar indignation

would be justified here.

28
This has the effect of making the early chapters less favourable to Nicias than we might expect from Thucydides, as Nikolaidis 1988

forcefully points out; but he goes too far in speaking of Plutarch’s ‘bias against Nicias’, and arguing that this is to be seen as a negative,

deterrent Life (so also Marasco 1976, 22; contra, Titchener 1991, though she too stresses the Life’s ‘negative tone’). There are several

passages where Plutarch might have criticized Nicias more fiercely (cf. preceding note), and anyway Plutarch’s unfriendly treatment of

the demos itself (pp. 125–6) makes Nicias’ nervousness more understandable. Littman 1970, 252–3, here gives a measured view. Nor is

the treatment as independent of Thucydides as Nikolaidis suggests (1988, 320). It is rather that Plutarch transfers Thucydides’ leading

themes to explain different and earlier events, rather as in Themistocles he exploits themes from Thucydides’ posthumous survey (1.138)

to reinterpret Themistocles’ earlier actions (in that case, actions for which Plutarch’s main source was Herodotus): cf. Littman 1970, 53–

7.

29
Notice the reworking in 2.1, the very first sentence after the proem, to insert a reference to ‘the people’. That is adapted from Ath. Pol.

28.5, which lauded Nicias, Thucydides, and Theramenes as ‘the best.. .after the ancients’ and ‘not merely gentlemen but also statesmen

and men who treated the whole city like fathers’ (.. . κάί τη πολεί πάση πάτρίκως χρωμενους). Plutarch changes this to make them the

‘best of the citizens and people who inherited from their ancestors goodwill and friendship to the people’ (… κάί πάτρικην [did he
misunderstand πάτρικως in Ath. Pol.?} εχοντες ευνοίάν κάί φιλίάν προς τον δημον). This, as elaborated in the rest of the chapter, is the
slightly nervous and precarious ‘friendship’ from which he begins. Cf. Levi 1955, 161–2.

30
This analytic flexibility is very clear in the Roman Lives: cf. pp. 96–102 and 207–10. Cf. also the rather different portrayals of the

Syracusan demos in Timoleon and Dion:Swain 1989d, 322–3.

31
Plutarch here builds on earlier literary portrayals of Alcibiades, which in various ways developed points both of similarity and of

incompatibility between city and individual:see Gribble 1999, esp. 29–89.

32
The expansion is intelligent: if we try to reconstruct plausible arguments for Alcibiades to use, we would be hard-pressed to do better

than Alc. 14.8–9. Cf. Fornis Vaquero 1994, 505.

33
For another important ‘reverse’, notice how the spectacular celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries at Alc. 34.3–7 mirrors and corrects

the earlier allegations of sacrilege. Here again Plutarch’s suggestions are intelligent and sensitive. Cf. Verdegem 2001; Pelling 2000, 23

and 54.

34
On this see esp. Gribble 1999, 159–213; also Macleod 1975; Connor 1984, esp. 60–2, 163–5, 237; Rood 1998, 185–8; and Pelling

2000, 22, 52–3.

35
Not that these ‘highly-regarded’ people are wrong: the analysis is picked up in the Comparison (Alc. 40(1).3), but there they are

described as ‘the sensible’, οί σωφρονές. On Alc. 16 and its political analysis see further Russell 1966a, 45–6 = Scardigli 1995, 204–6;

Duff 1999, 234–5; Gribble 1999, 265–8 and 277–9.

36
I elaborate this point in Pelling 2000, 44–60, esp. 54 and 59–60. Cf. also Rood 1998, 234, 288–91 for some other cases where

Plutarch interestingly revises Thucydides’ interpretations: in particular, his stress on Nicias’ wealth (Nic. 3.1–2), exploiting Thucydidean

material (4.105.1, 7.77.2, 7.86.4) to create a very unthucydidean picture.

37
Some aspects of Nicias’ rhetoric, especially at 6.68.3–4 and 7.64, lend themselves to analysis in this way. For his nervousness of the

troops, cf. especially 7.8.1, 14.1 (‘your natures are difficult to command’, χάλέπάί γάρ άί ύμέτέράί φύσέίς άρξάί), 48.3^.
38
Besides 17, cf. 4.6, 5.1, 8.1, 10.7, 31.1, 36.8, 38.1, 39.1; but in the case of the demos here it is more disturbingly connected with

‘anger’ ( οργη), a much less Periclean characteristic. Phronema is one of the themes that links Pericles to his pair Fabius, who shows the

same quality (Fab. 3.7); he too finds the quality hard to cope with in others (6.2); but he too finally inspires his city to respond with the

same quality (18.4).

39
Cf. 9.1, listing ‘cleruchies and theoric grants and distributions of pay’ as the distinctive demagogic methods; then e.g. 9.3. The irony

here is missed by Connor 1968, 114. This emphasis on phronema, both Pericles’ own and that inspired in the demos, helps us to
understand the different treatment of rhetoric in Plutarch (a point stressed by de Romilly 1988, 24–5, who found Plutarch’s analysis

disquietingly trivial). Plutarch presents Pericles’ rhetoric as psychagogia (‘leading of souls’), and emphasizes the point with Platonic

allusions at 8.2 and 15.2. For Thucydides it was much more a question of communicating truth and insight, especially prophetic

insight, to the demos. Plutarch thus dwells more on moulding and leading the emotions ( πάθη) of the people; that emphasis is of course
present in Thucydides too, who also stresses Pericles’ power to stem or inflate the people’s confidence, but does so in a much more

intellectual register (cf. esp. 2.65.9). One can now understand Plutarch’s re-emphasis. It is the spirit, as moulded by psychagogia, rather

than the intellectually inspired insight that is central to his interpretation. And it is again hard to be sure that he was wrong.

40
Especially 6.2–3, 7.3–4, 7.8, 9.5, 10.8, 11.3 (and all 11.1–4), 12.1, 14.1, 14.3, 15.1; cf. Stadter 1989, especially his notes on 7.3,

11.3, and 15.1. Many have criticized Plutarch for the crudity of the analysis, especially Frost 1964, 386–92, Breebart 1971, 267–9,

Andrewes 1978, 1–5: they generally explain this as a consequence either of Plutarch’s source-material (cf. e.g. Ath. Pol. 28.2) or of the

influence of conditions of his own day. (On this second possibility cf. also Ameling 1985.) Both considerations may indeed have played

a part. But we also need to explain why this analysis, when compared with Plutarch’s other Lives of the period, is both unusually

insistent and unusually crude. That needs to be explained in terms of the distinctive features of this particular Life.

41
Thus Cimon is genuinely popular in Cim. (5.4–6, 7.4–8.2, 8.7, 10, 15.1, 16.2); Per. 9.2 prefers to hint that Cimon’s liberality was

calculated demagogy, thus keeping closer to the tenor of the original (Theopompus FGrH 115 fr. 89) than he does at Cim. 10, where he

insists that such spontaneous generosity and rapport with the demos could comfortably coexist with ‘political aims which were

aristocratic and philo-Spartan’ ( προάίρεσις άριστοκράτικη κάί ?άκωνικη, 10.8). At Per. 10.6 Pericles is ‘put forward by the demos’ to

prosecute Cimon; nothing of this at Cim. 14.3–5. Indeed, in Cim. more than in Per. 9–10 Cimon is outside and above the two-party

bickering, at least at first, and can act as a moderating influence: cf. 3.1, 19.3, and especially 15.1 (‘when he was present, he would

control and restrain the demos, prone as it was to attack the best citizens and to seize all authority and power for itself ’). All this implies

that the two ‘parties’ were important, but in Cimon Plutarch does not explain every move or political figure in those terms. None of this

is particularly impressive; indeed, it is partly a consequence of Plutarch’s general lack of interest in political analysis in Cim. (cf. e.g. the

perfunctory explanation at 16.9–10, or the much blander treatment of his recall from exile at 17, especially 17.9, than at Per. 10.1–4).

But it is notable that Plutarch’s more insistent concern with political analysis in Per. requires so much simplification and overstatement.

42
Gomme HCTi. 56.

43
See Stadter 1989, xxxix; Breebart 1971, 261, 270; and below, pp. 314 and 325, where I discuss this from a different angle. Swain

1990c, 76 notes that Plato is not named at Per. 9.1, where the divergence between Thucydides and ‘many others’ is discussed. Plutarch’s

reverence for Plato is such that he would prefer dissent to be tacit. For a similar case in On Controlling Anger (457b–c) cf. Duff 1999,

213.

44
The distinctions are drawn sharply and crudely, but not without some discrimination; 11.3 argues that the split, hitherto latent,

becomes much fiercer and clearly defined with Thucydides son of Melesias and his more systematic organization, and Plutarch’s own

narrative emphases have confirmed that picture. Thus even before 11.3 we see a strong potential split (cf. the passages cited in n. 40),

but till that point the distinction is one of two potential sources of support or two different political approaches, ‘popular’ and

‘aristocratic’ ( δημοτικης κάί άριστοκράτικης προάίρεσεως, 11.3): thus Cimon too, even though belonging with the conservatives, still
knows how to play the demagogue (9.2). Between 11.3 and 15.1 (cf. also 6.2–3), the division of two ‘parties’, systematically at each

other’s throats, is clearer: cf. 12.1, 14.1, 14.3. Critics sometimes exaggerate the incoherence of Plutarch’s account, e.g. Meyer 1967, 145.

45
‘Takes further’, because there are already some elements of that style in the earlier, demagogic phase: these furnish one of several

devices for making this period less uncomfortable. Cf. e.g. the dignified aloofness from the demos, or the elevated specific motives for

basically demagogic measures (7.5–8, 11.6–12). Cf. esp. Stadter 1989, xxxix–xl and Stadter 1987, 258–9; Breebart 1971.

46
The fragility of the control is also felt: it is made clear that the demos can always break away from such grave leadership, as they turn

away from Pericles in the final years and months (32.6, 33.7–8, 35.3–5); and Plutarch seizes several opportunities to hint at what will

happen after his death (especially 39.3–4, but notice also 20.4, 37.1, 37.6, Fab. 29(2).3–4). That suggests some qualifications to the

argument of de Romilly 1988, 25.Thucydides naturally generates more interest (as she stresses) in ‘the nature of Pericles’ authority,

contrasted with his successors’ lack of authority’ and ‘the whole evolution of Athenian politics during the Peloponnesian War’; such

themes do not lend themselves to development in biographical form, as again she concedes. But the theme is hinted in Plutarch too,

despite his literary form.

47
Cf. n. 41.

48
de Romilly 1988. Cf. also the analyses of Frazier 1996 along similar lines, especially her summary at p. 95.

49
Stadter 1989, lxi.

50
Granted that this phrase raises considerable methodological complications: cf. p. 111 n. 27. Here I again mean tragic affinity as much

as tragic influence or allusion, though Nicias 29 in particular evokes the tragic genre, particularly when taken with the balancing Crassus

33: for Crassus see Braund 1993 and Zadorojnyi 1997a. On Thucydides and tragedy see esp. Macleod 1983, 140–58; I say a little more

about how Nicias’ self-seeking fits into Thucydides’ larger pattern in Pelling 1990, 259–60.

51
Cf. p. 127 and n. 34.

52
This stress, important in Nicias, is absent from the parallel account at Alc. 13. This helps to explain several variations between the two

accounts: I trace these through in detail at Pelling 2000, 49–52. Briefly, (1) At Nic. 11.5 Nicias and Alcibiades both play a part in the

scheming against Hyperbolus; in Alc. 13.7 it is Alcibiades alone. That is not just routine biographical focusing, for it is important that

Nicias’ own schemings should turn against himself. (2) The role of Phaeax, though a little inconsequential in Alcibiades, is certainly

greater than in Nicias (cf. 11.10). The shifting relations of Nicias and Alcibiades are a central point in Nicias and could naturally lead

him to play down a complicating additional figure: indeed, the ‘if either Nicias or Alcibiades had been ostracized…’ reflection would be

ruined if Phaeax were intruded too heavily, for his ostracism would evidently not have saved Nicias from Sicily. In Alcibiades Plutarch’s

focus rests more on Alcibiades’ relationship with the demos, and the extra character is a positive advantage, highlighting different styles of

popular leadership. Thus the incompetent rhetoric of Phaeax (Alc. 13.2–3) contrasts effectively with Alcibiades’ winning eloquence

(10.3–4), just as Hyperbolus’ ‘contempt for public acclaim’ (doxa, 13.5) contrasts with Alcibiades’ ‘love of honour and acclaim’ (doxa

again, 6.4, etc.).

53
de Romilly 1988, 33.

54
Frost 1980, 168, comments on this abruptness; cf. also Stadter 1983–4, 359–61.

55
An analysis, incidentally, that Thucydides would surely have found much too simpleminded, for all his awareness of the

interconnection of democracy and nautical empire (cf. esp. 6.24.3–4). Thucydides, both in his narrative and in the summary at 1.138,
has notably little to say or suggest about Themistocles’ part in building Athenian democracy or fostering factional strife; he is more

concerned with his role in building Athenian power and empire. Hence the lavish treatment of the construction of the walls (cf. esp.

1.93.4).

56
I return to this theme at pp. 187–8, and in Pelling, forthcoming (a) and (b).

57
Cf. Stadter 1983_4.

58
I say more about this in chs. 15, esp. p. 344, and 16, esp. p. 357.

59
On this topic in general cf. essGeiger 1981.

60
This might have left some gaps, particularly perhaps on childhood (cf. ch. 14 below); but this was true in other Lives too, and did not

stop him writing of (say) Nicias, Philopoemen, Phocion, or Flamininus: cf. p. 153.

61
Especially ‘(over-)confidence’, ‘brashness’ ( θράσυτης) and ‘worthlessness’, ‘disgustingness’ (βδελυρίά). For the traditional nature of the
qualities, see my note (1988, 119) on Ant. 2.6 and Stadter’s (1989, 78) on Per. 5.2; for Cleon, cf. Nic. 2.2–3, 8.5, Crass. 36(3).5, Demetr.

11.2, Mor. 855b; for Clodius, Lucull. 34.1, 38.1, Pomp. 46.4, 48.5, Caes. 9.2, Cat. Min. 31.2, Cic. 28.1, Ant. 2.6. On the absence of

Lives of ‘the really negative leaders’ cf. also de Blois 1992, 4604.

62
Cf. AOn the absence of Livesmeling 1985; Fuscagni 1989, 48–58. Alc. 14.8 is another case where Plutarch is perhaps misled by the

political conditions of his own day: cf. S. Hornblower 1983, 120. See also Gomme HCT i. 72–4, on Plutarch’s intrusion of stereotypes

from Roman history. But in chs. 10 and 11 I suggest that Plutarch was at pains to keep such contemporary flavouring to a minimum: cf.

also Pelling 2000, 58–9.

63
Fifth-century sources will of course have influenced Plutarch’s picture of (say) popular religion or the reaction to Alcibiades, and in

that sense he filters contemporary views to us; but that is very different from saying that he draws these particular themes or emphases

from a predecessor, contemporary or otherwise.

 6

TRUTH AND FICTION IN PLUTARCH’S LIVES

As for Solon’s meeting with Croesus, some scholars fancy that they have disproved this on chronological

grounds. Yet, when a story is so famous and well-attested, when (more important) it fits Solon’s

character so well, and is so worthy of his wisdom and largeness of spirit, I am not prepared to reject it

because of the so-called rules of chronology. So many scholars are continually revising these rules, and

still there is no agreement on how the inconsistencies are to be reconciled.

(Plutarch, Solon, 27.1)

That passage captures a lot about Plutarch’s approach to history, and to truth. Such an approach to

chronology is not ridiculous. In this particular case the chronological experts doubtless had it right and

Plutarch was wrong; but there was a wider sense in which he was right to be sceptical of the

chronologists, even if this made him credulous of the story. The chronologies of early Greek, Persian,

and Lydian history were hardly secure, and the different systems were not easy to harmonize. Plutarch
1
knew the problems very well. It would have been rash for him to build large consequences on such

speculative grounds, particularly as the meeting of Solon and Croesus afforded one of the more firmly

attested synchronizations for the experts to build their systems around; and, even on the experts’ own
2 3
terms, the case against the story was scarcely clear-cut. Plutarch was not indifferent to chronology, but

he liked it to rest on firmer grounds.

Still, his cavalier attitude here certainly gives one pause. He makes no attempt to grapple with the

chronological problem himself, he simply discards it; his placing of the story implies that he accepted

the traditional dating shortly after Solon’s reforms, a context which made the chronological problem
4
more acute; and, after he has made the reasonable point that the story is supported by a wealth of

evidence, we are surprised that he goes on to put more weight on the way it fits Solon’s character –

precisely the reason, of course, why it was doubtless made up. Momigliano has argued that ‘the
5
borderline between fiction and reality was thinner in biography than in ordinary historiography’, and
6
that ‘the biographers felt in principle much freer than the historians in their use of evidence’. This,

perhaps, is one instance where Plutarch shows less concern to investigate historical truth than we should

like.

Still, Momigliano’s thesis is a large one, and deserves more critical discussion than it has received;

and the enquiry will now be more complex because of well-argued attempts to demonstrate that

‘ordinary historiography’ itself showed less regard for the truth than Momigliano implies, and perhaps
7
assumed a different concept of ‘truth’ from our own. Yet the comparison of biography and

historiography can still be a rewarding one, and Plutarch is the only Greek political biographer who
8
allows serious analysis – really, indeed, the only substantial figure of whom we even know. He clearly

thought hard not only about biography, but about how history should be written too: On Herodotus’

Malice is sufficient demonstration of that, and the Lamprias catalogue attests a work on How We Are to

Judge True History (Lampr. cat. 124). Our enquiry should be profitable.

It will be in three parts, though they overlap. The first will discuss Plutarch’s historical criticism, the

criteria he uses for accepting or rejecting material as plausible or implausible. The second will revert to a

topic already treated in chapter 4, what he does with a story once he has decided to include it – how far

he can add circumstantial detail, how far he can change small details of it, how far he can shift around

its chronology, how far he can strain its interpretation to suit his thesis, and so on. The third will return

to Momigliano’s formulations, and explore the relation between Plutarch and historiography.

I. Plutarch’s critical ability

Even by modern standards, many of Plutarch’s historical arguments are quite impressive. Take the
9
discussion of Aristides’ wealth at Arist. 1. He discusses the various arguments used by Demetrius of

Phalerum to suggest that Aristides was quite well off, his tenure of the eponymous archonship, his

ostracism, and the suggestion that he set up a choregic monument. He counters the last point by

suggesting that friends might have subsidized him, as they did with Plato and Epaminondas in similar

cases; then he adds the epigraphic argument which he draws from Panaetius – that the letter-forms show

that this inscription is of the wrong date, and must have been dedicated by a different Aristides. We

would of course think the second point decisive, and wonder why he spent time on the first; still, both

the points are reasonable, and he need not have been wholly confident that Panaetius had his letter-

forms correctly dated. Against the other points, the archonship and the ostracism, he shows fairly easily

that others were ostracized without being rich or noble (Damon), and cites Idomeneus to demonstrate

that Aristides was elected archon, not drawn by lot from the pentakosiomedimnoi. Once again, he might
 10
have done a little better (e.g. by quoting Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens), but not much: he is using

his wide reading and general knowledge very effectively. And, most important, he cared: this is worth

two pages of fairly hard argument, and in the first chapter of a pair, where he usually prefers a more

gripping and less learned opening – indeed, something more like the reflections on justice in ch. 6,
11
which could easily have been made into a prologue.

Of course, there is a sense in which the scholarship suits Plutarch’s rhetorical concerns as well.

Aristides’ poverty will be important to his literary presentation of the pair, both confirming the famous

incorruptibility and making it more remarkable; the elder Cato’s justice, austerity, and domestic
12
management will be rather more qualified and problematic. The point will be important enough for

Plutarch to return to it at the close of the Life, with another, balancing display of intelligent learning:

Craterus cannot have good authority for his claim that the elderly Aristides was condemned for

corruption, for, if he had, it would have been in his manner to quote it, and the item would anyway

have featured in the canon of stories of the ungrateful demos (Arist. 26.2–5). Aristides’ poverty is also

confirmed by the fate of his children and grandchildren after his death, and again an impressive parade

of learning confirms the point (27). But, strictly in terms of forceful argumentation, the scholarly

technique is not ideal: Craterus’ obloquy was obscure enough to be ignored rather than countered, and

the initial points would have been more effective if they had been briefer.

More important, nothing suggests that the rhetorical point was here in conflict with what Plutarch

believed to be true. We often, and fairly, concentrate on the ways in which rhetoric could distract writers

from historical truth, but there were other ways in which it positively helped: in fostering a powerful
13
memory, for instance, and encouraging wide and cultured reading; in providing the techniques to

impose a clear, ordered structure on chaotic source-material; in affording a sensitivity to bias; in

encouraging discrimination among more or less reliable witnesses; in providing arguments from eikos

which could stimulate a sceptical approach to unlikely stories. The Aristides affords a good instance of

this, with Plutarch’s rhetorical expertise helping his critical alertness to the truth. Some modern theorists

have stressed the analogy between historical research and forensic technique, with historians asking
14
questions of ‘witnesses’ and elaborating techniques to check their testimony: in this case, at least, one

sees what they mean.

There are plenty of other examples of good argument: the remark at Crass. 13 that one cannot trust
15
Cicero when he incriminates Caesar and Crassus in a work he published after both were dead; the

discussion of Phocion’s social standing at Phoc. 4.1–2, including the sensible remark that, if Phocion had

been of low birth, he would not have attended the Academy or indulged in other privileged pursuits in

his youth; the use of more reliable chronology to demonstrate that Stesimbrotus had got his dates wrong

in making Themistocles the pupil of Melissus and Anaxagoras (Them. 2.5). He is alert to bias as well, as

befits one who is familiar with the rhetorical arts of misrepresentation: Oppius cannot be trusted when

he writes about Caesar’s friends or enemies, so one cannot believe his story of an atrocity of Pompey

during the Sullan period (Pomp. 10.9); Antiphon’s slanderous stories about Alcibiades should be

discounted, given the conventions of invective (Alc. 3.2); Andocides’ anti-democratic bias and

Phylarchus’ sensational style discredit their stories about Themistocles’ death (Them. 32.4); Duris of

Samos can always be relied upon to magnify his country’s sufferings (Per. 28.3); a story of Phylarchus

would not be worth accepting but for the fact that it is supported by Polybius, for Phylarchus would
16
always bend the truth in Cleomenes’ favour (Arat. 38.12); and Theopompus is more reliable when

praising people than when blaming them, so his version of Lysander’s financial integrity deserves some
17
respect (Lys. 30.2). And he certainly knows when truth is particularly hard to attain, whether because

of the remoteness of the period or because it was so heavily overlaid by propaganda (Per. 13.16, Thes.

1.2–5, Lyc. 1.1, Mor. 326a).

18
He knows the value of contemporary and eyewitness sources, too – that often emerges. Of course,

some contemporary sources could be rather embarrassing to have:

It is time for me to appeal to the reader for indulgence, as I treat the events that Thucydides has already

handled incomparably: in this part of his narrative he was indeed at his most emotional, vivid, and

varied. But do not assume that I am as vain as Timaeus, who thought he would outdo Thucydides in

brilliance and show Philistus to be totally vulgar and amateurish… Of course, it is not possible to omit

the events treated by Thucydides and Philistus, for they include material which gives an especially clear

notion of the man’s character and disposition, so often revealed by his many calamities. But I have

summarized them briefly and kept to the essentials, just to avoid the charge of total negligence. I have

tried instead to collect material which is not well known, but scattered among other authors, or found

on ancient dedications and decrees. Nor is this an accumulation of useless erudition: I am conveying

material which is helpful for grasping the man’s nature and character.
 (Nic. 1.1, 5.)

It is Thucydides’ artistic qualities, we noticed in the last chapter (p. 117), that make him inimitable: he

is so emotional, vivid, varied, brilliant. But, as we also noticed, Plutarch will compensate not by literary

virtuosity and not just by altering to a biographical focus: he will find out new facts. All this study of

‘other authors’ and ‘ancient dedications and decrees’ sounds like serious historical enquiry committed to

the truth; and indeed Nicias is quite full of such out-of-the-way evidence, including epigraphic material,
19
and he prefers to pursue this approach rather than strain every last ounce from Thucydides. He quite
20
often uses inscriptions elsewhere, too. One need not overdo it: there are of course spectacular
21
weaknesses as well, especially when he argues from silence; his attempts to reconstruct the political
22
climate of a different age can be disquietingly simple; and he does not always seem to us to give

weight to the right evidence or arguments – in different ways, Arist. 1 and Solon 27 were both examples

of that. Even in Nicias Gomme is probably right, and we should not really think of ‘research’: the
23
collection of material was doubtless too unsystematic. But it is not unfair to speak of ‘scholarship’, the

thoughtful application of extensive learning in the interest of getting facts right; and, without overdoing

it, we can at least say that he is as critical, as intelligent, and as committed to the truth as most ancient
24
writers about the past – when he wants to be.

There is evidently a sting in that tail, but we have already seen enough of Plutarch’s commitment to

the truth to justify two additional points. First, a good deal of this political biography is very committed

to getting it right. Now that evidently contrasts with literary biography, which is so often ‘representative’
25
and fictional; it also probably contrasts with any other models of Greek biography that Plutarch knew.
26
As Momigliano brought out, in formal terms the genera proxima to biography were, first, encomium,

and secondly the biographical novel on the model of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. Both, evidently, were quite

popular genres in the Hellenistic period, and both certainly indulged in fictional elaboration,
27
particularly of matters such as their subjects’ childhood. Momigliano was quite right to observe that

the fictional quality of such works could well topple over into biography itself. In the case of literary

biography, that indeed happened; but Plutarch’s biography was generally different – even though it was

usually public figures, not intellectuals, that those mendacious genera proxima treated, and we might

consequently expect political biography to be the more susceptible variety. Perhaps Plutarch had
28
Hellenistic forerunners who were equally historically committed, but I doubt it; more likely, he was

largely creating his own genre, and creating it in a mould which was unexpectedly truthful, a closer
29
cousin to historiography than to the formally more similar encomium or biographical novel.

Consider, for instance, his use of Onesicritus’ How Alexander Was Brought Up, apparently a
30
charming, romantic, and extravagant work written on the model of the Cyropaedia. Plutarch seems to
31
draw on this a little in the first few chapters of Alexander, but the remarkable thing is that he does not

draw on it more. As Hamilton brings out clearly, he is much more restrained in the Life than in his

essays (or speeches) ‘On Alexander’s Fortune’. In the Life, for instance, he does not develop the motif of

the ‘philosopher in arms’ civilizing the barbarous world, though we know this featured in the work of

Onesicritus (FGrH 134 fr. 17), and we might expect it to be to Plutarch’s taste: it was certainly
32
fundamental to the essays, particularly the first. Yet he had sufficient knowledge of the historical

tradition to be sceptical. He felt that this sort of material was inappropriate for the sort of biography he

was writing, however suitable it might be for a rhetorical essay: and it is pretty remarkable that he did,

and that he prevented his biography from drifting into the fictional conventions of its genera proxima. In
33
this as in other ways, Plutarch’s closest precursor was perhaps Nepos, as Geiger has suggested: for

Nepos was not, it seems, mendacious, and certainly not sensational. Still, in that case our respect for

Plutarch’s massive originality will be all the greater, for the gulf between the two is so immense; and it is

still remarkable that Plutarch should have turned to that model, if model it was, rather than any other.
34
For instance, he clearly knew hagiographic literature such as Thrasea Paetus’ Life of Cato. but that was

not to be his style. There were so many forces which were driving Plutarch, if he wrote biography, into

writing in the manner of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, fictional and extravagant. It is striking that he,

like his contemporary Suetonius, chose to write something much more historically faithful.

The second point here is the range of information he adduces – inscriptions, speeches, letters, oral

traditions, comic poets, as well as mainstream historians. We are so used to this that we almost take it

for granted, and are indeed accustomed to complain about the way he takes the comic poets too
35
seriously; but more striking is the fact that he uses them at all. This sort of range does not regularly

appear in historiography: some historians would use out-of-the-way material some of the time, of

course, but this is still much more the sort of polymathy that we associate with antiquarianism. For

instance, Millar commented on Cassius Dio’s strange use of Cicero’s speeches: ‘This illustrates a curious,

but important, feature of ancient historiography – while it was possible to use Cicero’s speeches for
putting together a speech “by Cicero”, it was not possible to use them to provide evidence for the main
36
narrative; that was supplied by the narrative sources alone.’ That is surely right about Dio, and

probably about Appian too. But Plutarch does use Cicero quite extensively as a historical source,
37
especially the Second Philippic in Antony (we shall come back to that). In this respect Plutarch is closer

to our modern idea of respectable historical activity than most of the historians were, and there is indeed

an essential historical seriousness about what he does. Once again, the parallel with his contemporary

Suetonius is suggestive. For all the difference in literary form, there is still a similar use of antiquarian
38
material and method, and a similar commitment to getting things right.

To go back to that earlier sting in the tail: Plutarch is quite good at historical argumentation when

he wants to be. Sometimes – not necessarily very often or extensively – he does not. His biography is a

most flexible genre. Sometimes he is very interested in history, in isolating the historical forces that

carried Caesar to power, for instance, or Themistocles, or that made and then broke the Gracchi;
39
sometimes his interest in history is much slighter. This can be seen most easily in his reluctance to give

historical background: there is far more on the historical setting, for instance, in the Caesar than in the

Antony, to take two figures who dominated their respective decades. It can be seen in the seriousness of

the political analyses he gives, with more trivial versions emerging in some Lives than in others, and it

can also be seen in the depth or shallowness of his critical discussions. When his mind is not

fundamentally concentrated on the history, his standards of criticism tend to relax. For instance, he

knows perfectly well that invective cannot be trusted: as we have seen, he rejects Antiphon’s attack on

Alcibiades on those grounds (Alc. 3; above, p. 145). At times, he is therefore critical of Cicero’s invective
40
against Antony – but, if it suits him to stress Antony’s luxury, he will use Cicero. If the propaganda

which reviles Cleopatra fits his general picture of the queen, he will use it, then briefly confess it may be

false (Ant. 58.4–59.1). When he comes to discuss less ‘historical’ areas or people – not necessarily those

living in mythical times, but rather those who had become enveloped in the sort of tradition which

made it difficult to write a more ‘historical’ biography – he can be much less critical of his material and

perpetrate much more precarious arguments. Sertorius yearns for the Isles of the Blessed; Antony comes

to hate Octavian more fiercely because he always loses at dice; the young Cassius bloodied the nose of

the young Faustus Sulla, hence the usual view of Cassius’ motive for tyrannicide must be wrong. We

should believe the miraculous stories of Rome’s foundation, despite the criticism of sceptics, for the

Roman state would hardly have advanced to such might if it did not have a wondrous and divine
41
origin. Indeed, that argument (or rather lack of it) about Solon and Croesus also belongs in this list.

All this does strike a very different tone from the acute, sceptical argumentation discussed earlier; but,

for one reason or another, he thought that the sort of material he was treating in these less historically

committed passages did not lend itself to argumentation of such rigour. In Aristotelian terms, one

should only seek the ἀκρίβεɩα appropriate to the ὕλη, the precision appropriate to the material the

writer was describing.

Even here Plutarch is not so far removed from the historians. Livy, for example, knew that people

added venerability to antique stories by including the supernatural, and proclaimed his indifference to

such material; but, he goes on to say, the Romans went on to win such martial glory that they of all

people might naturally be permitted to trace their descent from Mars (praef. 6–7). That is almost exactly

the same point as Plutarch makes in Romulus, though Livy puts it a little more sardonically; and it is

hardly the style of argument which recurs in his later books. And even Thucydides concludes his

Archaeologia with the claim that he has relayed the facts with sufficient accuracy, given their antiquity

ὡς παλαɩὰ εἶναɩ, 1.21.1):

(
42
it would be unreasonable, clearly, to expect the same rigour or precision as

with more recent and verifiable events. Thus in the Archaeologia he has strained to extract conclusions
43 44
from Homer, with a surprising lack of scepticism; ‘a funny kind of history’, indeed, and one which

is not going to be prominent in the rest of his work. It is unthinkable, for instance, that he would use

Euripides as evidence for Athenian war-weariness, or exploit Aristophanes on Cleon; with harder

history, that was not his way.

There were various reasons why Plutarch might favour a different style of argument and degree of

rigour. It might be the period, as with Romulus; it might be the type of figure – Sertorius really did

belong in a different world from Sulla, Pompey, or Caesar, even if he lived in the same times; or it might

be the style of Life – Antony or Brutus do have rather different, less ‘historical’, styles than many of the

others. It is certainly hard to find arguments as unrigorous or material as implausible as this in Lives like

Caesar, or Gracchi, or Themistocles. This also helps to explain a feature which disturbed Momigliano,

Plutarch’s readiness to write confidently about figures like Romulus, instead of confessing his inability to
45
judge deficient evidence. That is true – though it is also true that Plutarch begins Thes.–Rom. by
46
giving a general caveat and asking for indulgence; but in any case that does not mean that he was as

uncritical when he wrote of the later, more solid figures. His genre was flexible enough to accommodate

both sorts of figure, but he knew he could not ask the same questions with the same rigour about them
 47
all. The use of evidence may ‘lack consistency’, as Momigliano protests; but not irrationally so. And

even when we do find those less rigorous elements, his approach is usually not wholly indifferent to the

truth, not simply ahistorical. He may be accepting material too credulously, but in each case it is to

support a view that he genuinely holds, and often for good reason: the rest of the Life usually makes that

plain. He really believes that Antony and Cleopatra were infatuated and extravagant, that Sertorius was

a dreamer, Solon a courageous sage, and Cassius a fierce hater of tyrants: he just allows himself to make

the points a little easily. He is not presenting a false picture, just helping his truth along a little.

So far we have been applying our own standards of what a historian ought to be about. Plutarch’s

canons were rather different, and he conveniently sets them out at the beginning of On Herodotus’
48
Malice. For instance, the historian should not use severe words if milder ones should suffice; he should

not drag in irrelevant material which is discreditable to a character, but should not suppress anything

that puts him in a good light; when two versions of an incident are current, he should select the more

creditable one; when the motivation of an action is disputed, he should give a character the benefit of

the doubt; he should not include stray abuse and then admit it to be false, for such innuendo can only

detract from a character’s moral stature; and so on. How far did Plutarch the biographer practise what
49
he preached for historians?

The answer is at first sight surprising. The principles certainly strike us as ‘moralistic’: a character

must be given the benefit of any ethical doubt, and his moral stature must not be gratuitously

impugned. And yet it is (to put it crudely) the most ‘historical’ Lives which are most scrupulous in

observing those canons: those Lives such as Caesar or Themistocles, where the moralism is typically

subtle and muted, and where the interest in exploring historical background is unusually intense. The

moralism of other Lives is more open, for instance in Cato Minor or Antony: yet it is those Lives which

more often flout the principles.

In Caesar Plutarch thus makes little of discreditable facts, for instance Caesar’s sexual habits; indeed,

he avoids malicious comment even when it would have been justified, for example in his treatment of
50
Caesar’s vulgar demagogy, or his extravagance, or his debts. Caesar’s ambition was for tyrannical power
51 52
(Caes. 57.1, 69.1), and the theme is important to the Life: Plutarch of course strongly disapproved,

but in Caesar he kept his disapproval to himself. If there is ever a word of criticism, it tends to be a mild

one: for instance, the description of the Anticato is much more temperate in Caesar (54.3–6) than in

Cato Minor (11.7–8, 36.5, 54.2). The principles of On Herodotus’ Malice can sometimes be seen

working on a smaller scale. When Caesar refuses to give evidence against Clodius but insists on

divorcing his wife, Plutarch’s explanation is very proper: some say that Caesar was sincere, others that he

was courting the goodwill of the masses (9.10). His historical thesis would really welcome the second
53
interpretation, for he is stressing Caesar’s scheme of rising to power as the people’s champion; but he

includes the more favourable explanation as well. Again, at Them. 31.5 he strains plausibility in his

attempt to find a creditable motive for Themistocles’ suicide; Gracchi 22.6–7 takes the most generous

view possible of Gaius’ reasons for entering popular politics.

So far the principles really do seem to obtain; but other Lives are different. Antony retails that long

catalogue of abuse which Calvisius cast at Cleopatra – then adds that ‘Calvisius was doubtless lying’

(58.7–59.1). Precisely the sort of innuendo which On Herodotus’ Malice had outlawed. The principles

can always be ignored when Plutarch is painting a villain, a Cleon or a Sulla or (in his decline) a Marius.

Cleon opposed the peace-proposals in 425 because of his personal enmity with Nicias (Nic. 7.2): that is

not what Thucydides had said (4.21), for all his stress on that enmity (4.27.5) and his distaste for

Cleon. Sulla had claimed that he indulged the captured Athens because of the world’s debt to Athens’

past: Plutarch dismisses this, for his Sulla is simply ‘sated with vengeance’ (Sulla 14.9). Hardly ‘giving
54
Sulla the benefit of the ethical doubt’. In other Lives Plutarch praises Sulla’s constitutional settlement,

but not in Sulla itself: scarcely ‘including everything to Sulla’s credit’. The second half of Marius is

similar in texture: Plutarch regularly assumes the worst about Marius’ motives, often rejecting the man’s
55
own explanations as disingenuous or silly; and the close of this Life wallows in the slaughter, wilfully
56
exonerating Cinna to emphasize Marius’ own role.

But it is not just ethical outcasts who are denied the benefit of any ethical doubt. When the

moralism is crude, even the most favourable Lives can show little respect for the principles. Cato Minor

is favourable enough, and Plutarch indignantly rejects the story that Cato was once drunk as praetor

(44.2). Yet he still includes that story; it adds nothing, the innuendo can only detract from the subject’s

character, and the precepts of On Herodotus’ Malice should have led him to suppress it completely: the

historian, we recall, should not include abuse which he then admits to be false. Pericles similarly includes

various slanders about the genesis of the war (esp. 31), just as earlier it has mentioned and dismissed

Idomeneus’ allegation that Pericles murdered Ephialtes (10.7) and Duris’ charge of Athenian atrocities

at Samos (28); and Plutarch has also assumed the worst motivation for appointing Lacedaemonius to
 57
the Corcyrean expedition (29.1–2). At Cic. 29.1–2 he allows that Cicero’s allegations against Clodius

were fair and true, but that is not (says Plutarch) why he made them: he was simply trying to put

himself right with Terentia. Much of Pompey, too, is sympathetic; but Plutarch rejects out of hand the

excuses made by his friends for his conduct in 59 (Pomp. 47.7–8). He includes the attacks made on

Pompey for marrying Cornelia, and indeed affords them quite an expansive treatment (55.1–5): a more

sympathetic approach would have been possible, and just – and indeed would in some ways have suited

the Life, with its engaging stress on Pompey’s uxoriousness. Plutarch then concentrates on the bad

aspects of the administration in 52, the favouritism towards Scipio and Plancus and the arrogant

treatment of Hypsaeus: then he curtly adds that ‘in all other respects he restored order well’ ( τὰ δ’ ἂλλα
καλως ἂπαντα κατέστησεν εις τάξιν, 55.11). The balance of the whole treatment could have been

more generous. None of this is untruthful: Plutarch really did believe that Cleon was petty, Sulla and

Marius murderous, Cato drunken, Cicero henpecked, and Pompey impolitic. But there is surely a

certain lack of charity.

And perhaps these variations among the Lives are not so surprising after all. The Lives are

sometimes a little removed from historiography, sometimes closer; and On Herodotus’ Malice was giving

precepts for historians. Plutarch is alert and sensitive to the possibilities of his genre, and when he was

writing a ‘historical’ Life he himself became far more of a historian, keeping more closely to the norms

he thought appropriate to that genre. Those norms included both truthfulness and ethical generosity:

when he felt it appropriate, he would pursue the truth thoughtfully and rigorously, but also with a

proper readiness to err on the side of charity. At other times, he could be more relaxed.

II. Plutarch’s manipulation of his narrative

Quite evidently, Plutarch does not take over his historical material blindly: he does interesting things

with it. Sometimes he criticizes it explicitly, as we have seen, making it clear why he is favouring one

version or rejecting another; more often, he simply tacitly rewrites it, elaborating, reordering, giving

different emphases, often revising the detail. We examined some of these rewritings in chapters 4 and 5.

Can we say more about what Plutarch thought he was doing when he recast material in this way?

If we could tackle Licinius Macer or Valerius Antias, I think they would each indignantly deny that their

detailed and circumstantial narratives were all made up. I think they would argue that it must have been

like that; their justification would be ‘it stands to reason’, with a priori probability – or what seemed to

them to be probability – totally outweighing the lack of actual evidence.

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Thus Peter Wiseman. Whatever the case with Licinius or Valerius, what would Plutarch have said?

When we can detect him adapting or improving his material, would he have given that explanation, ‘it

must have been like that’? Or would it have been a more pungent and robust ‘don’t be a pedantic bore:

I’m just making it into a better story’? Perhaps it is a bit of both – so much a bit of both that it is hard

to think that Plutarch would have drawn a hard-and-fast line between cases where he was sacrificing the

truth and cases where he was reconstructing it. In that case, Wiseman’s analysis may not be quite the

right way to look at it, and we may instead have to develop a concept along the lines of ‘true enough’,

more true than false. Still, his remark gives a helpfully sharp question, and we shall ask it.

First, though, we should notice what Plutarch does not do. His source-material sometimes left vast

gaps, for instance the hole in Themistocles from 493 to 483. Some Lives indeed were veritable string

vests, more hole than substance – Phocion, Aristides, Philopoemen, Poplicola, Artaxerxes, even Crassus. But

Plutarch does not fill them with fabrication. Normally, we can see, he likes to pair two Lives of roughly

similar length, but there are times when he cannot. He simply does not have enough material on

Cimon, Phocion, Fabius, Marcellus, or Agesilaus to make them weighty enough matches for their pairs;

he does not make it up. And this reluctance to fabricate is particularly plain in his treatment of boyhood
59
and youth. So many Lives have virtually nothing before adulthood: Antony, Nicias, Phocion, Camillus,

Flamininus, Marcellus, Fabius, Timoleon, and more. We could all make up a few good stories about a

schoolboy Antony or Nicias; Plutarch does not. Similarly with death: we would be glad to know more

about how Camillus or Flamininus met their ends, but Plutarch lets the gaps stand. These are precisely

the sort of holes which literary biography would strain to fill; nor would encomium or the biographical

novel have been silent. Plutarch is different. When he adds circumstantial detail, it is in much more

limited ways: the circumstances of a conversation, perhaps, with a cautious plotter, a boisterous lover, a

playful maid, a sneering innkeeper, or an officious servant. He can add a man to hold out his toga for

Antony’s vomit; a new river or hill to make sense of a campaign; new circumstances for Coriolanus’
60
friend, once rich, now in penury. But the big invention is not in his style.

He does do something to fill childhood gaps, though: the most usual sort of item we find is what

one could call ‘the routine generalization’, passages such as Timoleon 3.4–5.
Timoleon was patriotic and unusually gentle – except that he nourished a peculiarly intense hatred for

tyranny and for evil people. In his military campaigns he showed such a finely balanced character that

he displayed great understanding as a young man and great bravery in his old age.

(Tim. 3.4–5)

61
Again one notices the lack of the anecdotal register, the reluctance to make up stories. Sometimes the

material is more circumstantial, but still not particularly anecdotal: in adolescence Agis abandoned the

foppery which typified his degenerate Sparta, and turned to the old ways of austerity (Ag.–Cl. 4.1–2);

Coriolanus’ youthful rivals ‘excused their inferiority by attributing it all to his physical strength’ (Cor.

2.2). We shall look at such passages more carefully in a later chapter (ch. 14, pp. 308–10), where we

shall see that it is unlikely that much of this material stood in Plutarch’s sources: he is simply retrojecting

important aspects of the men’s later careers. Indeed, Wiseman’s ‘must have been like that’ principle so far

works perfectly well. Plutarch is not fabricating. He is simply inferring what sort of youth it must have

been who grew up into the man he knew; just as in our earlier examples he was inferring how a slave or

innkeeper must have behaved, how a battle must have been fought, and what must have happened to

Antony’s vomit. This is not fiction or invention. It is creative reconstruction.

This type of inference can be more far-reaching. Consider the beginning of the Antony, where

Plutarch does not know much about Antony’s youth. What he does know, he seems to draw from

Cicero’s hostile portrait in the Second Philippic. Cicero there described Antony’s early involvement with
62
the young nobleman Curio. Plutarch reshapes it. Cicero had stressed the erotic aspects of the

relationship, likening Antony to a male prostitute; Plutarch omits that. Perhaps that is restraint, perhaps

scepticism: as we have seen, he knew what invective could get up to. Cicero had given no hint that

Curio was the leading partner, and had represented Antony as just as depraved as Curio. Plutarch prefers

to make Curio a corrupting influence, subtly tempting Antony into submissiveness. Now, in these early

chapters of Antony we should not be too ready to assume that Plutarch is simply giving Antony the

benefit of the doubt: he is not usually so generous, at least in this part of the Life. But he is concerned to

develop the notion of the man as brilliant but passive, the susceptible victim of others’ wiles: first his

wife Fulvia will render him ‘submissive’ ( χειροήθης, 10.6, the same word as here), then of course

Cleopatra and her flatterers. Plutarch is preparing the way here. That is both a literary and a historical

point. Told this way, the story better prepares for the later developments; but it is also more plausible

that Antony should have been behaving like this. His whole later life shows his passivity and

susceptibility, so even in his youth he was very likely similar: ‘it must have been true’.

Still, a few chapters later we find Plutarch suppressing any mention of Antony campaigning with

Caesar in Gaul, something he must surely have known: that allows him to pretend that it was Curio,

once again, who brought Antony over to Caesar in 50 (5.2). Later in the same chapter he gives Antony a
63
speech which his source (it seems) ascribed to Caesar himself (5.10). In these cases one’s nose twitches

a little more. Did Plutarch really believe that ‘it must have been’ like that, so clearly ‘must have been’

that Antony could not have been at Caesar’s side in Gaul, whatever his sources said, or that Caesar could

not have delivered his speech? Hardly; but it again suited the characterization to make Antony the

passive one, and he was prepared to bend the truth in a small way. Similarly, Plutarch seems to have

rearranged Caesar’s early adventures in order to place his period of study in Rhodes just before his first
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rhetorical successes in Rome (Caes. 3–4). It is an elegant arrangement, allowing Plutarch to group

together all the foreign adventures before his narrative focus returns decisively to Rome; it would have

been far more disruptive to have Caesar’s first steps in Rome, then move off to Greece, then back to

Rome again. It is pleasing logically as well. Caesar learns his rhetoric, then comes back and applies it.

But did Plutarch really think ‘it must have been true’, just because it is all so neat? Surely not. Here he

was adapting the truth for literary purposes, and he knew it.

That is particularly clear when he gives contradictory accounts of the same events in different Lives.

The debates of December 50 and early January 49 are described inconsistently in Pompey, Caesar, and

Antony ; the Lupercalia incident of 44 is interpreted differently in Antony and in Caesar ; Antony’s

behaviour at Philippi comes out differently in his own Life and in Brutus. Crassus (7.7) presents a

summary of Roman politics over thirty years which represents Pompey as the steady representative of

the established order and Caesar as head of the populares; compared with Pompey and Caesar, a ludicrous

oversimplification. Clodius is in one Life an independent figure, in another a subservient follower of the

triumvirs’ will. Plutarch’s view of the origins of the Roman civil war is subtly different in different
65
Lives. Yet all these Lives seem to have been prepared at the same time, and with the same material: he

simply cannot have thought them all true.

Coriolanus is interesting here. As we have already seen, there seems an unusually large degree of

retrojection here – the envy of his youthful rivals, and the way they made excuses to themselves. There is

also considerable tidying of detail: it looks as if Coriolanus’ first military service has been transferred to
the completely wrong battle, Lake Regillus, simply because the Dioscuri appeared at the battle of
66
Regillus – all an appropriately miraculous and charged setting. One suspects that such tidying was

deliberate, though one cannot be certain: Plutarch might even have claimed that ‘it must have been

true’, though possibly he would have found that a little strained. But what is most interesting is the
67
treatment of Coriolanus’ relationship with his mother. Marcius set himself new targets in courage and

achievement:

Others do this in search of fame and glory; Marcius aim’ was his mother’s approval. Nothing could

make him feel more honoured or happier than for her to hear him being praised, or see him being

crowned, or to embrace him in tears of delight… Marcius felt he owed his mother the joy and gratitude

which would normally fall to a father as well, and could never be satisfied with giving Volumnia

pleasure or paying her honour. He even chose his wife according to his mother’s wishes and request, and

he continued to live in the same house with her even after his wife had borne their children.(Cor. 4.5–7)

We shall look more closely at that passage in chapter 14 (pp. 309–10), and see how extensively Plutarch

is here elaborating his source Dionysius. Matters such as the psychological reconstruction, ‘it was his

mother’s will and choice that dictated the marriage’, seem to be his own inference; and this is a very

different Volumnia, much less resistible and less limp than the one Dionysius had portrayed. Plutarch

seems to be reading back from the final scene, where Coriolanus collapses before her pressure: what sort

of man must he have been to react like this, what sort of relationship must widowed mother and

orphaned son have had? What sort of person must Volumnia have been? Plutarch comes up with this, a

psychologically deep and not unconvincing portrait. And could he have answered, ‘it must have been

like that’? I think he could: it was his way of getting at the truth, to apply later actions and events to
68
reach a portrait which made psychological sense.

So what do we conclude about Plutarch’s attitude to the truth? He does not always behave as we

would, certainly; he tidies and improves, and in some cases he must have known he was being

historically inaccurate. But the process has limits, and the untruthful tidying and improving is never

very extensive. The big changes, the substantial improvements tend to come where he could genuinely

claim – ‘yes, it must have been like that’. Nor is this one of the features which vary significantly among

the Lives: the examples both of reconstruction and of untruthful improvement can be drawn as readily

from Caesar as from Antony, from Themistocles as from Theseus. Even when he was at his most

historically interested and alert, there was nothing in such rewriting to make him ashamed.

Yet it is not wholly satisfactory simply to conclude that Plutarch is usually reconstructing the truth,

but sometimes consciously sacrificing it. It is so hard to believe that he thought he was doing anything

totally different in the two cases: the techniques he employs in making Curio lead Antony into

licentiousness (reconstructing truth), and then over to Caesar (sacrificing it), are simply too similar, and

Plutarch surely did not regard them as belonging in different categories. It is better to start from the

basic point that the process has limits: he will not bend the truth too far, and the big changes are indeed

classifiable as ‘creative reconstruction’. At some times – when, for instance, he simplifies his whole

political interpretation in Crassus, or when he transfers a speech in Antony – he seems to us to be going a

long way; but he is never there falsifying things that are central to the particular Life, even if they were

central to others. He is perhaps giving his subject a bigger role, but a role which helps to support his

characterization of the man as a whole, Crassus as an oscillator between political extremes, Antony as

submissive and passive: once again, he is only helping the truth along a little, allowing himself some

licence to support a picture generally true. It is not, I think, that the concept of truth was itself
69
different; if it had been, such disquisitions as that in Aristides 1 would be hard to fathom. It is simply

that the boundary between truth and falsehood was less important than that between acceptable and

unacceptable fabrication, between things which were ‘true enough’ and things which were not.

Acceptable rewriting will not mislead the reader seriously, indeed readers will grasp more of the

important reality if they accept what Plutarch writes than if they do not. Truth matters; but it can

sometimes be bent a little.

III. Plutarch and historiography

When defended in such theoretical terms, Plutarch’s habits admittedly seem to invite Dover’s disdain for

‘a pretentious kind of falsehood’ which, he thinks, ‘theGreeks had more sense than to call…“ideal truth”
70
‘; just as Plutarch’s variations in critical rigour seem to imply an approach which a modern biographer

would find bizarre. But perhaps Plutarch’s mode of thought is less alien to us than we readily admit. On

a cool estimate historians and biographers still regard different sorts of rigour as appropriate for different

sorts of material. Take childhood anecdotes, for instance: can we really believe that the infant Hugh

Gaitskell startled a strange lady by singing from his pram, ‘Soon shall you and I be lying / Each within

our narrow tomb’? Yet that is what the standard biography claims, without reserve. Or that young

Florence Nightingale took a morbid pleasure in sewing back together the dolls which her healthy elder
sister had torn apart? A family friend was most indignant at that suggestion! Or that Franklin Roosevelt

had such demonic authority and confidence that he knew a bird would wait on a tree while he walked
71
several hundred yards for a gun? The three biographies in question have different styles; but in each

case this is not the sort of material which would have crept into the adult chapters. ‘Helping the truth

along’, indeed.

And a whole new aspect of this discourse has now crept in. Modern writers have big ideas, grand

interpretative themes, which they wish to present: so of course did the ancients. But the ancients

presented these through careful and supple narrative technique, while moderns prefer to set out their
72
ideas and arguments more directly, in passages of analysis rather than narrative. In such passages the

licensed overstatement is extremely familiar – the sort of remark which emerges in examination papers
73
with ‘discuss’ after it. Consider, for instance, the following passage of A.J.P. Taylor:

In his lazy fashion, Baldwin truly represented the decade. The ordinary Englishman, never attending

church or chapel, probably without a Bible in his house, expecting his children to swallow

unquestioningly a Christian education, was an exact parallel to the statesman who made speeches

supporting the League of Nations and never thought of asking the chiefs of staff how the League could

be supported. Façade became reality for a generation trained in cinema palaces. Churchill really thought

that there was a glorious Indian empire still to be lost; Baldwin really imagined that he was defending

democratic virtues; Left-wing socialists really anticipated a Fascist dictatorship in England. So the

watchers in the cinemas really felt that life was going on among the shadows of the screen. Of course no

one supposed that the tinny words would take on substance or that even the most menacing figures

among the shadows could reach out and hit the audience on the head. That is what happened before the

decade ended. The pretence turned out to be no pretence. Or perhaps it merely eclipsed the real life

underneath.

It is very familiar in style, especially in first and last paragraphs of chapters (and that is a last paragraph).

Nor is it bad writing, even if we feel there are too many ‘trulies’, ‘exacts’, and ‘reallies’. But some of those

sentences are not true, at least not literally, really, or exactly true. Never attending church or chapel? An

exact parallel? Never thought? And so on. Some, of course, we would unambiguously class as metaphors,
74
such as the cinematic analogy; but the whole passage in fact has a metaphorical quality. It is a different

sort of ‘licence’ from that which a Plutarch, a Livy, or a Tacitus would employ, but it could well be

categorized in the same terms. The author helps the truth along, the sentences are true enough, it would

be obtuse to draw a boundary between those sentences which are just about true (‘Churchill really…’)

and those which are just about not (‘The ordinary Englishman…’); the reader will understand more by

accepting them all than by disbelief. ‘A pretentious kind of falsehood’, perhaps, but one we instinctively

understand and applaud. This is good, stimulating, provocative history.

We are already comparing Plutarch with modern historians; what, finally, about the relationship

with ancient historiography? It has not been possible here to carry through anything but a fitful

comparison, but only a little has been found to support Momigliano’s contention. True, in the first

section we found that some Lives were closer to historiography than others, and in those others the

truth is pursued in a less rigorous way: some slightly less censored material can slip in. But even there

Plutarch’s commitment to the truth was seen to be generally insistent, intelligent, and impressive. And

when we consider the rewriting of material, it is clear that the same approach can be extended to the

historians. Not, of course, that every historian would exercise his licence in the same way and with the

same limits: doubtless Timaeus assumed different limits from Polybius, Antias from Sisenna, perhaps

even Herodotus from Thucydides. On the whole Plutarch seems to belong with the more scrupulous

group; and we can certainly see him operating in a similar way to the great historians who survive. With

Livy or Tacitus, for instance, one will again find many examples which fit Wiseman’s ‘must have been

true’ rubric – but some, usually less important, cases which do not. Almost at random, let us take a few

instances from the first pages of Livy.

It is not hard to detect that Livy has rewritten the vulgate version of the Aeneas legend, exaggerating

the speed of Rome’s early growth and suppressing the story of bad feeling between Lavinia and
75
Ascanius. ‘Must have been true’? Perhaps: Livy might indeed have assumed that Rome’s origins must

have been in keeping with her later glories – though the concern for a rapid, nervous, and appropriately

elevating introduction will also have played a part. But then a few chapters later one can detect further

rewriting of the detail of Romulus’ campaigns, carefully allocating one domestic event to follow each

invasion: Caenina invades, and a temple is founded to Jupiter Feretrius; Antemna invades, and the offer

of citizenship is made; Crustumerium invades, and colonies are sent (1.10.1–11.4). Livy’s source-

material was much more messy, it seems: two invasions, then all the domestic decisions, then a last
76
invasion. Did Livy really think his smoother sequence ‘must have been true’, because events in life are
77
always smooth, never messy? Surely not: this was sacrificing the truth, because in this case sequence
 78
hardly mattered: it was a ‘relatively harmless literary device’, no more. A little later he seems to have

rewritten the first steps of Tullus Hostilius’ reign to make him more ferox than his sources claimed: it is
79
he, not Cluilius, who now stirs up the war with Alba. ‘Must have been true’? Yes, in this case it must:

Livy had a clear idea of Tullus’ character from later events, and could naturally assume that he must
80
have been ferox here too. But would Livy really have thought his techniques in the second case were

different in kind from those in the first and third? Again, surely not. In small ways, his licence ran to

improving the truth; but in general, the same techniques produced reconstruction rather than sacrifice.

More substantial and contentious instances may be drawn from Tacitus. Let us assume (though it

cannot be quite demonstrated) that, in recounting the death of Augustus and accession of Tiberius,

Tacitus borrows some details from events forty years later, when Claudius died and Nero succeeded: in

particular, the detail of the barricades in the streets (Ann. 1.5.4) may well be imported from those later

events (cf. Ann. 12.68.3). Tacitus points the parallel between the two sequences by a series of verbal
81
repetitions. Possibly he ‘may intend to suggest that Tiberius’ accession was as questionable,
82
disreputable, and indeed criminal as Nero’s’, but that is unlikely to be the most helpful approach: this

is not simply a blackening device. It is surely clear that Tacitus is interested in the character of the

principate itself, not just the principes, and is concerned to analyse it, not simply denigrate. He points

the patterns of behaviour which are imposed on every new princeps alike: that is one reason why so

many of the specific traits of Tiberius’ principate are foreshadowed in the retrospect of Augustus – the

ruthless elimination of rivals, the personal grudges, the bloodiness, the luxus, the choice of a successor

who is even worse (1.9–10). And now each accession necessarily proceeds on the same pattern. That is a

point worth making for its own sake, and as important to Nero’s principate as to Tiberius’. (It is sad that

we lack the opening of Gaius’ reign, and of Claudius’: very likely some aspects of this pattern would

have been even more insistent.) If the narrative here is given extra details to make the parallels closer,

could Tacitus have felt ‘it must have been true’? Yes, he could: if he concluded that events genuinely

repeated themselves in the same pattern, that in itself was grounds for inferring what must have

happened, whether or not his source chanced to mention it. They must have wheeled out the

barricades, because that is what they always do. He was probably right. It is not quite the modern
83
historian’s way, at least not with factual detail; but it is not an absurd way.

Yet, once again, we find the same paradox as with Plutarch: Tacitus’ techniques here are so similar to

those he employs elsewhere, in cases where the ‘must have been’ analysis seems inadequate. Let us take
84
another instance which Woodman has brilliantly illuminated, the description of Germanicus’ visit to

the remains of Varus’ camp (Ann. 1.61–2), immediately followed by the German attack on Caecina

(1.63–7). Woodman has shown that the accounts are very close to two passages in the earlier Histories,

2.70 and 5.14–15: much too close for coincidence. The events can hardly have been so similar to each

other in fact, nor in Tacitus’ sources for the two periods. It is then highly unlikely that much of the

material in Ann. 1 is drawn from his sources for AD 15: whether or not Woodman’s term of ‘self-
85
imitation’ is the best way to describe it, there must certainly be a high degree of imaginative free
86
composition in the Annals passage; and very likely in the Histories passages too. In this case Tacitus can

hardly be intending to emphasize the parallels between AD 15 and events sixty years later: Woodman is
87
surely right, and this would be pointless. It is rather that Tacitus finds all these sequences

independently worth dramatic elaboration, and in each case sets about it in a similarly enthusiastic way.

We can also understand why Tacitus thinks this scene worth elaborating. It is not just a question of

rhetorical effect and entertainment, though those interests doubtless played a part: this is a most critical

moment, with Caecina himself in danger of re-enacting Varus’ disaster. Well indeed may Caecina dream
88
of Varus’ ghost beckoning him to follow, or Arminius cry out that this is a second Varus delivered into
89
his hands; and the description of Varus’ camp even seems to be finessed to make the parallel closer.

Indeed, it is not extravagant to think of the sequence as recreating a picture of Varus’ disaster itself,
90
much as the early books of the Iliad subtly re-enact the earlier events of the war. The effect is worth

gaining, for Varus’ defeat is so important in the background to Germanicus’ campaign: this is the very

lowly base from which his glorious successes of the next book will rise; and, just as suggestively, it

conveys the dangers of the old-fashioned type of war which is Germanicus’ speciality, and so alien to
91
Tiberius. But ‘must’ all Tacitus’ detail have been true, in his eyes? Surely not: once we have to

postulate a third category, not quite ‘true’, not ‘false’, but ‘true enough’, that surely is where this case

belongs. If pressed, Tacitus would have had to admit that this was imagination, not fact – but he would

have been surprised to be pressed. It was a reasonable exercise of his licence to convey points of serious

historical interest and insight. And it is again hard to believe that he would have thought he was doing

anything very different here and in the case of Tiberius’ accession. There too he is manipulating and

creating detail, in that case to bring two events into clearer connection with one another, here simply to

make the moment more arresting and thought-provoking. As it happens, we would say that one was
reconstructing, one was sacrificing, truth: our boundary falls between the two. The ancients’ limit fell a

little further on, and in some cases quite a long way further on; but it does not mean that it was

ahistorical. Tacitus had a historical point to make, and employed his licence to make it more clearly.

Two last points, both suggesting ways in which this analysis of Plutarch suggests morals for

historiography. First, we have seen that Plutarch’s critical alertness is a variable rather than a constant: in

less historical and more fluid areas he could be distinctly less rigorous than when writing of a

Themistocles or a Caesar. Yet all these Lives belong in the same series. Herodotus’ logoi and Livy’s

pentads and decades are also fused into a single work; possibly with, in some senses at least, a greater

unity than Plutarch thought appropriate for his series – but there too it is dangerous to assume that

their principles or practice were always on the same lines. In describing Egypt, doubtless, Herodotus

goes a long way to tidy his material. When he writes of Helen, he surely does claim that Egyptian
92
sources have told him a story which in fact owes more to his own creative art (2.112–20): it is a Greek

story, clearly owed to the Odyssey and to Stesichorus (and just possibly Hesiod, though fr. 358 MW is

poor evidence). Certainly, Greek travellers or immigrants could have taken the story with them
93
generations before, and Herodotus could have heard it out there (though it is more difficult to believe
94 95
that it was told him by his notorious priests ) – assuming, of course, that he went there at all. But he

could not have heard it like this – it is too close to the Greek literary forebears, too clean, too ungarbled

and uncontaminated by disparate elements. The only real Egyptian feature is the bias: the hostility to

Paris and Menelaus, who both abuse the laws of hospitality, and the contrast with the upright Egyptian

king Proteus. But whatever Herodotus has done here and in similar cases, we should not necessarily

infer that he proceeded similarly in later books, when he was dealing with more solid material. The

difference between Helen and Xerxes was as great for him as the difference between Theseus and Caesar

for Plutarch, or between Romulus and Pompey for Livy. Nor should we assume that Tacitus would

naturally place his inventive limits in the same place with a romantic figure like Germanicus, in a

remote and eerie forest, and with the grinding detail of senatorial business in Rome. There is more than

a little of Plutarch’s Sertorius about Tacitus’ Germanicus, living in the same period but a different world
96
from his harder-headed peers, and one which demanded description in a different style. Even with

Helen, too, we should not assume that Herodotus’ procedure was simply fictional and ahistorical. If he

did hear a garbled, contaminated Egyptian version, would he necessarily think it improper to compare it

with his Greek literary authorities, and ‘correct’ the Egyptian version in their light? The aspects of the

Egyptian version confirmed by Greek sources would seem more credible, and more worth retaining. If

he sensed a garbling, it would be tactful to remove it: ‘this is what they must have meant.. ? Again, not a
97
wholly absurd procedure, but one which could easily leave a version more Greek than Egyptian –

except, of course, for that irreducible bias.

Finally, a more general reflection. It is correct and important to observe the frequency in the ancient

historians of what we might call free composition: Woodman is absolutely right to stress the central

nature of inventio in theory and practice. But it need not follow that the procedure has no limits.

Plutarch, as we have seen, would fabricate more than we would, but there remains a stern divide

between his creations and those of literary biography; there are still so many things which he would not

invent. Reality can be bent, but not too far. We naturally place our limits and distinctions in a slightly

different place; we too have our licences to improve, but exercise them rather differently. What is

important is to try to discriminate exactly where the ancient limits were drawn, where historians would

fabricate and where they would stop. There is still a gulf between Thucydides and pseudo-Callisthenes,

between history and fiction. And that distinction, it seems to me, may be drawn because history will

only invent and improve (a) within certain limits, however startling we may sometimes find them; (b)
98
sometimes to overrule and reject certain well-attested ‘hardcore’ facts, but more usually to supplement

them and give them added clarity and vitality; and (c) ultimately with a historical purpose: that is,

historians would hope to delight and divert their audience, but to do so by deepening their insight,

helping them to understand events as they really happened and people as they really behaved. In this,

Plutarch and the historians are at one.

Notes

1
Cf. e.g. Numa 1–2, Cam. 22.2 and especially Them. 27.2, ‘Thucydides’ version [that Themistocles met Xerxes’ son rather than Xerxes

himself ] seems to me to correspond better with the chronological data, though even these are in some considerable confusion.’ In that

passage I am inclined to read o ὐδ’ αὐτοίς ἀτρέμα σύντέταραγμένοις 3

with Cobet, Flacelière, and Ziegler : Plutarch’s usage of άτρέμά
does not allow us to extract the required sense from σύνταττομένοις or σύντέταγμένοις, pace LSJ9, Frost, and Ziegler4.
2
Heracleides Ponticus allowed Solon to live on well into Peisistratus’ reign (Sol. 32.3): admittedly, Heracleides himself may have been

influenced by the desire to accommodate the Croesus-story, but this will not have been clear to Plutarch. Even the more moderate

estimate of Phanias of Ephesus placed Solon’s death in 560/59 (ibid.). Croesus succeeded to the Lydian throne fourteen years before the

fall of Sardis, i.e. c. 561/60 (Weissbach, R-E Suppl. v (1931) 457), and Plutarch will at least have known the synchronization with

Peisistratus (Hdt. 1.59.1). If he thought about it, he could reasonably wonder if the error might lie in associating the meeting with

Solon’s ten-year travels after his lawgiving (Hdt. 1.29.2–30.1, etc.): why could Solon not have made the trip in his notoriously sprightly
 old age (Sol. 31.7), as Diog. Laert. 1.50 seems to have inferred? After all, on one view he was in Cyprus when he died (Diog. Laert.

1.62, Val. Max. 5.3. ext. 3, Suda s.v. Σόλων, cf. Sol. 32.4), and some talked of voluntary exile under Peisistratus (Diog. Laert. 1.51–4,
Suda, (Dio Prus.) 37.4, Gell. 17.21, cf. POxy. 4.664.9–10): he was not immobile – or so Plutarch might infer. Duff 1999, 312 therefore

overstates when he talks of Plutarch knowing ‘clear chronological evidence to the contrary’ of the version he gives: the chronological

indications tended one way, the other considerations (the ‘witnesses’ as well as the appropriateness) tended the other, and Plutarch could

reasonably regard the issue as unstraightforward. We of course approach such questions rather differently, and regard all such data as

totally unreliable, ‘representative’ rather than authentic: cf. esp. Lefkowitz 1981, 45. Such an approach is as dismissive as Plutarch’s

attitude to the chronologists, and both have much good sense to commend them.

3
Them. 27.2 is itself enough to show that (n. 1): cf. e.g. Arist. 5.9–10, Them. 2.5, Per. 27.4, with Hamilton 1969, xlvi–xlvii and Gomme

in HCT i. 58 and n. 3 (less misleading than Hamilton’s criticism suggests); Frazier 1988b and 1996, 36–7; Duff 1999, 312–4.

4
Cf. n. 2.

5
Momigliano 1993, 56.

6
Momigliano 1985, 87.

7
See particularly Woodman 1988, esp. the Epilogue (197–215), and Kraus and Woodman 1997. Woodman’s 1988 book begins with

criticism of Momigliano’s assumptions about historiography (as expressed elsewhere, Momigliano 1978); cf. also his p. 213 n. 17. Of

other recent literature, Fox 1993, Moles 1993b, Wiseman 1979, 1981, and 1993, and, very differently, Brunt 1980, are especially

thought-provoking.

8
On the unlikely possibility of extensive Hellenistic political biography see Geiger 1985 and n. 28 below.

9
Well discussed by Hamilton 1969, xlviii.

10
A point fairly made by Gomme HCT i. 76, and Hamilton.

11
I return to Aristides 1 at pp. 269 and 367–8, and discuss the implications for Plutarch’s proemial and terminal self-characterization.

12
Cf. esp. the thoughtful reflections in the Synkrisis (Cato Mai. 30(3)–31(4) ), and below, pp. 200–1, 225, 235–6 n. 124, and 275. As

often, the first Life of a pair is the more straightforward, while the second presents a morally interesting variation: cf. ch. 16, esp. pp.

356–9.

13
Hamilton 1969, xxi–xxii, is again good on this.

14
See esp. Fogel and Elton 1983, 13–15, 21–2, 49–50, 90–5. I discuss this analogy, in particular its implications for ‘evidence’, more

fully in Pelling 1997c, 213–24. – There is of course a blunter sense in which all historical writing is necessarily rhetorical: a point

especially associated with Hayden White, e.g. 1973 and 1978: cf. n. 74 below. White gives disquietingly little attention to this gathering

and criticism of evidence, as Momigliano 1981 fairly observes; but when Momigliano retorts that ‘rhetoric has long been for the

historian an effective (never essential) device to be used with caution’, that too is surely a misunderstanding of rhetoric. Cf. Woodman

1988, 88 and 108 n. 72, and for a thorough narratological discussion of the ‘essential separation’ between historiography and fiction,

even historical fiction, see Cohn 1999, esp. 18–37, 109–31, and 150–62 (quotation from p. 157).

15
On this ‘work published after both Caesar and Crassus were dead’ see pp. 44 n. 172,47–8, 50, 67–8.

16
On a literal interpretation, this principle would seem to be equivalent to discarding Phylarchus completely and simply following

Polybius. But by looking at Plutarch’s practice one can see what he meant. For instance, at Phil. 5 and Ag.–Cl. 44–6 he describes the fall

of Megalopolis in 223, and clearly draws on Phylarchus: that seems established by comparison of the tenor of his versions with Polybius’

criticisms at 2.61–2. Thus Plutarch’s generous attitude to Cleomenes and his stress on Megalopolis’ wealth both seem distinctively

Phylarchan. But Plutarch knows Polybius’ account too (cf. e.g. Ag.–Cl. 46.5), and carefully avoids committing himself to the details

which Polybius criticized. Thus Polybius (2.62) trenchantly attacked Phylarchus’ figure of 6000 talents for Cleomenes’ booty; Plutarch

simply has a cautious ‘he acquired considerable wealth’ ( χρημάτων εὐπορήσαντι, Phil. 5.5: cf. Ag.–Cl. 46.1). He apparently feels he can
retain other details which Polybius did not criticize (or criticized so obliquely that the point could easily be missed: contrast Ag.–Cl. 45

and Plb. 2.55.8 (with Walbank’s note), the embassy of Lysandridas and Thearidas). When Polybius is being so captious, he could

reasonably be regarded as ‘confirming’ Phylarchus’ other details if he did not explicitly attack them. Cf.

also Pelling 1997a, 108, 116–17.

17
On this passage see now Schepens 2001, esp. 542–4, though I am not wholly convinced by Schepens’ wider conclusions about

Theopompus’ portrayal of Lysander.

18
Cf. e.g. Pomp. 72.4, Cim. 4.5, Gracch. 4.6, Mar. 25.6, Ant. 77.3, Aem. 15.5 with 16.3; Cf. the extensive reading in contemporary,

often non-chronological material before writing Cicero (ch. 1, pp. 16–18. Further instances in Hamilton 1969, xlvii, who here seems to

me right against Gomme HCT i. 58–9.

19
Cf. then 3.3, 3.7–8 (inscriptions); 4.5–8. 8.3–4, 11.7 (comic poets, not very shrewdly exploited); 4.2 (dialogue of Pasiphon); 10.1,

11.10 (Theophrastus); 17.4 (Euripides); 23. 8 (Philochorus); 28.5 (Timaeus). For other, unattributed non-Thucydidean material, cf.

Gomme, HCTi. 71–2. Not straining every ounce from Thucydides: cf. esp. 6.4, where he might have said more about both Mende (for

instance mentioning Nicias’ wound, Thuc. 4.129.4) and Cythera (where the fifth column might interestingly have presaged events at

Syracuse, Thuc. 4.53–4); note also the omission of the Melos campaign of Thuc. 3. 51, even though he goes on to make something of it

in the comparative epilogue (Crass. 36(3).5: below, p. 361). See also Frazier 1996, 32–4, with good remarks on the proem and its

commitment to finding out interesting new detail.

20
e.g. Ages. 19.10, ‘I discovered in the Laconian archives’ ( Λακωνικαι ̀ ἀναγραφαί…) with Shipley 1997, 244 ad loc.; Arist. 5.10, 10.9–
10, 19.7, Cim. 13.5, Sol. 11.1–2. See

p. 40 n. 120.

21
Cf. esp. Caes. 8.4 with pp. 47–8, 50, 67–8, Alc. 32.2, Alex. 46.3, Cic. 49.4.

22
On Greek history, cf. Gomme HCT i. 59–61, 73–4, with pp. 134 and 141 n. 62 above; on Roman, ch. 9 below.

23
Gomme, HCT i. 76. But elsewhere ‘research’ is not an unfair description: we saw in ch. 1 that he undertook a quite extensive and

systematic course of reading when preparing some Roman Lives.

24
Cf. Wiseman’s generalizations about historians’ critical research, in his chapter titled ‘Unhistorical thinking’: ‘The historians of Greece

and Rome [except for Thucydides] did not “put their authorities to the question”. They did not have the questions to put, because they

were incapable of the “historical imagination” needed for the historian to relive for himself, as Collingwood puts it, the states of mind

into which he inquires… “Evidence” as the main preoccupation of the historian is a modern concept… for people brought up on the

techniques of rhetoric, the first plausible story was good enough… [Livy and Dionysius] could assess the accuracy of what their sources

told them only by the rhetorician’s criterion of inherent probability’ (Wiseman 1979, 42, 47, 48, 50). All these are arguably

overstatements (cf. e.g. Rawson 1985, 217 n. 16): but scarcely extreme ones. In this company Plutarch can hold his head high.

25
See above all Lefkowitz 1981; Fairweather 1984. This distinction between literary and political biography is a rough one, and is clearly

unsatisfactory in the formal terms in which it was articulated by Leo 1901: for a succinct statement of the reasons, cf. Momigliano 1993,

87–8, and see also below, n. 28 and p. 330 n. 6. But, however rough, the distinction can remain useful in illuminating such central

points of difference as length, style of presentation, and focus of interest, as well as this issue of truthfulness (so Geiger 1985, 18–29): we

shall see that in ch. 14 as well as in this chapter.

26
Momigliano 1993, ch. 4.

27
Cf. ch. 14, pp. 303–4; more on childhood at pp. 153–6.

28
Geiger 1985, 30–65 discusses whether there was much Hellenistic biography that might be called ‘political’, and argues that there was

not: I still sympathize with that sceptical approach despite the powerful points made by Moles 1989. I would however now put matters

3
a little differently, in particular emphasizing the difficulty of drawing strict generic boundaries: cf. my sketch in OCD s.v. ‘biography,

Greek’. (Cf. Gentili and Cerri 1988, 61–8 and 82–5; Burridge 1992, Frazier 1996, esp. 9, and Duff 1999, 17, take a similar view.) If

that approach is right, it makes the present points more striking still: despite biography’s close relationship to encomium and the

Cyropaedia-type novel, Plutarch does not take over the more casual approach of those genres to truthfulness.

29
Cf. Geiger 1985, 9–29, 114–15.

30
At least, Diog. Laert. 6.84 specifically links the two, and what we know of the content supports the connection. Cf. esp. Strasburger, R-

E xviii (1939) 464–5; Brown 1949; Hamilton 1969, lvi–lvii; Momigliano 1993, 82–3. Geiger 1985, 48–9 n. 43 is too

cautious: cf. Moles 1989, 232.

31
Hamilton 1969, liii, lvi–lvii.

32
Cf. Hamilton 1969, xxiii–xxxiii, lvi–lvii.

33
Geiger 1985, esp. 117–20.

34
Geiger 1979, and 1985, 60–1, 120; ch. 1, p. 13.

35
In itself of course, a very fair point: cf. Pelling 2000, 128, and especially Gomme, HCT i. 60, 69–70. The way Plutarch uses such

material is not quite ours, and in particular he tends to use quotations in an out-of-time way, sometimes using them to illustrate events

years before the remarks were actually made: see the insightful remarks of Frazier 1988b.

36
Millar 1964, 54–5. Tony Woodman points out to me that historians, notably Velleius, regularly echo the phraseology of Cicero’s

speeches in their narratives, both when describing the same events as Cicero and elsewhere. That is rather different from using Cicero as

a historical ‘source’ in Plutarch’s manner; but it is a valuable reminder of the problems of definition involved in categorizing what is and

what is not a ‘source’.

37
See p. 154; cf. pp. 17–18, 94–5, and Pelling 1988, 26–7.

38
Cf. Frazier 1996, 39. Nepos too made some use of such material: Geiger 1985,109–10.

39
I elaborate this point elsewhere, especially in chs. 4 and 9.

40
The Second Philippic is explicitly criticized at Ant. 6.1, and similar material is rejected at Ant. 2.2–3; but other passages, especially in

Ant. 9–13 and 21, are largely based on the Philippic : see pp. 94–5 and Pelling 1988, 26–7, and nn. ad locc.

41
Sertorius and the Isles of the Blessed, Sert. 8.2–9.2; Antony, Octavian, and dice, Ant. 33; Cassius and Faustus Sulla, Brut. 9.1–4; gods

and Rome’s foundation, Rom. 8.9, with pp. 185–6 below. The Romulus passage has something in common with Dionysius of

Halicarnassus’ approach to early Roman history, which is informed by ‘a desire to give an account which made sense in terms of what

happened later in Rome’s history’, and envisages that coherence in moral terms: ‘in his conception of Rome’s development he blurs the

distinctions between what is true and what is good, between the morally praiseworthy and an unbiased reading of the evidence’ (Fox

1993, quotations from 34 and 47). Plutarch’s remark can also be related to an assumption that important themes, especially those

concerned with Rome, are associated with divine interventions (Swain 1989c, esp. 286–7) – but it is still not the sort of argument or

material which he would readily develop in treating later periods. See also the discussion of truthfulness in Theseus in the next chapter.

42
I am grateful to David Lewis for reminding me of this passage. I elaborate this point in the next chapter, pp. 174–5.

43
Cf. Gomme, HCT i. 109–10 on 1.9.4. It is piquant to find Thucydides hailed as the grandfather of cliometrics on the basis of 1.10

(Fogel, in Fogel and Elton 1983, 69): not in fact the style of evidence or argument where Thucydides is at his surest.

44
Finley 1985, 12, of attempts to extract history from unlikely poetic sources.

45
Momigliano 1985, 87.

46
I return to this in ch. 7.

47
Momigliano 1985, 88.

48
855a–6d: Cf. esp. Homeyer 1967; Wardman 1974, 189–96.

49
The question was usefully asked by Theander 1951, 32–7: he found that Plutarch did largely practise what he preached, at least in his

own narrative of those controversial events discussed in the body of On Herodotus’ Malice. Many of those are of course treated in

Themistocles, one of the more historically alert Lives (‘had we only the Themistokles.. .we should have a good opinion of Plutarch’s

learning and not a bad one of his judgement’, Gomme, HCT i. 61): thus Theander’s conclusion cannot be extended to other Lives

without qualification, as we shall see. Wardman 1974, 191–6, also overstates the absence of ‘malice’ (i.e. the кακοήθεια of On Herodotus’
 Malice) in the Lives. – For an interesting application of a similar approach to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, cf. Fox 1993. He argues that

in treating early Roman history Dionysius does pursue the historical principles he expresses in the theoretical works, however strangely

they may seem to us to blur the distinction between morality and truthfulness (above, n. 41). In many ways those principles resemble

Plutarch’s, demanding (at least provisionally) an assumption of true nobility in the characters and events he describes.

50
e.g. Caes. 4.4–9, 5.8–9, 11.1: for Plutarch’s disapproval elsewhere, cf. pp. 105 and 114 n. 62.

51
See pp. 5–6, 104–5 and 207–8.

52
Cf. esp. Otho 17.11, Pyrrh. 14; Wardman 1974, 53–5, 109–10, 217.

53
4.8, 5.8–9, 6.9, etc.: p. 104.

54
Lucull. 5.5, Cic. 3.3, 10.2, Pomp. 5.4–5, 81(1).2.

55
Mar. 29.4, 30.5–6, 31.2–5, 32.2, 33.2, 34.7, 41.6.

56
Mar. 43.7, 44.9–10.

57
In Pelling 2000, 107, I argue that Plutarch’s reconstruction here may rest on no more than a critical and imaginative reading of

Thucydides’ text. If that is so, his assumption – we might say ‘fabrication’ – of so uncharitable a motive is even more striking.

58
Wiseman 1981, 389, followed by Woodman 1988, 93.

59
I expand this point in ch. 14, esp. pp. 308–10.

60
Ant. 13, 10.8–9, Caes. 9.2–10.11. Mar. 44, Ant. 9.6, 48.6, 49.2, 76.1–3, Caes. 19.10, Cor. 10.5. On the Mar. case cf. Carney 1960,

28–9; on Cor., Russell 1963, 25 = Scardigli 1995, 365; on Ant. and Caes., p. 94 and Pelling 1988, 33–6, together with notes ad locc.

61
More on this in ch. 14, esp. pp. 307–15 (where I return to these ‘routine generalizations’).

62
Ant. 2.4–8, reshaping Cic. Phil. 2.44–8.

63
Cf. Pelling 1988, 127, 130 on both passages. Plutarch probably also transfers certain actions from Curio to Antony (above, pp. 107–8),

but that is too controversial to serve as evidence here. Even if he did, he could reasonably infer that Antony and Curio would have

followed a similar line (as many modern scholars have been happy to accept): ‘it must have been true’.

64
See pp. 76–7, 93.

65
See pp. 96–102, 107–8, 207–10; and Pelling 1988, 126–30, 144–5, and 171–3. There is a similar difference of interpretation between

Phil. 5.3–4 and Ag.–Cl. 45.4–8:Pelling 1997a, 117–9.

66
Russell 1963, 23–4 = Scardigli 1995, 362–3.

67
I return to this passage, and discuss it from different angles, in chs. 14 (pp. 309–10)and 18 (pp. 395–6).

68
Just as Erikson explicitly started from later events to reconstruct the childhood of Martin Luther, in his case stressing an abnormal

relationship with his father. ‘A clinician’s training permits, and in fact forces, him to recognize major trends even when the facts are not

all available; at any point in a treatment he can and must be able to make meaningful predictions as to what will prove to have

happened; and he must be able to sift even questionable sources in such a way that a coherent predictive hypothesis emerges’; the

reconstruction of Luther’s youth should proceed similarly. (Erikson 1958, 50, cf. esp. 37.)

69
This is one point on which I disagree with Woodman (1988), though in practice the difference is partly semantic. Woodman argues

for a different concept of truth, one more closely connected with impartiality (esp. 73–4, 82–3) and plausibility (87, 92–3); I prefer to

think of a similar concept of truth, but one which was pursued and presented with different narrative conventions and licences.

Woodman’s position is neater, but I prefer mine for reasons analogous to those given above. Like Plutarch (above, pp. 143–6), historians

discuss the difficulties of recovering the truth; bias certainly figures among these to a greater degree than we might expect (Woodman

1988, 73–4), but historians knew that there were other problems too, especially those concerned with the nature of documentary

evidence. It is hard to see why, for instance, the loss of records in the Gallic sack (Livy 6.1, cf. On the Fortune of the Romans 326a) or the

confusion of the early fasti (Livy 2.21.4) or the secrecy of imperial records (Dio 53.19) should be a hindrance to recovering truth, if

truth be interpreted in terms of impartiality and plausibility. Such passages defy interpretation unless truth meant something close to

what we mean in our less theoretically agonized moments today, events as they really happened, history wie es eigentlich gewesen ist. (For

similar points cf. Moles 1993b, esp. 114–18.) It does not follow, of course, that truth was pursued in the same way then as now, or with

the same rigour in detail: though we too have our unrigorous licences, as I shall argue below. For similar talk of ‘licence’ cf. Morgan

1993, 187, arguing that some of the novel’s fictional licences originate in historiography.

70
Dover, HCT v. 396 n. 2, interestingly criticized by Woodman 1988, 197–215. It will be clear that I am in sympathy with most but not

all of Woodman’s points.

71
For the first two instances (from Williams 1979 and Strachey 1918), cf. ch. 14,pp. 317–21; for the last, Davis 1973, 83–4.

72
True, narrative history is drifting back into fashion, or rather respectability: it can never be out of fashion as long as people like stories,

and care whether they are true. Cf. esp. Stone 1985. But a feature of the new narrative historians is that ‘analysis remains as essential to

their methodology as description, so that their books tend to switch, a little awkwardly, from one mode to the other’ (Stone 1985, 91,

cf. 75). Witness Stone himself. His next chapter begins ‘one of the more striking features of Christianity has been its perennial tendency

to fission… There are two ways of looking at this crisis of European civilization…’, and so on. That is very different from the ancient

style. Or consider Schama’s acclaimed history of the French Revolution (1989). This makes great play with its return to a narrative

strategy, justifying it (esp. xvi, 6) on the interesting grounds that the agents themselves narrativized their own actions and related them

to preceding narratives (especially those, as it happens, of Plutarch’s Lives: Schama 1989, 32, 169, 171, cf. below, p. 238). Its blurb

advertises it as ‘a return to the magnificent tradition of the epic narrative’ – and not unfairly, for Schama indeed narrates with brilliant

panache, with a particular gift for the biographical vignette. But Schama too finds room for analysis (e.g. 62 on the ‘politicization of the

money crisis’), and much of the narrative brilliance lies in his use of survey (notably 123–31 on aristocratic ballooning) to give an

arrestingly unexpected insight. Hardly the ‘tradition of the epic narrative’, though none the worse for that.

73
Taylor 1965, 319–20.
74
One is again reminded of Hayden White’s emphasis on ‘metaphor’ as one of his four modes of discourse, the others being metonymy,

synecdoche, and irony: cf. White 1973 and 1978, esp. 72–4, 252–3. But White, as usual with his borrowings of figures of speech,

means something rather different, and indeed rather peculiar: for instance, he strangely associates ‘metaphor’ with the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries. Others evidently find this schematism more illuminating than I do.

75
Cf. esp. 1.3.4; the battle between Ascanius and Mezentius after Aeneas’ death was famous (Cato, Origines, frs. 9–11 P = 9–11 Ch.),

and Livy’s claim that Mezentius and the Etruscans were acquiescent on Aeneas’ death is especially startling. 1.3.1 is similarly very bland,

in view of Cato’s story of Lavinia’s flight from Ascanius to the woods (fr. 11 P, cf. Dion. Hal. AR 1.70.2–3).

76
The fuller version of Dion. Hal. AR 2.32–7 probably gives a fair idea of what Livy found in the source or sources they (surely) share.

All such speculations are admittedly suspect; but at least one can here understand why Livy should have smoothed and abbreviated a

version similar to that of Dionysius, but not why Dionysius should have confused and roughened a version with Livy’s articulation but

more detail. Cf. Burck 1934, 143, and on the methodological principle 5–6.

77
Presuming, of course, that Livy thought his source’s version true. But Tony Woodman may well be right when he suggests to me that

Livy accepted his source’s version on the same terms as he expected readers to accept his own: that is, he assumed that predecessors had

smoothed events so thoroughly that their sequence or detail did not deserve any particular respect. That interpretation does not

fundamentally affect the point I am making here. Livy would still be showing the same respect or disrespect for accurate sequence: on

Woodman’s view, he would simply be taking for granted the same assumptions in others.

78
Cornell 1986, 73, who uses the phrase of small-scale fictitious inventions, acceptable enough (he thinks) provided they did not do

violence to the traditional facts. In this case, they did not do much violence, and that was enough. Cf. Wiseman 1993, 134, 142.

79
Dion. Hal. AR 3.2–5 again seems to come from the same origin. Note especially the contrast between Dion. Hal. 3.5.1 and Livy

1.23.4 on Cluilius’ death: for Dionysius it is genuinely a divine visitation, ‘because he stirred up a war between mother-city and colony

that was neither just nor necessary’; for Livy Tullus claims that this was divine intervention, but that is simply a piece of his fierce bluster.

Livy’s portrayal fits his individual portrayal of Tullus so closely that we are again surely dealing with his own rewriting.

80
On Tullus’ ferocia, Ogilvie 1965, 105–6, though this seems less traditional a characteristic than Ogilvie implies. Indeed, it is hard to

trace much colour at all in Tullus’ characterization before Livy: there is little in Dion. Hal., and Cic. De rep. 2.31–2 does not suggest

ferocia; not much can be extracted from Piso frs. 10, 13 P. = 17, 20 F. (discussed by Forsythe 1994, 195–201, 216–20).

81
On all this cf. Martin 1955; Goodyear 1972, 125–9 and bibliography there cited. Add now esp. Martin 1981, 162, and Woodman

1998, 23–39, esp. 35.

82
Goodyear 1972, 126; cf. e.g. Woodman 1979, 154.

83
With mental detail, our conventions are of course different: what ‘Livia’ (or Tiberius, or Caesar, or Pericles) ‘must have intended’ is

often inferred on similarly slender grounds, and ones which postulate no better and no worse a model of continuity in human

experience.

84
Woodman 1979, and 1988, 168–79. Much ofWoodman’s analysis is rightly followed by Goodyear 1981.

85
West and Woodman themselves suggest an alternative explanation in their Epilogue (1979, 195–6).

86
‘Much of what we are told at 64–5 may have happened not in AD 15, but in AD 70’ (Goodyear 1981, 108): an over-sanguine view. It

is more likely that it did not happen at all: if Tacitus could ‘invent’ the one, he could invent the other as well.

87
Or so I wrote in 1990. I am now less sure: it may be that the parallel is suggestive for a future audience who might read Annals and

Histories consecutively, and the Annals passages are crafted as prequels for the (already written) Histories sequence. The point might be

that the dangers of barbarians capitalizing on Roman dissension are real in 15 AD,but for the moment averted (a point which could be

related to other Germanicus-themes which I have explored in Pelling 1993 and 1997b); as dissension worsens, (a) the sites of past

disaster are now from civil wars – Cremona, Hist. 2.70 – rather than foreign, and (b) the German-Roman encounters are even more

perilous than in 15 AD.But even if some such analysis might hold, it would be hard for Tacitus to think that it ‘must have been true’,

that events must have run so similar a course simply because the parallel might be thematically suggestive. The main run of the

argument here would still hold.

88
For more about this dream, together with Germanicus’ further dream at 2.14, see Pelling 1997b, 206–9.

89
1.61.2 seems to suggest two camps for Varus (cf. Koestermann 1956, 443 n. 32 and Goodyear 1981, 95–6 ad loc.): not quite what we

would have inferred from the description of Varus’ march at Cassius Dio 56.19–21, but suggestively close to Caecina’s efforts at 1.63.4–

64.3 and 1.65.7. Hence read prima with MSS at 1.61.2, not Koehler’s primo (approved by Woodman 1979, 232 n. 2).

90
Virgilian influence is of course important too: ‘with this identification of Caecina with Varus, the present and past merge into one, as

they do so often in the Aeneid…’,Woodman 1988, 174, cf. 169.

91
More on this theme in Pelling 1993.

92
Fehling 1989, 59–65, to which this whole paragraph is heavily indebted, and which seems to me to survive the virulent critique of

Pritchett 1993, 63–71; but I take a less sceptical view than Fehling of Herodotus’ commitment to the truth, even if his ‘licences’

sometimes startle us.

93
Cf. Henige 1982, 81 ff.: a particular danger for modern oral historians is that ‘a great deal of testimony obtained from informants is

really feedback; that is, it originated as information that entered the society and was absorbed into its traditions because it proved useful

or entertaining’. Armayor 1978, 65, here seems to me too sceptical. Lienhardt 1985, 147, reports a case in the 1870s of simplified

Christian eschatological doctrine being fed back to a missionary-traveller, who was less surprised than he ought to have been: a

suggestive parallel.

94
On these problematic priests cf. Fehling 1989, 71–7; Armayor 1978; West 1985, 298 and n. 97. On the other side, Lloyd 1975, 89–

114; Pritchett 1993, 75–85.

95
Not, of course, that extensive use of literary sources need in itself suggest lack of autopsy: such arguments could easily be made to

suggest that Caesar never went to Germany. Nor can I resist quoting Nigel Williams, who mentions ‘a Scottish writer who has recently

completed a book about Peru. “My most important source”, he told me, “was not my experience of the place but The Ladybird Book of

Peru. ” ’ (N. Williams 1993, 95).

96
On Sertorius, above, p. 149; on Germanicus’ world, Pelling 1993.

97
Nor very different, for instance, from the procedure followed by a biographer of a living person today, if he found after an interview

that his subject’s own reminiscences were contradicted in unimportant detail by a documentary record. In such cases, a certain amount

of discreet tidying and cleaning up is part of the job. Cf. Henige 1982, 66–73, on the dangers of imposing one’s own acculturated

interpretations on material gathered in the field, and in particular the difficulties of integrating oral and written material. West 1985,

304–5, has some very valuable remarks on the relevance of such contemporary experience for our view of Herodotus. – This paragraph

and the first part of this note, written in 1990, may owe more than I then realized to personal childhood experience. Perhaps I may fill

that in here. My father was a sports journalist, who frequently interviewed not very articulate informants. He would regularly frame

questions in the form ‘would you say, Billy, that the cross came over exactly where you wanted it, but it was still tricky to get the

deflection…’: this then appeared in print as ‘Billy L. said, “The cross.” ‘, to everyone’s satisfaction. I am less clear than West 1991, 148

and n. 28, that such ‘leading questions’ make a caricature of the information-gathering procedure: this may be a case where the legal

analogy is misleading (cf. above, p. 145 and n. 14). My father would also, I think, have felt free to correct misremembered details, if

(say) full-back Dewi J. said that he had scored twenty-five points the previous season against Ebbw Vale when it was in fact against Cross

Keys. Dewi ‘would have meant’ Cross Keys, and the informant would certainly not have resented the tacit correction. I add this titbit

because journalistic parallels have been exploited so fruitfully by Wiseman (1993, 139–40) and especially Woodman (1998, 1–20 and

elsewhere). Doubtless there is also a case for picturing ‘Herodotus the journalist’ to go along Redfield’s ‘Herodotus the tourist’ (Redfield

1985). But Woodman’s points have largely been concerned with sensationalism and fictionality: it is worth remembering those aspects of

a journalist’s technique which do have a concern for truth, even if they would not pass muster in a court-room.

98
I draw the phrase ‘hard-core facts’ from Woodman 1988, esp. 88–94, with whom I here wholly agree. I am less certain that we are at

one on the first criterion, where he would assume different and more generous limits (I cannot for instance follow him in his treatment

of Thucydides’ plague, 32–40); or on the third, where his emphasis suggests a different balance between diversion and historical analysis.

But his Preface (pp. xi–xii) does enter a caveat, and he readily accepts that diversion and ‘deepening insight’ often go hand in hand.
 7

‘MAKING MYTH LOOK LIKE HISTORY’:

PLUTARCH’S THESEUS–ROMULUS

I. Introductory playfulness

In Chapter 6 I argued that Plutarch treated different periods in different ways: when it was appropriate

– when the period admitted it, and when he was writing a particular sort of Life – he would apply a

high degree of rigorous criticism to his material; but there were also periods and Lives where he would

not. It is worth giving Theseus–Romulus a chapter of their own, and exploring how Plutarch adapts his

technique to material which he acknowledges is rather different from the normal run of the Lives. This

will also give an opportunity to develop two themes which have so far surfaced only spasmodically in

this collection: first, the importance of intertextuality, in this case particularly intertextuality with Plato

and Thucydides (tragedy is a further important presence, but I will turn to that in the next chapter);

secondly, the sense in which the whole series of Lives is conceived, at least in some senses, as a coherent

unity.

The proem to Theseus suggests some distancing from the material, and also a certain playfulness.
1
This Life, and (perhaps to a lesser extent ) Romulus too, are not to be quite like the others.

You know, Sosius Senecio, how geographers, when they come to deal with those parts of the earth which

they know nothing about, crowd them into the margins of their maps with the explanation, ‘Beyond

this lie sandy, waterless deserts full of wild beasts’, or ‘trackless swamps’, or ‘Scythian snows’, or ‘ice-

locked sea’. Now that in writing my Parallel Lives I have reached the end of that period which can be

reached by reasonable inference ( είκότι λόγῳ) or where factual history ( ἱστορία) can find a firm

foothold, I might very well follow their example and say of those remoter ages, ‘All that lies beyond are

fables and tragic stories, the province of poets and mythographers, where nothing is credible or clear.’

However, after I had published my account ( λόγος) of Lycurgus the law-giver and Numa
the king, there seemed to be nothing illogical ( οὐκ…ἀλόγως) in going on to Romulus, since
my history ( ἱστορία) had brought me close to his times. Then, when I asked myself, as

Aeschylus puts it,

With such a champion who will dare to engage? [Seven against Thebes 435]

Whom shall I match against him? Who can bear our trust? [Seven against Thebes 395–6]

it seemed clear that I could find no more fitting counterpart for the father of

unconquerable and glorious Rome than Theseus, the founder of the lovely city of Athens,

famed in song. Let us hope, then, that the mythical may submit ( ὑπακο̑ υσαι) to us,
cleaned up through reason ( λογος), and take on the appearance of history ( ἱστορία). But
when she obstinately defies credibility ( òτ πιθανόν) and refuses to admit any commingling
with plausibility ( τὴν πρòς τò εικòς μεί̑ ξιν), we shall ask our listeners (ἀκροατω̑ ν) to be
indulgent and to accept ancient history in a gentle mood.

(Thes. 1, tr. Scott-Kilvert, adapted)

Immediately, several contrasts are in the air. One is Athens and Rome, the one a ‘lovely city…famed in

song’, the other ‘unconquerable and glorious’: carefully chosen adjectives, no doubt, and already this is a

tale of two cities as well as two founders. Other contrasts already evoke those intertextual models. One is

that between normal reality and that of the stage (the world of the quotations from Seven against
2
Thebes): what lies beyond the boundary is, we notice, ‘tragic’. Another is that of historia and the

mythical, τὸ μυθω̑ δες: here the inescapable figure is Thucydides, and his prominent disavowal of τὸ
μυθω̑ δες in his methodological introduction (1.22.4).
3
A third is that of logos and muthos: a staple of

much of classical Greek, but one which would probably particularly suggest to Plutarch’s audience, as it
4
does to us, the name of Plato.

Where you have logos, you also need listeners to that logos: here, Plutarch hopes, ones who are
5
‘indulgent’ and ‘gentle’. There is a triangle here of author, material, and audience. The author hopes

that he may be able to tame the material into a sort of submissive ‘listening’ , accepting the

appearance of history; if not, if the material behaves ‘stubbornly’ , then perhaps his real-life

πρᾴως), tamed and receptive to this ‘ancient

‘listeners’ can be the ones who will accept things ‘gently’ (

ǰρχαιολογίαν). Earlier in the chapter he has characterized the material of the other Lives as the
history’ (

period which is ‘reachable εἰκοτί λογῳ (by a logos which is both ‘reasoning’ and ‘reasonable’, ‘plausible’)
and accessible to historia’. He will now apply logos to this material too, but the most he can hope for is

, the ‘commingling’ with plausibility; and even this will not always be achieved, and in

such cases his audience will have to accept this archaiologia as something different from the logos of those

other Lives. He can hope for ‘credibility’ he can hope that the mythical material might λαβει̑ν ἰστορίας
οψιν, ‘look like history’ – look, in fact, like those other Lives which were more ‘accessible to historia’. But
6
it will be a matter of appearance; it will not, or at least not all the time, be the real thing.

Already we can see a sort of playfulness about all this: he is teasing his audience, playing for a sort of

indulgence and complicity as he plays the same games as he has with other Lives, but there will have to

be a sort of suspension of disbelief. In this chapter I shall suggest that this playfulness goes further, but

also that it is only provisional, that in one way or another seriousness comes in by the end; that an

important part of that seriousness indeed concerns those two cities, ‘unconquerable and glorious Rome’

and ‘the lovely city of Athens, famed in song’ and that a key aspect of all this centres on intertextuality

with those two authors, Thucydides and, particularly, Plato.

II. Truthfulness and uncertainty

After so disarming a proem, it may seem unbearably unsophisticated to raise the question of truth;

perhaps ‘credibility’ (τὸ πιθανόν), a mingling with ‘what is plausible’ ( τὸ εικός), is all that is in point.

But then Plutarch keeps raising questions of truthfulness himself, and more pervasively in Theseus than

in Romulus. We know too that he wrote a work ‘how we are to judge true history’ (placed next in the

Lamprias catalogue, which tends to order works thematically, to a work ‘on the time of the Iliad’,which
7
I take to be about the date of the Trojan War rather than the date of the poem’s composition). It is this
8
sort of material which for Plutarch most, not least, insistently raises questions of truthfulness. And it

was subject-matter that he liked, and thought about a good deal: he had already written a Life of

Heracles, outside the series of Parallels, to which he cross-refers in Thes. 29.5; and this is about the same

time as he was writing the Roman Questions as well, a work in which he is certainly concerned to
9
distinguish true versions and true aetiologies from false.

The Theseus proem makes it clear that the truth-value is not as straightforward in this pair as in

other Lives: when he talks about truth and tries to establish it, what sort of truth is he dealing with?

Does he provide any support for Paul Veyne (or at least one strand in Veyne’s thinking), suggesting that

‘truth’ or ‘belief ’ are relative terms, and one can see myth as commanding a different sort of belief,
10
reached, weighed, and received in different ways from literal everyday reality? Or would he share

Dover’s impatience with ‘…a pretentious kind of falsehood’, which, he thinks, ‘the Greeks had more
11
sense than to call…“ideal truth” If so, could he really be defended from Momigliano’s criticism for

‘lacking consistency’ in his historical approach across different Lives, and writing confidently about
12
figures like Romulus instead of confessing his inability to judge deficient evidence?

In the last chapter I argued that the ‘consistency’ in truth-standards that Momigliano seeks is in any

case not in Plutarch’s style. That is more on Veyne’s side than on Dover’s, but there are still different

ways of putting it, and questions still open. A full-blooded Veynian approach would have, not merely

different standards of rigour or styles of argument, but a different sort of truth applying in mythical
13
material; Veyne tends to talk of ‘modalities’ of ‘belief ’ rather than ‘truth’, but when he does talk of
14
truth he makes it clear that truth and (ideologically driven) belief are for him the same thing. Thus,

for Veyne, myths are true, or at least believed, in a different way. It is like children ‘knowing’ both that

toys come from Santa Claus and that they are given to them by their parents (Veyne 1988, 135 n. 33).

In Veyne’s view this approach to myth persisted in popular and general Greek thought despite the

attempts of various ‘existence thinkers’ (18), or ‘rational minds, beginning with Thucydides’ (23), to

strip away the incredible elements and reduce myth to something more like everyday reality; though for

Veyne even these do it in a half-hearted way, doubting particular legends but never doubting the

historical kernel of a real-life Theseus. That, for Veyne, is the sort of ‘purification of the truth’ that

Plutarch is talking about in the Theseus proem; but behind it we can still detect the more popular, but

for Veyne also more sophisticated, different type of belief which such ‘purification’ unsuccessfully tries
15
to elide, and which some other authors reflect more sensitively.

Veyne contrasts that popular view with that of the ‘rational mind’ of Thucydides; yet Thucydides is
16
not so far removed in approach as Veyne implies. Thucydides, as we saw in the last chapter (p. 149),

concludes his Archaeology with the claim that he has relayed the facts with sufficient accuracy given

their antiquity ( , 1.21.1). It would be unreasonable, he implies, to expect the same rigour or

precision as with more recent and verifiable events. The Archaeology has therefore based inferences on

more questionable evidence than he goes on to do later: extracting conclusions, including statistical

conclusions, from Homer, for instance, in a way in which he would never use sources when it came to

harder history. Admittedly, this is not extreme Veynism: truth would still be the same in distant periods
and if one believed it one would be believing in the same way; if the Trojan war happened, it was true in

the same way that fifth-century history was true. But one still cannot expect to establish such truth with

the same standards of proof or by asking the same questions. This position is close to the one I argued

for Plutarch in the last chapter and will argue again here, that in Aristotelian terms one can only seek

the precision ( ἀκρίβεια) appropriate to the material (ὓλη).

Plutarch himself, as we saw, proposes to try to ‘make myth look like history’: how does he set about

it? His language leads us to expect ‘rationalization’, the reduction of mythical and especially supernatural

material to look like more everyday reality, and profuse ‘rationalization’ of the Theseus myth was clearly

there in the Atthidographic tradition long before Plutarch. When Jacoby talked of ‘a very far-reaching

historization of the whole archaeology’, he was largely thinking of the Atthidographic passages cited by
17
Plutarch himself (from Hellanicus, Cleidemus, Demon, and Philochorus). But ‘rationalization’ is a

lazy word, and can mean different things. At least we should distinguish two. The first tries to make

sense of legends by explaining how they came about. One example is Herodotus 2.56–7, where the

‘speaking black dove of Dodona’ is traced back to two Egyptian sisters who were sold into slavery: the

one who came to Dodona was black because she was Egyptian and a speaking dove because she could

not speak Greek, only twitter in barbarian. That is a ‘rational’ picture, but the essence of the story has

gone: it is a story about how a story could develop, it explains away a legend. Then there is the style we

can again call Thucydidean, or at least typical of the Thucydides of the Archaeology. Agamemnon

gathered the Trojan expedition, Thucydides insists, because of his power, especially his sea-power, not

because of any oaths (1.9). This time the essence of the story remains, but it comes to make literal sense

by being plausibly contextualized: this is ‘contextual explaining’, rather than ‘explaining away’.

Plutarch does a little of both – or perhaps we should say ‘is attracted to both’, given that there were

many examples of both types already in the tradition. First, the ‘explaining away’, the provision of a

plausible explanation why a mythical version might have grown up. There are so many variants within

the Cretan chapters that it is hard to follow any basic narrative line, but in the main we seem to have a

general of nasty habits called Taurus, and the Minotaur is a legendary misunderstanding: this was the

version of Philochorus and Demon (Thes. 16.1, 19.3–7, 23.5; cf. Jacoby on FGrH 327 fr. 5 and 328 frs.

17–18). This is a time when Plutarch comes close to ‘explaining away’ rather than ‘explaining’ he does

not do so clodhoppingly (there is no ‘you see, readers, how the idea of a bull could come about.’), but

he implies that explanation of how a misleading story could develop. Nor does Theseus go down to Hell

and get trapped into sitting in stone (hence there is no room for that delightful Athenian aetiology using
18
this to explain why Athenians have such neat small bottoms ). Instead he and Peirithous visit a

Molossian king called Aidoneus with a wife called Persephone, a daughter called Kore, and a dog called

Cerberus (Thes. 31.4–5, 35.1): Theseus is kept captive, and Peirithous ‘made to disappear’ by execution

by dog. ‘Made to disappear’, ἀϕανίζειν (31.5): that is a choice word, used usually of more sinister and
19
mysterious disappearances such as that of Romulus himself. It is borrowed here from the more

miraculous version, and transfused into the naturalistic account which Plutarch prefers – an interesting

way in which Plutarch nods to the alternative way of telling the story even without explicitly mentioning

it. This is one of the cases (there are several) where his narrative would not make much sense except to

someone who knew the alternative version; and that informed reader would also catch Plutarch’s

implied explanation that this is how the more usual miraculous version arose. But, once again, it is

precisely that, an implication. As in the Minotaur version, this assumes that the usual version has

already been ‘explained away’, rationalized out of existence to make the world more like the way it is

now. That informed reader would also appreciate what Plutarch has done with the myth to make it

more everyday. This is ‘commingling with plausibility’, indeed.

20
Such cases would seem to conform with what Veyne called ‘the doctrine of present things’.

Minotaurs do not exist now, so would not have existed then. That is in keeping, too, with several

passages when Plutarch simply prefers the less miraculous variant. Poseidon is not Theseus’ father, and

that is simply a story put around for propaganda purposes by shewd old Pittheus (Thes. 6.1); nor is

Mars the father of Amulius, though it may be that Amulius got up in Mars kit to impress and seduce

Romulus’ mother (Rom. 4.3). That, again, is ‘the doctrine of present things’: gods do not regularly

appear now, and so talk of their appearance then must be some sort of human fiction or

misunderstanding.

Still, not everything is quite the way it is now, and the ‘doctrine of present things’ does not quite

apply. Thus the Lapiths and Centaurs are simply there, without apology or explanation, at Thes. 30.3.

Tales like those of Sinis and Sciron and Procrustes and the Crommyonian boar are again not easy to

explain naturalistically (Thes. 6–11). True, here too the text tends to play down the miraculous

elements: thus Sciron is just a brigand (with even a hint that he might have been quite a good fellow

after all, ch. 10), and the foot-washing habits are hardly mentioned; there is certainly no man-eating

tortoise waiting at the bottom of the cliff. But Plutarch still has to concede that travelling from Troezen
to Athens was much more dangerous then, with vastly perilous Bad People along the way. That requires

‘contextual explaining’ much more than ‘explaining away’: it demands some naturalistic explanation

which can give a context where such things could have happened. In the next section we will return to

this, and examine more closely how Plutarch sets about clarifying how the world could have been so

different.

This careful balancing – the assumption of a world which is largely similar, but also in important

ways different – becomes clearer if we look at Plutarch’s use of εἰκὀς arguments, what it is ‘reasonable’

or ‘plausible’ to assume might have happened: and this is particularly interesting in the light of the

proem, where ‘commingling with τò εἰκὀς’ was signalled as a feature of the Life. If such arguments are
21
to work, it can only be on the assumption that life then was more or less as life is now. Thus it is not

εἰκὀς that Theseus’ mother should have been captured if he were present to defend her, 31.7; and,

nicely, Carmenta is more likely to owe her name to ‘lacking mind’, carere and mens, than to anything to

do with carmina, presumably because there are more crazy women than singing women around, Rom.

21.2–3. But these εἰκὀς arguments also indicate what variations may be accepted as believable within

that world, a world which is not necessarily quite the same as ours. It is not plausible that Antiope and

her Amazons interrupted Theseus’ wedding with Phaedra and that Heracles killed them, but not it

seems because it is an Amazon story (28.1); it is more that weddings are not rowdy like that, it sounds

like ‘fiction and myth’.

This Life, indeed, is quite receptive to Amazons, excluded though they would naturally be by any

‘doctrine of present things’. In other Lives Plutarch is more sceptical, even if he does not exclude the

possibility of Amazons completely. Pompey was said to have killed some Amazons, admittedly in a

rather distant part: Plutarch leaves the possibility open, but notes that ‘no female corpse was seen’

(Pomp. 35.3). When he comes to the tale of Alexander and the Amazons, he marshalls a spectacular list

of authorities on each side: the issue is worth debating – but it ends with the story of Lysimachus being

read an account of the meeting with the Amazons by an eager historian, and commenting with a smile

‘And where was I when all that happened?’ (Alex. 46). In Theseus too Plutarch has some irony at the

expense of Cleidemus ‘who wants to get everything exact’ and gives the precise dispositions of the

Amazons’ battle-line in Athens (Thes. 27.3 = FGrH 323 fr. 18; cf. 19.8 = fr. 17): and yet he himself gets

caught by the spirit of the thing, and much of his language only works on the assumption that the battle
22
really happened, hard though it is to be sure about the details. ‘That they fought in the city itself is

μαρτυρέίταί) by the names of the places and the graves of those who fell’, for instance (27.2).
attested (

μάρτύρέίτάί, ‘attested’: that is a word he uses frequently in the Life, much more frequently than
is mere ‘inference’ but μαρτύριον does suggest real ‘attestation’,
23
pointing

to something which was really true – even though this ‘evidence’ would seem pretty unreliable by

Plutarch’s critical standards elsewhere. We are some way from the scepticism of a Strabo, who elaborately

applies ‘the doctrine of present things’ to his Amazons: the stories for Strabo are incredible because

women would not have been able to get their political act together, nor to expand into neighbouring

territory as men’s expense – why, it amounts to claiming that women of those times were men and men

were women (11.5.1–5). For Strabo the world must obviously have been the same as today; Plutarch is

prepared to toy with the idea that what was plausible then was different from what is plausible now.

So this world is more hospitable to Amazons than the world of Pompey and Alexander. But it is

only a matter of degree, for even in those other worlds Amazons were not quite excluded, and even here

there is an element of irony at Cleidemus’ expense. We are still concerned with truth, and disentangling

what is ‘attested’ nor is there much here to suggest a different type of truth, one which cannot be

investigated and would not be received in the same way; but still arguments and evidence may be

credited here which would not pass critical muster in other Lives. This is the intermediate,

‘Thucydidean’ position: the world, truth, and belief are not totally different, but the precision and the

type of argument need to vary according to the material.

Plutarch does not gloss over the uncertainty of it all. It may be the best he can do with the material,

but he does not pretend that things are as reliable here as elsewhere. In the Alexander passage Plutarch

provides that remarkable cluster of quotations on the Amazon question; its counterpart here is not too
24
different, and Theseus as a whole is remarkably rich in learned citations, much richer than Romulus.

We might expect that to be a declaration of scholarly research, and of course it is partly that: there is a
25
projection of authorial persona here. But it is not a persona of certainty, I have done the reading so I

know. It is the opposite, for time and again the flood of quotations underlines the perplexity, the

difficulty of pinning the factual truth down (one reason, doubtless not the only one, why there is more

citation in Theseus than in the historically more secure Romulus). Some points, such as the Ariadne

chapters, are particularly rich in citation and puzzlement, but on the whole it would be wasted labour to

try to work out which parts are presented as more certain and which as less. He may talk of particular
facts being ‘attested’, but even there it does not mean that every inference is secure. That provisionality

of the proem, with its acknowledgement that the reader may not be able to accept all the attempts to
26
make myth look like history, is reinforced by the diffidence of the narrative.

And in this Life it matters. The Alexander account ended by saying ‘whether one believes in these

things or not makes no difference to one’s estimate of Alexander’ but clearly the Amazon encounter, and

the treatment both of women and of warfare, does make a big difference to one’s estimate of Theseus.

The factual truth is hard to pin down; as we shall see, the moral truth is hard to pin down as well. We

shall return to these uncertainties in the final section, and also revisit the implications for Veyne and for

any differing ‘types of truth’.

III. Plato and Thucydides

Let us return to that ‘contextual explanation’: the sort of contextualization which provides some

naturalistic explanation to clarify how such things could have happened. This, rather unexpectedly, is

where we find Plato. At 6.4–6 Plutarch explains how such bad people could flourish:

This age, it seems, produced a race of men who, for sheer strength of arm and swiftness of foot, were

indefatigable and surpassed the human scale, but who did not apply these gifts of nature to anything

proper or helpful; rather they rejoiced in their overwhelming hubris and took advantage of their strength

to behave with savage inhumanity and to seize, outrage, and murder all who fell into their hands. They

thought that shame and justice ( άίδω.. .κάί δίκάίοσύνήν) and equality and human spirit had nothing to
do with anyone who could gain advantage ( τοίς πλέον έχέίν δύνάμένοίς): no, it was just that most
people praised such qualities because they did not dare to do wrong and were fearful of being wronged

themselves ( άτολμίά τού άδίκέίν κάί ϕοβω τού άδίκέίσθάί). Heracles went round displacing and

destroying some of these, but others cowered out of sight as he went by, and withdrew and were

disregarded as too abject for his notice. But then Heracles’ fortunes turned, and he killed Iphitus, went

to Lydia, and spent a long time in slavery to Omphale there, imposing this punishment on himself for

the killing. At that point affairs in Lydia had deep peace and security, but in Greece the former evils

came into flower and burst out again, for there was no-one to repress or restrain them.

(tr. Scott-Kilvert, adapted)

This draws on several passages where Plato’s speakers explored the nature of society, especially society’s

άίδω…κάί
virtue, by affecting a style of historical reconstruction. The rejection of ‘shame and justice’ (

δίκάίοσύνήν) summons up Protagoras’ great speech (Prot. 322c); the idea of a social contract not to do
wrong and not be wronged, together with its restraint on those who want to ‘gain advantage’ (πλέον

έχέίν), has a lot of the beginning of the Republic (343d6, 349b ff., then the social contract idea at the
beginning of Book 2); the notion that it is only ‘lack of daring’ which would hold back people who

want to do wrong has something of the Gorgias as well (483c–d, 488b5, 490a ff.).

Yet this is Plato with a difference: this is playful Plato, the sort of playfulness which the proem

encouraged us to expect. In Plato’s own text it is natural to take these historical ‘reconstructions’ as

heuristic or hermeneutic tools rather than literal ‘history’ (that is especially clear in Protagoras’ case),

ways of presenting the nature of justice and society in mock-historical terms as a way of capturing their
27
essence: Cynthia Farrar brought this out particularly clearly. Is Plutarch not here being faux naïf in

taking over such a picture in this wide-eyed, uncritical way? Consider in particular that notion that

Greece was suffering because Heracles was away with Omphale, while Lydia was correspondingly

peaceful: it is hard to take that as anything other than tongue-in-cheek. But if it is, we should not take

that playfulness as a keynote of the whole pair. Many things, including Platonic intertextuality, become

more earnest as the pair continues. As we shall see, Romulus ends with a purple passage on the potential

immortality and divine nature of the soul (Rom. 28.7–10), which again re-evokes Plato and is much
28
more intense.

In Theseus the suggestions of Plato continue, or at least of texts which Plutarch would have taken to

be Platonic. Chapter 16 ends with an extended borrowing from the pseudo-Platonic Minos to which we
29
will return, combined with a hint of another passage in the Laws; chapter 23 has a verbal allusion to

the opening of the Phaedo, as Plutarch refers to the ship from Delos whose arrival famously (though
30
Plutarch does not mention it here) delayed Socrates’ execution. Such passages help to introduce hints

of a different, more modern world, a world of fifth- and fourth-century intellectual confrontation – and

of violence and intolerance too, if the hints of Socrates’ execution are caught.

It is not just Plato who suggests that more modern world. Thucydides has already cropped up

several times. As we saw, he is probably there in the proem, with το μύθωδες 31

and I have suggested

that Thucydides’ style of contextually ‘explaining’ legends, rather than ‘explaining them away’, is rather

like Plutarch’s own. In 2.2 Plutarch links Theseus and Romulus as both (so the Teubner text prints)
μετά τού δύνάτού το ξύνετόν εχοντες (‘combining intelligence with their power’): it is the Teubner
editor Ziegler who prints ξύνετον with a ξ rather than with the manuscripts’ σ, and that may be

overdoing it – but it does capture the way that this echoes the ξ-ridden Thucydides, for at 2.15.2

Theseus εβάσιλεύσε, γενομενος μετά τού ξύνετού κάί δύνάτος (‘became king, having combined
32
power with his intelligence’). Then at 3.2 Plutarch picks up what Thucydides said about Pelops at
33
1.9.2, and here he corrects Thucydides. Thucydides had made Pelops ‘acquire power because of his

wealth’, πληθει χρημάτων…δύνάμιν περιποιησάμενον: once again, very much ‘the doctrine of present
things’ – money always talks. Plutarch thinks differently: he insists that it was not only the surplus of

money that brought him power, it was also the surplus of sons ( ού χρημάτων πληθει μάλλον η
πάίδων). That plays a delicious game of rationalization. Thucydides is being at his most ‘rationalist’

himself there, with his own brand of ‘commingling with plausibility’, but Plutarch trumps him by going

back to the mythical matrix: in that sort of world, sons did matter, and sure enough the rest of the Life

stresses the theme of Aegeus’ childlessness, the Pallantids’ contempt for it, and the simmering family
34
loyalties and animosities.

The Plato and Thucydides intertextuality comes back just as the last big political movement of the

Life begins, with the synoecism in 24. The synoecism itself borrows material and even language from
35
Thuc. 2.15. Notice too the strong, ‘modern’, tone with which the politics of the synoecism are

presented (24.2).

So he now travelled around Attica and strove to convince them town by town and clan by clan. The

common people and the poor responded at once to his appeal, while to the more influential classes he

proposed a constitution without a king: there was to be a democracy, in which he would be no more

than the commander of the army and the guardian of the laws, while in other respects everybody would

be on an equal footing ( ίσομοίρίάν). Some were convinced by his arguments without any difficulty;

others, because they feared his power, which was already great, and his enterprising spirit ( τολμάν),
preferred to be persuaded rather than forced into agreement.

It is a very democratic sort of Theseus, the sort we grow to know on the tragic stage (most notably in
36
Euripides’ Suppliant Women); but it is by now a very fifth-century sort of Athens too, with his

opponents fearful of his δύνάμίς and, interestingly, his τολμά, that highly Athenian buzz-word. They

are just biding their time, as we will see.

There may be some Plato too in the following chapter, with Theseus’ avoidance of ‘undisciplined

and unmixed democracy’ (25.2). Some of his fears there sound very much like those of the Republic (e.g.

557c–8c). In that case it becomes interesting that Theseus introduces three classes, the Eupatridae, the

Geomoroi, and the Demiourgoi (25.2), each doing their own thing: not quite the same things as the
37
three classes of the Republic, it is true, but still a rather neighbouring idea.

That could affect an issue which has troubled constitutional historians, for most of this chapter

looks as if it is borrowing from Athenaion politeia. Plutarch ‘borrows’ with some freedom, certainly, as

his quotation of Aristotle’s view οτί δέ πρωτος άπέκλίνέ προς τον δήμον (‘that he was the first to
of Ath. Pol.’s μίκρον πάρέγκλίνούσά τής
38
incline to the people’, 25.3) is a strong overstatement

βάσίλίκής (‘inclining a little away from the regal’): so strong, indeed, that some have preferred to posit a
different Aristotelian source, though this degree of source-manipulation is clearly within Plutarch’s
39
range. Yet Ath. Pol. itself seems initially to have only two classes, though by Ath. Pol. 13.2 we have

three. Rhodes argues that in the lost early section of Ath. Pol. Ion introduced two classes, then Theseus
40
expanded this by adding the Eupatridae as a third. If that is right, then we have Plutarch simplifying

by having Theseus introducing all three at once. That may be a routine instance of what Stuart called
41
the ‘law of biographical relevance’, highlighting the contribution of the central figure, but again the

Platonic texturing may be playing a part. If so, the intertext would not be casual, for the end of the Life

will develop the dangers of the demos when empowered, the slipperiness and instability of monarchy,

and the people’s manipulability by the ambitious demagogue, Menestheus. These are all hackneyed

themes, especially in the fifth and fourth centuries, but ones to which Plato had given particularly

strong and thought-provoking expression. And Theseus would here be recognizing the dangers, being a

Plato before his time, and still not being able to do anything about it: a powerful, poignant, perhaps
42
even tragic picture.

IV. Myth and fifth-century reality

That brings us to the final chapters of the Life, where the forces of the demos are turned against Theseus

by Menestheus. The opportunity was offered because Theseus was away with Peirithous on his amorous

adventures, and was therefore unable to protect the city when the Dioscuri, inflamed by Theseus’

abduction of Helen, attacked from the Peloponnese (Thes. 32–4). Menestheus was always an extremely
 43
malleable figure: he was known from the Iliad as the leader of the Athenian contingent at Troy, but
44
does not actually do very much in the Iliad (Page described him merrily as ‘a ninny and a nonentity’ ),

and could therefore be more or less elaborated at will. Here it is those currents of ill-will and fear

surviving from the synoecism, combined with the forces of the demos that Theseus had himself built up,

which offer Menestheus his demagogic chance:

Meanwhile Menestheus, the son of Peteus, grandson of Orneus and great-grandson of Erechtheus, had

taken a hand in affairs. He was the first man, they say, to cultivate the arts of the demagogue and to

ingratiate himself with the people. He began by uniting the nobles and stirring up their resentment.

They had long harboured a grudge against Theseus, because they felt that he had deprived each of the

country magnates of his rule and authority and then herded them all into a single city, where he treated

them as subjects and slaves. At the same time he also set the masses in a ferment with the accusations he

brought against Theseus. He told them that while they might delude themselves with the dream of

liberty, the truth was that they had been robbed of their native cities and their sacred rites, and all to

make them look up to a single master who was an immigrant and a follower… (Thes. 32.1)

Thus Theseus is destroyed by the very forces which he himself had unleashed, and which were to

make his Athens what it was.

The schema here is as early as Theophrastus’ ‘Oligarchic Man’:

He goes around saying, ‘when are we ever going to stop being ruined by the liturgies and trierarchies?’,

and ‘how hateful are the tribe of demagogues! Theseus was to blame for introducing this bane to the

city: he brought people together from twelve cities into one <and gave power to the people, so that the
45
many had control of everything> and the monarchy was dismantled; and he got what he deserved,

because he was the first to be destroyed by them.’

(Theophrastus Characters 26.6–7)

So Plutarch may well not have invented the idea himself. But we can see why he welcomed and

doubtless elaborated this. It maps closely on to two very familiar Plutarchan schemata. The first is the

way in which a hero can so readily be destroyed by the very forces which make him great and which he

himself has earlier fostered. The great man comes to be haunted by versions of his own past. Synoecism

and democracy were, politically, what Theseus did for Athens; synoecism and demos now destroy him.

Thus Caesar eventually falls when his friends misbehave, and alienate the troops and particularly the

demos – those friends who had always been so devoted to him and to whom he owed so much; those

troops and particularly that demos which he had so ruthlessly and effectively exploited. Thus Lysander

too starts to totter when Agesilaus arrives in Asia Minor, and is courted in the same very unspartan way

that Lysander himself had earlier developed. Thus Coriolanus lives out a version of his Roman

experiences among the Volsci, the very people who gave him his chance of vengeance; but this time he is

overthrown by the Volscian leader Tullus, someone who is a lesser version of his own strengths and
46
weaknesses. The same factors build a man, then destroy him. The insight is often a profound one, and

it is central to Life after Life.

He also likes to make a Life evocative, not just of the great man, but also of his city. Marcellus’

strengths, and more especially his emotional weaknesses, show the way Rome was at the time, so
47
absorbed with wars that it did not have time for proper Greek education (Marc. 1); a similar point is

made about Coriolanus (Cor. 1.6). The most elaborate example is Philopoemen–Flamininus, where both

men are driven on by overwhelming ‘ambition’ (philotimia), but in ways which typify their two

countries. Philopoemen’s philotimia easily topples over into destructive philonikia (‘contentiousness’),

whereas Flamininus’ philotimia leads him to give Greece the freedom for which Philopoemen had so

gloriously but ineffectively fought. At the Isthmia in 196 Flamininus proclaimed that freedom: the

dumbstruck Greeks thought back to all the battles which Greeks had fought, but almost always against

one another, so that every triumph had also been a disaster and a reproach for Greece. Their country,

they reflected, had been destroyed by her own philonikia – that philonikia which is Philopoemen’s as
48
well as Greece’s keynote. That pair is not just about two men, it is about their countries; and we find

something similar here with the comparison of ‘the founder of Athens, beautiful and celebrated in song,

and the father of Rome, unconquered and great in glory’ (Thes. 1.5: above, pp. 171–2).

So far I have presented this flavour of Athens as a rather general one, suggesting demos and

demagogues. Is there a more specific suggestion as well? The stress falls on the distaste of those packed

together into a city against their will, with the countrymen feeling resentment against the great man

who was behind it: Thucydides himself brought out the parallel between Theseus and Pericles at the

beginning of the Peloponnesian War (2.15: above, p. 179), and Plutarch makes the parallel even closer,

making Theseus’ synoecism not just a constitutional unification but a real physical uprooting of the
 49
countrymen into the city. At the end of Theseus the fifth-century resonance recurs, though this time

more of Alcibiades and the events of 415 and 411. Theseus and his private excesses alienate the city, so

that he is driven into exile (Thes. 35.5): the Dioscuri invade from Sparta, and there is internal dissension

within the walls; Menestheus prefers to open the gates to the Spartans, blaming his internal enemy

Theseus for it all (33.1).

The normal way of approaching this has been in terms of source-criticism: when did this story take

shape? Cantarelli 1974 argued that this demagogic characterization of Menestheus dated from the late

fifth century. Gianfrancesco 1975 built on this, identifying what he thought to be ‘sophistic’ material in

the last parts of the Life: he suggested that the origin of much of Plutarch’s material was in a (not very

well attested) speech of Antiphon, ‘for the Pallantidae against Theseus’, possibly put by Antiphon in the
50
mouth of Menestheus himself (the wording of the testimonium is rather obscure). On this view, that

speech would become a cross between a mythological exercise like Gorgias’ Helen or Palamedes, and a

contribution to contemporary propagandist debate. Gianfrancesco suggests that the oligarch Antiphon

used the speech to lambast his democratic opponents in disguise, and to preach the virtues of opening

the gates to Sparta.

That last aspect brings out the weakness of the thesis. As oligarchic propaganda, in war-time, this is

inept. Come on, men of Athens, our opponents are no better than Theseus – what a way to argue! One

wins few adherents by associating one’s enemies with a great national hero. And it is no better for the

speaker to reveal that the oligarchs were planning to be treacherous and invite the Spartans in. It would

be a gullible audience who would believe that they would be just like the Dioscuri in the story, who

exploited their victory only so far as to ask for permission to be initiated in the Mysteries (Thes. 33.1).

After twenty years of war and hatred and atrocity, that would persuade no-one.

So oligarchic ‘propaganda’ does not work. The fifth-century resonance remains, though, and

perhaps we should think less in terms of propaganda than in terms of commentary; perhaps we should

look for an author who manipulates the distant past to make it play out in anticipation the themes of

Athens’ later history – rather as the second half of Livy 1 foreshadows many of the themes of later

Roman history, as ambitio arrives and violent discontent gathers until finally a Brutus overcomes a

tyrant and inaugurates a new era of Roman history. In the present case, the ‘patterner’ could be a source,

perhaps as Cantarelli and Gianfrancesco assumed a fifth-century one; but why should it not be Plutarch
51
himself? He knew, and reminded his audience intertextually, that Thucydides had pointed the

Theseus–Pericles parallel; and he had already introduced a lot of what we might crudely call ‘sophistic’

material, borrowing those Platonic motifs in a subtle and sometimes faux naïf way. He liked his Lives to

tell tales about cities as well as about people; what could be neater than to make Athens’ inaugurator

sow the seeds, not merely of his own downfall, but of his city’s downfall in the greatest crisis of her later

history, the Peloponnesian War?

V. Theseus and Romulus

In that case, it becomes interesting that the end of Romulus plays a similar game. Romulus too sows

some seeds that turn against him. For Theseus the danger was in moving from being a king to being a
52
democrat, for Romulus it was the opposite move from being demotikos to becoming more of a king:

This was Romulus’ last war. Next came the experience which falls to most, indeed virtually all who are

raised to power and majesty by great and paradoxical successes; Romulus did not escape this either. His

career had given him (over?-) confidence (έκτεθαρρηκώς); he became haughtier in spirit and

abandoned his popular manner ( έξίστατο του̑ δήμοτίκου̑ ), shifting to a monarchy which gave offence

and pain. This came about in the first place because of the way in which he presented himself…

(Rom. 26.1)

53
Then we move into a description of his purple robes, his kingly throne, his bodyguard and so on. The

similarity to 44 BC is not far to seek, with Caesar’s semi-regal outfit and golden throne, the humiliation
54
of the senate, and the fears of his monarchy: especially as the distant future has already so often been
55
felt as a presence in this Life. Then Romulus too dies, mysteriously. One version, aired by Plutarch

though left uncertain, is that he is killed by the hostile senators (Rom. 27.6). The people are certainly

suspicious, and threaten those aristocrats whom they see as the murderers. And the appearance of

Proculus Iulius, announcing he has seen the dead Romulus in a dream (Rom. 28.1–3), pre-enacts the

role of Cinna the poet (Caes. 68), though it does not turn out so murderously.

Naturally there is a similarity with the end of Theseus too, as both men’s political programmes turn

sour. That is even pointed by a verbal echo, for Theseus is disappointed that the democracy has turned

out so rebellious, ‘corrupted and wanting to be fawned on instead of silently carrying out their orders’,

, Thes. 35.4; now Romulus’ patricians, much to their irritation, could do

no more than ‘listen silently to their orders’, , 27.2. Romulus too has done

something to establish the pattern that will ruin him, for ‘playing the demagogue’ he sets up

dual annual magistrates in Alba, and it is this which encourages those in Rome to ‘seek a monarch-free

and independent politeia’ with an alternation of ruling and being ruled, 27.1.

The differences between the two Lives are also important, and they too capture something

important about each city. It is the people which excludes Theseus, but the aristocrats who are so hostile

to Romulus; and Romulus’ last mysterious words strike a keynote of Roman history which is again

rather different from the Greek, for the Romans ‘are to practise prudence with courage ( σωϕροσύνήν
μέτ’ άνδρέίάς) 56
and thus come to the greatest portion of human power’, 28.3.

Thus both men initiate their nations’ style as well as the nations themselves, and both reversals look
57
forward to later crises and catastrophes. Once again Plutarch is not drawing this from nothing, just as

in Theseus he found the Theseus–Pericles parallel already suggested in Thucydides. The Romulus–

Caesar parallel was in the air in 44 BC itself, and it is likely that the conspirators were consciously

modelling themselves on Romulus’ eliminators. But that simply suggests that Plutarch’s knowledgeable

audience might already be primed to notice the parallels, just as they were already primed by

Thucydides’ suggestion of the Theseus–Pericles contact. We can still be sure that the elaboration of the

pattern is Plutarch’s own, and that he is not simply copying out a source. The similarity between the

two Lives, evidently from different sources, renders that secure.

VI. Playfulness turned serious

58
One thing is different between the ends of Romulus and of Caesar: the role of the gods. The Ides of

March had a religious dimension, but Caesar’s twenty-three wounds were very human indeed. The end

of Romulus is much more mysterious. On the whole it leans towards making Romulus’ disappearance –

άϕάνίζειν is again the recurrent word 59

– genuinely supernatural: the one naturalistic explanation, that

he was cut up into little pieces and the senators divided him up and carried him out in their clothes,

does not carry conviction (27.6). All the weight falls on the description of the omens, on Proculus Iulius

who has surely seen something, and on the purple passage 28.7–10 defending the immortality of the

spirit – though it is true that this leaves the fate of the body a little obscure.

The immortality of the soul: that returns us to Plato at the end of the pair, but with an earnestness

far removed from that early, playful false naïveté. Platonic myth is a mode, employed in particular

discourse for provisional and persuasive reasons, of conveying something more serious – the origin and

nature of humanity, say, or of morality, or of the divine and its relationship to humankind. In Thes. 6

Plutarch had smilingly accepted in literal terms what for Plato was only the mythical vehicle to convey

something more substantial; in Rom. 28 Plutarch is accepting not the vehicle but the cargo, not the

myth but what the Platonic underworld myths convey – the immortality and intrinsic divinity of the

human soul itself. That is no joke.

This, then, is the culmination of that process whereby elements of the divine come more and more

to the surface. Romulus began in the same tones as Theseus, with Amulius in his Mars kit and Mars no

more Romulus’ parent than Poseidon was Theseus’ but even here there is some supernatural element in

the birth-story and the recognition-scene, enough for Plutarch to emphasize that

some may find the theatrical and fictional flavour of the story suspicious, but we should not be sceptical

when we see what Fortune can devise, and reflect that Rome would never have advanced to such power

if it had not some divine beginning, something which was grand and paradoxical

(Rom. 8.9)

– as we noticed in the last chapter (p. 149 and n. 41), not the sort of argument which one could

imagine coming in a Life like Pompey or Caesar, but one which is more at home in this thought-world.

But what is that divine element? Not the parentage, but the lucky chance whereby Numitor sensed what

might be going on and asked the right question of the captive Remus (7.5); in other words, something

explicable in a natural way as well in terms of human intelligence and/or pure chance – something

which could sit perfectly well in a naturalistic world in a way in which Minotaurs and divine fathers

could not. Then there is much respect for auguries and religious foundations and purifications.

Romulus is made very ‘pious’ ( θεοσεβης), more so than in Livy or Dionysius, where a lot of this has to
60
be left for Numa. But the point where that piety becomes most mechanically necessary to the

narrative is when it explains why the Sabines continued respectful to Romulus after the death of their

own leader Titus Tatius, and that is because some of them thought that he had the goodwill of the gods

in everything (23.5), again a point about human mentality rather than the firmament.

Yet now the supernatural seems harder to avoid. Once again, this is the sort of pattern which

Plutarch reproduces elsewhere. In Alexander–Caesar, in particular, there seems a similar rhythm whereby
the supernatural dimension is played down through most of the pair, but at the end the great daimon of
61
Caesar does appear, irreducibly. However much the narrative might try to play the divine down,

however much in Thes.–Rom. the demythologizing programme requires the suppression of the more

supernatural and marvellous elements, there will finally be some divine accompaniment for events as

momentous as this.

VII. Terminal uncertainty

A final word on the synkritic epilogue, for there too Plato is in evidence. It begins with a Platonic

quotation (indeed the only explicit quotation in the pair), once again from the Phaedo: unlike Theseus,

Romulus became ‘brave through fear’, because of his determination to escape from slavery and

imminent punishment (30(1).1, citing Phaedo 68d). In the Phaedo the contrast is with the true

philosophical nature which needs no such impulse; by implication, that may here be the nature of

Theseus rather than Romulus. So initially Theseus seems to be the winner in the comparison. But as in

the Life of Theseus itself, there is a shift of sympathy here, and the epilogue like the narrative moves on
62
to dwell on Theseus’ more disturbing aspects, especially those concerning his erotic life. After

reflecting on various stories in which women suffered badly because of Theseus, Plutarch concludes:

…unless this story (that of Theseus’ mother’s captivity) is false – as it really ought to be false, along with

most of the others ( ως εδεί γε κάί τούτο ψεύδος είνάί κάί τά πλέίστά των άλλων). The mythical

stories about the divine aspects, too, show a great difference. For safety came to Romulus with great

goodwill of the gods; but the oracle given to Aegeus, to abstain from women while abroad, seems to

show that the begetting of Theseus was contrary to the gods’ will.

(35(6).7)

That is an astounding thing to say about Theseus, the great national figure; just as it is astounding to

have him come off worse, in erotic terms, than Romulus, the architect of the rape of the Sabine women.

Here too an extra twist is given by a Platonic original. In Republic 3 Socrates is attacking traditional

stories of the gods:

Let us not believe such things, and let us not let the poets say that Theseus son of Poseidon and

Peirithous son of Zeus hurled themselves in this way into dreadful rapes, nor that any other son of a god

or any other hero would have dared to do such foul and impious deeds as the poets now falsely claim.

For we have shown that it is impossible for bad deeds to come from the gods.

(Republic 3.391d–e).

So Plutarch’s ‘really ought to be false’ has good Platonic authority, one which centres particularly on

those erotic stories of Theseus which Plutarch finds so disturbing. Perhaps then they were false after all;

perhaps, to revert to the terms of the proem, the narrative has not achieved that ‘commingling with το
έίκος’ which would have given credibility (το πίθάνον); perhaps we too have been taken in by all these
sensational ‘tragic’ stories. If we remember another Platonic passage, that from the Minos in Thes. 16, we

remember that ‘it is a dreadful thing to become hated by a city which has a voice and a Muse’, for the

Athenian tragic poets have vengefully corrupted our view of Minos. Perhaps they have corrupted our

view of Theseus too.

So, like the end of (paradoxically) many tragedies themselves, the close of the pair invites us to

reassess radically what we have heard, and to wonder if it was not, after all, built on uncertain

foundations, not the stuff of true historia after all. The ring has taken us back to the suggestions of the

proem, and we are still not sure how playful the whole exercise has been.

VIII. Conclusion: continuity and change, truth and Veyne

Several points have, I hope, emerged about this fascinating pair, not least its subtlety and charm, and the

important part played in it by intertextuality: this is indeed one of Plutarch’s most exploratory and

enterprising productions. I will end by drawing out some further implications, and then returning to

the original question of truthfulness. In particular, how far do the terminal uncertainties, both about

historical accuracy and moral judgement, affect those initial questions about mythical truth and Veyne’s

argument about a different type of belief?

We have seen that both Lives have a perspective rather wider than the two individual figures

themselves; they make points about Athens and Rome, not just Theseus and Romulus. If the

conventional relative chronology is right, the Lives of Pericles, Caesar, and Brutus themselves were not

yet written. But they soon would be. Theseus–Romulus is normally put, along with Lycurgus-Numa and

Themistocles-Camillus, into three of positions VI–IX in the series, most likely in position VIII or IX, and
63
this is one of the most secure parts of the sequence. Two of the only fixed points are then Pericles and

Brutus. Pericles–Fabius was the tenth pair to be written (Per. 2.5), probably therefore the next after this
little group; Dion–Brutus was the twelfth (Dion 2.7), and, if the argument of ch. 1 holds, Alexander–

Caesar was written as part of the same project as Dion–Brutus. We can surely regard all these pairs as in

some sense complementing Theseus–Romulus, and assume that this pair, like the others, is written with a
64
function in the series as a whole, not just as a free-standing work of art.

If so, that is most interesting for our conception of Plutarch’s whole project. One great step of the

last generation of scholarship has been to see the unit of Plutarch’s biographies as the pair as much as the
65
Life. We should now take the further step, and see individual Lives more in the context of the series as
66
a whole. His whole project may now seem to have something of the style of the history of Drumann–

Groebe, splitting up Rome’s history (and in Plutarch’s case Greek history as well) under the leading
67
figures – doing in a sense, but in a more refined sense and in a more skilful way, a version of what

Plutarch had already done for the principate in his Lives of the Caesars, though those seem to have been
68
closer to ‘history’ in genre.

That is important in itself; it also matters for our inquiry into truthfulness. For, if the series of Lives

shows coherence, that is because of an element of continuity; as Theseus and Romulus inaugurate their

nations’ history, they also inaugurate the strengths of each people which will produce greatness and then

generate crisis and disaster. That is a continuous story for each people; it is one which belies any neat

distinction between different sorts or types of material, any categorization of a spatium historicum which

is different from a spatium mythicum – even though it is Plutarch himself who introduces the ‘spatial’

metaphor into the proem, and suggests some sort of boundary between the two. It is clear from the

range of sources quoted within Theseus itself that the most influential Atthidographers did not accept a

firm boundary between mythical and historical material, and passed within their works from one to the
69
other. Plutarch shares that intellectual outlook. For this continuity of conception to work, closely

related sorts of thing must – on the whole – have been going on in the ‘mythical’ past as in the fifth

century and the first century BC: they must at least be parts of the same story. That does not sound as if
70
the two sorts of material commanded ‘different sorts of belief ’.

That ‘on the whole’, though, is important. We have also seen ways in which Plutarch implies that

things were different; an essential continuity of history is compatible with an awareness of the possibility
71
of substantial change (an insight we can also trace in Plutarch’s treatment of later history). Perhaps

there were bad people who flourished, perhaps Amazons did appear – though even here we noticed that

there was no firm break from the assumptions followed in later periods and other Lives, only a

difference of emphasis and degree. If the element of the divine can finally not be resisted in Romulus,
72
that too does not mark a total difference from later history; it cannot be resisted in Caesar either.

Certainly, matters may have to be investigated with more provisionality; arguments may have to work in

a different way, slighter forms of evidence may have to be accepted. That is not full-blooded Veynism,

for Plutarch’s emphasis falls on the difficulty of knowing exactly what to believe. That is not the same as

saying that, whatever one might eventually decide to believe or whatever might turn out to have been

true, it would be belief or truth in a different sense. It does however suggest an awareness that historical

inquiry must be relative – yet not ‘relative’ in the egocentric way beloved of the assertive modern reader,

not ‘relative’ in the sense that its validity is relative to us; no, this is ‘relative’ to the texture of the

material which is being treated.

Plutarch indeed implies readers who are compliant before they are assertive; readers who are

prepared to enter into the spirit of this inquiry with a proper acquiescence, readers who will at least

begin by playing the same games as Plutarch himself, and may end by sharing some of his uncertainties.

In chapter 12 I shall say more about the complicitness of narrator and narratee which this encourages

and implies.

Notes

1
The geographical analogy of Thes. 1.1–4 suggests that the shift to Romulus is less bold than that to Theseus. Notice how insistently the

διελθóντι), that which can

analogy is pursued. To move into such territory at all is to go beyond the area which he has so far ‘traversed’ (

be ‘reached’ ( ἐϕικτóν) by factual history and where it can ‘find a firm foothold’ (βάσιμον). Now he might do what the ‘geographers’ do
and mark the area beyond as unknown. But Numa had brought him ‘close’ in time to Romulus, so he thought it reasonable to ‘go on to’

him ( προσαναβῆναι); Theseus is then selected as the natural partner. The implication seems to be that Romulus is only the other side
of the boundary; Theseus can be more distant. – Swain 1990b, 193, is technically incorrect to lump Numa with Romulus as a figure

about whom Plutarch admits there is no ‘solid information’: Thes. 1 puts Numa just this side, Romulus just the other side of the

boundary. But there is a wider sense in which there is more continuity between the Romulus material and all that followed, as I argue at

the end of this chapter.

2
On ίστορία and its meanings in Plutarch, cf. Duff 1999, 18–19 with n. 14 and bibliography cited there.
3
Flory 1990, 193 and n. 2, argues that later occurrences of are generally confined to historiographical criticism and seem

ultimately to be quotations of Thucydides’: perhaps an overstatement, but this is one of the more plausible ‘quotations’ – or at least

allusions. Flory takes the phrase in Thuc. 1.22.4 to mean ‘patriotic stories in particular and sentimental chauvinism in general’. That

seems to me wrong ( may often have been exploited by writers in that direction, but that is a different matter); Strabo’s gloss
 on as ‘material which is old, false, and full of monstrosities’ , 11.5.3) would be a better

starting-point, at least for those passages where ‘mythical’ serves historians rhetorically as a pejorative term (cf. Johansen 1999, 278–9).

But, if Flory is right, it gives even more point to this pair’s interest in tales about Athens and Rome as well as about Theseus and

Romulus. – σαϕηνείαν at Thes. 1.3 may also echo Thucydides’ σαψἐς σκοπεί̑ν at 1.22.4: so Ampolo and Manfredini 1988, xi.
4
Most memorably perhaps Gorgias 523a (cf. Veyne 1988, 131 n. 3), Phaedo 61b, Timaeus 26c–e (alluded to at Sol. 31.6), and Prot. 320c

and 324d. The Platonic material is explored helpfully by Murray 1999 and Rowe 1999: see also Calame (125–6) in the same volume,

Buxton 1999. Strangely, none of the contributors to that excellent collection mentions the Theseus passage, which touches closely on

many of their concerns. By contrast, Veyne 1988 mentions this passage on his first page, taking this process of ‘purification of myth by

logos’ as typical of one strand in Greek thought: but he does not seem to have caught the playfulness, which suggests that Plutarch’s

programme here may be ironically self-conscious and quizzically off-key rather than typical and routine.

5
Cf. below, pp. 272, 276–7 on Plutarch’s construction of different sorts of narratee, sympathetic and cross-grained.

6
We might even find an equivocation in the way Plutarch talks of ‘cleaning up’ the material by logos. If we look at his other uses of the

word ( ἐκκαθαίρεσθαί), is the process more like ‘cleaning out a ditch’ (Mar. 16.7), getting rid of the dirty material? Or like ‘polishing up
steel’ (On the Decline of Oracles 433b), leaving the substance the same but making it look better? The nearest metaphorical use may be

Table Talk 735a, ‘clarifying’ a murky sentiment of Democritus – in other words, clearing off the surface murk which makes a

formulation or a story harder to understand; but that can still leave it open whether one believes it.

7
, Lamprias catalogue 124 (Sandbach p. 6); 123 is .

8
This qualifies Gabba’s statement that ‘Plutarch’s preface to the lives of Theseus and Romulus completely denies the historicity of

Romulus and the value of the historical traditions relating to the king’ (Gabba 1991, 214, cf. 48). That is too strong. Even the preface

puts Romulus only just the other side of whatever line there is (above, n. 1), and the approach to ‘historicity’ throughout the pair is

much more complex.

9
Life of Heracles : referred to at Thes. 29.5: we have three fragments, most accessible in Sandbach’s Teubner Moralia VII (1967, 15–16), of

which the most elaborate is fr. 2 = Aul. Gell. 1.1. Roman Questions seems to date to c. 105 AD, about the time which the relative

chronology of the Lives suggests for Thes.–Rom.: Jones 1966, 70, 72, 73 = Scardigli 1995, 114, 120, 122. Cf. also p. 33 nn. 50–1; Vera

Mufioz 1990, 180–1.

10
Veyne 1988: for his own proemial use of Plutarch, cf. above, n. 4. For a thoughtful critique of Veyne’s approach see Méheust 1990,

bringing out (among other things) that the considerable number of North Americans who think they have been abducted by aliens

believe this to be ‘true’ in the most literal sense. They may or may not be wrong, but if they were right it would have happened in

exactly the same way as the rest of reality has happened. – I have benefited much from discussions of Veyne with Charles Smith.

11
Dover, HCT v. 396 n. 2: cf. pp. 156–7.

12
Momigliano, 1985, 83–92 at 87–8, discussed in ch. 6.

13
Thus he leaves myths as ‘neither true nor false’, 28, and ‘beyond matters of truth and falsehood, in an ageless past’, 46 (= ‘au-delà du

vrai et du faux, en un passé sans âge’ in the original); but notice also 84, ‘the coexistence of contradictory truths (= ‘vérités

contradictoires’) in the same mind is nonetheless a universal fact…’ but that is only because ‘truths and interests are two different terms

for the same thing’, so that ‘contradictory truths do not reside in the same mind – only different programs, each of which encloses

different truths and interests, even if these truths have the same name’, 85–6.

14
‘We know (or believe – it is the same thing) only what we have the right to know’: Veyne 1988, 92. Cf. 127, ‘Truth is the name we give

to the choices to which we cling’ (= ‘la vérité est le nom que nous donnons à nos options’), and that is why truth is ‘a work of the

constitutive imagination’, 117. The book’s subtitle is ‘Essai sur l’imagination constituante’.

15
Notably Diodorus 4.1 and 4.8 (Veyne 1988, 47–8, followed by Gabba 1991, 126–7), though Diodorus’ formulations look to be closer

to the position I am here arguing for Plutarch: ‘… For some readers adopt an unfair standard and require in the ancient myths the same

degree of exactness ( τἀκριβές) as in the events of our own time…’ ‘in general, when the histories of myths are concerned, one should

not always scrutinize the truth in so exacting a way…’ (4.8.3–4). Diodorus too finds an important continuity between these ‘histories of

myth’ (an interesting formulation) and later events, including those of his own time: cf. my concluding remarks on Plutarch in this

chapter, pp. 188–9.

16
Cf. above pp. 149 and 165–6 nn. 42–4.

17
Jacoby 1949, 136.

18
For this aetiology cf. Σ Ar. Knights 1368 and Suda s.v. λίσποι, with Mills 1997, 12 n. 40.
19
Cf. Rom. 27.4 bis, 27.6, 29.12, 32.7, 33.9–10, all of Romulus: cf. p. 185. Other eerie and mysterious/sinister destructions at e.g. Fab.

3.4, Dion 44.8, and Caesar’s ‘great daimon’ at Brut. 37.1; autocratic liquidations at Pomp. 80.6, Alex. 74.1. There is also a less charged

sense of ‘disappearances’ at sea, i.e. drownings: Duff 1999, 170 n. 40.

20
‘Doctrine’or ‘principle of present things’ (= ‘la doctrine des choses actuelles’): Veyne 1988, 14, then e.g. 27, 47, 52–3, 68, 73–4. Cf.

Stern 1999, 216–17 for Palaephatus’ application of this principle to mythical ‘rationalization’. Cf. also Jacoby 1949, 87, 133, cited by

Hunter 1982, 112; Wiseman 1979, 49.

21
The same goes for Plutarch’s long-distance psychological reconstructions, most noticeably that of Theseus’ fixation on Heracles at 6.8–

9, which is explicitly compared with the later feelings of Themistocles about Miltiades: I discuss this in ch. 14, p. 311. Cf. Larmour

1988, esp. 362–4, 366–7 for the part this psychological ‘raring to go’ plays in the Life; Duff 1999, 51 and 84 for similar psychological

pictures in other Lives. Figures of the right cast of mind in any period could think, feel, and be inspired in the same ways. Cf. also Pérez

Jiménez 2000, 235 and 239–40, and particularly 1994, 227: there he interestingly suggests that the same type of psychological

reconstruction underlies Plutarch’s recasting of Aegeus’ role in the Life, particularly his nervous fears.

22
This point complicates the use Wiseman 1979, 150–2, and 1993, 142, makes of Plutarch’s criticism of Cleidemus. He compares it

with Polybius’ criticism (3.33.17) of the circumstantial ‘precision’ used by other historians to generate a false persuasiveness. But

Plutarch is not immune to the charge himself (nor, perhaps, is Polybius); and Plutarch does not press his criticism of Cleidemus, nor

present it as ultimately decisive.

23
Thes. 5.2, 17.7, 25.3, 27.2, 27.7, 29.5, 31.2, 32.7, 34.1, Rom. 3.1, 15.5 (in a way),20.2, 35(6).5. τεκμηριον only at Rom. 30(1).3, of
inferring political background rather than identifying literal truth (contrast Thuc. 1.1.3, 1.3.3, 1.20.1, 1.21.1, 2.15.4 etc; μάρτύριον at
Thuc. 1.8.1, cf. 1.73.2).

24
For Plutarch’s source-citations in Theseus cf. Frost 1984, with a useful list on p. 71; for discussion, see also Ampolo and Manfredini

1988, xlii–lv.

25
On such proemial self-characterization, especially the projection of learning but also of diffidence, see also pp. 271–2 and 367–8.

26
This reading thus makes Plutarch’s rationalization more self-conscious and self-critical than, for instance, Frost 1984, 70 suggested in

his influential study of Plutarch’s sources: ‘In the Theseus [Plutarch] has made an honest attempt to treat the period as a historical one;

therefore all fable, all marvels, all episodes that smacked too much of the supernatural must be avoided, or at least explained in a logical

way. Given these goals, Plutarch found himself in over his depth, although he never seems to have realized it…’

27
Farrar 1988, esp. 87 ff.

28
See p. 185.

29
Thes. 16.3–4, exploiting Minos 319d, 320d–1b: see p. 187. That is the point of οντως at the beginning of 16.3, ‘it seems that it really
is [as Plato said] a hard thing to become hated by a city with a voice and a Muse.’, though Plato in fact had stressed the dangers of being

hated by an individual poet rather than a poetic city (320e). In their Teubner editions Lindskog and Ziegler scented a further quotation,

probably from poetry (‘ ϕώνην – μού̑σαν ex aliquo poeta petitum?’); Renehan 1979 saw that the elevated language is drawn not from a
poet but from Laws 666d–7a.

30
Thes. 23.1: notice especially the rhythm τò πλοί̑ον.. .ἐν ᾧ ἔπλεύσε και ̀ πάλιν ἐσώθη: the Phaedo refers to τò πλοί̑ον.. .ἐν ᾧ…
ἔσωσέ τε και ̀ αύτος ἐσώθη.
31
p. 172 and n. 3 above.

32
The different ordering is a neat touch. Theseus and Romulus are linked first because of their physical ‘power’ (2.1), but they also for

Plutarch ‘combined intelligence with that power’. For Thucydides, Theseus was not only intelligent, as Pericles was now, but also

‘combined power [when he became king] with the intelligence’, and hence was able to impose his will more readily and decisively than

Pericles could now.

33
Cf. the cases in fifth-century Lives where Plutarch corrects Thucydides’ interpretation, pp. 126–8 and 134.

34
On this see Pérez Jiménez 1994, esp. 223–5, 227–8.

35
Thes. 24.1 and 3–ί echo Thuc. 2.15.1–2, esp. 24.3 καταλύσας ούν τὰ παρ’ ἑκαστοις πρυτανεί̑α και ̀ βουλευτήρια καί ἀρχάς (~
Thuc.’sκατά πόλεις ᾠκείτο̑ πρύτάνείά τε ἐνταυ̑ θα
πρυτανείον κάί βουλευτήρια (~ Thuc.’s ἓν βουλευτήρια άποδείξάς κάί Cf. also pp. 182–3 and n. 49.
36
Cf. Larmour 1988, 368–9 for variant, less positive versions of this episode which Plutarch presumably knew and rejected. For the

Theseus of tragedy cf. esp. Mills 1997; I say a little about the Suppliant Women myself in Pelling 1997c, 230–4, and 2000,180–4.

37
Jacoby 1949, 247–8 n. 49, noticed the Platonic texturing, but assumed it was owed to a source, in his view Theophrastus. Sarkady

1969, 5, does not accept that there is anything Platonic here because the classes are so different from Plato’s; but Plutarch needs to adapt

the three classes if his political analysis is to have real bite, and combine Plato’s ‘three’ with Aristotle’s content for the classes (see the next

paragraph in the text, pp. 180–1). Aristocrats (whose power Theseus reduces), farmers (who will be forced into the city), and members

of the demos (who will turn against him) all have an important role to play. Were there less Plato elsewhere in the Life, Sarkady might

still be right to be sceptical; but the Platonic profusion makes the allusion harder to escape.

38
‘Una semplificazione eccesiva’, Ampolo and Manfredini 1988, 238: so excessive that Jacoby (see last note) denied that Plutarch could

be deriving from Ath. Pol. here. Contra, Sarkady 1969.

39
That is the picture in fr. 3 Kenyon, a division ‘before Cleisthenes’ into georgoi and demiourgoi : this was presumably introduced in the

lost first part of the Ath. Pol.

40
Rhodes 1981, 67, following Wade-Gery 1958 on the Ion suggestion; cf. also Rhodes 1981, 74–6, and on 41.2.

41
Stuart 1928, 78: cf. p. 53 above.

42
Contrast Jacoby 1949, 247–8 n. 49, finding Plutarch’s treatment incoherent: he thought that 25.1–2, stressing Theseus’ measures

against unlimited democracy, inconsistent with this inclination at 25.3 towards the demos, and assumed that Plutarch was incompetently

combining variants or abbreviating. Sarkady 1969 does not accept this, thinking that it all comes from Aristotle; but he does not deny

the incoherence, simply arguing that one should not expect anything better of Plutarch (‘Jacoby scheint in dieser Hinsicht eine so

weitgehend durchdachte, logische Kompositionsart von Plutarch zu erwarten, die für diesen Schriftsteller auch sonst gar nicht

charakteristisch ist’, 4). But nothing precludes Theseus from moving towards democracy at the same time as sensing and trying to

mitigate its dangers. Plutarch is here subtler than his critics.

43
Il. 2.552–6, 4.327, 12.331–63, 373, 13.195–6, 689–90, 15.331.

44
Page 1963, 145–7.

45
This translates Diels’ Oxford text, inserting . Other emendations or

supplements are possible, but the point will remain the same.

46
For these analyses see respectively chs. 11, 13, and 18.

47
I discuss this aspect of Marcellus more fully at Pelling 1989, 200–1; cf. Swain 1990a, 131–2, 140–2 = Scardigli 1995, 239–40, 254–9;

Duff 1999, 305–7.

48
Flam. 11, a very different emphasis from Plb. 18.44–6 and Livy 33.33.5–7. On this see pp. 243–4, 350–1, and Pelling 1997a, esp.

148–53.

49
Ampolo and Manfredini 1988, 235.
50
Gianfrancesco 1975, building on Rhet.gr. 7.5.26 W.,

Παλλαντίδων (‘Some say that the first forensic

speech was delivered by Menestheus, the general of the Athenians who also went to Troy, others say that this first speaker was Antiphon,

“For the Pallantidae against Theseus”…’).

51
I am pleased to see that Pérez Jiménez 2000 accepts this suggestion of Plutarch’s originality here (238 and n. 28), in the course of a

balanced argument which also acknowledges that fifth-century motifs had affected the Theseus legend long before Plutarch (230). For

this latter process cf. esp. Sourvinou-Inwood 1979, Calame 1990, 397–465, and Mills 1997. Calame 1990, 417, accepts that there is

fifth-century flavour- ing here, but implies that it affected the story well before Plutarch.

52
The chiastic rhythm is made explicit in the comparative epilogue, 31(2).1–3.

53
See n. 57.

54
Especially in the Lupercalia affair: see Caes. 61 and Ant. 12, with Pelling 1988, 144–7, esp. 145–6 on the Romulean elements. Fears of

Caesar’s monarchy: esp. Caes. 60.1, ο της βασίλείας ἔρως (Caesar’s ‘lust for kingship’). Humiliation of the senate: esp. Caes. 60.3–8.

This caused wider offence, ‘for the impression was given that the whole city was being trampled in the mud along with the senate’

προπηλάκιζομενης, Caes. 60.5): cf. Rom. 27.3, (Romulus) ‘seemed to be completely trampling the senate in the

mud’ .

55
Rome’s future glory, esp. Thes. 1.5, Rom. 1.1, 8.9. The Life is full of aetiologies of customs and places which ‘still today’ survive: esp.

1.3, 4.5, 5.4–5, 8.7, 9.5, 13.6, 15, 18.1, 18.6, 18.9, 19.8, 20.2, 21.2, 24.2, 25.7, 27.4. Particular later crises: Celtic conflict, 22.1 and

29.5 (see n. 57); Hannibalic War: 22.5. Other big names of the future: Augustus, 17.3; ‘Gaius Caesar’ (i.e. Caligula), 20.8; Scipio

Africanus, 27.5; ‘times of Varro’, 12.3–6. Hints of Caesar himself are more elusive, but notice that the calendar at 21.1 and the

Lupercalia at 21.4–10 introduce themes which will occur in the same order at Caes. 59 and 61; and in the context of Romulus’

disappearance, 27.4 notes – apparently incidentally – the renaming of the fifth month as ‘July’. Caesar is not there named; he does not

have to be.

56
An echo of the claim of Thucydides’ Pericles, ϕίλοσοϕούμεν άνεύ μάλάκίάς (‘we are lovers of wisdom, but without softness’, Thuc.

2.40.1), as Christina Kraus suggests to me? If so the Thucydidean intertext would again be thought-provoking, with the adaptation

capturing national characteristics. (Roman) σωϕροσύνη is a more practical pursuit than (Greek) ϕίλοσοϕίά, and the litotes άνεύ
μάλάκίάς gives way to the stronger positive μετ’ άνδρείάς.
57
Nor is it only Caesar’s crisis which Romulus anticipates: in particular, 22.2 and especially 29.4 look forward to Camillus and the great

threat to the city presented by the Celts. It is characteristic of Plutarch to recall a hero’s greatest moments at his end (pp. 375–6, Pelling

1989, 207–8), just as he here allows Romulus’ ‘purple robe’ (26.2) to recall an earlier crucial moment (14.5). At the end, though, it is

Camillus’ story which comes to recall Romulus: the role of the maids at 29.7 echoes 2.5–6, and Philotis’ signal at 29.7 evokes Tarpeia’s

treachery at 17.3. Thus Camillus’ great exploit at the end goes back to Romulus’ beginnings, and the second founder re-evokes the first.

That is further testimony to the degree to which this Life concerns Rome as a whole, not just Romulus. – My reading contrasts

markedly with that of Scheithauer 2000, who denies (512) any relation between Romulus’ character and the development of the state,

and contrasts here the Greek writers Plutarch and Dionysius with the more engaged Romans Cicero and Livy.

58
I discuss the role of the supernatural in Alexander–Caesar more fully at pp. 378–81 below.

59
Above, n. 19.

60
Scheithauer 2000, 509.

61
See pp. 378–81.

62
I say more about this in the next chapter, pp. 198–200. For the shifting balance in this and other epilogues, cf. Duff 1999, 253 and n.

36, 257–8.

63
See above, pp. 7–10 and 33 n. 50. Thes,–Rom. group in positions VI–IX: Jones 1966, 66–7 = Scardigli 1995, 106–9; Piccirilli 1980;

van der Valk 1982, 303–7.

64
For this suggestion cf. Marsoner 1995–6, suggesting (39, cf. 47) that the Theseus proem might serve as a proem for a (reordered) whole

series. That is more doubtful: in that case Plutarch would probably not have drawn attention to the original sequence of publication

(‘after I had published my account of Lycurgus the law-giver and Numa the king…’). But it can still play an important role in the

whole.

65
On this see ch. 16, esp. pp. 359–61.

66
Thus Mossman 1992 cautiously but convincingly suggests that Demetrius, Eumenes, and Pyrrhus are to be read not merely with a

general knowledge of Alexander, but specifically with the Life of Alexander in mind; Harrison 1995 argues that Demetrius–Antony and

Agesilaus–Pompey are to be read with a knowledge of Alexander–Caesar.

67
Drumann–Groebe 1899–1929.

68
On the ‘generic’ closeness of those Lives to history cf. Duff 1999, 19–20; Pelling 1997a, 127–8; and especially Ash 1997, 190–1, for

sensible caution about drawing conclusions about the whole series from Galba and Otho. I return to questions of the ‘genre’ of the

Parallel Lives in Pelling (forthcoming) (a).

69
Humphreys 1997, 218 n. 46 is sceptical about any firm distinction in the historians between ‘myth’ and ‘history’ I agree (Pelling 1999,

333 and n. 30). See also von Leyden 1949/50 and Calame 1999, 135 n. 24, with further bibliography.

70
Though Veyne could retort that this is simply to make Plutarch one of those ‘rationalist thinkers’ who are insensitive to the rich

multiplicity of popular belief. That still seems to me a subtlety too far, when Plutarch’s own text shows such alertness to the uncertainties

and precariousness of any ‘rationalizing’ programme.

71
I return to this theme in ch. 10, especially pp. 242–3.

72
Cf. also Swain 1989c on the other ways in which Plutarch recurrently associates divine involvement with the great events of Rome’s

history.
 8

DIONYSIAC DIAGNOSTICS: SOME HINTS OF DIONYSUS IN

PLUTARCH’S LIVES

It is the year 41 BC. Mark Antony, the victor of Philippi, has crossed to

Asia:

Kings thronged to his door, and their wives gave themselves to be

seduced, vying with one another in their gifts and their beauty. While

Octavian was being worn away in Rome by civic dissent and fighting,

Antony himself enjoyed infinite leisure and peace, and his passions soon

carried him round again to his old life. Men like the lyre-player

Anaxenor, the flute-accompanist Xuthus, a dancer called Metrodorus –

and indeed a whole troupe (thiasos) of such people, offering all the

musical pleasures of Asia and even outdoing in their brazenness and

buffoonery the pests which had come from Italy – all flooded in on him

and took over his court. It was intolerable. Everything which came in

was spent on things like this, and all Asia, like that city of Sophocles,

was laden with incense,

‘laden with paeans and moans of despair’.

At any rate, when he entered Ephesus, the women dressed as Bacchants

and the men and boys as Satyrs and Pans, and all marched in procession

before him; the whole city was full of ivy, thyrsus wands, harps, pipes,

and flutes, and the people hailed him as Dionysus, god of Grace and

Gentleness. And so he was for some: but to most he was the Dionysus

of Savagery and Wildness…

(Ant. 24.1–5)

robbing innocents of their possessions and presiding over a torn,

shattered, exhausted land.

So much of Plutarch’s Dionysus is caught by that passage. There is

the release in the middle of desperate hardship; there is the hint not

merely of drink and excess but also of the theatre (even if Plutarch has
1
misinterpreted the ‘paeans’ of the Sophoclean passage); there is the

infectiousness, with all rushing instinctively to play their part, and the

leader Antony responding in kind. But above all there is the

multiplicity, with Antony responding not merely in kind but in kinds –

the giver of grace and gentleness to some, but for most the Dionysus of

savagery and wildness.

Two chapters later we have Cleopatra’s marvellous arrival, draped as

Aphrodite on her barge;

and the word spread among everyone, that Aphrodite was come in

revelry to Dionysus, for the good of Asia.

(Ant. 26.5)

It is a sacred marriage, a ιερος γάμος, which should guarantee the

prosperity and health of the continent; and yet ‘for the good of Asia’ is

tragic delusion. The consequences of this idyllic scene will be

devastating.

These many forms of Dionysus offered Plutarch rich possibilities for

presenting his more multifaceted characters, and it is notable how the

Lives richest in Dionysiac allusions and imagery tend to be those most

thought-provoking and problematic in their moral assessment –

including some even more thought-provoking and problematic than

Antony itself. Dionysus is ‘good to think with’.

Let us begin by returning to Theseus, discussed in the last chapter. In

that Life Dionysus does not quite appear as a character but he is at least

not far away in the Ariadne panel, 19–23. Those chapters are rich in

variants, but Plutarch never airs the most popular variant of all, the

version that Theseus abandoned Ariadne and Dionysus rescued and

married her (or alternatively that she was already married to Dionysus

when Theseus seduced her). The nearest we come to that is, first, the

version of 20.1, where Ariadne goes on to live with a priest of Dionysus;

and, secondly, that of 20.8–9, where there are two Ariadnes, one

married to Dionysus and the mother of Staphylos and Oenopion (in an

earlier variant these two were treated as Theseus’ own children, 20.2,

despite their roisteringly Dionysiac names), and a second who was the
2
victim of Theseus’ lust and faithlessness. The standard version would

be too mythical, too unrationalized for this Life whose trademark is (as

we explored in the last chapter) ‘purifying away the mythical and

making it look like history’, at least where that is possible (1.5–6). But

there remain some further hints of the Dionysiac in the context,

especially the two androgynous but dangerous youths who, in the final

and highly rationalized version at 23.2–5, pose as two of the sacrificial

maidens and play their part in defeating the Cretans, and are duly

celebrated ever after by sacrifices to Dionysus and Ariadne.

So even here, where Dionysus as a character is excluded by the

demythologizing programme, the Dionysiac flavouring survives; and it

accompanies themes which we will find to be recurrent in Plutarch’s

more Dionysiac moments. First, the very profusion of Ariadne variants

reflects the difficulty in pinning down the factual and moral truth about

Theseus (another theme which I discussed in the last chapter): some of

these variants are quite generous to Theseus (notably that of 20.3–7,

and in a slightly odd way Rom. 30(1).6–7 defends too), but most are

not. Secondly, Theseus’ treatment of Ariadne reflects a wider concern of

the Life, for Theseus’ unsatisfactory behaviour towards women plays a
3
large part in generating Plutarch’s overall moral ambivalence. The

treatment of Helen is here central (31). This question of sexual

behaviour is highlighted in the final chapter of the Synkrisis, with

strikingly harsh words: Theseus emerges as even more sexually

unsatisfactory than Romulus, architect of the Rape of the Sabine

Women. That final chapter culminates in the breathtaking judgement

that Theseus’ birth was contrary to the will of the gods (Rom. 35(6).7),

an amazing emphasis for a figure who served as a focus for such national

and civic pride.

That terminal judgement is picking up the warning given by Delphi

to Aegeus: do not loosen your wine-flask before returning to Athens

(3.5–6). Once again one notices the Dionysiac motif. It is reinforced by

some interesting thematic patterning, for that is a scene in which Aegeus

goes on to behave as badly with women as his son will do later, seducing

the daughter of his host Pittheus. Then the ‘loosing of the wine-flask’ is

itself picked up later in the dashing of the young Theseus’ poisoned

kylix from his lips as Aegeus recognizes him, 12.2–6, and also in the

further wine-skin oracle at 24.4–6, presaging the height of Theseus’

4
political achievement. So once again the Dionysiac becomes an element

within a thought-provoking thematic pattern, in this case one which

prepares for the most paradoxical moral judgement of the whole Life.

One further point. In that passage where the cup is dashed from

Theseus’ lips (12.2–6), it is Medea who is trying to poison the boy. The

hints of Euripides’ tragedy, with its further suggestions of Aegeus’

original oracle, are not far to seek: and this leads us into the role of

tragedy in this Life.

On the whole, it is part of the Life’s demythologizing programme to

distance itself from ‘tragic’ versions. Usually τράγ- and τράγίκ- roots are
dismissive, with Plutarch rejecting theatrical versions in favour of his
5
more ‘historical’ narratives: 1.3, 2.3, 15.2, 29.4. The panel at 28–9

(containing material on Amazons, other women, and sundry labours

and achievements) is particularly interesting here, with several tragic

versions dismissed in quick succession. Yet one version is not there

rejected, and that is the story, familiar to us from Euripides’ Hippolytus,

6
that in a fit of rage Theseus cursed his own son. The reference to this at

28.3 admittedly looks curt: ‘as for his misfortunes relating to Phaedra

and his son, given that there is no discrepancy between historians and

tragedians, we should assume that it happened in the way they all say’.

Yet the memory of that cursing is expected to be secure enough in the

audience’s mind for an important point to be built on it, most allusively,

in the synkrisis at Rom. 32(3).2. The distancing from tragedy cannot be

total: Theseus’ life and conduct were, in part, ‘tragic’.

 It is interesting here to dwell on the reflection of 16.3, ‘it is a hard

thing to incur the hatred of a city which possesses a voice and a Muse’.

The character in point there is Minos, who ‘for evermore was reviled

and slandered in the Athenian theatres’, so that the original truth about

the just king became travestied. But there may be a wider point too. Is

there a hint here that Theseus’ inflation was as influenced by the Attic

theatrical tradition, so often dismissed in this Life, as Minos’

7
denigration?

Whatever we think about that, the recurrent interplay of history and

tragedy in the Life again touches on a theme which will recur elsewhere:

the way in which the theatrical, as well as the releasing, aspects of

Dionysus are recurrently hinted and explored in those Lives in which

the Dionysiac element is most pronounced, and where moral judgement

is most exploratory and balanced.

The world of Rome afforded a wide range of contrasts which could be

phrased in a suggestive Dionysiac register: a world where drunken

excesses were rife, but where grauitas, sobriety, and restraint were prized

as ancestral virtues; a world where the private excesses of the great often

had shattering consequences on thousands of subjects; and, in Plutarch’s

presentational strategy, a world where comparison with Greek

experience, including experience drawing on tragedy, provides a

consistently stimulating point of reference and departure.

Wine itself provided a focus for many of Plutarch’s moral

preoccupations: a test of self-control, an opportunity for civilized and

humane exchanges, a revelation of the true character within. Sometimes,

as in Camillus, the contrast of Roman sobriety and control with

barbarian drunkenness and self-destruction can be relatively simple

(Cam. 15.3–4, 20.2, 23.6–7, 35.4, 41.2). But even cases which are

prima facie similar, such as Cato Maior, can be more thought-provoking.

The elder Cato prided himself on restraint, and a recurrent index of

8
this is his moderation in wine-drinking. That stress on vinous restraint

is then focused in a contrast between the murderous symposium of

Lucius Flamininus which Cato punished so rigorously (17.1–5) and his

own sober, indeed very strict symposia (21.3–4, 25.4). But there are two

passages, one at the end of the Life and one in the comparison with

Aristides, which offer a new, re-orienting perspective on such

ostentatious austerity, inviting us to reassess the Life rather radically.

The more straightforward example is that in the epilogue, where Cato’s

preoccupation with prudent moneymaking, treated sympathetically in

9
the Life itself, is suddenly made to seem less clear a strength.

I should like to put the question to Cato himself. If wealth is something

to be enjoyed, why pride yourself on owning a lot and being content

with a moderate amount? And if indeed it is a fine thing – and it is – to

be content with whatever bread comes to hand and drink the same wine

as workmen and servants, and to feel no need for purple or stuccoed

houses, then Aristides and Epaminondas and Manius Curius and Gaius

Fabricius did not fall short in any way when they were unconcerned to

obtain things whose need they rejected. (Aristides–Cato 31(4).4)

The more interesting passage comes in the closing chapter of the

narrative itself. We have reached the dispute between Cato and Scipio

Nasica on the future of Carthage: Carthago delenda est, or Carthago non

delenda? Scipio’s reasoning is developed with sympathy (though there

10
may well be a subtle Greek re-texturing of Roman metus hostilis):

And there was one thing which was already too violent of Cato – to end

any speech he was making on any topic by adding ‘it seems to me that

Carthage should be destroyed’. Publius Scipio responded in kind:

whenever he was called on he always declared ‘it seems to me that

Carthage should survive’. It seems that Scipio could see that the demos

was already going astray through hubris and was becoming hard for the

boule to handle because of its prosperity and its spirit, and that the city

as a whole was so powerful that it was being forcibly dragged in

whatever direction its momentum took it: so he wished this fear, at

least, to hang over the city as a sort of bridle to chasten the citizens’

brashness ( θράσύτή”), thinking that Carthage was too weak to

overcome Rome but too strong to be despised. Cato, on the other hand,

thought this very point terrible (or ‘frightening’, δέίνον) – that a people
that was plunged in Bacchic revelry and tottering in many respects

through its power should have hanging over it a city that was always

great, and had now been brought to sobriety ( νήφούσάν) by its disasters
and had been punished, and that Rome should fail to eradicate all

dangers to the empire to leave itself free to repair its domestic mistakes.

(Cato Maior 27.2–4)

Anyone familiar with Plutarch would find it surprising if the issue

were totally clear-cut. Both visionaries are given powerful language and

imagery, and in some ways both are talking sense. Cato’s language,

unsympathetic to Bacchic excesses, is what we would expect from the

punisher of Lucius Flamininus. But still Scipio Nasica seems clearly the

winner: that is made clear by the way Plutarch introduces it, ‘and there

was one thing which was already too violent of Cato.’. Plutarch’s readers

would also know what happened later; they would be quite clear that, if

the idea of destroying Carthage was to leave Rome free to deal with her

domestic distempers, it had not worked. The end of Flamininus derives

interesting moral capital from Titus Flamininus’ hounding of

11
Hannibal; Cato is here equally questionable for his similarly

unyielding anti-Carthaginian feeling, that determination to destroy

Rome’s great adversary. As so often, the great man’s rigidity is

understandable, even in a way admirable, but it is carried too far.

So, once again, the most Dionysiac language of the Life is reserved

for the moment where the moral problematic is at its most intense.

There is more to Dionysus, and to Dionysiac imagery, than

drunkenness and wine; we should return to the importance of Dionysus

as god of the tragic theatre, and the frequency with which these

suggestions combine with those of Dionysiac excesses. Judith Mossman

has recently brought out the importance of Dionysiac tragic self-

destruction to Alexander, David Braund and Alexei Zadorojnyi that of

Dionysiac theatricality and brutality to Crassus, and Rhiannon Ash that

12
of Dionysiac dismemberment to the decapitation theme of Galba.

Alexander is the more suggestive case for our present concerns, in

particular the interaction of vinous excesses and theatrical motifs in the

closing chapters.

Alexander is rich in Dionysiac imagery, from the involvement of

Olympias in ‘Dionysiac ecstatic rites’ at 2.7–9 through to Alexander’s

Dionysiac eastern process across Carmania at 67 (the latter evoking the

familiar idea of Dionysus as the great Eastern conqueror and Alexander

as his successor). Particularly interesting, though, is the notion that

Dionysus will take vengeance on Alexander for his treatment of Thebes:

Later however the catastrophe of Thebes is said to have made him often

more indulgent to many others. And indeed he was accustomed to

attribute to the wrath and vengeful indignation of Dionysus his

treatment of Cleitus, drunken as it was, and the cowardly refusal of the

Macedonians to fight the Indi, abandoning as they did his campaign

and his glory while they were still incomplete. No Theban later made

any request to him without gaining it…

(Alex. 13.3–5)

That passage gives no more than hints of how Dionysus exercises

13
that wrath (or, to be more precise, how Alexander thought he did).

The mention of the Indi suggests Dionysus’ own protection of a

favoured race, with an irrational mental surge injected into the

Macedonians themselves in Dionysiac fashion; the Cleitus episode

seems to point to a more naturalistic register, through Alexander’s own

drunken excesses. And certainly the drunken register recurs frequently.

Initially Plutarch treats the theme generously, as in the drunken komos

where Theodectes’ statue is showered with garlands (17.9) and in the

rather strained defence of Alexander against the charge of over-

indulgence (23); but soon the motif recurs more destructively, in the

great series of disquieting episodes at the core of the life. Wine thus

plays a part in the Thais story (38) and the Philotas episode (48.5) as
well as the murder of Cleitus (50); and then drunkenness is an

important element in the macabre description of Alexander’s final illness

and death (esp. 69.6, 72.2, 75.5–6).

In those final chapters another Dionysiac note also becomes felt,

with the recurrent theatrical motifs: first the scene of Bagoas in the

theatre in Gedrosia (67.8), then lots of theatrical events in Ecbatana

(72.1) – indeed, Hephaestion drinks himself to death while his doctor is

away in the theatre at one of them (72.2). True, Plutarch distances

himself from the more sensationalist treatments of Alexander’s death,

put together by those who ‘thought that this sort of thing was necessary,

as if they were making up a tragic and pathetic exit for a great drama’

(75.5): but, as Mossman has stressed, the emphasis there falls on the

‘making up’, πλάσάντες. 14

Plutarch’s own treatment is tragic and

theatrical enough, without the need for sensationalist fabrication; and in

his narrative the tragic aspect of Dionysus is fundamental to Alexander’s

death. In Hephaestion’s case the theatrical and the vinous are both

relevant, and that is also true, in a wider sense, of Alexander himself. As

Mossman stressed, it is Alexander’s tragedy that he self-destructs, like so

many tragic heroes before him. The vinous is one important way in

which that self-destruction articulates itself; another is the strange,

unreal, chilling mentality which invades Alexander in these final days, a

royal and more deadly equivalent of that cowardice which crept over his

troops amongst the Indi. This, finally, is Dionysus’ revenge; and several

of his different facets – the riotous excess, the theatricality, the mental

invasiveness, the tragical self-destruction – come together in

orchestrating his victim’s death. The destructions of Alexander and

Pentheus have something in common.

This provides a useful register for revisiting Demetrius–Antony. In my

1988 commentary on Antony I naturally stressed the importance of

Dionysus as a linking theme in both Lives, with both Demetrius

(Demetr. 2) and Antony imitating, even impersonating Dionysus, then

the god abandoning Antony (Ant. 75); I also stressed the theatrical

imagery throughout the pair; and I naturally dwelt on the vinous

excesses. I discussed the hints of Antony’s mental disintegration,

especially as he confronts the disaster not merely of Actium, but of how

15
he has behaved at Actium (esp. 66.7, 67.1–6). But I now wish I had

placed these various themes more firmly in a Dionysiac context. It is

Dionysus who brings all these themes together, and here too, as in

Alexander, the registers of the vinous excesses and the theatrical

interestingly merge. We might begin by thinking of a reader, of this pair

as of Alexander, asking how Dionysus is going to be most relevant – in

Alexander how he will orchestrate his revenge, in this pair which of the

many facets will be the dominant. But we will not be surprised if we fail
to reach a single and simple answer, given Dionysus’ capacity to blur

and complicate any clear-cut distinctions.

In both Demetrius and Antony the natural first suspicion is that

Dionysus’ significance will be in the individuals’ excesses, and in

important senses that remains the case. True, in Demetrius it for a time

seems possible to keep excesses and industry in separate life-

compartments, so that Demetrius can fit the stereotype of the man of

action who relaxes riotously; several times Plutarch emphasizes that

Demetrius’ excesses never harmed his military efficiency (Demetr. 2.3,

19.4–10, cf. the synkrisis at Ant. 90(3) ). The same is true at times of

Antony, at least in his pre-Cleopatra days, and his capacity for convivial

comradeship with his troops is a homosocial strength (esp. Ant. 4). Even

after his first meeting with Cleopatra he can cast off his infatuation with

Cleopatra ‘as if he had slept off a hangover’, ωωσπέρ έξύπνίσθέίς κάί

άποκράίπάλήσάς, 30.3. But it is in the nature of Dionysus to resist

restraint and compartmentalisation; even with Demetrius, then more

decisively with Antony, the categories become catastrophically blurred,

and private debauchery impinges on public competence. At 9.5–7

Demetrius secretly meets the beautiful Cratesipolis, and makes an

undignified escape when surprised by his enemies; at 44.8 the

Macedonians refuse to toil any longer to keep him in luxury. All is well

for Antony as long as he shares the jokes and the conviviality with his

troops:

Even things which seemed vulgar to other people – his boasting, his

jests, his undisguised bouts of drinking, his practice of sitting down

beside his men at their meals or standing to eat at the soldiers’ common

table – all this created an extraordinary affection and longing for him

among the troops. His erotic pursuits, too, were not without their

charm ( ήν δέ πού κάί το έρωτίκον ούκ άνάφροδίτον), and these won

many over to his support, as he helped them in their love affairs and

accepted with good grace the jokes about his own.

(Ant. 4.4–5)

So the Dionysiac and the Aphrodisiac are already coming together,

as they do later in his meeting with Cleopatra (26.5: above, pp. 197–8).

But then all the jokes, all the revelry begin to be shared with Cleopatra;

and Antony’s love-life ceases to be the bonding, laughing matter with

his men that we see in this early phase (‘accepted with good grace the

jokes about his own’). It is that development which eventually drives the

wedge between Antony and his own men, and leaves him abandoned

and destroyed at the end.

When Shakespeare took up Plutarch’s treatment of Antony he

concentrated on Hercules, not Dionysus, as Antony’s god; he had his

16
own reasons for that, but thereby he obscured an important
dimension of Plutarch’s original. For there is more of Dionysus than of

Heracles in Plutarch’s Life. We have already seen the hailing of Antony

as Dionysus at Ephesus (24.4: Plutarch is the only author to put

Antony’s association with Dionysus so early, and it is more likely that

17
historically it began two years later, in 39 rather than 41 Bc). As time

went on Antony became known as the ‘New Dionysus’ (60.5), and

showed appropriate favour to the Artists of Dionysus (56.7). Yet

eventually, and most movingly and marvellously, the god abandons

Antony, in an eerie thiasos (75).

Even before that there had been many disquieting omens; one had

been at Athens, when a statue of Dionysus had fallen into the theatre

(60.5): and once again, as with Alexander, we see that the theatrical and

the vinous sides of Dionysus interweave. They had done the same at the

end of Demetrius : his end was certainly drunken, but it is also

distinctively tragic – ‘his burial too had a certain tragic and theatrical

aspect’ (Demetr. 53.1); then the transition into Antony is ‘now the

Macedonian drama is complete, it is time to bring on that of Rome’

(53.10). The end of Antony shows a similar rhythm. We have known for

some time that Antony ‘wears his tragic mask for Rome, his comic for

Alexandria’ (Ant. 29.4); now the Alexandrian donations appear ‘tragic,

arrogant, full of hatred for Rome’ (54.5); and the last words of the pair,

Antony ‘took himself off ’ (93(6).4), also point to the tragic theatricality

of his fall.

That is the mask of Dionysus which faces us at the end; and one

element that binds the mix of different themes and different audience

responses – disapproval but also engagement in the open frankness of

the excesses, the sense of the tragic frailty which Antony shares with the

rest of humanity, the shock at the destructiveness of a single pair’s

excesses – is nothing but Dionysus himself, that god who is so

multifaceted, so receptive, and yet so lethal.

Recent studies of Greek tragedy have made much of Dionysus as the

18
god of the tragic festival. Dionysus, we are told, frequently mediates in

tragedy between opposites: male and female, salvation and destruction,

savagery and civilization – nothing could show that better than the

Dionysus of Euripides’ Bacchae. ‘Mediates’, it must be emphasized,

rather than ‘reconciles’: tragic Dionysus allows for the simultaneous

presence in the same person or phenomena of apparent opposites.

If we find something of the same in Plutarch’s Dionysus, that need

not imply that Plutarch’s own characters combine opposed or

contradictory traits; on the contrary, Plutarch tends to favour what I

elsewhere call ‘integrated’ characters – that is, not stereotypes nor

unidimensional figures, but ones where the various character traits

cluster naturally, so that each trait tends to predict the next and we are
 19
not presented with jarring or paradoxical combinations. One might

even see Dionysus as advancing this integration: it is Dionysus’ own

divine personality which means that a character’s vinousness can cluster

naturally with theatricality, or with spasmodic mental derangement.

But, even if characters themselves are ‘integrated’, they can still generate

paradoxically contrary consequences – the exuberant joy but also the

outrage and devastation which Antony and Cleopatra brought to those

around them; and they can certainly generate challengingly conflicting

responses in readers, as awareness of a character’s strengths carries with it

insight into his or her weaknesses, and engagement and admiration

jostle in our minds with disquiet and disapproval. It is no coincidence

that assessment is at its least clear-cut and most equivocal when the

hints of Dionysus are loudest.

Plutarch indeed found Dionysus ‘good to think with’: in particular,

good for thinking about people, particularly those people whom he

found most ethically fascinating.

Notes

1
As I argued in my commentary: Pelling 1988, 178–9.

2
Then there is a further hint in the synkrisis, Rom. 30(1).7): if Ariadne fell in love with

Theseus ‘I myself would say that she was genuinely worthy of a god’s love, if she has such an

affection for the beautiful and the good and such a love for the best’.

3
On this moral complexity, and the part played in it by delaying the material on the early

rapes, see also pp. 311–12.

4
The oracle too has interesting thematic parallels: Apollo refers to ‘my father’ (Zeus) as he

addresses Theseus’ father Aegeus. Then κλωστήράς (‘threads’) links with the preceding panel
of Ariadne and the labyrinth: this is to be the next achievement in a thematically connected

series, but will be a less morally problematic one.

5
Just as ‘tragic’ or ‘theatrical’ imagery usually has a negative tinge: cf. Wardman 1974, 170–3;

Mossman 1988, 84–5 and n. 6 = Scardigli 1995, 212 and n. 6; Zadorojnyi 1997a, 169–70;

Duff 1999, 125–6 and n. 89.

6
Cf. Wiseman 1993, 130, though we should not take as typical Plutarch’s acquiescence here in

the historicity of a tragic plot; Larmour 1988, 374.

7
On this (Platonic) passage cf. p. 187, where I also suggest a further sense in which ‘tragedy’

may be misleading the reader in this Life.

8
This moderation of the elder Cato may be an intertextual referent in Cato Minor, a Life

where memories of Cato’s sober ancestor often offer a relevant register for comparison, and

which problematizes the younger Cato’s drinking habits (6) along with some aspects of his

marital sexuality: cf. p. 103.

9
I return to this passage in ch. 12 at p. 275, and discuss the triangle of interrogator (Plutarch),

interrogated (Cato), and narratee (reader); cf. also p. 312, and Pelling 1989,214–15.

10
As I argue in ch. 9, p. 225.

11
See pp. 351–2 and Pelling 1997a, 249–52, 313–18.
12
Mossman 1988; Braund 1993; Zadorojnyi 1997a; Ash 1997; cf. also Mossman 1992 and

Braund 1997 on Pyrrhus. Cf. pp. 97–8 and 111 n. 27, and p. 296 on tragic imagery in

Lysander and the importance of a Dionysiac setting for Lysander’s death.

13
The emphasis here, focalizing the idea through Alexander’s own nervous unease at what he

has done, itself offers a naturalistic as well as a demonic register in which, if we chose, we

could explain the later recurrence of the Dionysiac theme. That is relevant to the uncertainty

in Alex.–Caes. on the degree to which the divine is really involved as an explanatory factor (a

theme I develop in ch. 17, pp. 378–82); it also allows a further level on which psychic

invasion is possible. Dionysus may genuinely be ‘invading’ the troops among the Indi; or

‘invading’ Alexander, in making him think in this way; or it may all be self-generated delusion

of Alexander in any case. We cannot know: as so often in matters Dionysiac, clear-cut

distinctions are impossible.

14
Mossman 1988, 91 (= Scardigli 1995, 224–5).

15
Pelling 1988, esp. 21–2, 123–4, 137–40, 177–81, 195, 209, 241, 257–8, 284–7,303–4.

16
Pelling 1988, 123–4.

17
Pelling 1988, 179–80.

18
In particular, see the collections of articles in Winkler and Zeitlin 1990, with the critique of

Griffin 1998, and Carpenter and Faraone 1993. Naturally, I can here do no more than

summarize dogmatically and enigmatically an insight which recurs, in subtle, varied, and

partly conflicting ways, in a number of sophisticated studies by different scholars.

19
I develop this idea particularly in chs. 13 and 14: at pp. 334–5 n. 77 I acknowledge that

apparent disharmonies can coexist, but suggest that such figures remain more predictably

inconsistent than modern counterparts.

 9

PLUTARCH AND ROMAN POLITICS

I. Biography and politics

Is Plutarch really interested in Roman politics? After all, he is writing biography, not history; and there

are certainly times when he disclaims any interest in describing historical background. That sort of
1
thing, he says, may be left to the writers of continuous histories; it is often the little things, the words
2
and the jests, which reveal a man’s character, not the great battles or the sieges of cities. ‘Often’ the little

things, we should notice: often, not always. Plutarch’s biography is a very flexible genre, and his interest

in historical background is one of the things which vary. Sometimes he does write very personal Lives,

sketching the historical setting in only the vaguest lines: Crassus, for instance; or Antony, which somehow

or other describes the politics of the two years from summer 44 to summer 42 without even mentioning

Brutus and Cassius; or Cato Minor, where he contrives to describe the formation of the triple alliance of

60 BC without naming Crassus. But there are other Lives where his interest in history is very clear

indeed, and he is evidently concerned to present the same sort of analysis as those ‘writers of continuous

history’ – though he naturally sets about it in rather different ways.

Caesar is a good example. As we saw in chapter 4 (pp. 103–5), Plutarch is there very concerned to

explain Caesar’s rise to tyranny – the ‘absolute power’, as he says in the last chapter, ‘which he had

sought all his life; and he saw only its name, and the perils of its reputation’ (Caes. 69.1, cf. 57.1). What

forces carried him to this power? Plutarch’s answer is a clear one. From the beginning, Caesar is the

champion and the favourite of the Roman demos. When they support him, he rises; when he loses their
3
favour, he falls. In the early chapters, the demos encourage him to become first in the state. When

Caesar revives the flagging ‘Marian faction’, this too is brought into the same analysis: his opponents

denounce the display of Marian imagines as ‘an attempt to win over the demos’ (6.1–3), while the

admirers of the display encourage him to great ambitions: the demos, they say, will support him as he
4
goes on to conquest and supremacy (6.7). Caesar spends lavishly on the people, and they seek ‘new

commands and new honours’ to repay him (5.9, cf. 4.4–9) – an interesting foreshadowing of the

spectacular and odious honours they vote him, and resent voting him, at the end of his life. Plutarch

comments that, at the beginning, Caesar’s outlays are purchasing the greatest of prizes cheaply (5.8, cf.

4.8); and, at first, the optimates are wholly deceived (4.6–9, 5.8). It is only gradually that ‘the senate’

comes to realize the danger; and it is indeed ‘the senate’, described like that, which is seen as Caesar’s
5
enemy. Caesar is duly victorious, and becomes tyrant – and it is then that he begins to lose his crucial

popular support. The Lupercalia outrage, for example, is carefully presented at 60–1 in a way which

dwells on the people’s reactions, and especially their final dismay; and we can see, I think, that this is a
6
passage where he is rewriting and reinterpreting what stood in his source. (Appian, Suetonius, and

Plutarch’s parallel account in Antony all seem to draw on the same source-material as the Caesar –

probably the account of Asinius Pollio – but none of these versions carries the same popular emphasis.)

It is duly ‘the masses’, οί πολλοί, who turn to Brutus and Cassius. Caesar is now left vulnerable, and is
killed; but the popular fervour then immediately erupts once more, and the victim is the luckless ‘Cinna
7
the poet’ (68).

So intense an interest in historical explanation is not of course typical; but it is not wholly isolated,

either. The Lives of the Gracchi, for example, again show Plutarch very eager to relate the brothers’

policies and destinies to the attitudes of the urban demos. Marius and Cicero are both concerned to

explain their subjects’ rises – what forces and what combinations of support enabled such men to
8
overcome the obstacles which, Plutarch knew, confronted a new man at Rome. So, in a different way, is

Cato Maior, though the sort of explanation he there offers is rather more sonorous and less convincing:

the Roman people were greater in those days and worthier of great leaders, and so they joyfully chose a

man of austerity to be their consul and rejected the demagogues who were his rivals (Cato Mai. 16.8, cf.

Aem. 11.3–4). Less our sort of historical explanation, perhaps, but still a historical generalization

intended to make a surprising success more intelligible. But other Lives are less interested in historical

themes. Sulla is conspicuously less concerned with history than Marius : when historical points are made

in Sulla, they are introducing notions which are simply useful for our moral estimate of Sulla’s character.

Generals by now had to spend large sums on bribing their armies, and so it was not surprising that Sulla

was harder on Greece than men like Aemilius Paullus or Titus Flamininus – though Sulla himself must

equally take some blame for encouraging and accelerating the decline (Sulla 12.9–14). Rome was by

now so decayed a city that Sulla found it easier to stand out there than Lysander at Sparta (Sulla

39(1).2–7). We are some way from the simple interest in making careers historically intelligible which

we find in Marius or Caesar.

 And, when Plutarch’s mind is not primarily focused on history, he is capable of saying some very

odd things. Crassus, for example, is a peculiarly lightweight and anecdotal Life. Plutarch evidently

decided – wisely enough – that it was simply impossible to write a serious historical biography of

Crassus. The weight of that Life falls on the great narrative set-pieces: the exciting escape from Marius

and Cinna, the war against Spartacus, then the great Parthian disaster.

The political aspects are dismissed very quickly: a notably trivial account of the consulship of 70 BC,

9
then all the political history of 60–56 – about which Plutarch by now knew a great deal – dismissed in

a single woolly chapter (14). The most substantial political analysis is in fact introduced in a digression,

placed just before the Spartacus war. It is evidently supposed to provide some guide to the entire twenty

years which followed.

Rome was divided into three powers [ δυναμεις – a very odd phrase], those of Pompey, Caesar, and

Crassus: for Cato’s reputation was greater than his power, and he was more admired than effective. And

the wise and sound part of the state supported Pompey, while the excitable and reckless followed the

hopes aroused by Caesar; Crassus stood in the middle, exploiting both sides, continually changing his

position in the state, not reliable in his friendships nor irreconcilable in his feuds, readily abandoning

both gratitude and hostility when it was expedient for him to do so.

(Crassus 7.7)

That is an extraordinary thing to say. It would be hard to find any period when this analysis – Pompey

as the establishment figure, Caesar the popularis, Crassus the inconsistent trimmer – bore much relation

to reality; least of all does it fit the part of the Life where we find it, when we are still deep in the

seventies. Plutarch knows very well that Caesar only became important ten years later: he makes that
10
clear in both Pompey and Caesar. He knows that Pompey never really enjoyed the confidence of this

‘wise and sound part of the state’ (as he puts it here): indeed, in Pompey he makes it clear that it was only

late in the fifties – after Crassus’ death, and hence beyond the scope of Crassus itself – that the optimates

came to any real understanding with Pompey, and that it was the popular support for Pompey which
11
was important in the first period of his life, down to 60 BC. The account in Pompey of the shared

consulship of 70 BC makes the contrast with the Crassus passage clear. In Pompey, Plutarch is concerned

to explain the historical background, and he says that ‘Crassus had the greater strength in the senate,

whereas Pompey enjoyed great power among the people’ (Pomp. 22.3) – note, incidentally, that

characteristic boule–demos analysis again. That is quite irreconcilable with the Crassus passage, which

made Pompey the establishment figure and Crassus the trimmer. In Crassus he is prepared to give the

different analysis – cruder and less satisfactory though it is – because it aids the characterization of the

Life. Crassus is there the shrewd manipulator, unscrupulously exploiting everyone he can in the interests

of his own ambition and (particularly) greed. ‘The middle’, now supporting one side and now the other,

is the right place for him. That view of Crassus himself is, of course, not without some truth; but it is a

far less plausible matter to make Caesar and Pompey the two ‘powers’ between which he oscillated.

There, if he thought about it, Plutarch must have realized that he was falsifying and trivializing

historical reality.

It is easy enough to find further examples of the same sort of thing. It can be shown, I think, that

his view of Clodius varies from one Life to another, depending on the interests and emphases of each

Life; in one Life he is an independent figure, bullying the passive Pompey into submission and disgrace;
12
in another, he is relatively meek and subservient, demurely following the triumvirs’ will. It can be
13
shown that Plutarch’s view of the origins of the Civil War is not always quite the same; and that
14
Pompey’s awareness of the menace of Caesar in Gaul is greater in Pompey itself than in the other Lives.

All this makes the analysis of his political views and interpretations a delicate question. We should not

expect him always to be consistent, and we must always be aware that he may be bending his analysis to

suit the themes of a particular Life; and we should give more weight to some Lives than to others. It is

the Lives where he is most interested in historical analysis – Caesar, perhaps, and Marius and Gracchi –

which should provide the kernel of our estimation. We should not be surprised if the views developed in

those Lives are muted or trivialized elsewhere.

One further difficulty should be noted. No one, I hope, would now regard Plutarch as a mere

excerptor, meekly copying out the analyses of his sources. (Scholars have, in fact, been relatively swift to

realize that Plutarch has a mind and a literary hand of his own. That procedure of scholarly
15
enlightenment is only just beginning with Appian and Cassius Dio.) Yet it is equally clear that

Plutarch sometimes adopts ideas and interpretations very closely indeed. Take the analysis of the origins

of the Civil War, which we find in its simplest form in Caesar. It was not the enmity, but the friendship,

of Pompey and Caesar which caused the war: the year 60 was the start of it all. They first combined to

destroy the aristocracy, and their final estrangement only sealed the Republic’s fate. Cato alone saw the
truth. Caesar was always ambitious for tyranny, and purchased his way to power with his Gallic wealth.

Pompey was his dupe, first disingenuous, then vacillating, then the prey of conflicting senatorial

interests and ambitions. The deaths of Crassus and Julia removed vital obstacles to war; and the parlous

state of politics (kakopoliteia) at Rome, so acute that many recognized monarchy as the only solution,
16
was the background which made it all possible. It is certainly a powerful analysis; but it is hardly
17
Plutarch’s own. Much of it recurs in a tellingly similar form in Appian and elsewhere, and it is surely

derived originally from the work of Asinius Pollio. Of course, we are free to criticize it. Pollio, wishing

to give his work a powerful beginning, may well have exaggerated the importance of the electoral pact of

60 BC, thus giving rise to that long legend of the ‘first triumvirate’ (as we used to call it). Horace speaks

of gravis principum amicitias (‘weighty [or ‘burdensome’] friendships of the leaders’) as a theme of

Pollio’s work (Odes 2.1.3–4): Pollio perhaps laid too much stress on the personal relationships of the

great men, and made them too far-sighted and clear-cut in their ambitions. The treatment of Roman

kakopoliteia tends to confine itself to violence and bribery in Rome itself, especially the violence and

bribery initiated by the great men or their followers; there is no hint that Pollio gave any wider sweep of

the empire, armies, and provinces. But, whatever we say, we are really making points about Pollio more

than Plutarch. Plutarch simply recognized, and welcomed, the intellectual distinction and power of the

analysis.

Such passages as this certainly help us to see which analyses Plutarch found plausible and welcomed

as illuminating and intelligible, and thus far they can be used as evidence for his own historical

understanding. But, in the end, they will tell us less than those passages where we can see his individual

judgements and assumptions at work, where we can see him imposing his own views and interpretations

on the events he is describing: particularly, where we can see him reinterpreting what his sources offered

– as, for instance, in the Caesar account of the Lupercalia incident, where (as we saw) he seems to be

revising and rewriting Pollio’s account to concentrate on the reactions of the demos; or in the early

chapters of that Life, where he goes out of his way to stress the people’s encouragement to Caesar to
18
become ‘first in the state’. (We can there contrast the early chapters of Suetonius’ biography, which are
19
evidently based on very similar source-material, but have no such emphasis on the popular theme.) In

those passages we see Plutarch himself labouring to make his material intelligible. And in those passages,

most insistently, his analysis concentrates on the demos theme, the popular support which Caesar

enjoyed – a theme, incidentally, which is rather lost from sight when Plutarch is reproducing Pollio’s

analysis of the causes of war.

II. Oligoi and demos

In a Life such as Caesar, what Plutarch leaves out can tell us as much about his assumptions as what he

puts in. We might not expect him to say much about Caesar’s family relationship to (say) the Aurelii or
20
the Aemilii Lepidi, two highly influential gentes at the period of Caesar’s early career; however much

importance we ourselves may – or may not – choose to attach to such links, at least in explaining a

politician’s first steps, these are not the sorts of connection which ancient writers regularly stress. But

Plutarch might surely have said more about Caesar’s various attempts to conciliate senatorial opinion or

foster senatorial connections. At 5.7, for instance, he does not mention that Caesar’s bride Pompeia was
21
Sulla’s grand-daughter, though this has clear biographical interest. And it is certainly striking that

Plutarch has so little on Caesar’s early relations with the great men, Crassus and Pompey: nothing, in

this Life, on Caesar’s support for the lex Gabinia, or his pressure for Pompey’s recall from the East, or his

association with Pompey’s lieutenant Metellus Nepos; nothing on Caesar’s alleged involvement with
22
Crassus during the Catilinarian affair. All of these are items which Plutarch certainly knew. But, in

this Life, Caesar is his own master and agent. He gains his support – that vital popular support – wholly

in his own right. At least in treating the sixties, Plutarch gives little indication of the personal

attachments, alliances, and deals which most modern scholars would want to stress, however transient or

however firmly based we might regard them as being. Here as elsewhere, it is the demos theme which

dominates.

23
No-one would regard Plutarch’s analysis as wholly false. Of course, Caesar was a great popularis,
24
recognized as such in his own day, and the support of the urban demos was important to him. What is

wrong with the analysis is simply what it leaves out. It is one strand among several important for

explaining Caesar’s career and success, and it is the exclusiveness of Plutarch’s focus which is so striking.

And it is a type of analysis which recurs time and again. In Life after Life, in much the same way in

every period, we have the urban demos against the senate, there are just these two forces in politics: they

can be described as ‘both groups’, αμϕοτεροι, at for instance Marius 4.7. ‘The senate wanted peace, but
Marcellus stirred up the people for war’ (Marc. 6.2); ‘Appius Claudius always had the senate and the

best men with him – it was his family tradition – while Scipio Africanus was a great man on his own

account, but also always enjoyed great support and enthusiasm among the people’ (Aem. 38.3); Marius
‘was a formidable antagonist of the senate, for he was playing the demagogue with the people’ (Mar.

4.6); in 70 BC people criticized Pompey for ‘giving himself more to the people than the senate’ (Pomp.

21.7), and, as we saw, ‘Crassus had more strength in the senate, while Pompey was very powerful with

the people’ (Pomp. 22.3); in 66 it was the ‘favour of the people and the flattery of the demagogues’

which gave Pompey the command against Mithridates, while ‘the senate and the best men’ felt that

Lucullus was being terribly slighted (Lucull. 35.9); in 59 Caesar cried out that ‘he was driven to court

the people against his will, because of the violence and recklessness of the senate’ (Caes. 14.3); by 50

Cato was making no progress with the people, who ‘wanted Caesar to be greatest’, but he ‘persuaded the

senate, who were afraid of the people’ (Cato Min. 5.7); in March and April 44 Brutus and Cassius ‘had
25
the goodwill of the senate’, and turned to courting the people (Brut. 21.2–3). These two forces or

factors in politics are not quite ‘parties’: Plutarch never suggests that there was any organized group of

politicians who systematically devoted themselves to promoting the people’s interests (though he
26
sometimes talks of ‘the demagogues’ in terms which have some analogies with this). But, at least, the

senate and people almost always act each in their unified and corporate ways, and Plutarch is surprised if

the two sides act in concert: if they unite to support Cicero for the consulship, for instance, or if the

aristocratically minded Aemilius is as popular as any demagogue (Cic. 10–11, Aem. 38.6). Other,

complicating factors – the equites, perhaps, or the Italians, or the veterans – tend to be left out of things,

as Plutarch prefers to leave his picture simple and unblurred.

In some ways, Plutarch is hardly alone in this. Nothing could be more natural at Rome than to

contrast ‘the senate’ and ‘the people’. This mode of analysis is frequent enough in Roman historiography

(we shall see that later), and – naturally enough, given the analogies to classical Greek stereotypes of the

ολίγοι and the δήμος – it proved particularly congenial to the Greek historians of Rome. The Greek

equivalents are clearest in Polybius, who makes the senate and the people two of the three vital factors in

his vision of the Roman ‘mixed constitution’: just as the consuls contribute the elements of monarchy,
27
so the senate inject those of aristocracy and the people those of democracy. It is not surprising that this

schematism leaves no room for the equites, for example: at 6.17, very uneasily, he has to include the
28
equestrian publicani among ‘the people’. As Clemence Schultze points out, Dionysius of Halicarnassus
29
is similarly fond of boule–demos antitheses in describing the history of the early and middle Republic.

Appian begins his Civil Wars with the remark that ‘at Rome there was frequent conflict between the

senate and people, as they clashed over legislation and debt-cancellations and land-distributions and
30
elections’; Cassius Dio readily adopts the boule–demos antithesis as a favourite device for analysing late
31
republican history, and equally stresses popular support as the key to Caesar’s rise.

Yet with these other authors – but not really with Plutarch – there is normally more to it than that.

There is often a measure of thoughtfulness in the way these categories are applied, as possibly with

Dionysius and certainly with Polybius. The latter has evidently expended an extraordinary amount of

intellectual effort in isolating the elements of the Roman constitution which correspond to the Greek

stereotypes; and he concludes that the particular blend of monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic

factors, though not necessarily any of the factors themselves, is really unlike any Greek constitution, and
32
indeed superior to anything the Greeks could offer. It is hard to think that Plutarch’s application of

the boule–demos categories is anything like so reflective. In the other authors, too, there is usually some

sense of historical change. Polybius, like Dionysius, stresses that it took considerable time for the
33
distinctive Roman blend of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy to develop; and Appian, in his

introductory survey, tends to regard boule–demos strife as the main strand in earlier Roman history –
34
before the Gracchi. The Gracchi marked the introduction of violence into politics; afterwards Appian

concentrates much more on the theme of the ‘returning general’, with his discontented army which
35
needed to be settled. The analysis recurs later in Appian’s history, and his use of the boule–demos
36
antithesis is correspondingly sparing. He, like Cassius Dio, shows much more awareness than Plutarch

that the boule–demos contrast often breaks down, and other strands of explanation need to be employed.
37
Thus both Appian and Dio have rather more of the veterans, for example, and the equites; thus

Appian knows that Pompey can be both ‘a friend of the people’, ϕιλόδημος, and thoroughly responsible
38
in his behaviour towards the senate; thus Dio can introduce the interesting and revealing descriptions

of Cato, and then of Brutus and Cassius, as ‘lovers of the people’ ( δημερασταί); 39
and he can talk –

admittedly in a rather bewildering way – of the various ‘associations’ (εταιρεί̑αι) which Pompey and
40
Crassus respectively brought to the alliance of 60 BC. What strikes one about Plutarch is how rarely

such complicating factors are adduced, and how relentlessly and exclusively he presses the simple boule–

demos antithesis – indeed, how often he reduces and simplifies other modes of explanation so that he

can phrase them in these terms. We are here confronting an individual feature of Plutarch’s technique.
 Particularly striking and illuminating are the Lives of the Gracchi. There we find analyses very

similar to those given in Caesar, and there, too, elements which complicate the simple picture tend to be

cut away. Tiberius is greeted by popular acclaim (Gracch. 7.3–4, 8.10, 10.1), and his policies are aimed
41 42
at the urban demos. The senate – or, more usually in this Life, ‘the rich’ – naturally respond with

hostility. Led on by the people’s enthusiasm, Tiberius manages to depose Octavius, but at that his

popular support begins to waver (15.1). He finds himself forced into policies which are more extreme

(16.1), but the people remain cool: the enraged opponents of the bill seize their chance, and Tiberius is

killed. Yet, by the time of his death, the popular fervour is beginning to erupt once more (21) – exactly,

one remembers, as it did when Caesar was killed, and Cinna the poet became the victim. Indeed, the

whole sequence is closely similar to the pattern developed in Caesar : popular support brings success,

popular cooling drives a man to fatal mistakes, popular fervour reasserts itself at the end. A few years
43
later, and the whole pattern starts again with Gaius. We see the great initial popularity, and Gaius

responding to it with a collection of popular measures; then we have the wavering of popular support,

this time caused less by any mistake of Gaius than by the shrewdness of his opponents, who use M.

Livius Drusus to outbid Gaius’ proposals. Gaius is forced to more extreme tactics; the opponents take
44
their chance, and he dies; the popular fervour returns after his death. Once again, all is focused on the

urban demos, whose support brings success and whose indifference brings failure and death. The pattern

of Caesar comes back in Gracchi, and it comes back twice.

We can also see that Plutarch has removed material which does not fit. Consider Gracch. 8, where

Plutarch is setting out the background of the troubles. That chapter seems clearly to come from the
45
same source as Appian, BC 1.7, but we can see that Plutarch and Appian have selected rather different

strands to stress. Appian, as is well known, makes a great deal of the Italian strand. The problem is the

euandria or dusandria of the Italian race (the ‘abundance of good men’ or its opposite), and Tiberius
46
tries to favour the poor – including the allies, it is clear – throughout Italy. One particular concern is

that on the large estates landowners prefer slave to freeborn labour because the freeborn are eligible for

military service; this military strand is given great stress.

Plutarch does seem to know of this type of explanation, and it is reasonable to infer that something

like this stood in the shared source. Plutarch does mention, for instance, that ‘the poor did not enlist

enthusiastically for military service’, and that they ‘did not care to bring up their young, so that shortly

all Italy would be afflicted by a shortage of free men’; and he records Tiberius’ resonant speech,
47
proclaiming the plight of those who ‘fight and die for Italy’. But none of this is brought to the centre

of the analysis, and the isolated mention of ‘all Italy’ remains rather opaque. All Plutarch’s weight falls

on the urban demos, whom Tiberius is trying to benefit and placate. The public land had been

distributed ‘to the destitute and landless citizens’, and these had now been dispossessed: Tiberius tries to
48
reverse the process. Plutarch is clearly thinking of the citizens in Rome as the beneficiaries of his

measures: a conventional ‘land-distribution’ ( γη̑ ς αναδασμός), in fact, in very Greek terms. (That
indeed is the charge of his enemies: he is introducing a γής αναδασμός and starting a revolution, 9.3.)
Later, Appian speaks of ‘the countrymen’ (1.10.41) coming to Rome to support Tiberius, and then of

the country citizens who might come to vote for his re-election (1.14.58): in each case there may be
49
some confusion in Appian’s detail, but something like these notices surely stood in the shared source.

Plutarch again cuts the details away, reducing everything to the urban demos.

His treatment of Gaius is very similar, again concentrating purely on the popular elements. The

laws, even including the law extending the citizenship to the allies, all have one absolutely

straightforward aim: Gaius is trying to win the goodwill of the demos (Gracch. 26, esp. 26.2). Once

again, too, there are hints that Plutarch is recasting and simplifying his source-material. There is his

casual mention that the Italians gave Gaius their support, or the notice of the accusations that he and
50
Fulvius Flaccus were stirring up the allies to revolt: those passages suggest that Plutarch’s source had

rather more material on the Italians, just as Appian does. But in Plutarch this material again remains

tangential and unexplained. The centre of the analysis remains the urban demos, wooed in a stereotyped

way by Gaius, a stereotyped demagogue. That stress on the demos certainly fits the structure of the

double pair. The Gracchi are compared with Agis and Cleomenes, and all four are seen as demagogues,

even if they are initially idealistic ones: that is the whole point of the comparison (Agis and Cleomenes
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2.7–11, cf. Gracch. 42(2) and 44(4) ). But Plutarch is drastically simplifying and recasting in order to

produce this clear-cut popular focus.

This has considerable significance for the Roman historian. The tendency of Appian’s account of the

Gracchi is often examined closely, and we are frequently warned to beware of the ‘pan-Italic motif ’ in
52
Appian BC 1; scholars have often sought to exploit Plutarch against Appian in order to discredit that

‘Italian’ material. Most influentially, Badian, when arguing that Tiberius’ land-grants were to be limited
to Roman citizens, has explicitly defended Plutarch’s authority: Plutarch’s emphasis on the urban demos,

he thinks, represents an earlier and more authentic stage in the tradition than Appian, and all these

Italians were sneaked into the tradition by Appian’s imediate source (who, he thinks, was a popularis
53
historian of the late republican or Augustan period). Bernstein then sought to reconcile Plutarch and

Appian by suggesting that Tiberius first intended to include the Italian allies in his grants (Appian), but
54
then changed his plan and confined the distribution to Roman citizens (Plutarch). What is worrying

about this is how little attention is being paid to Plutarch’s methods, how often he is the dumb partner

in the comparison with Appian. Once we see that it is characteristic of Plutarch to reduce complicated

descriptions to the simple boule–demos categories, then it is much more likely that he is the one who is

sneaking the Italians out of his account, not Appian, or Appian’s immediate source, who is sneaking

them in. If it is right to assume a shared source, it is likely to be Appian, not Plutarch, who is preserving

its spirit.

If this is so, it becomes much harder to discard Appian’s evidence for this ‘Italian’ strand, and harder

in particular to reject his statement that Tiberius intended the Italian allies to share in the grants of
55
land. ‘Italian’ needs further definition, of course: who were these people? Not just the rural citizens, it
56
seems, unless Appian has wildly misunderstood his source; but Latins and allies, or just allies? And
57
were they to receive the citizenship as well as their parcel of land, as Richardson suggests? Those are

real questions, and perhaps there is not sufficient evidence to give firm answers.

It may well be, too, that this whole ‘Italian’ strand did not figure quite so prominently in Tiberius’

propaganda and programme as Appian would suggest. It is important to Appian’s vision to stress Italian

discontent, for he is already preparing and developing the themes which will return in his treatment of
58
the Social War: all that is sensitively traced by Gabba and Cuff. Appian might well want to make the

most of any Italians he found. That anyway suits his way of doing history: he is not particularly

‘Italophile’, as again Cuff has shown; but he is unusually sensitive to social factors in his history, and
59
particularly the relevance of the countryside in providing support. But ‘making the most of any

Italians he found’ is one thing, widespread fabrication is another. When Badian discards the ‘chatter

about the opposition between “the rich” and “the poor” ’ which he finds in both Plutarch and Appian as
60
‘no more than a stereotype of stasis, a purely literary device of little use to the historian’, that obscures

the differences here between Plutarch and Appian. As far as Plutarch is concerned, we are right to be

sceptical: the rich–poor antithesis is more than a stereotype, it is a version of his distinctive stereotype,

and we can see that he is simplifying a complex reality in order to make it fit. But for Appian the rich–

poor conflict is just one strand in a much more complex reality: town and country, Roman and Italian
61
are in fact much more important to his analysis. The categories are of course rough ones, but the most

complex political divisions regularly embrace contrasts which can fairly, if simply, be described in such

terms. The blend of factors may be confusing, but it is not stereotyped: Gabba is indeed right to
62
comment on the unstereotyped and unconventional nature of Appian’s analysis in this part of BC 1. It

is very hard to believe that the Italian material is simply drawn from the air.

To return to Plutarch: something similar has probably happened in his account of Saturninus and

Glaucia at Marius 28–30. Marius is another Life in which Plutarch is interested in historical analysis,

and he is concerned at that point to analyse Marius’ wavering popular support. Once again, it is likely

that he is drawing his material from the same source as Appian, who gives a parallel account at BC
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1.28–33. But, once again, the emphases of the two authors are very different. Appian is very clear that

it was ‘the Italians’ who supported Saturninus, and were to benefit from his land-bill. The urban mob

(πολιτικός ἄχλος, 1.30.133) oppose Saturninus fiercely, and in this they are at one with the senate.

When Saturninus tries to drive Metellus into exile, the Italians again support him (1.31.139–40), and

again threaten to come to blows with the city-dwellers; and, once Saturninus is overthrown, the demos

and the senate, again at one, gratefully seize their chance to press for Metellus’ recall. (I take it that

Appian means ‘the Italian allies’ when he speaks of the ‘Italian’ or ‘rustic’ support for Saturninus; even if,

as many suppose, he means the ‘rural citizens’, the fact remains that he is drawing a firm distinction
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between countrymen and city-dwellers. ) All that is much too complicated for Plutarch. He turns

Saturninus, like the Gracchi, into a very conventional demagogue. Saturninus aims at the ‘destitute and

turbulent mob’ ( πλήθος ἄπορον καί θορυβοποιόν, 28.7, cf. 29.9): it is clearly the urban demos which

supports him (29.7, 29.11, 30.2), and the senate which is opposed. The land-bill seems aimed, once

again, at the urban demos : not a word of those ‘countrymen’ or ‘Italians’ of Appian. (Nor indeed, in this

context, of Marius’ veterans, though Plutarch has mentioned them in the preceding chapter at 28.7;

more of that later.) This leaves the final popular surge against Marius (30.5) and the popular pressure for

Metellus’ recall (31.2) harder to explain – but mobs, after all, are fickle. Appian’s version of all this is
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more subtle and sophisticated, whatever its relation to historical reality; if he and Plutarch do share a

source, it is likely that it is Appian, not Plutarch, who is retaining more of the complexities of the
source’s analysis. And, once again, we see Plutarch’s reductionism, his readiness to simplify the most

complex events into simple demos and boule conflict, and his readiness to cut away material which

would complicate and blur that simple stereotype.

III. Greekness

I suggested (p. 215) that Tiberius’ γής αναδασμός was described ‘in very Greek terms’, and it is

tempting to take this further. This whole boule–demos analysis does remind one of the way Plutarch

talks about Greek politics, and the stereotypes of Greek political thought: not, perhaps, the boule, but at

least the oligoi, who are predictably and violently opposed to the fickle demos. Before he came to write

the Parallel Lives, Plutarch evidently had an extremely thorough knowledge of Greek history and

literature, whereas his knowledge of detailed Roman history was probably scanty; is Plutarch here

imposing Greek concepts on Roman reality, bending Roman history to fit stereotypes which did not

wholly match the reality? It is interesting to note that Gomme made the converse and equally attractive

suggestion, that Plutarch sometimes imposed Roman stereotypes on Greek history: Nicias buying the

goodwill of the demos with expensive shows, for instance, or Cimon as the soldier who is lost when it
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comes to the tricks of domestic politics. And certainly the similarity of the terms was sometimes very

useful to Plutarch, making his parallels all the closer. Just as Dion and Brutus have to kill similar tyrants,

so Pericles and Fabius have to confront similar mobs and similar demagogues; and the corruption of
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good programmes into rank demagogy can link Agis and Cleomenes with the Gracchi.

Certainly, the similarities of Plutarch’s language to that in his Greek Lives seem very close. The

opponents of the Roman demos may be described in various ways, though they can usually be seen to be

αριστοκρατικοί (the ‘aristocrats’), or the

equivalent to (or at least to dominate) the senate: they are the
68

γνώριμοι (the ‘notables’), or the καλοί καγαθοί (the ‘good men and true’), or the χαριέντες (the
69 70

or the ὀλιγαρχικοί (those ‘of oligarchic sentiments’) or the αξίολογοί (those ‘worthy
71 72
‘gentlemen’),

or the δοκιμώτατοι (the ‘most wellknown’), or the δυνατώτατοι (the ‘most powerful’),
73 74 75
of note’),

or the κρατίστοί (the ‘strongest’), or simply the πρω̑ τοί or αρίστοί (the ‘first’ or ‘best’).
76 77
Those are
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precisely the terms in which Plutarch is accustomed to speak of Greek politics. The sort of analysis he

gives in Caesar or Gracchi – the hero wins popular support, then forfeits it, then it is finally reasserted –

has considerable parallels with, say, Pericles.

Just as in Greece, an individual tries occasionally to become first man in the state; then, particularly

if that individual is hoping to exploit his popularity with the demos, Plutarch usually assumes that he

hoped for or achieved a ‘tyranny’: a τυραννίς, a δυναστέία, or a μοναρχία. These accusations were

thrown around in the real world of Roman politics, and it is natural that Plutarch should say such

things of Sulla, Marius, Cinna, Saturninus, Cicero, Caesar, or Pompey; it is more striking that he should

casually note that ‘C. Gracchus had by now acquired a sort of monarch’s strength’, or record the

suggestion that ‘Cassius was seeking to secure a δυναστέία for himself, not freedom for his fellow
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citizens’. If a man’s aim is specified more closely, it is rarely any more informative than ‘revolution’,

μέταστασίς or συγχυσίς τής πολίτέίας: so, naturally enough, of the Catilinarians and of Caesar; so also,
though, of Saturninus; and even, once again casually, of the supporters of Pompey in the late sixties – ‘a

sizeable part of the demos wanted Pompey’s return because they looked for a revolution’ (Cato Min. 27.1,

cf. Pomp. 43.5); and during the Hannibalic War the ruling classes were accused of ‘exploiting the war to
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destroy the demos and introduce an absolute monarchy’ (Fab. 8.4).

This assumption that political aims and achievements are regularly to be explained in terms of

constitutional change is very Greek. Plutarch has little idea of the characteristic Roman desire to be first

within the system rather than change it. When he is treating Marius or Pompey, he writes of their

ϕιλαρχία, their quest for offices or commands;

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he has no notion of an ambition for a position of

prestige and respect within an appreciative state. Nor is there much feel for the importance of such ideas

as dignitas or auctoritas. He does have rather more feeling for the Roman passion for gloria : he seems

clear enough, for instance, that T. Flamininus was eager to avoid handing the war with Philip over to a

successor, and was prepared to make peace rather than see this. ‘He was fiercely ambitious for honour,

and was afraid that he might forfeit his glory if another general were sent to the war’ (Flam. 7.2, cf.
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13.2): Plutarch does not find that at all remarkable or perplexing. But, usually, when he speaks of such

ambition for glory, he does so with considerable bitterness and hostility: this was the decisive failing of
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the Gracchi (Agis–Cleomenes 2), and it was an important aspect in which the elder Cato fell short of

Aristides (Cato Mai. 32(5).4). Plutarch has not felt his way into the values of Roman public life, and
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gives no sense of the respect and value Romans accorded to a competitive quest for glory.

Where Greek analogies of Roman institutions exist, Plutarch is quite good: he does, for instance,

seem to understand a fair amount about political activity in the law-courts, and his discussion of
political trials at Cato Mai. 15 is sensible enough. Things in Greece were perhaps not so very different –
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or at least less different than they were in many other aspects of political life. When Greek equivalents

are absent, he is in trouble. It may be a particular institution which defeats him: the tribunate, for

instance, was a curious thing to a Greek of the Roman Empire, and Plutarch several times incorrectly
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explains the tribunicial veto, speaking as if a tribune could veto the acts only of a fellow tribune.

Certain aspects of the early days of January 49 BC are therefore beyond him: at Ant. 5.10 he can only

refer to the infringement by the senators ( των από βουλής) of the tribunes’ freedom of speech, and gives
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no hint of the overriding of their veto.

Or it may be a convention of political life which he finds difficult, or tends to obscure. He knows

the importance of the Roman political family and of family traditions: the Claudii, for instance, and the

Metelli are by tradition aristocratically minded (Aem. 38.3, Cato Min. 26.4). He sees the importance of

kinsmen, too, in persuading Aemilius Paullus to stand for the consulship at a time of national crisis

(Aem. 10.2). But he does not seem to sense the extent of the authority exercised by the very great

families, the Scipiones or the Metelli or even (despite Gracch. 1) the Sempronii. When he seeks to

explain the early electoral successes of Marcellus, it does not occur to him to mention the importance of

the family (Marc. 2): the answer must be found in his military promise. The senate are the aristokratikoi;

Plutarch has no notion of the importance of nobilitas, and makes no attempt to distinguish grades of

aristocracy within the senate itself. When the terms ευγενής or ευπατριδής do occur, they often seem
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rather to refer to the patriciate. All that scarcely conveys the flavour of the realities of Roman

aristocratic society.

Nor could Greek stereotypes accommodate so unfamiliar an institution as clientela. Plutarch’s

definition of patronus at Fab. 13.6 is feeble and inadequate; and, when he mentions a cliens–patronus

relationship, it is normally to explain the adhesion or obligation of one individual, normally a fairly

important individual, Marius to Metellus or to C. Herennius, for example, or Mucius (if that was the
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man’s name) to Ti. Gracchus. He has no feel for the electoral or military significance of a large body of
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clients. Thus the senatorial opponents of Ti. Gracchus can arm only ‘their slaves and friends’ against

him (Gracch. 18.3); thus – though he knows Pompey was always welcome in Picenum, that he liked

being there ‘because people liked him so much’, and that his popularity was inherited from his father

(Pomp. 6.1) – he can still describe Pompey’s raising of a private army in the eighties without any explicit

mention of clientela. Nor is he alert to the importance of clientelae which are foreign – though he is

always very interested in his subjects’ achievements in the provinces, and in particular the justice and

humanity of their administration. (A rather distinctive feature, this, and one which marks him out from

Greek historians more steeped in Roman life and Roman historiography, Appian and Cassius Dio; and

Plutarch, incidentally, has few illusions about the savagery and rapacity which typified Roman
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governors. ) But, still, he can describe the links of Aemilius Paullus with various foreign nations in

wondering terms, and regard his continuing concern for their welfare as a quite remarkable trait (Aem.

39.8–9); and, still, he can describe the enthusiasm shown by the Spaniards for Ti. Gracchus as simply

‘inherited from his father’, with no hint that there was any more formal bond of duty or obligation

(Gracch. 5. 4–5).

Very often, he modifies unfamiliar ideas and forces to ones he can understand: again, usually to the

familiar boule–demos antithesis, by the same characteristic reductionism. He of course knows that the

equestrian order existed, but he rarely brings it into his political analysis: he can mention Sulpicius’
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‘anti-senate’ of 600 equites, but there is no deeper analysis of Marius’ equestrian support. He has

therefore, very uneasily, to represent Marius as a curious sort of incompetent trimmer, spasmodically

courting the demos ‘against his true instincts’ (28.1) but tending to drift away from them at inexplicable

moments (e.g. 30). When Tiberius or Gaius Gracchus or Pompey proposes to give the knights a share in

the juries for the lawcourts, in each case Plutarch knows the political significance: in all three cases, they
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were trying to win the goodwill – of the demos! His treatment of the publicani is similar: resentful

publicani determine to do down Lucullus in Roman politics – but the only way they can do so is by

using ‘demagogues’ (Lucull. 20.5). In all this Plutarch contrasts with Appian and Cassius Dio, who both
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(especially Appian) have a good deal of the equestrian order – perhaps, indeed, rather too much. But

there is no doubt that Plutarch has too little.

We can see a similar reductionism in Plutarch’s treatment of the army, particularly the army in

politics. Here he is quite good on some aspects. He knows the perils presented by the returning generals,

dangerous men at the head of devoted armies: he digresses on these in Sulla (12), and the theme recurs,
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though not very insistently, in Pompey. But what do these returning armies want? Here he is less good,

and he certainly does not understand their imperative need for land. He knows that the veterans were in

some way connected with the land-bills of 59 BC; he even knows that Pompey ‘filled the city with
soldiers’ to pass the measure; but still he does not bring out the connection. The bills are aimed ‘to win
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the goodwill of the mob’; they distribute land ‘to the poor and destitute’. His treatment of Saturninus’

land-bill is similar. There too he knows that Marius introduced his soldiers into the assemblies to help

Saturninus (Mar. 28.7) – but the land-bill is still, as we saw, aimed at captivating and benefiting the

urban demos. Just as he strips away the Italian allies from his analysis, so also with the veterans: once

again, everything is reduced to a simple, conventional land-distribution ( γής αναδασμός), aimed at the
urban mob.

As he is so blind to the veterans’ interest in land, it is hardly surprising that he seems to miss the

point of the Marian military reforms. He knows that Marius introduced a new type of recruit into the

Roman army, but makes a revealing error when he mentions this: Marius is recruiting ‘destitute men

and slaves’ (Mar. 9.1). He clearly does not realize that it is a different type of citizen, the man without

capital or land, who is involved: his stereotype of the demos is too simple to admit of distinctions
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between assidui and proletarii. In Sulla, similarly, when he digresses on the theme of the ‘returning

general’ he does not bring out that Sulla’s army included these new, landless types of recruit. He does

not see that this army was in important ways different from the forces of Flamininus, Acilius, and
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Aemilius Paullus, with whom he compares it (Sull. 12.8–14); nor that these differences were central in

explaining the new bond between general and troops, and the violent consequences this produced.

Indeed, he is not really very interested in the soldiers at all. Very often, he simply leaves them out

completely when he is describing politics. In the story of the turbulent spring and summer of 44 BC he

rarely mentions the veterans; it is again usually the urban demos for whose favour Brutus, Octavian, and
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Antony contend. He has little notion that the veterans might have genuine loyalties, worth discussing

and analysing. ‘The armies’, he says in an aside in the Brutus (23.1), ‘were on sale – it was just like an
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auction: they gave themselves to the highest bidder…’ When he comes in Antony to describe the

treaty of Brundisium, it is simply the ‘friends’ of Antony and Octavian who urge them to come to
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terms, and cement their alliance with the marriage agreement. Appian, again probably drawing on

similar material, makes it clear that it was the veterans who began this pressure on their leaders to agree
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on peace. Indeed, the entire history of the Triumvirate reads very differently in our other accounts,

and especially in their treatment of the soldiers. Appian in particular has a great deal more on the

impact of their veterans and their loyalties on political life, even though he seems to be using similar

source-material. Cassius Dio has his blind spots with the soldiers, but he too knows that their loyalties
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were not wholly for sale; Nicolaus of Damascus, also, is more in tune with historical reality. Plutarch

cuts the theme away, and again it is the urban demos which matters.

IV. Greek stereotypes and Roman realities

I have been dwelling on the ‘Greekness’ of it all, and suggesting that Plutarch is imposing his own

categories, drawn from classical Greek history and political thought, on Roman realities which do not

wholly fit. But we must not overstate the differences between Greek and Roman political stereotypes.

That boule–demos analysis, for instance: is it so very different from Sallust’s view of the duas partis of the
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Roman state, the pauci (or nobiles or potentes or just senatus) and the plebs? Sallust, too, often omits

the equites from his analysis, and Sallust too dwells on the plebs, the ‘artisans and rustics’, as the decisive
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force which carried Marius to the consulship. The incautious reader might well assume – just as
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Plutarch often seems to assume – that the poorest citizens could genuinely dominate the wealth-

based comitia centuriata. Livy as well sometimes describes events in similar terms, with the senate (or the
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nobiles) striving valiantly to resist stereotyped popular fury. Cicero, in his tendentious little account in

the pro Sestio, feels he can get away with speaking of the two great traditions in the Roman state, the

optimates and the populares; and he then describes the Gracchi in terms very similar to Plutarch,
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affirming that they introduced laws which were welcome to the people but hateful to the boni.

Tacitus, too, can refer to ‘continual struggles of the senate against the people’ (assidua senatus adversus
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plebem certamina) as a conspicuous feature of the last phase of the Republic. And all that quest for

tyranny and revolution: was this not the stuff of political abuse, and occasionally of reality, in the late
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Republic – ‘both men want to be king’, and so on? Is there not a real chance that here – just as in the

case of Pollio’s explanation of the war which we noticed earlier – Plutarch is simply following the

analysis of some Latin sources, and the similarity of his language and interpretation to the ways he

speaks of Greek politics is just a fortunate coincidence?

There may be something in that objection. It is certainly true that he may not have found any very

clear correctives to his natural assumptions in the Roman historical tradition, and so it is not surprising

that the later Lives are not conspicuously more sophisticated in their historical interpretations than the
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ones which he had written earlier. But it is also true that few Roman writers (and few Greek writers,
as we noticed earlier) apply the boule–demos analysis quite so relentlessly and exclusively as Plutarch.

Consider, for example, the wide group of people whom Cicero would class as optimates in the pro Sestio,

or the various different classes of supporters who contributed to Marius’ honestissuma suffragatio (‘most
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honourable canvass’) in Sallust. And there is some way between abusive allegations that individuals

are aiming for tyranny, uttered by political opponents with ferocity and passion, and Plutarch’s casual

assumption that such claims are regularly true.

Still, it anyway seems clear that Plutarch is not simply taking over categories which he finds in his

sources; on the contrary, he is regularly reinterpreting his material in order to bring out these favoured

categories, and is not the slave of the tradition. We saw a certain amount of this earlier, in examining his

recastings of Pollio in describing Caesar and of an unidentifiable source in telling the story of the

Gracchi. The recastings will emerge even more clearly if we go back to an earlier period of Roman

history, where we can compare Plutarch with his source-material – or something very like his source-

material – rather more closely.

If we had to pick a piece of Roman historiography to remind us of Greek demos and demagogue

stereotypes, we might well choose Livy 22. Minucius and Varro are the Cleon-like demagogues,

mobilizing the uncontrollable forces of the vulgar mob; on the other side, we have the sober and

sensible Fabius and Paullus and the sober and sensible senate. This is a place where we can compare

Plutarch closely, for his narrative in Fabius is often very similar indeed – so similar that we should either
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assume that he is using Livy directly, or an earlier authority to whom Livy, too, kept very close. In

either case, Livy can give us a very good idea of the content of Plutarch’s source-material.

What is interesting is the way in which Plutarch takes those demos and demagogue stereotypes even
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further than Livy: even this very Greek passage of narrative was insufficiently reduced to the boule–

demos terms which he wanted. In Plutarch, much more than in Livy, Fabius is initially created dictator

by a mindless surge of popular panic, precisely the sort of mindless surge which he himself will later

have to confront. Livy, like Polybius, had simply dwelt on the confusion in Rome at the time, and had
115
not given any such popular stress. In Plutarch, Fabius gives a speech to the demos as soon as he is

appointed, reassuring them and quelling their panic; in Livy it was not delivered to the demos, but to the
116
senate. When Fabius is deceived by the oxen stratagem, and again when Minucius wins his initial

delusive successes, it is the popular enthusiasm for Minucius – and the popular fears for his safety, if

Fabius got his hands on him – which Plutarch stresses. On both occasions, Livy had concentrated on
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the attacks on Fabius delivered in the senate. When Fabius is attacked, the demagogue Metilius

claims that the senate ‘had provoked the whole war to destroy the demos and impose an absolute

monarchy’ (8.4). ‘To impose a monarchy’? That sounds very odd, and very much like Plutarch himself:

sure enough, Livy has nothing like this. Plutarch seems in fact to be borrowing from a passage rather
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later in Livy, when Varro accuses the nobles of ‘using the war to gain control of the comitia’. ‘To gain

control of the comitia’ is rather milder, and much more plausible. Plutarch is again rewriting the Roman

original to stress his own favoured theme.

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This boule–demos analysis is important to Fabius, and not just to the Life but to the pair. Stadter

has shown that the comparison of Pericles and Fabius is very elaborate, and the two men’s reactions to

hostile mobs and hostile demagogues are a central element in the pairing. Later in the Fabius – and this

is a most interesting development – we see related themes coming back when Fabius is in decline,

woefully jealous of the successes of the young Scipio. Fabius may still be urging his distinctive caution,

but he is also showing exactly those characteristics which we earlier saw in the demagogues: he is

overcome by petty philonikia (‘contentiousness’), scoring political points rather than prosecuting the

war, ‘crying out’ (βοων) in the assembly, desperate to mobilize popular pressure against a great
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general. As Pericles in old age gains a stature lacking from his demagogic youth, so Fabius’ demagogic

decline compromises the dignity which he has won in the years of his greatness: the pair shows an
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extremely elegant ‘hour-glass structure’ (to use the term of E.M. Forster). And once again the

neatness of the analysis seems to be Plutarch’s own. We would be hard put to it to find any similar

thematic links between Fabius’ greatness and decline in the treatment of Livy.

In Fabius, then, Plutarch does not seem to be at the mercy of his sources. Even where they offered an

analysis which must have been congenial to him, he was not content to take it over: skilfully, he took it

much further. One can trace the same individuality in other passages, and can see how reluctant he was

to take over blindly the themes which his Roman sources developed. We might conclude by looking at

some passages where he shows his awareness of the characteristic motifs of Roman historians: the

importance of metus hostilis, for example, in keeping Rome morally upright, or the nature of moral
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decline from ancestral simplicity, or the disastrous effect of foreign culture. As Jones has stressed,

Plutarch often takes over these views himself, sometimes in a not very original way: in particular, he has
some splendid passages of routine nostalgia, reflecting wistfully on the days before ambition and greed
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overtook the state. But there are also passages where he gives such Roman ideas as metus hostilis a

rather individual twist; and one can indeed see that some of the most cherished Roman beliefs would

have been hateful to him. Metus hostilis, vital to keep the state morally healthy? Plutarch found such

glorification of war extremely distasteful, surely: on a related theme, he insists that triumphs would far

more appropriately be given for the arts of peace (Marc. 22.9–10, cf. Pomp. 13.10–11). And the
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disastrous effect of external, especially Greek, culture? He clearly knows the idea (cf. Cato Mai. 4.2) –

but it was hardly a theme to appeal to him. He feels that Romans should have learnt a lot more from

Greece (Mar. 2), and he criticizes the elder Cato most forthrightly for his prophecy that Greek

influences would be fatal to Rome. ‘Time shows that he was wrong; for the time of Rome’s greatest

achievements was the time it was most ready to welcome Greek studies and Greek culture’ (Cato Mai.

23.3).Plutarch and Roman politics when it was most ready to welcome Greek studies and Greek culture’

(Cato Mai. 23.3).

When Plutarch does echo such Roman topoi he is therefore keen to adapt them, and the nature of

these adaptations is again extremely suggestive. Marcellus was criticized for bringing back the treasures

of Syracuse and corrupting – corrupting whom? Corrupting the Roman demos, turning them from

farming and warfare to luxury and idleness, filling them with laziness and chatter, so that they spend

most of the day discussing arts and artists.. .(Marc. 21.6)! It is a very mild form of criticism, and
125
Plutarch is clearly on Marcellus’ side. He has just been stressing the superiority of Greek culture, and

bringing out the wretchedly primitive character of Rome at the time: as he makes Marcellus say, he is

educating these people. So much for that topos of Greek influence: even that is fitted into the demos-

emphasis, and given a very individual turning. The same sort of thing emerges with metus hostilis in the

famous passage at the end of Cato Maior, when Scipio Nasica is arguing that Carthage should remain

standing: ‘for Nasica saw that the demos was going wildly astray through their hubris, and were hard for

the senate to control.; he wished the fear of Carthage to remain a bridle on the recklessness of the mob’
126
(Cato Mai. 27.3). Again, quite characteristic: the Roman idea is given a very individual twist, and

tied into the distinctive boule–demos analysis.

The emphasis on the demos is clearly Plutarch’s own: the great preconception with which he came to

write about the Roman Republic. And no-one would want to suggest that he was wholly wrong. The

reduction of so many other forms of analysis to this theme is disquieting, and so is the assumption that

the analysis is equally applicable to every period; but few would doubt that Plutarch captured something

very important about the late Republic by describing it in this way. It was not Plutarch, it was Sir

Ronald Syme, who described the end of the Republic as ‘the Greek period of Roman history, stamped
127
with the sign of the demagogue, the tyrant, and the class war’.

_____________

I have only lightly revised this 1986 paper. In it I wrote as if Plutarch’s ‘reductionism’ was a clear defect,

to be written down as a limitation of the Greek filters through which he processed Roman realities. That
128
may be right; but there were also some advantages which he derived from this interpretative mindset,

and I did not pay enough attention to these. There is the way it helps Plutarch’s comparative

programme, for these Greek and Roman figures face similar political crises and have similar options for

dealing with them: that is a theme which I did acknowledge in 1986, but too briefly (pp. 215, 218). It

also made it easier for Plutarch to extract the moral and political points which interested him most: not

points which were specific to any one society or period, but those which might most readily be applied

to other cultures and milieux, provided only that those most timeless categories – the struggle of the few

and the many, the quest for tyranny or for revolution, the inspiration of glory and fame – continued to

obtain. These are themes which will recur in the next two chapters.

Notes

1
Fab. 16.6, cf. Galba 2.5.

2
Alex. 1.2: Frazier 1996, 17–18, here has some good remarks (not ‘petite histoire’, but a balance between small things and big things).

More on this passage at p. 102–3, 259–60, 276–7, and Pelling, forthcoming (a).

3
Caes. 6.7, cf. 5.1–3, 8.4–5, 14.2–3, 14.6.

4
For the ‘Marianism’ see 5.2–3, 6.1–7; and then note 19.4 (with 18.1) for the continuation of the theme in the military narrative. The

stress is an interesting one, and seems individual to Plutarch; neither Suet. Div. Iul. 11 nor Vell. 2.43.4 give anything like so charged and

coloured an account of the Marian display as Caes. 6. For the historical importance of Caesar’s ‘Marian’ links see Syme 1939, 65, 89–90,

93–4; Strasburger 1938, 131, 136–7.

5
Caes. 7.4, 14.3, 21.7, 60.5, 64.2, cf. 10.6–7. His enemies may also be described as the αρίστοκρατίκοί (13.5, 14.6), or the καλοί
καγαθοί (14.3), or the αρίστοί (7.4):cf. p. 218.
6
See pp. 5–6 and 14–15 where Plutarch’s adaptation of his source-material is analysed in more detail; also Pelling 1988, 144–5.
7
For the historical interests of Caesar, and some further aspects of Plutarch’s presentation of his analysis, see also pp. 5–6, 103–5, and ch.

11.

8
Mar. 6, Cic. 11.2–3 with pp. 55–6 above; and for a new man’s difficulties, Cato Mai. 16.4–5.

9
See ch. 1, where I argue that Crassus was prepared at the same time as Caesar, Pompey, Cato Minor, Brutus, and Antony. The first three of

those Lives all give much more detailed accounts of the politics of the early fifties.

10
Thus, in Caesar, his authority ‘increased slowly’ (4.5), and it was only ‘late’ (4.7) that his opponents realized the danger; in 61 he flees

before his creditors to Crassus, who finds him useful for his own opposition to Pompey (11.1); in 60 Pompey and Crassus are still ‘the

greatest powers in the state’ (13.3). It is the alliance with Pompey in 60 which brings Caesar to real power (28.2–3, cf. Pomp. 57.6). (It is

true, as Strasburger 1938, 71, 75–6, 85–9, insists, that Plutarch exaggerates the extent and importance of Caesar’s early popular support ;

but this does not lead him to exaggerate Caesar’s early power as greatly as Strasburger’s discussion would suggest.) In Pompey, Caesar

again only comes to prominence with the alliance of 60, which brought him ‘gratitude, and power for the future’ (47.1); it was Pompey’s

power which raised Caesar against the city, and finally against Pompey himself (46.3–4, cf. 57.6).

11
Optimates come to an understanding, 54.5–9, 59. 1–2, etc.: the accord reached in 57 BC (49.6) is very transient. Early popularity:

1.3–4, 2.1, 14.11, 15.1, 21.7–8, 22.3–4, 22.9, 25.7–13, 30.4. This stress disappears in the second half of the Life, for Pompey is then

the tool of other, more subtle and degraded demagogues, Clodius and Caesar; it is then their popularity which is stressed (46.7, 47.5,

48.3, 48.9, 51.1, 53.6, 58.4).Cf. the firm division of the ‘two parts of Pompey’s Life at 46.1–4, with pp. 98–102 and Pelling,

forthcoming (b).

12
Ch. 4, pp. 98–100.

13
The analysis is set out in its simplest form in Caesar, and that Life’s treatment is discussed below. In Cato Minor, affairs are taken

further back than the alliance of 60 BC, to Cato’s rejection of the proffered marriage-link with Pompey: that was the start of it all (30.9–

10), for Pompey was driven to marry Julia instead. The marriage of Julia and Pompey is advanced to the very beginning of the narrative

of 59 BC in order to emphasize the point (31.6, contrast Caes. 14.7–8, Pomp. 47.9); and Cato’s own insight concerning the 60 BC

alliance, stressed at Caes. 13.6 and Pomp. 47.4, is here muted and delayed. Cato explains all in terms of personal factors and personal

rebuffs, while Caesar represents the alliance of Pompey and Caesar in purely political terms. That treatment excellently suits Cato, which

shows little interest in politics but a considerable concern with the affairs of Cato’s womenfolk (24.4–25, 13, 30.3–10, 52.5–9: cf. p.

103). Pompey is different again. Pollio’s view is retained (47.3–4, cf. 51.1–2, 53.8–10, 54.3); but Plutarch here gives the crucial

importance to Pompey’s own reactions and attitudes during the fifties (see pp. 96–102). In particular, the joyous Italian reaction in 50

BC, when Pompey recovered from illness, is given extraordinary weight, for this engendered his false confidence: ‘this, so they say, was as

important as anything in causing the war’ ( ούδενòς μὲντοι του̑ το λὲγεται τω̑ ν ἀπεργασαμὲνων τὸν πόλεμον αίτίων ἒλαττον
γενέσθαι, 57.5). No other Life gives such emphasis to this moment.
14
See pp. 96–7. Though more aware, he is also more passive: pp. 99–102.

15
The ‘procedure of scholarly enlightenment’, as I pompously put it in 1986, has duly proceeded since then: cf. esp. Goldmann 1988;

Rich 1989 and 1990; Gowing 1992; Hose 1994; Swain 1996, 248–53 and 401–8; Bucher 2000; and the various articles in ANRW

ii.34.1 (1993) on Appian and ii.34.3 (1997) on Dio. Appian will be illuminated further by work currently in progress by Luke Pitcher. I

say a little more myself about Dio in Pelling 1997d, and about both Appian and Dio in Pelling, forthcoming (a).

16
Caes. 28, cf. e.g. 13.4–6, 23.5–7. For the variations in other Lives see n. 13. The analysis is clearest in Caesar because Plutarch there

brings together so many of the themes in the single powerful survey (28); that analysis, returning the reader decisively to urban politics

after the account of the Gallic campaigns, combines many motifs which are exploited earlier in the narratives of the other Lives.

17
Cf. esp. Gaul as the training-ground for Caesar’s army: App. BC 2.17.62 with Caes. 28.3, Pomp. 51.2. Kakopoliteia : App. 2.19.69–70,

with Caes. 28.4, Cato Min. 44.3, Pomp. 54.3. Pompey’s disingenuous behaviour and true ambitions: App. 2.19.71, 2.20.73 with Caes.

28.7, Cato Min. 45.7, Pomp. 53.9–10, cf. pp. 96–7; monarchy the only remedy: App. 2.20.72 with Caes. 28.5–6, Cato Min. 47.2, Pomp.

54.7 (and also Brut. 55(2).2, an interesting variation of the idea); cf. below, pp. 258–9. For Pollio’s view, and for other ancient analyses

of the Republic’s fall, see Pohlenz 1927; Syme 1950; Lintott 1971, 493–8; and now Sion-Jenkis 2000, esp. 65–126.

18
See pp. 5–6 and 103–5.

19
The uniformity of the tradition for Caesar’s early years is demonstrated by Strasburger 1938, 72–3, though his elaborate

discrimination of different strands in that tradition is not at all plausible.

20
For Caesar’s connection with these gentes see Suet. Div. Iul. 1.2; for their power see Münzer 1920, 312–13, 324–7 Note Aemilii Lepidi

as consuls in 78 and 77, Aurelii Cottae in 75 and 74 – precisely the period when Caesar’s career was beginning.

21
He probably knew the item: cf. Suet. Div. Iul. 6.2, probably from the same source.

22
He mentions Caesar’s support for the lex Gabinia at Pomp. 25.8, but not in Caesar (cf. Watkins 1987); here Plutarch may well have

transferred material from the lex Manilia (cf. Dio 36.43.2–4) to the context of the lex Gabinia in the manner sketched at pp. 93–4 (so

Watkins 120–1 n. 6: cf. Strasburger 1938, 63, 100–1), but that does not affect the present point. Plutarch had already described Caesar’s

agitation together with Metellus in the earlier Cicero (23.1–4), and makes a great deal of it at Cato Min. 27–9, but at Caes. 9.1 he

blandly states that ‘Caesar’s praetorship was not at all turbulent’. At Cic. 23.5 he had also mentioned Caesar’s proposal to recall Pompey

from the East, and repeats the story in a slightly different form at Cato Min. 26.2, but again does not mention this in Caes. He mentions

Caesar’s involvement with Crassus at Crass. 13.4, with some pride in his learning: pp. 47 and 50. In Caesar, apart from the casual

mention of Pompey at 5.7, the introduction of both Crassus and Pompey is delayed until 11.1.

23
And since this was written the ‘popular’ strand in late Republican history has been much more stressed: see esp. Brunt 1992, 1–92 (a

particularly forceful statement of views which he had stated as early as 1971b and before) and Millar 1998. This, evidently, is not the

place to enter that debate: of course that strand is important, but I wonder if the balance has not now shifted too far in that direction.

24
Cf. esp. Cic. Cat. 4.9, de Prov. Cons. 38–9, Phil. 2.116, 5.49; Caelius, apud Cic. Fam. 8.6(88).5. See Strasburger 1938, esp. 129–31,

Meier R-E Spb. x (1965), cols. 580, 582, 590, and Mackie 1992.

25
Cf. also e.g. Marc. 10.2 (Nola), Cato Mai. 16.4, Mar. 9.4, Pomp. 25.7, 46.5, 49.3–6, 49.11, 52.2, 59.3, Lucull. 38.2, Cato Min. 22.6,

26.1, 28.6, 29.3, 32.1, Cic. 33.2, 33.6, 43.4; and the detailed analyses of Caesar, Gracchi, and Fabius elsewhere in this chapter. Note the

isolated exception at Mar. 34.2, where Plutarch is aware that the views of the demos were divided. On Plutarch’s portrayal of the demos

see now de Blois 1992, 4578–83, esp. 4580–3 on Plutarch’s failure to bring out ‘the increasing heterogeneity of the masses’: here, as so

often, a political force tends to be represented as a constant, not a variable.

26
e.g. Aem. 38.6, Ant. 2.6, Lucull. 35.9, Cato Min. 31.2. Hose 1994, 286, here misinterprets me as denying that Plutarch thinks in

terms of optimates and populares. As he says, e.g. Ant. 5.1 (‘the aristokratikoi supporting Pompey, the demotikoi calling Caesar from

Gaul…’) could easily be translated into those terms – but that is not the same as talking of ‘parties’, which would be as misleading a way

of categorizing optimates and populares as it is of aristokratikoi and demokratikoi. Cf. the forceful words of Mackie 1992, 49, ‘It is

common knowledge nowadays that populares did not constitute a coherent political group or “party” (even less so than their counterpart,

optimates)…’ The important point is the assumption of two sides, and here Hose and I are at one.

27
Plb. 6.11–18, 43–58.

28
See e.g. Walbank 1957–79 ad loc., or Brunt 1965a, 119: ‘by the people he of course means the Equites’. Nicolet 1966, 322–3, does

not quite bring out the importance of Polybius’ schematism.

29
Schultze 1986, 130–1, 139–40. See also Gabba 1991, 152–89, esp. 160, 186, stressing that Dionysius develops a continuity of theme

in the major issues of Roman history: this entails some similar continuity in the way the contending elements are categorized.

30
App. BC 1.1.1. On Appian’s categories see now Hose 1994, 283–301, and Sion-Jenkis 2000, 69–71; I say a little more in Pelling,

forthcoming (a).

31
Boule–demos : e.g. 36.24.1–2, 36.24.5, 36.37.1, 36.38.3–5, 36.43.2–5, 36.51.3, 37.26.3, 37.29.3, 37.41.3, 37.42.3, 37.43.1, 37.51.3,

37.56.5, 38.1.1, 38.12.4–13.1, 38.15.3, 38.16.3, 38.16.6, and so on. Popular support for Caesar: 36.43.2–4, 37.22.1, 37.37.2–3,

37.56.1–2, 38.11.3–6, 39.25.1–3, 40.50.5, 45.6.1, 45.11.2. Cf. Brutscher 1958, 43–6; Pelling, forthcoming (a). But, as Strasburger

1938, 98–106, observes, he does make considerably more than Plutarch of Caesar’s associations with Pompey during the sixties.

32
Plb. 6.43–58. For Dionysius’ adaptation of Polybius cf. Gabba 1991, 201–8.

33
Plb. 6.10.13–14, 51.5; for Dionysius see Schultze 1986, 130–2, 139; Gabba 1991, 152–89 stresses the continuity, but also brings out

some elements of change.

34
App. BC 1.2.4, cf. Plut. Gracch. 20.1.

35
App. BC 1.1–6, esp. 1.2.4 ff.

36
‘Returning general’ theme: cf. 1.55.240, 1.60.269–70; 5.17 brings out the importance of finding a settlement of such an army. Sparing

use of boule–demos antithesis: e.g. 1.21.87–9, 1.38.169, 1.69.316–17, 1.107.502. Sion-Jenkis 2000, 71, agrees that the boule-demos

theme, while not disappearing, becomes less important as the work progresses.

37
See p. 220.

38
App. BC 2.20.72. Note also his careful discrimination of different elements in ‘the people’ after Caesar’s death, esp. at 2.120.503–7,

121.510, 125.523, and 126.527: Hose 1994, 292. There are mirroring divisions in the senate too: 2.127.528 and 531.

39
Dio 37.22.3, 43.11.6, 47.38.3 (with Rawson 1986, 115 = 1991, 503). Lintott 1997, 2517 and n. 81, argues that ‘lover of Republican

institutions’ may underlie δημεραστής, but also suggests interestingly that Dio may be crafting this description with an eye to the

principate: ‘It may be suggested that Cassius Dio devised Cato’s character as an ideal, so that he could portray any imitations under the

Principate as perversions. Since, according to Dio (65.12.2), Helvidius Priscus’ vice lay in pandering to the mob in his opposition to

monarchy (basileia), it was necessary to depict Cato as a lover of the Republic…’

40
Dio 37.54.3, 37.57.2; for the use of ὲταιρεία cf. Nic. Dam. Vit. Aug. 103, 105. On Dio’s portrayal of the people cf. de Blois 1997,

2655–60, especially 2656–7 for comparison with the stereotypes of Plutarch; Sion-Jenkis 2000, 71–2.

41
Gracch. 8.10, 9.3, 10.1, 12.6, 13.4, 13.6.

42
Gracch. 10.9, 11.1, 11.4, 12.6, 18.3, 20.3; cf. Sion-Jenkis 2000, 66–8. These ‘rich’ dominate the senate (11.4, though cf. 18.3), and

seem closely equivalent to the political grouping which Plutarch normally describes simply as ‘the senate’: cf. 14.3, 16.2, 21.1–4.

Plutarch here calls them ‘the rich’ simply to phrase the conflict in the relevant terms, i.e. economic ones; Appian’s procedure is here

similar (Hose 1994, 296). When political rather than economic divisions come to be more relevant, Plutarch naturally reverts to

describing Tiberius’ opponents as ‘the senate’ (20–1). Economic considerations were less central to his treatment of Gaius, and his

antagonists are again usually ‘the senate’: 26.1, 27.1–2, 29.3–6, 30.1–2, 30.6–7, 32.5, 33.3, 35.2. Cf. Gargola 1997, 576 for the similar

shift in Appian’s phraseology: I do not find it as incoherent as he does.

43
On the similarities of rhythm between the two brothers’ Lives cf. Ingenkamp 1992, esp. 4306–19 (‘Tema con variazione’). Gargola

1997, 568–70 finds a similar recurrent rhythm in Appian.

44
Initial popularity: Gracch. 22.7. Demagogic proposals: 24.5, 25.1, and especially 26, bills in which he was ‘playing to the demos and

trying to destroy the power of the senate’ ( τῳ̑ δήμω χαριζóμενος και ̀ καταλύων τὴν σύγκλητον, 26.1); 27.5. People rejoice: 25.4, 27.1,
28.1. The ‘most notable men’ ( γνωριμώτατοι) launch Livius Drusus: 29.4, 31.3–4. People waver: 30.7 (‘the people became more gently
disposed to the senate’), 32.4, 37.7. Gaius more extreme: 33. Death: 36–8. Popular hatred of Opimius: 38.8–9, 39.2; and

demonstrations for Gaius after death: 39.2–3.

45
The sequence and selection of material in the two authors is tellingly similar. The usual view, and surely the right one, is that they

share a source (cf. Gabba 1958 on App. BC 1.7.26): see esp. Tibiletti 1948, 206–9 (who seems right against Gabba 1958, 14–15 on

1.7.28); Shochat 1970, 34 ff., with extensive bibliography at n. 31; Badian 1972, 707. The principal dissenter is Göhler 1939, 74–5,

but his strongest argument rests on precisely the difference of interpretation – Appian stressing the Italians, Plutarch the urban poor –

which is here explained in terms of Plutarch’s individual techniques.

46
See esp. BC 1.7.28, 1.8.32, 1.18.74, 1.21.86–7, with Gabba’s notes; Göhler 1939, 76–82.

47
Gracch. 8.4, 9.5. Cf. Gabba 1956, 37 n. 1, Shochat 1970, 36–7, Richardson 1980, 2.

48
Gracch. 8.1, 9.2; for the stress on the demos see n. 44.

49
For countrymen coming to Rome in 133, cf. Diod. 34(35).6.1.

50
Gracch. 24.1–2, 33.1 (Italian support); 24.1–2, 31.3 (accusations of stirring revolt).
51
In Pelling, forthcoming (b) I explore some further implications of this pairing, in particular the (slightly different) development of the

theme of wealth in treating the Spartan and the Roman couples. On the importance of ‘love of glory’ in the pair cf. Ingenkamp 1992.

52
Particularly by Badian: see Badian 1958, 172, and Badian 1972, 701 n. 100, 717 and n. 146, 731 n. 183. Gabba 1956 discusses ‘il

motivo alleato’ with great care, but is much more ready than Badian to believe that it may bear some relation to historical reality.

53
Badian 1958, 168–74, cf. Badian 1972, 731 and n. 183; he was following and developing some suggestions of Gelzer (see esp. Gelzer

1929, 299–303). See also e.g. Earl 1963, 20–3 and Nagle 1970, 373–6 for similar arguments.

54
Bernstein 1978, 137–59. Bernstein also argues that reflections of this change of plan can be seen in Appian’s own narrative: this is no

place for a discussion, but his argument is not at all cogent. Cf. Astin 1979, 111–12, Richardson 1980, 2–3.

55
Naturally, not all the material relevant to this complicated issue can be discussed here: any serious treatment would have to consider

the terms of the lex agraria of 111 BC, as well as the various (largely enigmatic) statements made by Cicero. I here limit myself to those

arguments drawn from the divergence of the narratives of Plutarch and Appian – arguments, it is true, which most scholars have felt to

be of particular importance in discussing this question. For fuller discussions see Shochat 1970 and 1980; Richardson 1980 (Italians

included in the grants); Brunt 1971a, 76 n. 1; Sherwin-White 1973, 217–18; and Stockton 1979, 40–6 (cautious, but not excluding

Italian participation); Nagle 1970; Badian 1972 (Italians excluded); Lintott 1992, 44–5, and 1994, 63–4 (no new allotments for non-

Romans, but some previous non-Roman possessions may have survived); and Bernstein 1978 (discussed at pp. 215–16).

56
Cf. Göhler 1939, 76–82 (showing that by ‘Italians’ Appian certainly means Italian allies); Cuff 1967.

57
Richardson 1980.

58
Gabba 1956; Cuff 1967. See now also Gargola 1997, who argues that Appian’s account of the post-Gracchan reforms (BC 1.27.121–

4) is similarly influenced by his wider thematic concerns. At 577–8 he tentatively but convincingly extends that suggestion to the entire

Gracchan narrative: Appian ‘strengthen[s].. .the thematic continuity over the first episodes of civil strife by bringing forward all the

central issues as early as possible’.

59
This emerges with particular clarity in Book 5 (which, pace Gabba, is surely not drawn from the same source as the early parts of Book

1): cf. esp. 5.12–14, 5.23.90, 5.27.106. See also Cuff 1983.

60
Badian 1972, 707; cf. the criticisms of de Ste Croix 1981, 359.

61
As Badian 1972, 717 f. and n. 149 rightly insists.

62
Gabba 1956, 62.

63
This is likely, though less certain than in the case of the accounts of the Gracchi. The exile of Metellus is certainly described in

extremely similar terms by both authors (Mar. 29, App. BC 1.29), and must surely come from a common source. It is possible that one

or the other has turned to a different source for the political background, but, in view of Plutarch’s capacity for recasting material, there

is no need to resort to that assumption.

64
See Badian 1958, 207 n. 2; Göhler 1939, 80–1 (Appian means allies); Shochat 1970, 40 and n. 44; Gelzer 1929, 298; Brunt 1965b,

106 (rural citizens); Lintott 1968, 178–81 (Appian confused); Gargola 1997, 578–9 (Appian deliberately mis-states to link two major

themes of his work, allies and land).

65
Historians normally accept that Saturninus proposed some distribution to Italians, but argue (or imply) that only Italian veterans –

particularly those of Marius’ army – were to benefit: Göhler 1939, 197–203; Badian 1958, 203–8; Gabba 1951, 178–9, and 1956, 75–

6. I suspect that this needs reconsideration. The veterans were clearly of central importance (cf. Mar. 28.7, App. BC 1.29.132), and

would doubtless be the first to be settled; but there seems no reason to assume that only veterans were to receive benefits.

66
Gomme, HCT i. 72–4: cf. p. 134 and n. 62. For the stereotypical soldier who is lost in politics see also ch. 15 below.

67
Cf. p. 215 and n. 51. I would now put much more emphasis on this point: see my last paragraph, pp. 225–6.

68
Caes. 13.5, 14.6, Aem. 38.2, 38.6, Flam. 18.2, Mar. 28.6, Cato Min. 26.4, Pomp. 30.3–4, Lucull. 38.2, Cic. 10.1, 33.2, cf. 22.2.

69
Aem. 31.2, Cato Mai. 16.4, Gracch. 24.2, 29.6, 30.7, Pomp. 4.8, Brut. 24.4.

70
Caes. 14.3, Cic. 11.2, 29.4.

71
Gracch. 40.3, Pomp. 4.8, Brut. 24.4, Cato Min. 27.8, cf. 49.3.

72
Gracch. 32.4, 35.2, Cic. 9.7. Moles 1993a, 152 (cf. 1988, 160), argues that at 9.7–10.2 Plutarch distinguishes the αριστοκρατικοί
from the όλιγαρχικοί: he thinks that the όλιγαρχικοί ‘here = the narrow clique within the general aristocracy, οί ἀρισ- τοκρατικοί’. I
think not. The logic of the sequence is that Cicero won the favour of the δη̑ μος largely by attacking Pompey’s enemies and the
όλιγαρχικοί (9.7), but was supported for the consulship no less by the ἀριστοκρατικοί than by οί πολλοί (10.1). This co-operation
(συναγωνισαμένων) requires an explanation: the Catiline scare. That ‘but’ (δέ) points to a change of texture in Cicero’s political tactics

and support between 9.7 and 10.1, and ἀριστοκρατικοί picks up όλιγαρχικοί just as οί πολλοί picks up δη̑ μος. Were ἀριστοκρατικοί

and όλιγαρχικοί different, there would be less need for an explanation. As Moles says, ἀριστοκρατικοί is then picked up by ‘most of the

καλοι ̀ κἀγαθοί’ at 11.2, but that need not point to any systematic sub-division among this ‘general aristocracy’: it just indicates that
Cicero attracted enough but not necessarily universal support.

73
Mar. 9.4, cf. Otho 3.3.

74
Marc. 27.4.

75
Fab. 8.4, Gracch. 13.2, 20.1, Lucull. 37.3, Pomp. 25.7, Caes. 10.6; cf. Mar. 9.4, 30.5, Gracch. 24.3.

76
Mar. 30.2

77
Fab. 8.4, Marc. 27.4, Aem. 38.2–3, Cato Mai. 16.4, Mar. 14.14, 29.7, 34.6, Lucull. 35.9, 37.3, Pomp. 16.3, 49.3, 51.6, Crass. 4.1,

Caes. 7.4, Cato Min. 27.8, Brut. 27.5, 29.3.

78
A representative selection of Greek passages: Arist. 2.1, 26.2, Cim. 10.8, 15.1–2, Nic. 2.2, 11.2, Alc. 13.5, 21.2, 26.2, Dion 28.1; and

esp. Per. 7.3–4, 9.5, 10.7.8, 11.1–3 (with Meinhardt 1957, 38, and Andrewes 1978, 2), 15.1. In general see Rhodes 1981 on [Arist.]

Ath. Pol. 2.1.

79
Sulla: Sull. 30.5–6 (etc.), Pomp. 9.3, Brut. 9.2, Cic. 17.5, 27.6. Marius: Mar. 46.6, Sull. 30.5, cf. Pomp. 81(1).2. Cinna: Mar. 41.2,

Sull. 22.1, Cic. 17.5, Caes. 1.1. Carbo: Sull. 22.1. Saturninus: Mar. 30.1. Cicero: Cic. 23.4. Caesar: Caes. 4.8, 57.1, 64.5, 69.1, Cato

Min. 55.4, 58.7, 66.2, Ant. 12.5, Brut. 12.3. Pompey: Pomp. 25.3, 30.3–4, 43.1, 54.5, Caes. 41.2, Lucull. 38.2, Cato Min. 47.2. C.

Gracchus: Gracch. 27.1. Cassius: Brut. 29.5. For Plutarch’s vocabulary here cf. Sion-Jenkis 2000, 35–8.

80
Catilinarians: Cic. 10.2, 10.5. Caesar: Caes. 4.9, 13.4, Cic. 20.6. Saturninus: Mar. 30.1. On Fab. 8.4 see p. 218.

81
Marius: Mar. 2.4, 28.1, 31.3, 34.6, 45.4–12. Pompey: Pomp. 30.7–8. There is little on Pompey’s wishes – for commands or for

anything else – in the second half of that Life: see pp. 100–1 and Pelling, forthcoming (b).

82
This ascription of motive derives from Polybius (18.10.11–12, 18.39.4). Livy, interestingly, finds the charge embarrassing and plays it

down: see Livy 32.32.5–8 and 33.13.15, with Briscoe 1973, 22 n. 4, and notes on both passages. For a powerful modern discussion see

Badian 1970, 295 ff.: note esp. 310 ff., with some trenchant remarks on Roman views of gloria. I discuss Plutarch’s adaptation and

reinterpretation of Polybius more fully in Pelling 1997a, 291–309.

83
On this theme in Agis–Cleomenes–Gracchi cf. esp. Ingenkamp 1992.

84
Wardman 1974, 120 brings this out well. On philotimia in the Lives see also Frazier 1988a, 109–27, who helpfully sets Plutarch’s

against earlier treatments. The awareness of positive and negative aspects is as old as Arist. NE 2.7.1107b27–1108a1. Cf. also chs. 10,

15, 16, and 18 for discussion of the positive and – especially – negative aspects of philotimia and its close twin philonikia in Philopoemen

and in Coriolanus.

85
The important political aspect which Plutarch does not see concerns the composition of the juries. To understand this he would need

to show more grasp of the equites than he does: see p. 220.

86
Ant. 5.8, Gracch. 10.3, Cato Min. 20.8 – though, oddly enough, he gets it right at Roman Questions 81 (Mor. 283c).

87
Caes. 35.6–11, Caesar’s clash with the tribune Metellus, is another case where Plutarch does not bring out the importance of the veto.

88
See esp. Sull. 1.1, (‘by birth he was one of the patricians, whom one might call “nobles”

’), and Ant. 12.3. Most men so described are in fact both nobiles – whether on Gelzer’s definition or on Mommsen’s, revived by Brunt

(1982) – and patricii : P. Clodius (Caes. 9.2, Cic. 28.1), Cornelius Lentulus at Cannae (Fab. 16.7), Valerius Flaccus (Cato Mai. 3.1), P.

Cornelius Dolabella in AD 69 (Otho 5.1), the house of the Servii (Galb. 3.1). But the terms are clearly vague ones: cf. Popl. 18.3, Cam.

33.4, Cic. 40.2. Note Sert. 25.2, on Perperna’s ευγενεία (Perperna was not patricius, but he was nobilis, Gelzer 1969, 51 n. 457), and

Cato Mai. 16.4, where the ευπατρίδαί monopolize the consulship (clearly nobiles, for he knows that one plebeian had to be elected,

16.2). Plutarch simply follows any source which refers to high birth, and has no awareness of subtle distinctions.

89
Mar. 4.1, 5.7–9, Gracch. 13.2: cf. Cor. 21.4, Pomp. 4.7, Cato Min. 34.6.

90
Cor. 13.5 is an exception, but relates to a very different political climate.

91
For Plutarch’s interest see e.g. Fab. 20.1, Marc. 20, Flam. 2.3–5, 5.1–2, 12.6, Cato Mai. 6.2–4, 10.4–6, Aem. 6.6–7, 28.6 ff., 39.7–9,

Gracch. 3.1, 23.4, Sulla 25.4–5, Sert. 24.5, Lucull. 7.4–7, 20 and 29 (with Swain 1992, 309–11), Cato Min. 34–40, Pomp. 10.2, 28, 39,

50, Caes. 11–12, Cic. 6.1–2, 36, 52(3). As emerges most clearly from Pompey, he tends to be more interested in mildness of everyday

administration and equity in routine jurisdiction than in the great administrative settlements. For his awareness of general rapacity see

esp. Cato Mai. 6.2–4, Cic. 52(3).3, Cato Min. 12.3–6, Brut. 6.10–12, and the other instances collected by Jones 1971, 100.

92
Mar. 35.2; other casual mentions of equites at e.g. Mar. 30.4, Cic. 10.5, 13.2, 31.1, Pomp. 14.11 (where again note that Plutarch

stresses the enthusiasm of the people at Pompey’s equestrian demonstration): cf. de Blois 1992, 4579. Brunt 1965a, 130, is therefore right

to notice the absence of equites from Plutarch’s account of Marius, but wrong to find this surprising or significant.

93
Gracch. 16.1, 26.2, Pomp. 22.3.

94
Dio: esp. 38.12.4, 38.13.1, 38.16.2–3, 38.16.6; casual references are also more frequent than in Plutarch, e.g. 40.49.4, 40.60.4,

40.63.3, 41.7.1, 42.51.5, 43.25.1, 44.6.1, 44.9.1. Appian: esp. BC 1.22.91–7, 1.35.157–36.162, 1.37.165–8, 1.100.468, 2.13.47–8.

95
Sull. 12.12–14, Pomp. 20.1, 21.5–7, 43.1–3. On Plutarch’s portrayal of the soldiers see now de Blois 1992, 4583–99.

96
τò στρατιωτικόν somehow involved: Cato Min. 31.2. City filled with soldiers: Pomp. 48.1. Mob’s goodwill as the aim: Caes. 14.2.

Land distributed to the poor and destitute: Cato Min. 31.5, 33.1, Pomp. 47.5. Demos enraptured: Pomp. 48.2.

97
Cf. de Blois 1992, 4578–80, 4588.

98
Cf. de Blois 1992, 4584–90, esp. 4587–9; then 4592 on the Sulla passage.

99
Brut. 18.10–14, 20.1, 20.4–11, 21.2–6, 22.3, Ant. 14.5, 16.6–8. Scanty references to the soldiers: Ant. 16.6–8, Brut. 21.4, 22.3,

23.1.

100
Cf. de Blois 1992, 4596–7; and, more generally, 4590–2, 4598–9, and 4612–13 on the materialist preoccupations of the rapacious

soldiery. On that theme see esp. Galba 1, with Ash 1997.

101
Ant. 30.6–31.3.

102
App. BC 5.63–4.

103
App. BC 2.119.501, 2.120.507, 2.125.523, 2.135.565, 3.6.18, 3.11.38–12.41, 3.21.78, and so on, esp. 5.17: a glance at the index

locorum of Botermann 1968 reveals how much of the evidence for the political loyalties and impact of the veterans is drawn from

Appian. Dio’s blind spots on the veterans: see Botermann 1968, 30, but note e.g. 45.7.2, 45.12–13, bringing out both their genuine

loyalties and their capacity to be influenced by largesse. For Dio’s treatment of soldiers see now de Blois 1997, 2660–75, especially

2667–9 on the way they make up their own minds as a sort of extra popular assembly. Nic. Dam.: see Vit. Aug. 41, 46, 56, 95, 99, 103,

108, 115–19, 121, 130–3, 136–9.

104
Cf. esp. Sall. BJ 41, BC 37–8, Hist. 1.6–13M, and (if authentic) ad Caes. 2.5.1. For Sallust’s usage see Hanell 1945; Syme 1964, 17

f., 171 ff.; Hellegouarc’h 1963, esp. 110 ff., 430, 438, 442 ff., 512. Sallust is, of course, heavily indebted to Thucydides in his use of

these categories, and a certain ‘Greekness’ is unsurprising.

105
See BJ73.6–7, …plebessicaccensa…opificesagrestesque omnes (‘… the people were so inflamed.. .all the artisans and rustics’) and 84.1,

cupientissuma plebe consul factus (‘elected consul to the great enthusiasm of the people’). For the general omission of the equites (though

note 65.4) see Syme 1964, 173: ‘a serious omission.if nothing worse’.esp. 198–204.

106
e.g. Pomp. 15.1, 22.2, Cato Min. 21.3. How far the comitia centuriata was in fact dominated by wealth is one of the questions

which has become controversial since this paper was written (cf. n. 23): see esp. Yakobson 1992 and 1999, 20–64; Millar 1998, esp.

198–204.

107
Though he admittedly tends to confine such analyses to the early books, where such categories are natural enough for the description

of the struggle of the Orders (see e.g. Hellegouarc’h 1963, 430 with nn. 1 and 7, 436 with n. 2, 515–16). His use of such categories to

describe Roman politics is extremely sparing in the third, fourth, and fifth decades (except in Book 22, esp. 22.34.1–35.3, 22.40.1–4:

rather a special case, as I suggest at pp. 223–4). Such instances as 21.63.4, 31.6.4, or 43.14.2–3 are fairly isolated. Interestingly, he is far

readier to use such terms for non-Roman states, e.g. Capua (23.2.3, 4.2–4, etc.), or ‘all the states of Italy’ (24.2.8), or Carthage (e.g.

34.62.1), or the states of Greece (35.34.3), or Phocaea (37.9.4).

108
Sest. 103, cf. de Leg. Agr. 2.10, 81, and de Off. 2.78–81, where his language very much suggests a γη̑ ς ἀναδασμóς. But, once again,
this should not be overstated. Hellegouarc’h (1963, 512) could reasonably comment on the rarity with which Cicero employs patres–

plebs or nobiles–plebs antitheses, or speaks of the plebs as a political group.

109
Dial. 36.3. Cf. his conspectus of all republican history at Ann. 4.32–3, especially plebis et optimatium certamina (‘the struggles of

people and optimates’, 32.1), …plebe ualida uel cum patres pollerent (‘. in the days when the people were strong or when the senate had

power’, 33.2).

110
Uterque regnare uult, Cic. ad Att. 8.11(161).2; see passages collected by Hellegouarc’h 1963, 560–5, and Seager 1972, 335 n. 11.

111
Not that it is a particularly easy matter to establish the relative chronology of the Lives. Jones 1966 gives the best discussion, but

needs to be treated with some caution: see pp. 7–10. But if the argument of ch. 1 holds, we can trace an increase in Plutarch’s factual

knowledge of the late Republic; it is interesting that we cannot trace any parallel development in his interpretations.

112
Sest. 97–8, 132–9, esp. 138; Sall. BJ 65.5.

113
The extreme closeness of much of Fabius to Livy is quite clear, but several passages seem to show accurate knowledge of non-Livian

detail: e.g. the 15,000 prisoners at Trasimene, 3.3; the deception at Rome when news of the Trebia arrived, 3.4; the 4,000 men of 6.4.

Such elements suggest either that Plutarch knew Livy’s source rather than Livy himself (so Peter 1865, Soltau 1897, etc, suggesting

Coelius Antipater; Klotz 1935, suggesting Valerius Antias); or a systematic, though small-scale, supplementation of Livy from a closely

parallel account. (There is larger-scale supplementation at e.g. Fab. 15, 20, 26, but those passages are not woven so closely into the

Livian material, and can easily represent additions from Plutarch’s own memory and general reading: cf. ch. 1, esp. p. 16 on Livy.) Some

parts of Plutarch show knowledge of those parts of Livy which are most likely to be Livy’s own contribution (e.g. the arguments of

Herennius Balbus, 22.34 and Fab. 8.4; the Camillus echo at 22.3.10 and Fab. 3.1; the words of Fabius, 22.18.8 and Fab. 8.1); and it is

on balance more likely that Plutarch knows Livy himself, not his source. It may well be that a slave or freedman assistant was sent to

consult (say) Coelius or Polybius, and report back to Plutarch any significant variations from Livy’s account, or useful extra details: we

too readily ignore the possibility of such ‘research assistants’ (see p. 24 and Jones 1971, 84–7). At all events, even if it is Livy’s source,

not Livy himself, who is Plutarch’s main authority, Livy’s general closeness to Plutarch suggests that he is generally remaining very

faithful to the source which, on this hypothesis, he and Plutarch share. The source-picture is similar in Marcellus : Pelling 1989, 203 n.

7.

114
Hoffmann 1942, 38–9, brings out this feature of Plutarch’s narrative very well, though he is surely wrong in attributing the recasting

of the material to Plutarch’s source, not Plutarch himself.

115
Fab. 3.6–7, cf. Livy 22.8, Plb. 3 86–7.

116
Fab. 4.4, cf. Livy 22.9.7.

117
Fab. 7.5–7, 9.1, cf. Livy 22.23.5–7, 22.25.12.

118
Livy 22.34.9.

119
Stadter 1975.

120
ϕιλονικία: Fab. 25.3–4 (cf. 22.5). For the dangers of this quality in another Life, Coriolanus, see ch. 15, especially p. 347 n. 24 on

the word’s suggestions: there too the quality becomes destructive when a general turns to politics. Political point-scoring rather than

fighting the war: esp. Fab. 25.3–4 (where ‘his refusal to allow money to be allocated for the war’, 25.3, closely reverses the story of 7.5–

8). Shouting: 26.1, contrast 7.5, 14.2: cf. p. 392 for this as a demagogic trait. Even in his distinctive ‘gentleness’ (πρᾳóτης) he is now
outdone by Crassus (25.4): that is prepared already at 22.8, when Marcellus emerges as more πρᾳ̑ος than Fabius. On the nature of the
tradition see Hoffmann 1942, 92–3: the contrast of Fabius and Scipio seems well founded in the historical tradition, but the personal

pettiness of Fabius seems individual to Plutarch’s account.

121
Forster 1962, 151, discussing Anatole France’s Thais.

122
Jones 1971, 99–100; on old frugality and new greed cf. also de Blois 1992, 4613 and Pelling, forthcoming (b).

123
e.g. Pomp. 70, Cato Mai. 4.2, 16.8, 28(1).2–3, Aem. 11.3–4, Sull. 1.5, 12.8–14, Phoc. 3.3.

124
When the theme is first introduced at Cato Mai. 4.2, Plutarch simply talks of Rome ‘not preserving her purity because of her very

size: her control of so many affairs and so many peoples was exposing her to many different customs and examples of many different

sorts of life’. Nothing specifically on Greece there – probably because Plutarch is so far reluctant to cast any shadow of hesitation or

doubt on Cato’s moral insight. It is only at 22.4–23.2 that Cato’s hostility to Greek culture is specifically stressed and criticized: at that

stage of the Life Plutarch is tracing with more subtlety the manner in which Cato’s strengths and flaws both spring from the same basic

traits. By then we have come to appreciate the man’s moral force, and respect his concern for old-fashioned Roman virtue: we now see

the excesses which this attitude can bring. See further Pelling 1989, 214–15. I pursue this theme further in Pelling, forthcoming (b),

discussing Plutarch’s treatment of wealth in the Roman Lives: I argue there that he avoids the implication of any corrupting Greek
influence (so also Swain 1990a, 126–8 = Scardigli 1995, 229–32), and that one can trace some nimble footwork as he tiptoes around

the theme.

125
Contrast the much more sombre emphasis of Plb. 9.10 and Livy 25.40.2. I discuss this treatment of Greek culture in Marcellus more

fully in Pelling 1989, 199–208, especially 201–3 on the way Plutarch tilts the moral scales in Marcellus’ favour. Cf. also Swain 1990a,

131–2, 140–2 = Scardigli 1995, 239–40, 254–9; Duff 1999, 305–7.

126
Contrast the parallel passage at Diodorus 34(35).33.4–5, doubtless inspired by the same source (probably Posidonius). Diodorus has

no such emphasis on the demos, and speaks more vaguely of external fear as a stimulus to concord: indeed, his Nasica brings in concepts

such as ‘the need to rule Rome’s subjects with equity and good repute’, and the threat to Rome from dangerous allies. For discussions of

Nasica’s insight see Astin 1967, 276–80, and Lintott 1972, 632–8; Gelzer 1931, 272–3 and others were clearly quite wrong to see the

hand of Polybius in influencing Plutarch’s stress on the boule and demos. See also pp. 200–1, where I suggest that Plutarch leaves a certain

moral ambiguity on the issues, but that Nasica still has the better of the exchange.

127
Syme 1939, 441.

128
It is accepted in those terms by de Blois 1992, 4570 (‘Plutarch certainly viewed Roman history through Greek glasses’) and Hose

1994, 286 (Plutarch’s ‘interpretatio Graeca’). Swain 1990a, 127–8 = Scardigli 1995, 232–3 dwells more on the value of the similar

political categories for the comparisons. Duff 1999, 302–3 thoughtfully develops the point in the context of ‘the politics of parallelism’:

he brings out the relevance for comparison of this ‘Greek lens through which to project his Romans’, and argues that ‘by applying Greek

values to Roman history, Plutarch appropriates the past of Rome into the Greek cultural tradition’. Cf. then 309, where he speaks of

‘.the imposition.of a Greek perspective onto Roman history. To this extent, the Parallel Lives can be seen as a Greek response to Roman

power, a statement of resistance.’ That makes Plutarch’s Hellenism too aggressive for my taste: cf. below, pp. 259–60, in a chapter where

I exploit the continuity of Plutarch’s Greek and Roman categories rather differently.
 10

THE MORALISM OF PLUTARCH’S LIVES

For there is always a risk that civil life will damage the reputation of those who owe their greatness to

warfare, and are ill-suited to democratic equality. They expect to enjoy the same supremacy in this new

sphere, whereas their opponents, worsted by them on campaign, find it intolerable if they cannot

overtake them even here. Thus they delight in taking a man with a glorious record of campaigning and

triumphs, and when they have him in the forum they take care to subdue him and put him down;

whereas they behave differently to a man who lays aside and yields the honour and power he enjoyed on

campaign, and they preserve his authority unimpaired.

(Pomp. 23.5–6)

When Antony had taken his fill of the sight he ordered the head and hands of Cicero to be impaled over

the rostra, as if this were a matter of outraging the corpse; in fact he was making an exhibition of his

own outrageous behaviour at fortune’s expense, and of the dishonour which he brought on his office.

(Ant. 20.4, cf. Cic. 49.2)

Nothing brought more delight to the Romans as a whole, and nothing won them over more firmly to

Otho’s side, than the fate of Tigellinus. No one had realized it, but the fear of punishment, which the

city demanded as its public due, had already been one sort of punishment in itself; a second sort had

been the incurable diseases which racked his body; but the wisest judges put particular weight on those

impious and unspeakable cavortings with prostitutes, a style of life to which his depraved taste clung

even as it came near to gasping its last. This, thought those wise persons, was the worst punishment of

all, outweighing a multitude of deaths.

(Otho 2.1–2)

I. Preliminary

Plutarch, it is agreed, is a ‘moralist’, a writer who employs his persuasive rhetoric to explore ethics and

point ethical truths; but moralism can take different forms. Take the three passages printed above. The

first essays a generalization about human experience; the second adopts a particular ethical voice for

describing behaviour, commending one mode – not a particularly controversial mode – of viewing an

action; the third is similar, but this time the voice is more individual, intimating a view which Plutarch

might hold but his audience might find more paradoxical.

It is good to see Plutarch so admired once again, but there is one way in which our generation is out

of step. Most ages who have admired Plutarch have been appreciative of his moral content, and have

found no difficulty in extracting morals from the Lives for their own day. Sometimes, indeed, this has

been unnerving, as in the eighteenth century, when Rousseau and others found Plutarch’s treatment of

liberty so inspiring: Macaulay, not specially tongue in cheek, even held Plutarch responsible for some
1
‘atrocious proceedings’ of the French Revolution. But the contemporary world has no taste for

moralism. ‘Moralizing’ tends to have an adjective before it – ‘mere’, or ‘shallow’, or ‘hackneyed’.

Plutarch’s rehabilitation as a biographer has largely sprung from an increased alertness to his artistry, but

fewer critics of the Lives have dwelt on the ethical thought.

Most of us lack the instinctive understanding of moralism which previous generations enjoyed. We

accept that it concerns values and conduct; it is a natural next step to assume that a moralist will be

telling readers to live their own lives differently – to put it in grammatical terms, that a moral should be

an imperative, ‘act like this’, ‘avoid that’. And so, of course, it sometimes is. This is the way in which

Plutarch sometimes describes it himself: at Demetrius 1.6 he compares himself with Ismenias the flute-

player, who would use bad examples as well as good: this is how you should play, this is how you should

not. Yet this is where the modern discomfort begins, particularly when we approach those Lives which

most invite ethical appraisal. Is the moral of Antony the encouragement to public men to control their

sexuality, for ladies like Cleopatra might be catastrophically distracting? Is Coriolanus or Marius a simple

lesson in the need for education and flexibility? Are we to assume an audience which really needed

telling these things, all agog for any Cleopatra which came along, all arrogantly proud of their lack of

education or their class-bound inflexibility? These, surely, were morals which everyone already knew all

too well. We may feel tempted to take a step which is often rewarding in treating tragedy, and to make

these moral views features of the audience rather than the writer, assumptions which the audience would

already have and which the writer could therefore exploit for his own purposes. In Plutarch’s case, these

purposes might then be viewed as an extension of the self-characterization which Stadter has so
 2
illuminatingly stressed, Plutarch’s presentation of himself as a man of sage, humane, sympathetic

understanding, bonded with the audience in moral harmony. That can work simply, with Plutarch

describing events in a voice which his readers would welcome as their own: thus, perhaps, the example

from Antony with which we began. Or it can be subtler, as with the Otho case: not all of Plutarch’s

audience would think in quite the terms he adopts, but this stronger and more mannered self-projection

is still engaging rather than alienating. That is not too different from a passage in Epicurus Makes a

Pleasant Life Impossible (1093c), where Plutarch has been talking about the absorbing power of

literature: ‘who would take pleasure in sleeping with the most beautiful of women rather than staying

awake with what Xenophon wrote about Panthea, or Aristobulus about Timocleia, or Theopompus

about Thebe?’ The answer was never going to be ‘no-one’, but it is hard to dislike the captivated
3
bookworm whom the passage projects.

There is something in this approach, but we should also be aware how similar this Plutarchan

phenomenon is to one visible in other genres, where self-projection is a less profitable approach. If we

feel impatient at the simpler formulations of a Plutarchan moral, then it is similar to the impatience we

feel at those who reduce Sophocles’ Antigone to a sermon on its closing lines, ‘respect the gods’ – a

formulation which the audience would indeed have found unsurprising, and one which does not match

up to the moral intensity of the play itself. And Antigone may be a thought-provoking example in other

ways. In tragedy, as in epic, we have grown more used to thinking about moralism. We have learnt that

works can be ethically reflective and exploratory, without always producing conclusions which can be

reduced to a simple expository imperative ‘do that’, ‘avoid this’. The Iliad can explore war and heroism

without being simply pro-glory or anti-war; tragedy can explore paradoxes of polis-life without always
4
crudely reinforcing or crudely subverting polis-ideology.

This distinction between ‘expository’ and ‘exploratory’ moralism is one to which we will return,

though it may by then appear a little rough. The same is true of a further distinction, that between

‘protreptic’ and ‘descriptive’ moralism, with ‘protreptic’ seeking to guide conduct, ‘descriptive’ being
5
more concerned to point truths about human behaviour and shared human experience. Such

‘descriptive’ moralism is suggested by such formulations as Cimon 2.5, where Plutarch includes bad

qualities ‘as if in shame at human nature, if it produces no character who is purely good or of

unqualified virtue’. That may not give Plutarch’s audience any firm guidance on how to behave, but it

still points a moral truth of the human condition, just as it may be a human truth that men as great as

Alexander or Pompey or Antony may be fragile in different ways. The Pompey passage with which this

chapter began is a good small-scale example of this. It is immediately clear that descriptive moralism

often involves a protreptic aspect as well: don’t go around killing people like Cleitus or drinking yourself

into oblivion; if you are a military man, find out about politics too; avoid Cleopatras. But this may at

least remind us that the moralism may have a range and depth which goes beyond the simpler protreptic

reductions, just as Oedipus Tyrannus is better seen as a study of a great man’s fragility than as a warning

against intemperate behaviour, or for that matter against intense curiosity.

II. Contemporary flavouring, or timelessness?

This chapter will explore these distinctions through a more precise question, one which centres on more

narrowly political moralizing. What sort of political guidance do the Lives offer, and how close is their

relevance to Plutarch’s own day? If we think of other ancient biographers, some of the most interesting

recent work has centred on their moral categories, and the way in which these reflect the contemporary

interests of the writer’s milieu. Wallace-Hadrill 1983 has brought out how Suetonius’ distinctive

categories reflect his Hadrianic setting – the stress on civilitas and clemency, the preoccupation with

spectacula and ludi, the lack of interest in military courage, and so on. Dionisotti 1988 has emphasized

that Nepos’ Lives recurrently focus on the clash of freedom and tyranny, the desirability of public men’s

obedience to the state, the dangers of unrestrained self-seeking, all themes which resonate with the

experience of the Second Triumvirate. The famous passage of the Eumenes is a particularly explicit

example:

That phalanx of Alexander the Great had crossed Asia and vanquished Persia; glory, and also licence,

had become ingrained; now they presumed to issue commands to their leaders rather than obey them,

just as our veterans do today. Thus there is a danger that history will repeat itself and that they too will

destroy everything through their licence and lack of moderation, their victims including those who once

stood on their side along with their former enemies. If one reads the history of those veterans, he will see

the parallels and will judge that the differences are only those of period.

(Nepos, Eumenes 8.2–3)

The most thoughtful attempt to relate Plutarch to his political milieu, that of Jones 1971, was

sceptical of such precise contemporary allusions in the Lives. He found hints of contemporary concerns

with harmony and concord, but he also emphasized, for instance, that Plutarch could criticize the self-
 6
deification of Hellenistic kings without feeling that this need reflect on Roman emperor worship. And

it is clear that Plutarch responds much less well than Suetonius or Nepos to the search for contemporary

flavouring. Let us consider the qualities which most regularly excite Plutarch’s interests. If we consult

Wardman’s catalogue, we find an emphasis on steering a middle path between demagogy and tyranny;

on disarming the envy of opponents; on winning military victories but not abusing success; on giving a

lead in battle but not exposing oneself to unnecessary personal risk; on an appropriate degree of
7
ambition. If we consult Bucher-Isler, we find the thickest lists of examples for bravery, energy,
8
prudence, justice, cowardice, arrogance, lack of self-control, and awkwardness in personal encounters.

Of course, these virtues and vices have some relation to his own time; they have some for any time,

including our own; but do they really have more relevance for Plutarch’s own day than for any other?

Take that emphasis on military qualities, bravery, keeping a cool head when successful, not exposing

oneself to unnecessary danger; or, if we turn to a more ‘descriptive’ type of moralism, that type variously

illustrated by Pompey and Marius and Coriolanus, the brilliant general lost in the tricks of politics. In

Advice on Public Life Plutarch emphasizes that, in matters of war and peace, the world has changed:

Consider the greatest goods which cities can enjoy, peace, freedom, prosperity, a thriving population,

and concord. As for peace, the peoples have no need of politicians at the present time; every war, Greek

and barbarian, has disappeared.

(824c)

No wonder that Plutarch’s contemporary Suetonius has relatively little to say about warfare; yet the

Parallel Lives are preoccupied with soldierly virtues and are full of wars, often with disproportionate

space and emphasis – the Parthian wars in the Antony or the Crassus, for instance.

Some might seize on this same example in a different way. Wars may have vanished from the world

of small-town Greece, but Plutarch knew of the wider world of Rome. Trajan may have been planning a

Parthian war at the precise time when Plutarch was preparing Antony and Crassus. Was this in Plutarch’s
9
mind? We should doubt it. The same line of reasoning, applied to Marius, would convince us that

Trajan was planning to attack Germans and Cimbri; to Caesar, that he was turning to Gaul. If we search

for references to Dacia in the Lives, they are conspicuously scarce: Caesar’s Dacian aspirations are given
10
a couple of lines (Caes. 58.6–7). And at this same time Trajan was also emphasizing a connection with
11
Hercules, pointing to the traditional Stoic associations of toil and beneficence to humanity. Plutarch’s

Antony plays the Hercules as well, but in a very different way – a swaggering bluffness, with more than

a breath of the comic miles gloriosus (Ant. 4). If any contemporary association had been caught, it would

have been extraordinarily gauche, and Trajan surely never crossed Plutarch’s mind. Plutarch has other

reasons for emphasizing Parthia, where so many of Antony’s frailties and virtues showed themselves so

plainly; a few chapters later the Actium campaign reprises many of the same points, but this time events

are even more catastrophic. Parthia can point many truths about an Antony, impetuous, valiant,

irrepressible, lovable, and deeply flawed. But those are traits which might recur with other people at

other times: they are points about a timeless human nature, not about AD110–15. Similarly the German

fighting reveals many of the best features of Marius, which will show themselves in so distorted a form

when he returns to politics; and Caesar’s fighting in Gaul marks the successful version of the energy and

love of glory which will guide Caesar’s rise as well as sealing his end.

This ‘timelessness’ deserves further stress. The Lives are narratives of particular past events, but

Plutarch, like so many Greek writers about the past, had a gift for extracting points of general, timeless

significance from such details of narrative: often he makes such generalizations explicit, as in our initial

example from Pompey. Often too the timelessness is less explicit, and becomes more a question of the

categories of interpretation which he tacitly prefers. One aspect is his liking for formulating political

controversy in fairly standard terms, exploiting categories which cut across different cultures and
12
periods, such as the antithesis of demos and oligoi. These categories do not always sit comfortably on

the periods which he is describing, but they do not fit his own day any more closely, and he is not

imposing distinctively contemporary preoccupations. In particular, he frequently remoulds his material

to present powerful demagogic leaders anxious to lead the demos in rebellion, and rise on the people’s

shoulders to establish personal tyrannies. It is hard to imagine a political atmosphere more remote from

Trajanic Rome; and it is more remote still from the Greek world of Advice on Public Life. That is not a

world of fierce demos–oligoi confrontation and tyrannical aspiration. True, the demos has to be handled

tactfully: leaders may have to put on a spurious show of disagreement over trivialities, for instance, but

only in order to carry the really important matters with less bother (813a–c); and ‘overthrows of tyrants’

are explicitly one of the spheres of glorious activity which the world no longer admits (805a).

Critics sometimes comment on this ‘timelessness’ as a weakness of Plutarch’s historical vision. We

say that he assumes every generation to be more or less the same, so that he applies the same moral
categories to each period in turn; that he fails to weigh his judgements of characters against the moral
13
norms and expectations of the societies in which they lived. Perhaps we have overstated this. He is

certainly capable of generalizing about different societies and bringing out what was morally distinctive

about each. Thus he identifies the bellicosity of Rome. ‘ “Did not Rome make her great advances

through warfare?” That is a question requiring a lengthy answer for men who define “advance” in terms

of wealth, luxury, and empire rather than safety, restraint, and an honest independence’ (Numa

26(4).12–13). And several times Plutarch dwells on the destructive moral decline of Rome, the greed,
14
the selfishness, the luxury, the provincial ransacking and extortion. He also adduces circumstances of

time or background to explain quirks of a particular character: the Spartan educational system helps to

explain a Lysander or an Agesilaus (Lys. 2.2–4, Ages. 1.5); the perpetual warfare of the time can explain

why Marcellus’ taste for Greek culture took such an uncomfortable form (Marc. 1.3–5). And he is

certainly interested in historical change, whether on small matters (trade was once much more

respectable, Solon 2.6–8) or large (the changing attitude to wealth in Sparta, a recurrent theme in
15
Lycurgus, Lysander, Agesilaus, and Agis–Cleomenes).

It is notable too how rarely Plutarch’s moral judgements are wholly anachronistic. Sometimes they

are, as when he criticizes the Gracchi for their philotimia, their ‘love of honour’ or ‘ambition’ (Ag.–Cl.

2), but he does not attack Caesar for his intense version of the same trait. That is a Life where explicit
16
moralism is scarce: such criticism would have been insensitive to the ambitious norms of Roman

political life. He is more interested in tracing how Caesar’s philotimia operated, how it built him and

then destroyed him, as the pressures of success forced him to measures which fed the resentment against

him. That is a more descriptive style of moralism, ‘howphilotimia works’ rather than ‘avoid excessive

philotimia’; and one which is both timeless in its application and a reasonable extrapolation even from

the peculiar norms of Roman politics. Nor does he criticize Flamininus when he is prepared to make

peace with Philip rather than allow a successor to take over the war and win the glory (Flam. 7.1–2).
17
Plutarch is very clear in bringing out what Flamininus was doing, clearer than his source Polybius. Yet

he does not inveigh against him, even in a Life so concerned with philotimia and the ways in which it

could be corrupted. He knows that Roman politics were like that, that this is how Roman generals
18
thought. He limits his criticisms of Flamininus’ philotimia to the vindictiveness in the hunting down
19
of Hannibal (Flam. 20–1), and that is surely a fairer point; just as he is not anachronistic in criticizing

Pompey so strongly for yielding to the pressure of his lieutenants, or Lucullus for the extremity of his

hedonistic retirement (Pomp. 67.7–10, Lucull. 40–1). These are points which contemporaries too could

have made, and in some of the cases clearly did make.

Plutarch’s approach, then, was not ‘timeless’ in the sense that he was insensitive to historical change;

it is simply that points particularly apposite to one period or one milieu were less interesting to him.

Immediately one says, ‘one can only understand Pompey by relating him to the social circumstances of

Picenum in the first twenty years of his life’, one is making points less likely to be relevant to an

audience of different circumstances. It was the more general, more widely applicable points which
20
engrossed Plutarch more, and that is the sense in which he had a taste for the timeless.

III. Philopoemen and Flamininus

Philopoemen and Flamininus provides an interesting test case for these questions of timelessness and

contemporary relevance. In this pair he is treating the first important intrusion of Rome into Greece.

The ‘freedom of the Greeks’ is a recurrent theme, one which is highlighted by the mirroring great

central panels of each Life. After Philopoemen has killed the Spartan ‘tyrant’ Machanidas he is faced by

the Greeks at the Nemean games of 205. The whole theatre turned to him as the lyre-player recited the

line of Timotheus, ‘he wrought Greece her freedom, her grand and glorious crown’ (Phil. 11.3–4).

Freedom recurs throughout that Life: Philopoemen’s last years are spent in trying to assert the dignity of

Greece against the Roman intruders, ‘endeavouring to draw the most powerful speakers and statesmen

in the direction of liberty’ (Phil. 17.3). Yet, paradoxically, it was one of these Roman intruders who

finally gave Greece that liberty: Flamininus, at that proclamation at the Isthmian games of 196, a

second theatrical festival which provides the equivalent central panel of his Life (Flam. 10–11). Plutarch

there makes the paradox explicit: after all those great national struggles for liberty, it was now the

Roman outsiders who brought them that freedom.

They thought about Greece and all the wars she had fought for freedom; and now it had come almost

without blood and without grief, championed by another people, this finest and most enviable of

prizes… Men like Agesilaus, Lysander, Nicias, and Alcibiades had been great warriors, but had not

known how to use their victories to noble and glorious ends; if one discounted Marathon, Salamis,

Plataea, and Thermopylae, and Cimon’ s victories at the Eurymedon and in Cyprus, all Greece’s wars

had been fought internally for slavery, every trophy had been also a disaster and reproach for Greece,

which had generally been overthrown by its leaders’ evil ways and contentiousness…
 (Flam. 11.3–7),

It was the Greeks’ own ‘contentiousness’, philonikia, which had been so selfdestructive. In the context of

the pair that is a most suggestive theme, for philonikia is Philopoemen’s word (Phil. 3.1, 17.7): the

contentiousness that led him to take on other Greeks, eventually even destroying the ancestral

constitution of Sparta. Flamininus is philotimos, Philopoemen is philonikos (Flam. 22(1).4), and the two

men’s qualities have come to embody something of their two countries as well. Philopoemen was indeed
21
the ‘last of the Greeks’, and in several senses.

These emphases of the pair – freedom, Greek contentiousness, Roman intervention – would

certainly have a resonance for Plutarch’s own generation. The ‘freedom of the Greeks’, that delicate

possession which Philopoemen upheld and Flamininus bestowed, remained delicate in his own day. In

AD 67 Nero had come to Corinth and proclaimed the freedom of Greece: Plutarch himself compares

that announcement with the great proclamation of Flamininus (Flam. 12). Yet that freedom had turned

sour. Nowadays, as Advice on Public Life stresses, the constant threat of Roman intervention lay over

Greek politics. ‘As you enter on any office, you should not merely remind yourself, as Pericles did

whenever he took up the general’s cloak, “Be careful, Pericles; you rule over free men, over Greeks, over

Athenian citizens”; but you must also say to yourself, “You rule as a subject: the city is subject to

proconsuls, the procurators of Caesar” ’ (813d–e). An important theme in Advice on Public Life is the

need for Greek local politicians to act with responsibility, but also with dignity: they should develop the

art of controlling their cities without constant recourse to Rome, and without allowing the sort of

disorder or affray which would force Rome to intervene (814c–16a). The Greek cities had as much

freedom as their masters chose to give them; that had to be accepted (824c); and that freedom was too

valuable to be abused. And one of the greatest dangers was, precisely, philonikia, ‘contentiousness’: that

produced the disorder which forced Rome to intervene even more actively than she might have wished

(814e–15b). Nearly three centuries earlier, Philopoemen’s differences with Aristaenus centred on the

degree of deference which Greeks owed to Rome, and the ways of minimizing Roman intervention

(Phil. 17.2–5), Aristaenus arguing ‘that they should do nothing to oppose or offend the Romans’,

Philopoemen preferring a more active independence though making some concessions; yet

Philopoemen himself embodied that contentiousness which endangered the freedom he championed.

These issues clearly had their counterparts for Plutarch’s audience. The need to steer a path between

dignified self-respect and provocative self-assertion was still problematic; contentiousness and greed

could easily prove Greece’s worst enemies. Of course Philopoemen grazes those questions, and the issues

would strike Plutarch’s audience as absorbingly familiar. But how sharp a political moral did Plutarch

intend that audience to draw, and how specific were the lessons for their own political life?

Advice on Public Life again gives some guidance, and illustrates the facility which Plutarch has, and

which he expects in his audience, in extracting morals from past events and applying them to new

contexts. The work is full of exempla from the distant past, and its addressee, Menemachus of Sardis, is

expected to draw conclusions from the worlds of Themistocles and Pericles, Nicias and Archidamus,

Pompey and Cato and use them to guide his conduct in his own very different world. At the same time

Plutarch expects discretion as well as facility in applying those morals.

We laugh at small children when they try to pull on their fathers’ boots and wear their crowns; but what

of the leaders in the cities, when they stupidly stir up the ordinary people and encourage them to

imitate their ancestors’ achievements and spirit and exploits, even though those are all quite out of

keeping with present circumstances? Their behaviour may be laughable, but the consequences they

suffer are no laughing matter. There are many other deeds of the Greeks of old which one may recount

to mould the characters of the people of today and give them wisdom. At Athens, for instance, one

might remind them not of their deeds of war, but of the nature of the amnesty decree under the Thirty;

or of the way they fined Phrynichus for his tragedy about the fall of Miletus; or of how they wore

crowns when Cassander refounded Thebes, but when they heard of the clubbing at Argos, with the

Argives killing 1,500 of their fellow-citizens, they gave orders for a procession of purification around the

whole assembly; or of the episode during the Harpalus affair, when they were searching the houses but

passed by the one of the newly wedded bridegroom. Even now one can imitate these things, and make

oneself like one’s ancestors; as for Marathon and Eurymedon and Plataea, and all those examples which

make the ordinary people swell up and fill them with shallow ostentation – we should leave them in the

schools of the sophists.

(814a–c)

Plutarch clearly hopes his audience will be too sensible to assume too close a correlation between the

glorious deeds of the past and anything that might be practicable in present circumstances.
 The passage in Advice on Public Life is mainly concerned with more distant and heroic events,

Marathon, Eurymedon, and Plataea. Philopoemen and Flamininus relate to a period when circumstances

were more similar to those of Plutarch’s own day. But even here the moral implications of the story

remain at a very general level. A self-respecting, dignified stance for independence is good, though one

might have to make some (unspecified) concessions; contentiousness, on the other hand, is bad: simple

morals like that come out clearly enough, and would have struck Plutarch’s audience as utterly

unsurprising. Everyone knew such things. But they are not enough to make this Life into a manual for

contemporary statesmen, and anyone seeking more specific political advice would search in vain.

Plutarch gives little idea of how the balance should be struck, of what counted as a wisely gauged line of

action or what was perilous. Plutarch’s striking vagueness at 17.2–7 about those ‘concessions’ which

Philopoemen made, or the way in which he tried to ‘draw the most powerful speakers and statesmen in
22
the direction of liberty’, is here significant.

Nor does Plutarch strain to illustrate another theme he preached in Advice on Public Life, that

contentiousness can itself be self-destructive by forcing Rome into more direct intervention. He might

have done: there were instances where Philopoemen acted in provocative ways which nearly inspired

Roman intervention; there were several Greek appeals to Rome and her representatives to interfere with

Philopoemen’s Spartan settlement in the 180s. Yet Plutarch tells us nothing of all this, though he knew

his Polybius well. Sometimes Plutarch visibly shies away from making a moral too contemporary and

too sharp. Philopoemen stresses Greek contentiousness and it stresses the Roman presence, but it does

not bring the two themes together: one can even trace some sleight-of-hand in separating the two

themes. The climax of contentiousness is Philopoemen’s destruction of the Spartan constitution (Phil.

16.4–9), but Plutarch removes this from its chronological context in order to treat it at a moment when
23
the Romans are far from our thoughts. When Plutarch turns to the increasing Roman intrusion, he

prefers to explain it in a different way, associating it not with contentiousness but with the sycophancy

of ‘the demagogues’ instead (17.2), a phrase of great vagueness, and one of less contemporary relevance

to Plutarch’s audience. That intrusion even seems to come at a time when Greek ‘contentiousness’ is

fading:

Rather as diseases become less acute as the body loses its strength, so the Greek cities were becoming less

contentious as they grew feebler.

(18.2)

That is no way to preach the continuing dangers of contentiousness to a contemporary audience, in a

world which was immeasurably feebler still. If a moral is to be drawn, it illuminates not the Greek

present, but the Greek past, just as those spectators at the Isthmian games of 196 were thinking of the

Greek past when they reflected on Flamininus’ gift of freedom. Contentiousness had typified Greece for

many generations, but was fading by the beginning of the second century Bc that is the moral we would

draw from Philopoemen and Flamininus, and it is only Advice on Public Life which reminds us that

contentiousness was a problem still, three hundred years later.

The contemporary resonance of freedom and contentiousness still matters; but it is just that, a

resonance. The themes would seem particularly alive and engrossing to the audience, who would find

the atmosphere disturbingly familiar; but those readers would be hard put to it to extract any specific

guidance for their own political lives. We have already seen that Plutarch prefers the more timeless to

the more particular, that he favours modes of historical explanation which transcend the particular

period which he is describing; he likes points which transcend the particular circumstances of his own

day as well. We might be reminded of the ways in which contemporary affairs impinge on tragedy. It

matters that certain plays were performed during the Peloponnesian war, in a context of great human

suffering, often generated by Athens herself; but to move from that to specific contemporary allusions is

a more delicate matter. Such material touched a nerve, and it might enrich the way spectators pondered

their own political and moral problems, but it rarely told them what to conclude or how to act.

IV. Conclusions

It is time to return to those more general questions about moralism with which we started. Several

conclusions can be drawn. First, it has continued to prove profitable to relate this ‘contemporary

resonance’ to Plutarch’s reception, and to think first of the audience rather than the author. The

audience already know that contentiousness is dangerous and freedom is a delicate possession, and bring

these assumptions to their reading: Philopoemen’s and Flamininus’ stories chime in with these pre-

existent assumptions. We should not only think of the historical interpretation subserving the moralism:

the moral assumptions of the audience also predispose them to accept the interpretation. There is

evidently a two-way process here, with audience ready for the text, and the text affecting the audience.

Secondly, let us concentrate on the second of the two ways, the moral impact of the text on this

receptive audience. It may still look as though Plutarch was telling the audience things that they knew
already, and doing so in an expository rather than exploratory way, even if these expository morals are

uncontroversial ones, and general rather than specific. Yet it is surely more complicated than that. By

the end of the Life the audience will have found various shafts of light falling on those initial

presumptions, and they will have seen them in various new perspectives; they will have seen that the

taste for liberty and the contentiousness coexisted even in a great national hero; they may have sensed

wider points about the Greek past; they will understand more sharply what range of actions philotimia

can inspire, in Flamininus’ case as well as in Philopoemen’s. None of this will lead them to doubt their

initial presumptions. Freedom is still precious and inspiring, contentiousness still a peril. But their grasp

of these morals will not merely be reinforced, it will also be more nuanced. In Plutarch’s case the new

perspectives are not specially challenging ones; they are piquant rather than shocking, just as it may be

piquant to discover that Antony or Cleopatra can be moving in their fall, or that Aristides and

Themistocles were mutually incompatible; we may never doubt that the choices made by Antony and

Cleopatra were reprehensible, or that Aristides and Themistocles were both great national heroes, but

the new insights are again piquant. Perhaps, too, that exploratory/expository distinction is coming to

seem inadequate. These new piquancies may not lead in any particular direction; they provoke thoughts

rather than command a single unambiguous conclusion, and in that sense they are exploratory rather

than expository. But the initial assumptions survive, indeed are reinforced, and no doubts are felt about

them: that is more clearly an ‘expository’ aspect.

24
Once again, it is interesting to compare tragedy. There too the audience bring their own moral

assumptions, and these assumptions are deepened by new insights. True, those new, exploratory insights

are more challenging ones. Beliefs in the superiority of Greeks to barbarians, in the ideology of the

Athenian polis, in the justice of the gods – all are put to a much sterner test than Plutarch ever essays. In

tragedy the new perspectives are more than piquant, they are disturbing and shocking. But there too the

initial assumptions generally survive, and are deepened rather than reversed by these new insights and

perspectives. Reader-response theorists tend to speak as if the ‘negation’ of an audience’s social or moral

ideology is the distinctive contribution of challenging literature; as if, indeed, negation is vital to
25
literature’s socially formative role. That seems crude. We might rather recall recent work on Augustan

literary and artistic propaganda, which has again shifted the focus more to the audience. Propaganda
26
only works with an audience ready to receive it, when it deepens rather than replaces assumptions;

straightforward negation is a poor way of influencing opinion, and it is more effective to add to ideas

rather than counter them; more effective still, if one thinks of great Augustan poetry rather than the

more basic Augustan propaganda, to see ideology put to a stern test, and nevertheless, arguably, survive.

That parallel also suggests that the moralism is still authentic in a more traditional sense, in Plutarch as

in tragedy: that it does seek to affect and impress an audience, and to encourage particular moral views –

even if these views were identical, or closely related, to those which the audience already held. Augustus

was too accomplished a propagandist to waste time on telling his audience what they already knew

unless there was some further advantage to this. Propaganda reinforces, it crystallizes, it strengthens the

will. Plutarch’s interpretations too provide clear and crystallized examples of moral truths, both

descriptive and protreptic, which enhance those pre-existent moral insights. Once again we have that
27
two-way process between writer and audience.

‘Both descriptive and protreptic’: this, thirdly, brings us back to that further initial distinction. The

notion of ‘descriptive’ moralism may still be a useful one: at least, it is useful to see how some Lives, like

Caesar, veer to the descriptive end of the spectrum, while others, like Aristides or Brutus or Aemilius

Paullus, tend to the protreptic. But it is also now clearer that there is indeed a spectrum, that the

distinction between protreptic and descriptive moralism is a blurred one, and the two forms go closely

together: just as, in the exempla of Advice on Public Life, descriptions of past human experience can

inspire us as we face current problems. Philopoemen gives little specific guidance for contemporary

politics, but that does not mean that it has no protreptic force. The description of Philopoemen’s

fighting for liberty can elucidate the dangers, it can point to certain truths of Greek historical

experience, and it can also inspire: it can sensitize an audience to the issues; readers have their own

moral decisions to make, and they will confront them with greater insight once they grasp how similar

behaviour has worked in the past. The protreptic may consist in an invitation to recognize the

importance of the issues and to explore them in a particular way, rather than to draw specific practical

conclusions; but that is still protreptic. Descriptive and protreptic moralism feed off one another, and

that is central to Plutarch’s moral programme.

Finally, we might return to that question of Plutarch’s self-presentation. Donald Russell has drawn

attention to the way Plutarch ends On Self-praise: given that people can so easily find self-praise

offensive, ‘we shall refrain from speaking about ourselves except in cases when we are likely to bring

some great benefit to ourselves or to those who hear us’ (547f ). Russell argues that, in Plutarch as in

Horace, self-disclosure does indeed have this serious moral purpose of benefiting those who hear: it is
28
‘an aspect of the teaching function of literature’. The characterization of others can crystallize ideas of
what a welllived life could be; the same goes for the characterization of self, of that narrator who is

serious but sympathetic, cultured but practical, introspective but congenial, perpetually interested and

perpetually wise. His moral commentary, as we have seen, is one way in which he constructs that figure

of ‘Plutarch’; and that construction is itself both descriptive and protreptic, capturing both the person

we read and the person we might like to be.

Notes

1
Macaulay 1898 (1st pub. 1828), 185–92; cf. p. 168, n. 72; Hirzel 1912, 160–6.

2
Stadter 1988, 292. Cf. Beck 2000 for a similar approach to Plutarch’s use of anecdote.

3
In ch.12 (pp. 277–8) I say a little more about the complicity of author and audience which such paspsages generate.

4
I say more about tragedy along these lines in Pelling 1997c and 2000, 164–88.

5
For this distinction cf. Pelling 1988, 15–16. For further discussion of it, see now Duff 1999, esp. 68–70. Duff ’s whole book represents

a far more sophisticated approach to ‘moralism’ than those which I was combatting in this 1995 essay.

6
Jones 1971, esp. 108–9, 123–4.

7
Wardman 1974, 49–132.

8
Bucher-Isler 1972.

9
Different answers to this question are given by Scuderi 1984, 74 on Ant. 34.9 and 80 on 37.2, and by Pelling 1988, 4. It should be

stressed that the Parthian War was probably still in the future when Plutarch wrote: p. 255 below.

10
Here the same goes for Suetonius, Div. Iul. 44.3 (p. 263 n. 16). I elaborate this point in the next chapter, p. 255.

11
Jones 1978, 116–19; cf. Pelling 1988, 124 on Ant. 4.2.

12
ch.9 above; de Blois 1992, 4578–83.

13
Thus Bucher-Isler 1972, 73–4; Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 108; and above, pp. 212, 225. Here, as so often, the most perceptive judgement

is Donald Russell’s (cf. n. 28 below), in this case Russell 1966b, 141–3 = Scardigli 1995, 77–81.

14
Pomp. 70, Sulla 1.5, 12.8–14, Phoc. 3.3 (on Cato), Aem. 11.3–4, Cato Mai. 4.2, 16.8, 28(1) 2–3. Cf. pp. 220 and 233 n. 91.

15
On this theme of Spartan wealth see Desideri 1985 and Pelling, forthcoming (b). On sensitivity to change, Frazier 1996, 34 and n.

58: she points also, most pertinently, to On Pythian Oracles.

16
pp. 5–6, 103–5.

17
Polybius 18.10.11–12.

18
ch.9, p. 219.

19
ch.16, pp. 350–2.

20
I say more about this ‘timelessness’ in the next chapter, and also in Pelling 2000,58–60.

21
Cf. pp. 182, 187–8 for Plutarch’s taste for making points about the cities as well as about the men, and chs. 15 and 18 for his analysis

of similar ‘contentiousness’ in another military figure, Coriolanus; also Gribble 1999, 272–4 on philonikia in Coriolanus’ pair

Alcibiades. On the question whether philonikos would suggest to Plutarch’s audience ‘love of victory’ (nike) or ‘love of quarrels’ (neike),

cf. p. 347 n. 24: the answer is probably both.

22
Contrast Polybius 24.12–14, which has clearly influenced Plutarch’s presentation of Philopoemen and Aristaenus, but phrases the

disagreement in more detail: Philopoemen’s legalism was more thoroughgoing than Aristaenus’, but he would co-operate with requests

within the terms of the alliance; and so on. Polybius’ own readers could extract from that passage much harder and more illuminating

guidance for their own day. In Pelling 1997a, 135–9, I say more about Plutarch’s presentation of Philopoemen and Rome, and trace his

adaptation of Polybius in more detail.

Thus Phil. 16.4–9 describes this destruction of the Spartan constitution (189 BO) with clear disapproval (?ργον ?μ?τατον…κα?
23

παρανομ?τατον, ‘a most savage and unprecedented deed’); then Phil. 17 turns to the Roman question, reverting to events of 192/1. The
Roman question builds to a climax as Philopoemen shows his independence and contentiousness by restoring some Spartan exiles

(17.6). These are in fact the same exiles as he restored in the context of the constitutional dismantling, and Plutarch has referred to them

already at 16.4; but no one would have inferred this from his narrative. He has now come back to the same context, and could, if he had

chosen, have delayed the constitution item till here. As it is, the dismantling of the constitution and the Roman question are left in

separate trains of thought. Cf. Pelling 1997a, 145–6, 148–53.

24
In Pelling 1997c, esp. 219, and 2000, esp. 162–3, I sketch in a little more detail the ways in which the approach of this paper could be

extended to fifth-century drama.

25
Cf. e.g. Iser 1974, xii–xiii; 1978, 73, 85; the train of thought is especially clear in Jauss 1983, 25–8, 39–45. Fish 1972, 1–2, prefers to

talk of dialectically ‘decertain- izing’ moral assumptions, rather as the Russian formalists talked of ‘defamiliarization’. These formulations

may be more fruitful for tragedy, but even these overstate the case for Plutarch. His audience remain quite certain of their original

assumptions, and the persisting familiarity of these assumptions is crucial to the audience’s receptiveness to the historical analysis.

26
Kennedy 1984 has been very influential. Cf esp. Zanker 1988 for artistic aspects.

27
What I meant by this is now put better by Stadter 2000, esp. 505, elaborating the comparison of studying the Lives to looking in a

mirror (Aem. 1.1, Progress in Virtue 85a–b: cf. Desideri 1995, 21–4, Frazier 1996, 59–60 and p. 273 below): ‘He invites the reader,

using the life he is reading as a mirror, to consider his own qualities: “am I acting in the same ambitious way that Marius did?” The

introspection might go further:recognizing the modes of self-justification employed by Marius, as present in oneself – “after all, I deserve

it”. Again, the reader of the Antony might ask, “am I allowing myself to be swayed by smooth talking but pernicious flatterers?”…’
Stadter is most generous in presenting that paper as a response to my own (493–4); in fact I find myself almost wholly in agreement

with it, for in these examples too the Lives may be seen as renuancing the reader’s pre-existing moral assumptions rather than inculcating

new ones.

28
Russell 1993: quotation from 436; cf. 427, ‘both Plutarch and Horace seek to help their hearers, as well as to advance their own case,

by talking sometimes about themselves’. Russell is talking primarily about the specific information which Plutarch gives us about his

own life, but acknowledges that ‘the characteristic ways in which they talk to us’ is another reason that we seem to know both Plutarch

and Horace quite well (426–7). I did not know that elegant essay of Donald Russell when I wrote this paper in 1993, and my final

paragraph is an addition to the original version. It is fitting that the thought should be owed to the person in whose honour the paper

appeared in 1995, and to whose own teaching and example – sometimes, though not often, conveyed by his talking about himself – I

owe so much.
 11

PLUTARCH’S CAESAR :

A CAESAR FOR THE CAESARS?

1
When Plutarch wrote his Lives of the Caesars, probably under Domitian, he found it natural to begin

the series with Augustus. When Suetonius wrote his similar series, presumably under Hadrian, he began

with Julius. Nor is that just a reflection of the two authors’ tastes: something has changed. It does seem

that it was under Trajan himself that Caesar became recognized as the first of the Caesars, as Geiger
2
argued twenty-five years ago: in his Numa, written under Trajan, Plutarch himself refers to Augustus as

‘the second of the Caesars’ (Numa 19.6). A generation earlier, Augustus counted as the first of the

Caesars for the elder Pliny (N.H. 9.143); now Tacitus in the Annals can include Caesar among the line

of Nero’s predecessors as he gauges their eloquence (Ann. 13.3.2); a generation and a half later, Appian

would be emphatic that Caesar founded the monarchy (Proem 6). Perhaps this was a matter of the
3
emperor’s own initiative: in 107 Trajan issued a commemorative series of coins celebrating Caesar. Or

perhaps it was something springing as much from below as above, as subjects recognized parallels or

origins for contemporary features in Caesar’s reign: ‘the epoch of Trajan felt the attraction of a Caesar
4
who was also a conqueror’, as Syme put it. Most likely it was a little of both, as top responded to

bottom and bottom to top.

In any case it is tempting to explain it by assuming that Caesarian themes were particularly hot for
5
contemporary audiences. ‘Trajan looked like a general of the Republic’ (Syme again); ‘as general and
6
conqueror, [Caesar] furnished an important model for Trajan himself ’ (Bowersock). That is doubtless

partly correct; but Geiger was also right to emphasize that some Caesarian themes, and particularly
7
Caesarian sensitivities, had gone not hot but cold. Forty or fifty years earlier Brutus, Cassius and Cato

could still be inspiring figures to people like Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus; even under the

Flavians it could be dangerous – or at least Tacitus in the Dialogus could portray it as dangerous – to

praise Cato (Tac. Dial. 2–3); things were now much blander. Remember Pliny’s acquaintance Titinius

Capito, that patient and loyal functionary of the Caesars, fulfilling a series of administrative imperial

posts – and seeing nothing incongruous in posting busts of Brutus, Cassius, and Cato in his hall or

writing about the ‘Deaths of Illustrious Men’, presumably the ostentatious martyrs like Thrasea Paetus
8
(Plin. Ep. 1.17, 8.12.4). In 107 Trajan issued coin-types with Republican heroes, including Pompey
9
and Brutus, as well as Caesar, and Pliny in Panegyricus compares Trajan not merely with previous

emperors but also with great Republican names from the past (Pan. 55, 57.4–5, 88.6). ‘Republicanism
10
ended in the year 98’ (Syme again). In fact, the two points go together. The reduction in libertarian

sensibility meant that Caesar was no longer so delicate a figure, and there was no barrier in seeing him

as the founder of the dynasty which bore his name; and that name, indeed, is vitally important, perhaps

as important as Caesar’s exemplary potential as the greatest conqueror of them all.

If Caesar had a special resonance for Trajan, that poses a problem of interpretation for the Parallel

Lives too. Is Plutarch intent on exploiting that contemporary interest? If he is, it ought to be possible to

notice. We might compare Shakespeare, and the way he angled his Roman themes (owed to Plutarch as

they of course were) to whatever issues were most topical in his contemporary world. Thus at the

beginning of Coriolanus Shakespeare gives the differences over grain even more prominence than

Plutarch had done, and these become the touchstone of the rift between rich and poor (with Menenius,

well-fed and preoccupied with ‘dining’ as he is, less than tactful in telling the fable of the stomach and
11
the other parts of the body to famished men). The play dates perhaps to the year before, more likely
12
to a year or so after, the Midlands revolt of the ‘Diggers’ or ‘Levellers’ in 1607; but that revolt was in

any case provoked by a series of bad harvests and famines over several years, and the relation is not far to

seek. Or take Julius Caesar itself. The traditional moral issue of the tyrannicide was the one Shakespeare
13
found foregrounded by Plutarch, the problem of ingratitude. ‘The greatest charge they lay against

Brutus was that he was saved by Caesar’s favour, was allowed to rescue as many of his fellow-prisoners as

he wished, was regarded as his friend and was favoured above many others, then became the assassin of

his saviour…’, Brut. 56(3).4. But Shakespeare deflects attention from that, and concentrates on the

different, more general issue of the justifiability of rebellion: the affront to a free people of having

anyone so powerful; the contrast between the weak, frail old man and the ‘Caesar’, the position and the

idea as much as the person, described by the man himself in the third person – ‘Caesar shall go forth’;

the jealousies which this can inspire in the young and strong Cassius; but the terrible forces then

unleashed when a Caesar-shaped hole is left at the top of the state. All this is again not hard to relate to

1599, the date of the play, with a government already nervous of the Earl of Essex two years before his

open rebellion against the aging Elizabeth, and with a vibrant contemporary debate on the merits and
 14
dangers of autocracy and those of republicanism. Now that new historicism has made this sort of

thing respectable again, we surely can see how Shakespeare shapes his themes to the preoccupations of

his own day. The only issue is how far we should push the historicizing and how much it matters, not

whether the approach works at all.

Can we see Plutarch doing the same thing? That is my question for this chapter, and my answer is

no. I do not argue that Plutarch’s themes have no relation at all to his contemporary world; as I argued

in the last chapter, they have relevance to every period, including our own; but he does not make his

narrative any more relevant to his own times than to any other. Indeed, the opposite is true. Whenever

he comes near to stressing a theme with a particularly contemporary application, he shies away, and we

can see some nimble footwork in the way he avoids making his narrative too specifically contemporary

in its resonance. This is a resolutely uncontemporary narrative.

Let us take some test-cases. Above all, Trajan would have meant Dacia. (Dacia, probably, rather than

Parthia: to judge from the relative chronology of Plutarch’s production, the most likely date for

Alexander–Caesar is around 110, and in that case Trajan’s Parthia would still be in the future.) Dacia

becomes extremely relevant at one point of the Caesar, where Plutarch is talking about Caesar’s last

plans. That is a theme of great potential for Alexander–Caesar. The pattern would seem irresistible of

Alexander’s last plans, with the great Eastern conqueror now pointing west, mirrored by Caesar’s

counterpart, the great westerner pointing East. But in fact less is made of this in the pair than we would

expect (there is surprisingly little on Alexander’s last plans, though the theme figured large in the
15
tradition ). And the way Dacia is treated is stunning. Other authors make no bones about it: Caesar
16
was going to attack ‘the Dacians’ (Suetonius, twice ); if they do not use the actual word ‘Dacus’ or

‘Dacia’, then at least they use ‘Getae’, regarded by so learned a judge as the elder Pliny as the Greek ‘for’
17 18
Dacians (thus Appian, and also the Latin Velleius ). But Plutarch puts it much more obliquely:

He planned and prepared an expedition against the Parthians; once he had conquered them, he

intended to march through Hyrcania along the Caspian and the Caucasus; then he would make his way

around the Pontus and invade Scythia, then overrun Germany’s neighbours and Germany herself, and

finally return through Gaul to Italy, thus completing the circle of an empire which would have Ocean

alone as its boundary.

(Caes. 58.6–7)

That misses out Dacia, and misses it out twice. As those passages of Suetonius, Appian, and Velleius all

make clear, the plan was to attack Dacia first and then go on to Parthia: so Dacia is passed over right at

the beginning. Then we are taken all the way around the Black Sea and back into Scythia, then into

‘Germany’s neighbours and Germany herself ’. ‘Germany’s neighbours’: that is Dacia; and the beginning

of Tacitus’ Germania talks of Dacia in similar terms (1.1). But in this context it is a remarkable way to

put it, rather as if we were to talk of a traveller moving northwards ‘through Guatemala, then Mexico,

then Canada’s neighbours, then Canada herself ’. It is clear what trouble Plutarch is taking in order to

avoid the word.

Or consider another case. At the beginning of his reign, Trajan famously showed reluctance to

accept the title parens patriae or pater patriae, but finally and graciously allowed himself to be persuaded.

Pliny makes a great deal of this in the Panegyricus (21). Caesar, again famously, was pater (or parens)
19
patriae.

Appian specifies the title for Caesar; so do Dio, Nicolaus of Damascus, Livy’s perioche, Suetonius,
20
and Florus. Of our major sources only Plutarch omits the detail. He is interested in Caesar’s titles and
21
the sensitivity of the issues – but leaves them vague, several times. And it is not that he failed to realize

the importance of this title. Contrast the following passage, from Cicero and dealing with 63 Bc:

He [Cato] so extolled Cicero’s consulship in his speech when he harangued the people that they voted

him the greatest honours ever and acclaimed him father of his country. It seems that he was the first to

receive this title, Cato having so acclaimed him before the people.

(Cicero 23.6, tr. Moles)

‘The first to receive the title’: thus ‘P[lutarch] unobtrusively links C[icero] and the emperors’, as Moles
22
comments. That theme of Cicero as imperial forerunner is of some interest in that Life (Moles on Cic.

2.1), perhaps indeed in the whole pair Demosthenes–Cicero, dealing as it does with these great libertarian

wordsmiths and their dealings with tyranny. But which is the more obvious forerunner of empire,

Cicero or Caesar? And yet it is in Cicero, not Caesar, that a point of this sort is made and the detailed

honour is specified.
 23
It is not difficult to add further examples, big and small. Let us take three more. The first is

adoption. Nerva’s adoption of Trajan saved the world from civil war, so it could be claimed. Certainly

the theme was a hot one, as Pliny (Panegyricus 6–8) and Tacitus (Histories 1.16) illustrate in their
24
different ways, Pliny with bland encomium, Tacitus with thought-provoking incisiveness. (Syme is

magnificent on how Tacitus exposes the disingenuousness of Galba’s rhetoric.) Adoption might well

have come into Caesar too, with the Life’s final three-page foresnap of the wars which will follow. And

there is indeed a passage where Plutarch talks about the importance of Caesar’s adoption of the young

Octavius, and singles out its importance for giving the young Caesar his name, that name which I
25
emphasized earlier as so important to the Trajanic perspective. Yes, Plutarch does make the point –

but in Brutus, several times (22.1, 22.3, 57(4).4), not in Caesar itself, which does not mention the

adoption at all.

Secondly, the power of the legions, especially the legions of the north; and particularly the power of

the soldiery when it was crying for revenge. That theme was relevant to the events of 97–8, with the
26
praetorians pressing for revenge for Domitian. It was relevant too, doubtless, to the realities of Nerva’s

adoption of the powerful general Trajan, with all those Rhine legions at his command. It is a theme

which even Pliny cannot avoid: ‘Will later generations believe that a man whose father was a patrician, a

consular, and celebrated a triumph, a man who himself was commanding the bravest and finest and

most loyal of armies, that this man was made emperor by anything other than that army?…’ (Pan. 9.2).

Pliny’s embarrassment might suggest one reason why Plutarch should omit the theme, that it was simply

too delicate. But we should not press that point: Nerva and Trajan, and Caesar before them, could

readily be presented as saving the world from all those other legions, and military might could be seen as

protection rather than threat. Evidently this was a theme of relevance to Caesar, and the power Caesar

gained in Gaul is not concealed: but neither is it analysed, and usually Caesar’s power is seen in political
27
rather than military terms. It is not Caesar, but again another Life, this time Sulla, which treats the

power of the legions in greater depth (Sulla 12.12–14). And legionaries crying for revenge? That theme

is very relevant to the last chapters of the Caesar, but in fact we get nothing on the theme at all: there

the force for vengeance, as so often the force for everything in this Life, is the Roman people, and the
28
focus is once again wholly political.

My final point. Many will remember the story of the young Caesar seeing a statue of Alexander, and

weeping because at that age Alexander had conquered the earth and so far Caesar had achieved nothing.

That is the way Suetonius (Div. Iul. 7.1), and Cassius Dio (37.52.2) tell it: and both of them specify

that the statue was in the temple of Hercules at Cádiz – a feature of the story which has real point, for

Cádiz was conventionally one end of the earth, that earth which Alexander had traversed to east and
29
Hercules to west. And the theme is Trajanic. Not merely did Trajan himself favour Herculean
30
motifs; it is usually said that the ‘Hercules’ type which he included on his coinage was, precisely,
31
Hercules Gaditanus, with all the point which that carries for our Spanish emperor. That is how the

story is usually told; but in Plutarch it is not like that at all (11.5–6). There is no statue, and no temple.

Caesar is simply reading something about Alexander, and inspired by what he has read. Now Plutarch

may well be up to something here. The point can be metatextual, with the Caesar suggesting – just as
32
Caesar is about to reach Ocean for the first time – the inspiring power of reading about Alexander,

just as his own readers have just read about Alexander in the paired Life, and just as Plutarch’s Alexander

looked forward to writings about himself (Alex. 14.9). The beginning of Pericles is explicit on the way in

which written narrative is a more powerful incentive to virtue and achievement than any statue. But

whatever Plutarch is doing there, it is nothing Trajanic. Once again, a Trajanic motif looms – and

Plutarch deftly sidesteps, turning the story into something quite different.

So far I have been dwelling on specific parallels in historical events and actions, potential points of

contact between what Caesar did and what Trajan did. The inquiry could be pitched more generally, to

look at points of ideology as well as ‘doings’. We can look, for instance, at the themes of Pliny’s

Panegyricus, or more especially of Dio of Prusa’s kingship orations. Are there any links between the

touchstones of good kingship there and things which Caesar did – or perhaps more significantly, with

things which Caesar did not do, errors which Caesar made and which Trajan wisely avoided (or, perhaps

we should say, dangers which Dio of Prusa assumes that he is wise enough to recognize, and thus listen

indulgently to the advice)? Here, certainly, we get a little further. Dio offers various themes which might

have a Caesarian resonance: the play between rule of law, autocracy, and a democracy which (there is a

heavy hint) was failing in practice; the value of friends to support the burden of rule; the careful steering
33
of a path close to the gods but not infringing their realm.

Some of those are indeed insistent in the Caesar. Take friends. One of Plutarch’s themes, a highly

intelligent one, is the debt which Caesar owed to his friends, and the damage they went on to do to him
by their excesses when he and they were in power. Yet he could do nothing about it, for he was trapped

by his own past.

Dolabella’s madness also started tongues wagging against Caesar, and so did Matius’ avarice; so too did

Antony’s drunken excesses, and Corfinius’ (?) ransacking and rebuilding of Pompey’s private house, as if

it was not big enough already. The Romans did not like all this. Caesar himself knew what was going

on, and it was against his will. But he had no choice. The political conditions forced him to make use of

the men who were willing to be his agents.

(Caes. 51.3–4)

Not that the parallels with the realities of Trajanic Rome are close: but ‘friends’ at least is a theme which

links the two reigns. But that does not take us far. I am not claiming that Caesar’s themes have no

relevance to his own day, only that they have no more relevance to his day than any other; and it is in

the nature of ideology that Dio too treats those themes in a ‘timeless’, generalized way, not making the

topicality precise. In Plutarch’s case, there are other reasons for the theme, in particular the pairing with

Alexander, where the two men’s relations with their friends become a vital theme in plotting their fall.
34
(As so often, the second Life provides a more interesting variation on the first: one way that Alexander

traced the man’s decline was in his treatment of his friends, and there the reasons lay in Alexander’s own

personality; Caesar’s treatment of his friends is dictated by external necessities, but is no less disastrous.)

Anyway, friendship is a recurrent preoccupation of Plutarch himself, in all sorts of context where

thoughts of Trajan are far away.

What of those other Dio themes? I listed the play between rule of law, autocracy, and a democracy

which was failing in practice; and the careful steering of a path close to the gods but not infringing their

realm. ‘A democracy which was failing in practice’: there is something of that in Caesar, noticeably the

emphasis on the parlous state of politics, that kakopoliteia (Caes. 28) which formed the background to
35
the civil war. But even there the treatment is interesting. In Caesar the kakopoliteia is what affords

Caesar his ‘excuses’ ( προϕάσεις): it is a matter of propaganda and rhetoric. Plutarch certainly had the

notion that this was more than mere talk, that Rome had reached a state where it needed healing, and

the best doctor in the circumstances was Caesar.

Caesar’s rule caused trouble for its opponents during its genesis, but once they had accepted it and been

defeated it seemed no more than a name and idea, and nothing cruel or tyrannical sprang from it.

Indeed it seemed that the state needed monarchy, and Caesar was God’s gift to Rome as the gentlest

possible doctor. (Brut. 55(2).2)

36
But that is the Dion–Brutus. There are similar remarks at Antony 6.7, and even Pompey himself says

something along the same lines at Pompey 75.5. In the Caesar itself the only mention of a ‘gentlest

doctor’ is in the same ch. 28, and it is there something that people were saying about – Pompey (28.6);

it is not about Caesar at all. And ‘divine honours’? The notion of Caesar as king is important in Caesar,

notably at the Lupercalia; but the only divine honours are at 67.8, when the senate vote ‘to honour

Caesar as a god’ on the 17th March, after he is dead. That seems to be an error, in fact, as no other
37
source mentions divine honours granted at that juncture. But if so the error is an illuminating one,

bringing out how little interest Plutarch has in the subject, and how he neglects every opportunity to

bring out the divine honours Caesar had accepted while still alive.

So if Trajan in Plutarch’s Caesar is significant, it is in the sense that Sherlock Holmes’ dog in the

night is significant, the one that did not bark. Trajanic themes are significant precisely for not being

there.

Why? There is one possible explanation which immediately offers, something ‘generic’. The most-

quoted passage in Plutarch is surely

Alexander 1:

For it is not histories we are writing, but Lives. Nor is it always the most famous actions which reveal a

man’s good or bad qualities: a clearer insight into a man’s character is often given by a small matter, a

remark or a jest, than by engagements where thousands die, or by the greatest of pitched battles, or by

the sieges of cities.

(Alex. 1.1–2)

38
– usually, and perhaps too readily, quoted as the key to all Plutarch’s biographical technique. We

should remember where it comes, precisely to introduce this pair; and, like the similar passage in the

Pompey (8.7), it is particularly relevant to a pair which deals with so many big public actions,

engagements indeed where thousands die. Is that the key to this problem? The big Trajanic themes

would be ‘public’ ones: if Plutarch is inclined to dwell on small matters, words or jests, is he then
writing a more intimate, individual, personal portrayal, and eager to distract attention from those

grander and more public matters? If one goes down that route, it would be possible to extend that

generic point into something more political. We could, if we chose, make Plutarch imply that the

important thing about history and culture is not these big, Roman, public conflicts, but something

more concerned with individual fulfilment, knowledge perhaps and personal satisfaction rather than

surface achievement. Caesar ‘had sought dominion and power all his days, and after facing so many

dangers he had finally achieved them. And the only benefit he reaped was its empty name, and the perils

of fame amid his envious fellow-citizens’ (69.1). Is that path of achievement and ambition really worth
39
it? Those who make Plutarch an anti-Roman ‘resistance’ figure (I am not one of them myself ) could

easily annex this argument to make this uncontemporary tone a setting of face against the obvious

Roman ways of seeing Caesar. In that case, Plutarch will be suggesting that the lessons of Caesar’s life are

quieter and more universal.

That route is a tempting one, but ultimately I would reject it, partly because it is too unsubtle in the

way it takes Alex. 1. The passage is so familiar that we ask too few questions about it, even after we have

remembered to take it in the particular context of this pair. For does Alexander–Caesar really dwell on all

those ‘little things’? Not altogether. Caesar in particular has very little time for the ‘smaller things’ of
40
Caesar’s life: even his love-life is given very little space, much less space than the equivalent themes in

Pompey. In fact, one important story in Caesar’s love-life, his alleged affair with Servilia, is mentioned in

Cato and in Brutus but not in Caesar itself (Cato Min. 24.1–3, Brut. 5). And when Caesar is allowed a

‘remark or a jest’, it is hardly on the private and more intimate themes: ‘this is what they wished’ on the

battlefield of Pharsalus (46.1), or ‘today the enemy had victory in their grasp, if only they had had a

victor to command them’ at Dyrrhachium (39.9), or indeed ‘let the die be cast’ (32.8). This is pre-

eminently a Life, and a pair, which dwells on ‘engagements where thousands die.’.

It is better, I suggest, to see that preface to Alexander as introducing a polarity of ‘small things’ and

‘big things’ which prepares for a variety of interactions through the pair, and as we go on it proves more

difficult to keep small things and big things so separate. In Alexander it is the little things, the ill-judged

remarks and jests, that mark his decline, even destroy him: the exchanges with Cleitus or Callisthenes,

then the bizarre and macabre goings-on at Babylon at the end. In Caesar it may be more that Caesar has
41
so little time for anything other than ‘big things’, no time for instance for love, no time to become the

great orator which his nature would have allowed him to be (Caes. 3). Instead it is Cicero who becomes

the topmost orator, and Caesar can only be second-best; and, if we look for ‘remarks and jests’, it tends

to be Cicero’s remarks in the final weeks which chart and even orchestrate the growth of opposition to

Caesar. Initially things are good: ‘by raising Pompey’s statues he has firmly fixed his own’ (57.6); but

before long ‘let us hurry to greet the new consul before he demits office’ (58.3), and the calendar is
42
‘obeying orders’ (59.6). Little things have a way of biting back, and affecting those big things after all.

We certainly cannot say that Caesar avoids the big public themes; indeed this is in many ways the most
43
‘historical’, least intimate and personal of all the Lives. Our knowledge of Caesar’s more personal side

comes not from Plutarch but from Suetonius, whose category-approach is so well suited to providing a

‘rounded’ portrait. In Plutarch it is precisely the public man whom we see.

So that generic explanation does not work. I suggest a different explanation, one that is more
44
conceptual. I have elsewhere argued that Plutarch’s interpretative categories tend to be ‘timeless’: he

avoids the explanatory themes which are specific to the particular times and places he is talking about,

and thus, for instance, has little to say about the equites at Rome or the hetaireiai in Athens. He prefers

the big themes which are more transcultural: themes like the perennial clash of ‘few’ and ‘many’; or the
45
search of the powerful individual for tyranny; or the failures of the military man to adapt to the
46
intricacies and subtleties of political life. Similarly, I have argued, in other Lives too he does not make

the political implications very specific. In Philopoemen–Flamininus he grazes the need for concord

among Greek states, the dangers of ‘contentiousness’; he also points the dangers of exciting Roman

intervention, and the difficulties of plotting a political path which combines self-respect and dignity

with prudence. The natural thing would be to bring these two themes together, as he does in the Advice

on Public Life, and emphasize that it is precisely the contentious squabbling which is in danger of

provoking the Roman intervention: it happened with Philopoemen, and it could happen again now. But

there too Plutarch avoids making the moral specific, and develops the two points, contentiousness and
47
Roman intervention, in separate trains of thought. Plutarch likes his focus to be soft; he prefers to

leave the points as contemporary resonances, no more. This is not unlike the points which we have

grown accustomed to making about Greek drama: it is comedy which makes the immediate, sharp

points about particular figures and events; tragedy is more general, exploring the strengths and

weaknesses of democracy or the rule of law, the sufferings of war, the problematic of international
48
compassion rather than focusing sharply on particular issues and characters. Plutarch aligns there with
tragedy rather than comedy, keeping his distance from the specific and preferring the bigger and more

timeless themes.

That is what tells us most about the intellectual climate of the reign of Trajan: that Plutarch could

think that the points he was extracting would remain valuable and relevant for all time, not just for the

here-and-now, and that there was no need for him to strive assiduously to hang them on particular

contemporary themes. For it did not have to be that way. I am arguing not merely the weaker thesis that

Plutarch does not dwell on contemporary issues, but also the stronger one that he goes out of his way to

avoid them. If I am right, that tells us more than we have so far seen. It suggests that he is writing for an

audience who, there was a danger, might seek (or at least include people who sought) to read him in

that way: an audience who were on the look-out for such relevance, who unless he avoided the word

‘Dacia’ might think he had something to say about Trajan’s campaigns, who might look for parallels to

contemporary debates about parens patriae, and so on. Plutarch was eager not to let his audience go

down that track. Not everybody who read him, even among his immediate audience, need be so

topically minded; it is hard to think, for instance, that young readers in Chaeronea would be quite so

agog for pater patriae points as his powerful Roman friends at Rome. But at least distracting attention

from such topicality would do something to ensure that all those readers would start equal, and would

be directed towards those other, more timeless themes.

John Dillon has suggested a parallel between Plutarch’s view of the Roman Empire and Fukuyama’s

view of all world history: that history had reached its end, that just as for us western liberalism leaves

nowhere else to go, so for Plutarch the Roman Empire marked a settled world which would continue in
49
more or less the same way. In that case, we may add, themes could indeed be timeless, and there was

no need to tie things to the evanescent preoccupations of the present. Dacia would not last as an issue;

tyranny might. If Dillon is right, then a first reflection might be ‘so much for Fukuyama, and so much

for Plutarch too: look what happened to the Roman Empire; that did not last for ever, and neither will

western liberalism’. But a second reflection might be that Plutarch was not so wrong as all that, and that

his transcultural preoccupations have ensured a lasting relevance for his moralism and his historical

analysis which a superficial topicality could never have achieved.

It is a lazy habit of critics to talk about what ‘we’ might be expecting or assuming from a text, or
50
how ‘we’ feel or think about the issues it raises. Perhaps it is a less bad habit with Plutarch than with

other authors, if his themes and focus are as ‘timeless’ as I have argued here. We should indeed think of

this as a ‘possession for ever’, a κτη̑ μα ές αίεί; of an audience which could stretch forward through time
and respond to timeless themes, themes whose relevance and interest for later generations need not be so

very different from the relevance and interest for the immediate audience. Even talk of ‘primary’ and

‘secondary’ audiences may oversimplify the picture, as the target audiences blur into one another. If we

also posit an immediate audience who looked hard for contemporary themes and an author who needed

to deflect that tendency, even that does not make a modern audience totally different. ‘We’ are still

inclined to look for the same things. The collection for which this essay was written, exploring ‘Sage and
51
Emperor: Plutarch and Trajan’, is testimony to that.

Notes

1
Thus Bowersock 1998, following Jones 1971, 72–3: or possibly under Nerva (Geiger 1975) – but that window is very tight.

2
Geiger 1975.

3 2
BMC Imp. III , pp. 141 nos. 30–1, 142 nos. 696–7: cf. Geiger 1975, 450, Bowersock 1998, 197; cf. Syme 1958, 250, 434.

4
Syme 1958, 434.

5
Syme 1958, 218.

6
Bowersock 1998, 197.

7
Geiger 1975, 449.

8
On Titinius cf. the trenchant remarks of Syme 1958, 92 (possibly overstated: cf. Sherwin-White 1966, 124–5 on Plin. Ep.1.17.1).

9 2
BMC Imp. III pp. 132–45 nos. 673–706 (Brutus: 684; Pompey: 693); cf. Syme 1958, 250.

10
Syme 1958, 434 n. 1, cf. 28.

11
For the themes which Shakespeare suppresses – the usurers, for instance, of Cor. 5, or the patricians’ desire to send plebeians to plague-

torn Velitrae (Cor. 12–13), cf. pp. 389–90; for Menenius’ food-preoccupations, p. 389 and n. 8.

12
See e,g, Patterson 1989, 135–46; Bliss 2000, 17–27; and now especially George 2000, who shows how expensive corn became,

especially in 1608, and argues for a late 1608 date for Coriolanus (so also Bliss 2000, 7). Notice the summary of the approach at George

2000, 72: ‘While Shakespeare relied on Plutarch for his narrative and his main military and political events, he filled in passage after

passage with Jacobean England. This is not so much a question of “relevance” as an artistic method of creating immediacy for his

audience and of winning their involvement.’ That seems very fair, and is exactly what Plutarch does not do.
13
On this as the traditional moral issue posed by the tyrannicide, see Rawson 1986, 101–9 = 1991, 488–507.

14
On this background cf. e.g. Daniell 1998, 22–9.

15
Only really Alex. 68.1–2 (with Hamilton 1969, 187–9 ad loc.): for the interest elsewhere cf. esp. Arr. Anab. 7.1, Diod. 18.4, Curt.

10.1.17–19, and Plutarch himself in On the Fortune of the Romans (326a–c).

16
Suet. Div. Iul. 44.3, ‘to repress the Dacians, who had encroached into Pontus and Thrace; then to invade Parthia by way of Lesser

Armenia, but not to attack them without first getting used to their tactics’ (Dacos, qui se in Pontum et Thraciam effuderant, coercere; mox

Parthis inferre bellum per Armeniam minorem nec nisi ante expertos adgredi proelio);Div. Aug. 8.2.

17
Plin. N.H. 4.80, ‘the Getae, whom the Romans call “Dacians” ’ (Getae, Daci Romanis dicti); cf. Sil. Ital. Pun. 1.329; App. Proem 4, ‘the

Getae beyond the Danube, whom they call Dacians’.

18
App. BC 2.110.459, 3.25.93, Ill. 13.36–7; Vell. 2.59.4.

19
Weinstock 1971, 200–5.

20
App. BC 2.106.442, 144.602; Cass. Dio 44.4.4; Livy per. 116; Nic. Dam. vit. Aug. 80 (FGrH 90 fr. 130); Suet. Div. Iul. 76.1, 85;

Flor. 2.13.91.

21
Caes. 57.2–3, 60.4–5.

22
Moles 1988, 171 ad loc.; cf. 148 on Cic. 2.1. App. BC 2.7.25 makes the same point more explicitly: ‘some think that this honorific

title began with Cicero and passed on to those emperors who were thought worthy of it.’. There is irony there, for in that book devoted

to the conflicts of Caesar and Pompey (2.1.1–3) the first forerunner of the emperors is – Cicero!

23
A fourth might be Plutarch’s treatment of clementia in 57.4. On this see the perceptive remarks of Schettino, forthcoming: Plutarch

uses the less charged έπιείκεια, ‘moderation’ or ‘mildness’, which raises none of the explosive issues which had become connected with

‘clemency’. Schettino may well be right in saying that in this ‘Plutarch shows himself sensitive to the issues of his age’ – but, if so, it is

again precisely in avoiding terminology which would carry too heavy a contemporary loading.

24
Syme 1958, 207–8, 219–20. For bland praise of adoption cf. also Cass. Dio 68.4.1, praising Nerva for adopting Trajan even though

Nerva had living relations, and even though Trajan was Spanish.

25
Above, p. 254.

26
Cass. Dio 68.3, 68.5.4: cf. Syme 1958, 10.

27
See esp. Caes. 28–9. Caesar ‘trained’ his power at 28.3, and that does sound quite military. But that ‘power’ is defined as much by the

Gallic wealth which Caesar can use for political bribery, 29.3, and the soldiers returned to Pompey have most impact by spreading pro-

Caesar propaganda among ‘the people’, 29.5. Pompey, over-persuaded by this that the rest of the army will come over to him readily,

consequently makes errors which are as much political as military, 29.6.

28
Caes. 67–8: on Plutarch’s general neglect of the veterans in the aftermath of the Ides cf. pp. 221–2. The importance of the soldiers

comes out more in Brutus (21.4, 22.3, 23.1) and Antony (16.6–8).

29
One end of the earth: Juv. 10.1 etc. Its relevance: della Corte 1989.

30
On this cf. e.g. Jones 1978, 116–19.

31
Hercules Gaditanus on coins of 100: cf. Strach 1931, 95–105, followed by e.g. Syme 1958, 57–8 and 58 n.1; Jones 1978, 117. H.

2
Mattingly, BMC Imp. III (1966) lxvii–lxviii is more cautious, but does not reject Strach out of hand. Early in his reign Hadrian too

2
issued coins of Hercules Gaditanus, in one case named as such (BMC Imp. III pp. 253–4 nos. 97–9, and esp. 273 no. 274), which

might in itself make more likely the identification of Trajan’s Hercules as Gaditanus; the pose however is different, and this inspired

Mattingly’s caution. Jonathan Williams of the British Museum kindly tells me that he shares Mattingly’s hesitation.

32
Caes. 12.1, where as quaestor in Spain Caesar drives through in conquest ‘to the outer sea’ ( ἄχρι τη̑ ς ἔξω θαλάσσης); that theme is

then picked up at 23.2, where in invading Britain Caesar ‘was the first man to sail the western ocean with a fleet, and convey an army

into battle through the waters of the Atlantic’, and at 58.6–7, quoted above – ‘thus completing the circle of an empire [cf. Alex. 68.1]

which would have ocean alone as its boundary’.

33
Friends: cf. Dio Prus. 1.28–32, 3.86–118; Plin. Paneg. 85–7. Different forms of government: Dio Prus. 3.45 ff. Gods: Dio Prus. 1.12–

14, 2.72, 3.51–7, 4.39–45, Plin. Paneg. 52.

34
As I argue in ch. 16.

35
See p. 210 and n. 16.

36
Cf. p. 376.

37
Cf. p. 37 n. 90.

38
On this passage see also Duff 1999, 14–22; pp. 102, 207, 276–7; and Pelling, forthcoming (a).

39
Cf. the formulation ‘a statement of resistance’ which (with some qualifications) Duff 1999, 309 adopts at the end of his book: see p.

236 n. 128. But I have no reason to think that Duff himself would argue in this way, and he would certainly (1999, 21–2) not use Alex.

1 in the way I have here set up. Note also the suggestive title of Boulogne 1994, Plutarque: Un aristocrate grec sous l’occupation Romaine :

true, Boulogne himself presents Plutarch as a cultural harmonizer rather than a resistance hero, but ‘Roman occupation’ is a misleadingly

loaded phrase. For ‘resistance’ in Roman Achaea in a blander sense cf. Alcock 1997, esp. 111.

40
This theme is the subject of a most interesting unpublished paper by Jeff Beneker, who is completing a Chapel Hill doctorate on the

Roman Lives. Cf. also my own remarks in ch. 4, pp. 104–5.

41
Above, n. 40.
42
On this theme cf. Pelling 1997e, 219–20, 225.

43
And hence I took it as the paradigm of a ‘historical’ Life in ch. 4: cf. Duff 1999,20–1.

44
In interpreting Roman history: ch. 10. In interpreting Greek history: Pelling 2000,58–60.

45
Ch. 9, esp. p. 218.

46
Chs. 15 and 18.

47
See pp. 243–7.

48
Cf. for instance Taplin 1986. I have said more about this myself in Pelling 2000, chs. 7–9, esp. 164–6.

49
Dillon 1997, building on Fukuyama 1992.

50
Cf. below, p. 278, and especially the passage from Bernard Williams quoted at p. 282 n. 45.

51
Stadter and van der Stockt (eds.) forthcoming. I hope however that this will not be seen as a subversive anti-keynote contribution to

that inquiry: if the argument here is right, it is still illuminating for the worlds of ‘Sage and Emperor’, but in a broad sense of intellectual

climate. On Plutarch and Trajan see also p. 85, on the dedication of the Apophthegmata of Kings and Generals.
 12

‘YOU FOR ME AND ME FOR YOU…’:

NARRATOR AND NARRATEE
IN PLUTARCH’S LIVES

Narrative is a slippery thing, and Plutarch ensured that his readers knew it. Let us begin with a few

passages of embedded narrative, and see how he portrays story-telling in action. Such passages are rare:

Plutarch normally prefers to tell stories on his own authority. But where they come they often point the

uncertain relation of narrative to the events described.

Take Proculus Iulius’ narration of Romulus’ apotheosis at Rom. 28.1–3, especially interesting

because it is an embedded narrative (Proculus’) of a further narrative, Romulus’ account of his

apotheosis: so Proculus is a ‘secondary narrator’, Romulus a ‘tertiary’. The narrative had given several

possible explanations of the disappearance in the previous chapter. Had the senators torn him apart and

concealed the fragments about their persons? Or had he genuinely been snatched up to the gods? Now

Proculus tells how Romulus appeared to him and explained that this had been the gods’ will, to allow

him to return to Heaven: now he will protect Rome as the god Quirinus. The story was believed

‘because of the character of the man who told it and the oath which he swore’ (so narratorial authority

does make a difference, Rom. 28.3); but an important element of uncertainty remains. Plutarch as

external narrator is decisive enough to conclude that there was indeed ‘something supernatural’ at play –

but in the way that everyone accepted Proculus’ story, 28.3, which is not the same as saying that this

divine version was true. He goes on to make his own scepticism clear, first relating the parallel ‘mythical

tales’ (28.4, 7) of Aristeas and Cleomedes, then arguing that it is ‘stupid’ (28.7) to think that bodies,

unlike souls, can be taken to Heaven. Something of Romulus’ apotheosis may remain, a matter of spirit
1
rather than corporeality; but that is not the way Proculus and Romulus described it, or at least not the

way that people at the time apparently took their story.

Plutarch’s version of the meeting of Solon and Croesus is a further, very elaborate case (Solon 27–
2
8). Misreading is in the air: it is set up by Solon’s own initial misreading of the court, where he cannot

tell which of the sumptuously dressed figures is Croesus himself (27.3). When questioned, Solon gives

embedded narratives of Tellus, then of Cleobis and Biton: the stories are reported in indirect speech and

given briefly and enigmatically, presumably because Herodotus’ original is taken as familiar. As in

Herodotus, Croesus does not get the point, ‘and so Solon left: he had given Croesus pain, but left him

no wiser’ (27.9). But Herodotus’ Croesus does become wiser later, and can pass on Solon’s lesson (or at

least an interpretation which only mildly trivializes, 1.86.5) to the conquering Cyrus. Plutarch’s Croesus

tries to do the same, and there is embedded narrative here too as Croesus tells of Solon’s advice (28.4–

5). Croesus concludes that ‘it was a greater evil to lose this wealth than a good to gain it’ (28.4): that, for

him, was what Solon must have ‘foreseen’ when he urged him to ‘look to the end’ (28.5). Plutarch’s

readers would be unlikely to have read Solon’s wisdom quite like that. They would recall Solon’s

exchanges with Thales (Solon 6–7), a case where an embedded narrative was straightforwardly false, in

that case Thales’ carefully-wrought story of the death of Solon’s son. Plutarch had there pointed the folly

of concluding that it is a mistake to have anything good at all, ‘wealth, or glory, or wisdom’ (7.1), simply

because one might one day lose it – something like the opposite of the moral that Croesus now draws.

In this case, Cyrus is ‘wiser than Croesus’ (28.6), and takes Solon’s lesson to heart: but it is not clear that

Cyrus, this great man of insight and achievement, reads that lesson as simply as Croesus has done.

So the wise adviser Solon knows that telling stories is a good way of conveying wisdom; but it also

emerges that stories are not easy to read, and their point can be missed – as it is missed by Croesus,

certainly at the beginning and possibly even at the end.

There are implications here for Plutarch’s narrative too, but they are subtle ones. It would be wrong

to suggest that his own master-narrative is infected by similar uncertainties, at least most of the time:

there are many devices for establishing Plutarch’s narrative authority. But there remains a potential

uncertainty about narrative: uncertainty about fact, about interpretation, about moral implication. That

is one reason for the frequent nests of scholarly citation: not merely do they establish the narrator’s
3
learning, they also point to the number of variants attested by other reputable authorities. If the

narrator wins the narratee’s confidence, it is against a background of potential slippage, the knowledge

that other narratives might be possible and that the narrator himself may not always be confident that

this is the right story to tell.

 That suggests a rather sophisticated brand of complicity between narrator and narratee, and in this

chapter I shall explore the ways in which this complicity is established and developed. That is a vast

topic, for Plutarch’s narratorial interventions can take many forms; he can convey a response and make

it infectious – approval or disapproval, or simply engagement and excitement – in many ways, and we

cannot look at them all here. Here I will examine only his uses of an explicit ‘me’ or ‘you’, and limit the

investigation to the Lives rather than the Moralia. I begin with his first-person statements.

4
These are often there to explain the origin of a story. While ‘I’ was travelling over the battlefield of

Bedriacum the consular Mestrius Florus told me of the piles of corpses (Otho 14.2); ‘I’ discover that

Nicias’ shield is still on display in Syracuse (Nic. 28.6, cf. Ages. 19.10–11); Sextus Sulla of Carthage has

given ‘us’ a particular explanation of the Roman wedding-cry ‘Thalassio’ (Rom. 15.3); Philotas of

Amphissa told Plutarch’s grandfather Lamprias an anecdote of the feasting of Antony and Cleopatra,

then Lamprias passed it on to ‘us’ (Ant. 28, cf. 68). There are times when such ‘we’s clearly extend to his

narratees as well, or at least some of them. ‘Our’ fathers still tell a story of Lucullus at Chaeronea

(Cimon 1.8); inscriptions of ‘Lucius Cornelius Sulla Epaphroditus’ are still found ‘among us’ (Sulla

34.4); honours are paid to Themistocles’ descendants to ‘our own day’, including one who himself bore

the name of Themistocles and was ‘our’ friend in the school of Ammonius (Them. 32.6) – this last an

instance of how a first-person plural can blur between the inclusive ‘we’, embracing the narratees, and

the authorial ‘we’ = ‘I the narrator’. Similar references to survivals ‘to our own day’ are found elsewhere
5
too.

Such passages add to the narrator’s ‘authority’ by citing evidence; they also convey a world where the

past has vitality, where ‘we’ still care, where stories are still told and memorials are on display. The same

goes for those passages, whether or not they include ‘we’s or ‘I’s, which stress continuing controversy,

with arguments still being made: was Aristides really poor (Arist. 1, including a ‘to our day’)? Should we

follow the traditional version of the Megarian decree or what ‘the Megarians say’, using the Acharnians
6
to turn the blame on to Aspasia and Pericles (Per. 30.4)? The past is still alive in other ways too: the

Athenians’ magnanimity towards Aristides’ family was followed by later cases, and ‘even in our own day

the city still produces many examples ( δείγματα) of generosity and kindness, and is justly admired and
emulated ( ζηλοΰται) for it’ (Arist. 27.6–7). Part of the narrator’s own purpose in the Lives is to provide
such ‘examples’ himself; that of Aristides has been followed by many, and the present city, true to its

past, still gives examples for the future and is ‘emulated’ for it. There is a continuing process of

inspiration and imitation here, one in which Plutarch’s own writings play a part. The ‘we’s and ‘our’s

invite narratee as well as narrator to join in this milieu of moral and intellectual immersion in the past.

Proems and epilogues are particularly important in the narrator’s characterization of self, of

narratees, and of the dynamic between the two. In proems we often find a strong self-characterization,
7
or characterization of the reading or writing process: a display of critical learning (Arist.–Cato Mai.,

Lyc.–Numa), or moral debate (Demetr.–Ant., Per.–Fab., Ag.–Cl.–Gracchi), or a setting of a hero’s life in a

wider ethical or historical perspective (Cimon–Lucull., Phoc.–Cato Min.). These herald the sorts of

reflection which are expected of the narratee during the rest of the narrative too, once the narrator’s

personality has receded into the background (not that it ever disappears); then similar points recur with

particular frequency in the comparative epilogues. Naturally, then, first-person statements are common
8
in proems and epilogues. Many of those are undeveloped – ‘it seems to me’, ‘I praise’, ‘I blame’, ‘I infer’

– though even these have their point in setting the tone for the sorts of response which the narrative

invites.

There are a few second-person statements too: let us start with the formal dedicatees. These can be

important in setting a work’s tone. Outside the Parallels, Aratus is dedicated to Aratus’ descendant

Polycrates of Sicyon, giving ‘examples drawn from their own household’ to his sons to encourage them

to emulation (Arat. 1). The theme of ‘sons’ and Aratus’ descendants ‘to our own day’ recurs

symmetrically at the end (54.7–8). That does not mean that Polycrates’ family are the only, or even the

target, narratees: the very reading of the work tells every new reader that it extends to a larger audience.

But the moralism of Aratus is more explicit than that of the Parallels, with a particular stress on
9
education; and that fits a more straightforward protreptic work aimed at the young. Polycrates and his

sons give a signal of the type of narratee expected, even if an extreme example of that type; they indicate

narratees to which real readers may assimilate themselves, flattered and intrigued to think of themselves

as moral classmates of the man’s real-life descendants.

The Parallel Lives give a more refined version of this. Their dedicatee is Q. Sosius Senecio, twice
10
consul, perhaps himself of Greek origin, and also the dedicatee of Table Talk and Progress in Virtue.
11
The series may have been initially dedicated to him during his first consulship in 99 AD. If so, the

proem to the lost opening pair Epaminondas and Scipio would probably have made the appropriateness
explicit: this is a lover of the Greeks and yet a great Roman, a military man with a taste for the past and
12
for culture, a symbol of the interplay of different worlds and pursuits which the Lives will explore.

Sosius’ name recurs in various ‘re-addresses’ at Thes. 1.1, Dem. 1.1, and Dion 1.1. Those placings are

not random. Thes. 1 marks out Theseus–Romulus as the point where the series reaches its extreme

boundary in the past. The mind-set of the critical but sympathetic narratee is also in focus, as we shall

see, and a narratee of ‘ideal’ sophistication is here constructed with special care. Demosthenes–Cicero will

present two figures who combine culture and a life of action, and investigate the tensions which that can

bring. Sosius, as a contemporary example of the cultured man of affairs, adds a valuable further

perspective. Dion–Brutus will investigate the Platonic picture of the ‘philosopher in politics’, especially

the Academic philosopher: and ‘.it is right for neither Romans nor Greeks to complain about the

Academy, for they both gain equally from this book which contains the Lives of Brutus and of Dion’

(Dion 1.1). That suggests a world of cultural fusion, where both Romans and Greeks learn from

philosophy and are interested in its effect on political action. Sosius sums up that world too.

Sosius, however, is hardly the typical narratee. The Lives often explain basic Roman terms and

institutions – the meaning of hoc age, for instance, or ‘deliciae’, or even ‘magnus’ (Cor. 25.3–4, Ant. 59.8,
13
Crass. 7.1); or how the tribunate worked (Ant. 8.5, Cam. 5.1, Fab. 9.2). At other times too they seem

to imply Greek narratees, for instance in his comments on the lack of Roman aesthetic taste (Popl.

15.4), uncharacteristically abrasive if aimed only at a Roman narratee but wistfully nostalgic if aimed at
14
a Greek. Still, we need not narrow the real-life audience down, even there: Roman readers might feel

flattered to be expected to share Greek tastes. Real-life readers doubtless extended over a wide range,

from the most distinguished of Plutarch’s Roman friends to impressionable young pupils at Chaeronea.

Sosius may be valuable as intimating one end of that range, rather as in Philostratus’ dedication of his

Lives of the Sophists to Gordian (VS proem), or in his claim that he re-edited his Life of Apollonius at the
15
behest of Julia Domna (1.3). Readers can reflect on the implications of being included along with

Sosius in that range: the work is suitable for him as well, and that has its own implications on the value
16
and applicability of what they will read.

The proem to Demosthenes tells a tale about Plutarch as well as about Sosius. One can be virtuous

anywhere: it would be odd if small towns, Ioulis or Aegina, had produced great actors or poets but could

not generate people of goodness and justice (1.2–3). Plutarch himself has made his home in the small

town of Chaeronea (2.2). Still, there is value for a writer too in living in a great city, where one has not

merely a lavish supply of books but also hears the stories which people still tell about the past (2.1).

When he was in Rome and Italy, he had not had time to refine his Latin because he was too busy with

political affairs and with those who came to hear him on philosophy. Then, when he did read Latin

sources, he had found it a great advantage that he was already familiar with the substance (2.2–3). He is

not equipped to give a stylistic contrast of Demosthenes and Cicero as orators – people ‘who have more

leisure and whose age is more suited to ambitions of that sort’ (2.4) might do that – but he can at least
17
compare them as politicians and men of action (3.1).

18
Scholars frequently quote this passage for what it tells us of Plutarch’s Latin; they less often ask
19
what its function is in this pair, or how it characterizes narrator or narratee. Once again we have the

intimation of milieu: in big cities people are still exchanging anecdotes about the past, in little ones too

people are examining their moral health. As for the narrator’s own self-characterization, (a) small towns

can produce great artists, and (b) Chaeronea is a small town. His distaste for self-praise – a subject on
20
which we have his moral essay, and on which he dwells in this pair (Cic. 24, 51(2) ) – prevents him

from drawing the conclusion from the two premisses, but the self-applicability is not far to seek. Yet he

is more than just a writer, and his aspirations have not been only to be the good man in private life

which the first chapter of the Life has sketched. He has also been a man of affairs: those ‘times in Rome

and Italy’ make a point, together with those distractions which prevented him from perfecting his

feeling for Latin style. The distractions consisted in ‘political affairs’ – presumably diplomatic
21
missions, though again he is diffidently vague – as well as ‘those who came to listen to me on

philosophy’. This is a doer as well as a man of letters and ideas, a narrator who is well-equipped to

understand the interplay of culture and politics which he will explore in Demosthenes and Cicero. And

what of his narratees? As we saw, this is an appropriate place to introduce Sosius Senecio; but the wider

audience is implicated too. The ‘we’s of this proem are sometimes clearly ‘Plutarch’, ‘we the narrator’:

‘we’ began to read Latin late in life and visited Italy (2.2–3), ‘we’ are writing this fifth pair of Parallel

Lives (3.1). But some ‘we’s are vaguer: ‘if we fall short of thinking or living as we should, we shall ascribe
22
this not to the smallness of our country but to ourselves’ (1.4). There is an intimation here of a value-

scheme which narrator and narratee share, just as there will be in the epilogue to the pair – there, for

instance, the valuing of wide culture (Cic. 50(1) ), the sympathy for Platonic views on philosopher-kings
(52(3).4), the strong views on political venality (52(3).5–6). All have the tone of dispensing approval

and disapproval among a community of morally serious people who think and feel in similar ways.

Then there is the parade of eschewing stylistic comparison (2.4). That theme too returns in the

epilogue (Cic. 50(1).1), though he goes on there to do something very close to it anyway – perhaps itself

self-characterization, suggesting that even though he rates substance above style he can make stylistic

points as well. In each case, though, the tone suggests that the narratees are likely to feel the same way.

That reference to those ‘who have more leisure and whose age is more suited to ambitions of that sort’

(2.4) is not especially warm, nor does it imply that such a project would be triggered by their own

reading of Plutarch. Then in Dem. 3 Plutarch is dismissive of the stylistic criticism of Caecilius, and that

too is not likely to produce any identification of most narratees with this potential stylistic critic. Or

rather, perhaps, we should distinguish between two different sorts of constructed narratee. There are

those whom the narrator welcomes and accepts, those whom he is writing for : his ‘target’ narratee,

perhaps. Such a narratee is expected to share his assumptions, in this case a privileging of substance

above style. But there is a second sort of constructed narratee as well, those who he knows will read his

work but may not be so sympathetic, those who may put quite different questions to the material. They

are not neglected, but not welcomed with such inclusiveness or warmth. We shall see more of this
23
second category later.

The inclusive techniques, though, are the more usual ones, and they can be more far-reaching.

Those first-person plurals are here important. It is indeed often unclear exactly how that category of ‘us’

is envisaged: ‘we Greeks’, ‘we cultured beings’, ‘we people of humane sensibility’, ‘we who are interested
24
in the past’? Does it include real readers in subsequent generations as well as those ‘in our day’, i.e.
25
Plutarch’s own? But in any case it is evidently a category which includes narratee as well as narrator.

Elsewhere too, as in the Demosthenes proem, a ‘we’ may begin by seeming to be Plutarch himself, but

drifts into being a genuine plural ‘we’ = ‘you and I’, narratee and narrator: ‘now that we have delivered

our first narrative, we have to go on to contemplate experiences and sufferings of a similar size in the

Roman pair, comparing the life of Tiberius and of Gaius…’ (Gracch. 1.1). As in that Gracchi passage, it

easily reaches the stage where the whole project of the Lives is envisaged as a joint investigation of

narrator and narratee: when ‘we compare’ two people (e.g. Phoc. 3.6, Pomp. 81(1).1, Popl. 1.1, Ag.–

Cleom. 2.7), or ‘bring on first’ one of them (Dion 2.7), or ‘contemplate’ the pair’s qualities (Pomp.

84(4).11, Ant. 88(1).1), that ‘we’ is not restricted to Plutarch himself. There are also blurred

intermediate cases, sometimes very uncharged, where it is unclear whether narratee is included or not: ‘if

we were to say that those writers were lying (though there are a fair number of them…)’, Cic. 52(3).6;

‘we do not have anything parallel in Pompey’s career’, Pomp. 82(2).2. These are not very different from

some cases without an explicit ‘we’, such as ‘but this, I suppose, will seem to support Lycurgus’ case’

(Numa 26(4).14), or Nicias’ moneymaking ‘will seem more respectable’ than that of Crassus (Crass.

34(1).1). ‘Seem’ to whom? ‘To me’, or ‘to us’? The blurring is important in insinuating that of course

narrator and narratee are people who think along similar lines.

Such ‘we’s create an impression of happy unanimity between narrator and narratee. There are fewer

cases where instead of an inclusive ‘we’ there is a disjunction of ‘I’ and ‘you’, though there too the text

usually suggests basic concord, or at least the likelihood of concord. One of those ‘you’s comes in the

proem to Aemilius–Timoleon, which gives an interesting twist to the relation of narrator and narratee.

Normally Plutarch presents himself as the model for his narratees, almost an ‘ideal’ narratee and moral

respondent to the stories he tells. This time the movement goes the other way. He began his

biographical project for others, he tells us, but continued it for his own sake, using history as a mirror

for making up his own life on the model of those of the past (Aem. 1.1): so, instead of the narrator’s

response cueing that of the narratee, the process here works the other way round. Soon there are ‘we’s

that seem inclusive: ‘it is as if we were entertaining each of them in turn, welcoming them in the history

and examining “how great he was and what sort of man”, and taking the most important and finest

things we might see in their actions…’ (1.2). Then the ‘we’ becomes less certain: ‘we use our historical

reading and our familiarity with its writing to mould our own life, welcoming always the recollection of

the best and most glorious figures into our souls…’ (Aem. 1.5): is that ‘we’ narrator alone, or narratees

too (as the plural ‘souls’ particularly suggests)? They too by now have ‘familiarity’ with his writings.

Then the first person becomes more clearly the narrator, but that goes with a blurring of the narratee:

‘From such examples we have now taken for you the life of Timoleon of Corinth and of Aemilius

Paullus…’ (1.6). Is that ‘you’ just ‘Sosius Senecio’? Or any reader? In any case, the two lives will generate

a ‘debate, whether it was good fortune or good judgement which brought them their greatest successes’

(1.8), and it is a debate in which both narratee and narrator will participate.

So the debates are shared ones: there are times, too, when the text gestures towards the possibility

that narrator and narratee might disagree. In the proem to Agis–Cleomenes, the text gives a summary

interpretation of the Gracchi (2.7–8), and goes on ‘you will judge this for yourself from the narrative’,
 26
2.9. It is up to ‘you’ to ‘judge for yourself ’, and there is again an intimation that other narratives

might be possible. It is at least conceivable that narratees might construct an alternative interpretation

for themselves. But it is also not very probable: that summary interpretation had been given in

confident indicatives, ‘they…did not realize that they were entering on a course where it was not

possible to withdraw’. That mild encouragement to an independent verdict is then echoed in the pair’s

conclusion: ‘you see for yourself the difference on the basis of the narrative. If it is necessary to set it out

in detail, I say that Tiberius came first of them all in virtue, that young Agis made fewest mistakes, and

that in action and daring Gaius was not far behind Cleomenes’ (Gracch. 45(5).7). It would not be in

keeping with Plutarch’s narratorial persona to assume that so elaborate a judgement would be taken over

in each particular by every narratee: hence the affectation of diffidence. Other verdicts show similar

tentativeness: ‘perhaps it is time to consider whether we shall not be far off the truth, if we declare that

Sulla got more things right but Lysander fewer things wrong, and give the one man the prize for self-

control and restraint, the other for generalship and courage’ (Sulla 43(5).6); ‘consider whether, if we give

the crown to the Greek for military skill and leadership and to the Roman for justice and generosity, we
27
shall not seem to be doing too badly’ (Flam. 24(3).5). Yet, despite the diffidence, more important is

the underlying assumption that this is the sort of judgement which narratees might eventually make,

that they are at least playing the same comparative game. It is still that joint project of comparison

which we saw earlier. And in all those cases – Agis–Cleomenes–Gracchi, Lysander–Sulla, Philopoemen–
28
Flamininus – there is a further twist, for all make particular use of the idea of competition: the ‘crown’

for Philopoemen or Flamininus, the ‘first place’ for Lysander or Sulla, Tiberius ‘coming first’ and Gaius

‘not far behind’ Cleomenes. All those pairs have also made use of the idea of competition in their

narratives. It was competitiveness that led to the rifts between Lysander and Agesilaus, then between

Sulla and Marius; it was contention for glory which led Agis, Cleomenes, and the Gracchi astray; it was

ambition for glory that drove Philopoemen and Flamininus too, and they eventually recognized it as a
29
competition between themselves. In all these pairs the men are contestants, and the agonistic contests

of the narrative prepare for the final synkritic competition. That is only resolved in the final words, and

the judges are narrator and narratee.

The same lack of real discord is seen in those passages when an epilogue imagines an objection: ‘here
30
someone might say that…’ Those objections are sometimes rebutted, sometimes accepted, or at least

accepted in a modified form. The implication is certainly that the narratee has been pondering the line

of argument critically, and is capable of making independent steps in the argument; he or she is not

wholly a follower. But the implication is still that both are conducting the investigation according to

similar rules – perhaps, indeed, that the narratee has been led by Plutarch’s own example, in this and in

earlier epilogues, to understand how this comparative exercise ought to be conducted. Sometimes it is

the imagined interlocutor who makes the telling point: ‘yet here someone will draw a distinction

between them’ (Alc. 41(2).8, cf. e.g. Gracch. 42(2).4). The effect is not very different from the rhetorical

questions which often punctuate epilogues (often in close conjunction with an imaginary ‘someone-

might-say’ objection): ‘or is this the first point which tells the other way?’ (Brut. 56(3).6, cf. e.g. Numa

25(3).4–5, 26(4).7, Crass. 37(4).3). Are these soliloquizing reflections of the narrator, or are they

questions put to the narratee? By now the distinction does not matter: the assumption is that both are

engaged, weighing issues and putting the same sorts of question. The dialogue can become more

elaborate still: a reflective question about attitudes to wealth, ‘or is this the first point which could tell

either way?’ (Cato Mai. 31(4).1), leads on to ‘I should like to put the point to Cato himself…’
31
(31(4).5). By now it is a three-way moral debate, with narrator, narratee, and subject all engaged.

Those engaged and sympathetic narratees – following the narrator most of the way, sharing his tastes

and assumption, with an independence which remains within limits – may also be sensed when Plutarch

apologizes for a digression: they are independent enough to need an apology, but are expected to be

indulgent. ‘We do not think that this material is unsuited to our biography, nor that it will seem
32
unhelpful to readers who are not in a hurry and not too busy,’ Tim. 15.11. Such narratees may also be

felt in Plutarch’s moralism: as we saw in ch. 10, there is rarely a sense of telling them anything they

might be reluctant to accept; he rather gives the impression of providing thought-provoking test-cases

within an acknowledged framework of moral values. Learning as well as ethical taste is taken for

granted, and such narratees will not be bewildered by comparisons with other historical events and
33
characters. Sometimes those are great – ‘Agesilaus, Lysander, Nicias, and Alcibiades.. .Salamis, Plataea,

Thermopylae, and Cimon’s successes at the Eurymedon and Cyprus’ (Flam. 11.5–6); sometimes more

mixed, as with the ‘Fabii and Scipios and Metelli…or Sulla, Marius, and both Luculli’ (Caes. 15.2),

where the lesser Lucullus brother might not be in the front of everyone’s mind. Literary culture is also
34
assumed, enough to welcome the quotations and allusions which lace his narrative; enough, even, to

catch allusions which the narrator does not label, confident that the narratee will be able to fill in the

gap – ‘in that city of Sophocles’ (Ant. 24.3, referring to Oedipus Tyrannus 4–5), or ‘Greece that had
“endured so very much” ’ (Ant. 62.1, quoting Euripides’ Heracles 1250, and the Herculean suggestions
35 36
are important); and many others. The same goes for allusions to myths. At Theseus 28.3 the text has

just mentioned Theseus’ marriage to Phaedra: ‘as for the misfortunes which concerned her and his son,

there is no disagreement between the historians and the tragic poets, and so we must assume that it was

as they have all made out’. The narrator clearly relies on the narratees to know what is meant: an

important point is built on the Hippolytus story, again rather allusively, in the epilogue (Rom. 32(3).1–

2).

There are moments, however, when less concordant narratees are envisaged, people whose approach

is so at odds that they would be looking for, or even assuming they had found, one of those alternative

and very different narratives. In Demosthenes–Cicero we noticed that a different sort of person is

acknowledged, someone who might conduct the stylistic discrimination that Plutarch and his regular
37
narratees would avoid. We also noted that these were not treated with the same inclusiveness: we may

have to class them as ‘cross-grained narratees’, in that the text acknowledges their potential existence,

but they are not proper narratees, not people entering into the spirit of the project, not the readers

whom the writing is for. Dorrit Cohn has drawn a distinction between ‘consonant’ and ‘dissonant’
38
narrators; we may have to make a similar distinction among narratees. For elsewhere too such

dissonant, cross-grained narratees are treated in a similarly unwelcoming way; they constitute a foil for

the more appropriate response which more sympathetic narratees will develop.

It is interesting to see how they are described. At the beginning of Nicias, ‘it is time to request and

call upon those who come across ( τους έντυγχανοντας) these writings not to assume that I have suffered
the same affliction as Timaeus’ (that is, the ambition to outdo Thucydides: Nic. 1.1). These are ‘those

who come across these writings’, not even ‘my readers’ or ‘my listeners’: as in Demosthenes, they are not

‘proper’ narratees. The same phrase is used in the proem to Demetrius–Antony. The narrator there gives

his reasons for including characters whose lives were less creditable, ‘not (for Heaven’s sake!) to give

variation to my writing so as to give pleasure or diversion to those who come across it’ ( τους
έντυγχανοντας again, Demetr. 1.5): those who so misconstrue his purpose are again those who found

his work by a chance encounter. The better approach is to realize that ‘we will become more enthusiastic

in our contemplation and in our living of better lives, if we pay attention too to those who are bad and

are censured’ (1.6). That is what ‘we’ do – and that ‘we’ gives a more regular embrace of the narratee as

someone who reacts as the narrator himself does.

Or consider the famous passage which begins Alexander.

39
‘We shall ask our readers μή
συκοφαντείν if we do not include everything or go into every detail of famous events, but abbreviate

most of them. For it is not histories we are writing, but lives…’ (Alex. 1.1–2). There μή συκοφαντείν is
usually translated as ‘not to complain’ (Perrin, Waterfield, Hamilton, Duff ) or ‘not to regard this as a

fault’ (Scott-Kilvert). There is more to it than that. The word always carries a notion of something

disingenuous or disreputable: ‘criticize in a pettifogging way’, ‘quibble’ (LSJ I.2) is better, or ‘de ne pas

nous chercher chicane’ (Chambry). Whether or not the complex suggestions of classical Athenian

‘sycophancy’ are felt, there is always a hint that the objector is not being sufficiently generous, or not
40
saying what is really in the mind. Such complaints are some way from the engaged and sympathetic

‘someone might say.’ objections in the epilogues.

As we saw in ch. 7, Theseus–Romulus provides a more elaborate example where the narrator toys

with a degree of narratee-independence. The proem indeed asks ‘our listeners to be indulgent and to

accept ancient tales in an acquiescent mood’ (Thes. 1.5): that assumes the same sort of readerly

independence as before, as if the indulgence cannot be taken for granted. The narratee would normally

be critical of such unreliable material, and in ways which are not merely triggered by passages of explicit

discussion in the text: thus Plutarch cannot simply avoid such criticism by refusing to question veracity

himself. To ask for such discrimination among different types of material is to demand, and to assume,

considerable sophistication in a narratee: in that sense there is flattery here. But it is also a sophistication

which is close to Plutarch’s own, or at least to the sophistication which he temporarily affects for this

pair. As in the epilogues, even the independent narratee is assumed to be conducting games which are

not too distant from those played by Plutarch himself: for even if that narratee does decide that the

mythical has not been made to look like history, he or she will be doing so by applying criteria similar to

those which Plutarch has acknowledged he would apply elsewhere.

The same goes for the epilogue, where (if the argument of ch. 7 is right) the narratee is still not sure
41
how serious, and how convincing, the whole exercise of ‘making myth look like history’ has been. Are

these then narratees who are constructed as thinking differently from the narrator, who have been so

perplexed by the clever moves and ironies that they are finally at a loss to work out what sort of text they

have been reading? Not at all: for in the proem we also saw the diffidence with which Plutarch himself

approached this singular project, uncertain whether it would come off. Now, at the end, we again have
the effect of rumination, with narrator as uncertain about narrative status as narratee. Narrative is still

slippery, especially in this pair, and both parties are assumed to know it. Even in uncertainty, even when

the narrator has highlighted the possibility that the narratee may not be able to go with him the whole

way, narrator and narratee are not so very different, and share the same sort of patience with the

material and subtlety in the way they toy with it.

The same is true in those cases when the narrator reveals a moral response to his material which goes
42
beyond those views that the narratee would naturally share. ‘For myself, I would not even sell a

working ox because it was too old, never mind an elderly man’ (Cato Mai. 5.6). ‘I would not myself

agree with Demaratus of Corinth, who said that a great pleasure had been denied those Greeks who had

not seen Alexander sitting on Darius’ throne’ (Ages. 15.4). ‘The wisest judges put particular weight on

Tigellinus’ impious and unspeakable cavortings with prostitutes. This, those wise persons thought, was
43
the worst punishment of all, outweighing a multitude of deaths’ (Otho 2). The narratees might not go

that far; some would not gibe at turning an honest drachma from an aged ox; some might even prefer
44
the odd whorish cavorting to even a single death. But at least we are expected to find the authorial

persona attractive rather than repellent, someone with whom we can engage and even identify, at least

most of the way.

‘We are expected…’, ‘we can engage…’: those are phrases which the modern scholar uses

unselfconsciously, and which have many parallels with the sort of inclusiveness for which I argued
45
above. The same goes for the rhetorical questions: ‘are these then narratees who…?’: am I asking my

own readers, or myself? The implications are similar too, a barely conscious attempt to insinuate the

notion that reader and author are at one in a joint investigation. It is not that scholarly discourse has

stayed the same: the manner is different from that, say, of nineteenth-century scholarship. It is rather

that Plutarch, with his combination of learned disquisition with vitality, engagement, and genial
46
characterization of self and audience, has much in common with the more informal style of much

current scholarship, or at least with the scholarly persona which many of ‘us’ try to project.

Notes

1
Cf. p. 185.

2
For a close comparison of the scene with Herodotus see Frazier 1992, 4499–506: she particularly stresses Plutarch’s psychological focus

on Croesus’ reactions and the contrast with Solon.

3
This is particularly striking in Theseus : cf. pp. 177–8.

4
For this sort of ‘I’ cf. Russell 1993, 428.

5
e.g. Sol. 21.7 and 25.1, with n. 26 below; Lyc. 31.4, Rom. 13.6 and about a dozen other instances in that Life, Popl. 10.7, 11.6, 15.3,

24(1).3, Arist. 1.3, Them. 22.3, Cim. 19.5, Alc. 21.3, Alex. 69.8, Phoc. 18.8, 22.2, Fab. 1.8, Flam. 16.5–7, Sulla 21.8. Cf. Frazier 1996,

38.

6
Frazier 1988b, 301–2, like Dover 1966, assumes that these ‘Megarians’ are written sources; in Pelling 2000, 272 n. 60 I give reasons for

assuming that Plutarch is here conveying, and very likely constructing, what Megarians would still be saying.

7
Cf. on beginnings Stadter 1988, 292; on ends ch. 17, p. 367. See also Russell 1993, 431 on similar projections of a learned persona in

the Moralia, sometimes extending to making a little fun of himself (e.g. Table Talk 675a or 731a–b): not the case, I think, in these cases

in the Lives.

8
e.g. Dem. 1.1, Demetr. 1.1, Lucull. 44(1).8, Cato Mai. 32(5).3, Numa 24(2).10, Ages.–Pomp. 83(3).1–2 (‘it seems to me’, ‘I think’);

Marc. 33(3).1–2, Crass. 36(3).2, Sulla 41(3).7 (‘I praise’ or ‘do not praise’); Sulla 39(1).5, Cato mai. 32(5).3 (‘I blame’ or ‘do not

blame’); Sulla 41(3).7 (‘I infer’). Outside proems, e.g. Lucull. 36.6, Phoc. 4.1, Alex. 8.1, Gracch. 2.1, Per. 39.2, Solon 27.1, Marc. 21.3,

28.6: notice how many of these are close to the beginnings or ends of Lives, as the authorial persona gradually recedes or re-emerges.

9
Cf. below, pp. 288–91.

10
Jones 1970, 103 and 1971, 55; but the eastern origin is doubted by Halfmann 1979, 211 and Swain 1996, 426–7.

11
Thus Jones 1966, 70 = Scardigli 1995, 114.

12
Wardman 1974, 39: ‘Sosius is…the reader who already exemplifies by his life and achievement the kind of activity to which the Lives

exhort us’.

13
Ziegler and Gärtner 1980, 200–3 give a list of Latin terms which Plutarch explains. For other instances where the audience seems

Greek, cf. Wardman 1974, 39–40; Duff index s.v. ‘audience, constructed as Greek’, esp. 302 on the Parallel Lives. Stadter 1994 494 n. 4

objects that ‘Plutarch frequently explains Greek terms and institutions’ too, ‘especially those of Sparta and Athens. His practice is more a

feature of his literary technique than an indication of a restricted audience.’ I agree that the practice does not give a firm guide to the real

audience, but it does give a guide to the constructed audience, the narratees: where Greek institutions or terms are explained they tend to

be distinctly more arcane, the sorts of thing where even a Greek might flounder.

14
For similar cases of a Greek viewpoint on Roman issues, cf. Swain 1996, 139–45.

15
For similar dedications of narrative works cf. Marincola 1997, 52–7, pointing out that they are less frequent in what he calls ‘Great

historiography’ than in related, smaller-scale genres – autobiographies, memoirs, monographs, works with a strong panegyric element.

Those genres are also more ‘personal’ than historiography in that the narrator too often emerges as more of a character, either as more
‘self-conscious’ about the writing process (as in Plutarch, or, say, in Sallust: for the term, Booth 1961, 155; de Jong 1987, 46) or as a

figure in the narrative itself. The two points go together, with both narrator and narratee being in sharper focus.

16
Cf. p. 85 above, on the dedication of the Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum to Trajan. – Swain 1996, 144–5, argues ‘that Plutarch

probably looked on.. .Senecio.. .as a man who needed encouragement towards attaining the peace of mind that comes from Greek

philosophy’. Swain bases this particularly on the dedication to Sosius of Progress in Virtue. I should put this less in terms of Plutarch’s

view of the man and more in terms of the rhetoric of the dedication, the suggestion that even a Sosius might be improved: but the basic

point is similar.

17
Cf. Cato Mai. 7.3, on the comparison of Cato’s style with Lysias’: ‘This is a matter for those with a greater feeling for Latin style to

decide, but we will include a few of his bons mots, for we think that human character appears more clearly from what people say than (as

some think) from how they look.’ That intimates the narrator’s distance from the physiognomists as well as from the stylistic critics.

18
As I did myself in ch. 1, p. 2 and n. 10.

19
An exception now is Mossman 1999, who dwells particularly on the contrast of substance and style and its resonance in the later

narratives. Rosenmeyer 1992, 221, does address the question, but reaches the opposite conclusion: ‘The arguments of the first two

chapters.. .are largely unrelated to what follows’. Russell 1993, 428, has some good remarks on the self-characterization here: ‘this is

both apology and self-recommendation.’

20
On the problems of narratorial self-praise cf. Marincola 1997, 175–82, and see above, p. 249.

21
Jones 1971, 20–1.

22
For similar blurrings of ‘we’ see pp. 272–3, 278.

23
See p. 276.

24
Cf. e.g. Dem. 22.5, the actors playing kings and tyrants ‘whom we see in the theatres crying and laughing not as they themselves wish,

but as the plot demands’; Per. 8.9 (quoting Stesimbrotus), ‘we do not see the gods either, but we infer that they exist from the honours

they receive and the goods which they give us’. Per. 39.2, ‘…just as we think it right that the gods, as responsible for good things but not

for bad, should rule over and control all reality, not in the way that the poets terrify us…’; Cor. 32.6, Homer attributes everyday

responses ‘to us’ but more irregular ones to the gods; Arist. 6.5, ‘our’ nature does not allow immortality. In the proems, e.g. Per. 1.4–5,

‘we often despise the craftsman but admire the work,’ etc, and 2.3; epilogues, cf. e.g. Ant. 90(3).4, ‘as we see in paintings’. Russell 1993,

427, observes that even an ‘I’ can often amount to ‘I, as a typical rational being…’.

25
For this complication cf. de Jong 1987, 36.

26
Cf. Solon 19.4–5, discussing whether there was an Areopagus before Solon. The text weighs various learned arguments and inclines

towards the view that there was, though allowing that the crucial evidence could be taken another way: ‘well, then, consider this for

yourself ’ ( ταυτα μεν ουν καί αυτός επισκοπεί). The addressee is taken as engaged and discriminating, one who might conceivably

disagree but one who will accept that this is the way to approach the problem. The atmosphere of debate there continues into the next

few chapters, with vigorous discussion of the rights and wrongs of several laws: notice the ‘someone might say…’ at 20.8, with n. 30

below; and the continuation of the principles into ‘our own laws’ at 21.7 and the preservation of the cylinders to ‘our own time’ at 25.1,

with p. 269 above.

27
Cf. Duff 1999, 203–4 (Lysander–Sulla), 268–9 (Ag.–Cl.–Gracchi), and more generally 286 (though these are not all necessarily ‘court-

room metaphors’, as he says at 286 n. 45). For some related points about the complicity of narrator and narratee in the epilogues see also

p. 361.

28
Pelling 1997a, 329–31.

29
Esp. Lys. 2.3–4, 23.3 and 7, Sulla 4.6, 5.10, 13.1, 39(1).7, cf. Stadter 1992, Duff 1999, 179–80; Ag.–Cl. 2.8 (‘contesting’, αμιλλ?
μενοι); Phil. 15.1–3, Flam. 13.1–4, and Pelling 1997a, 91, 220 n. 93.
30
e.g. Sol. 20.8 with n. 26 above; Marc. 32(2).2, Rom. 32(3).1, 2, 3, Numa 23(1).10, 26(4).13, Brut. 57(4).5. Ant. 90(3).2 (an imagined

objection which ‘one could not make’), Tim. 40(1).3, Popl. 27(4).4. Such a τις-intrusion may not always be an objection, of course: ‘if

one examined their battles’, Flam. 22(1).3; ‘one might particularly think Lucullus fortunate in the time of his death’, Lucull. 44(1).1;

‘one should not wholly excuse Lucullus for this’, 45(2).5; also e.g. Brut. 56(3).5, Mar. 1.4, Ant. 91(4).5, Cic. 54(5).1, Crass. 34(1).1,

38(5).1, Fab. 30(3). 6, Alc. 44(5).2, Cato Mai. 29(2).5, Ages. 15.3, Pomp. 84(4).4, Gracch. 42(2).4. Such concordant ‘someones’

reinforce the impression that the narratee is assumed usually to be in mental tune with the narrator. This has something in common

with the Homeric ‘anonymous focalizers’ analysed by de Jong 1987, 57–60, who often cue and correspond to the response of primary

narratees – though, as Irene de Jong kindly points out to me, those ‘anonymous focalizers’ are typically viewing the events of the story,

whereas these Plutarchan imagined interlocutors are commenting on the implications of the story itself. As she points out, this links

these imagined interlocutors even more closely with the narratee: the Homeric cases are of the type ‘here you [or ‘a person’] might

see…’, yet narratees could of course not literally ‘see’ in this way, whereas Plutarch’s narratees could literally form a ‘view’ on the issue.

For related phenomena in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon see Hornblower 1995, 148–9: some of those ‘someones’ are rather

less concordant, e.g. the viewer of Athens and Sparta at Thuc. 1.10 who will not believe in Sparta’s greatness, or the doubters of the

constitutional debate at Hdt. 6.43.

31
For further discussion of this passage cf. pp. 163 n. 12, 200, 312, and Pelling 1989, 214–15.

32
Cf. also e.g. Per. 39, building to the Life’s elevated ending with an excursus on the moral goodness of the gods, suggesting that Pericles

is indeed ‘Olympian’: ‘but these things will perhaps seem appropriate to a different type of enquiry’. The narratee has a feeling of

appropriateness to context, but will also not mind too much (otherwise the emotional rhythm of the closure would be wrecked), and

may not mind at all (‘perhaps’). Rom. 12.6 is similar but more elaborate. The text has just mentioned an attempt to fix Rome’s

foundation date by reverse astrology, reading back from its future greatness: ‘these things, perhaps, will attract by their strange and far-

fetched character rather than alienate those who come across them because of their air of myth’. But there the possibility of a more cross-

grained reaction (‘alienate’) is more explicit: the formulation ‘those who come across them’ ( τούς έντυγχάνοντας) fits this possibility of a
grumpier response (below, p. 276).

33
On these cf. Duff 1999, 251–2.

34
They are usefully collected by Helmbold and O’Neil 1959.

35
e.g. the Homeric cases now collected by Alexiou 2000.
36
And also for an appreciation of some finer points of philosophy and mathematics: Wardman 1974, 41–2.

37
Above, p. 272.

38
Cohn 1978, 26–33, discussing the degree of ‘consonance’ a third-person narrator shows with the psychology of a central character. In

this case the ‘consonance’ or ‘dissonance’ will be not with the psychology of any agent within the narrative, but with the self-presentation

of the narrator himself. (I am again grateful to Irene de Jong here.)

39
Discussed from different viewpoints also at pp. 102–3, 207, 259–60, and in Pelling, forthcoming (a).

40
Perhaps non-coincidentally, the word recurs twice at the end of the narrative at Alex. 74.4–5, where the issue is whether those accusing

Antipater are doing so falsely. At Numa 9.3 the lawgiver does not συκοφαντεί ν in the case of a genuine impediment in conducting

sacrifices, that is ‘does not make unreasonable objections’. At Cato Min. 11.4 some critics έσυκοφαντούν at the expense of the funeral of
Cato’s brother, failing uncharitably to realize the depth of his capacity for emotion. At Pomp. 2.10 Pompey έσυκοφαντείτο as neglecting
public affairs because of his wives. The narrative will show there is some truth in this, but for the moment the critics are stigmatised as

ungenerous: Pompey is ‘careful and guarded’ about his love-life, but ‘nonetheless was blamed by his enemies’. Naturally, Plutarch also

uses the word in contexts of classical democracy: Sol. 24.2, Arist. 26.2, Per. 37.4, Alc. 13.6, 19.7, 34.7, Tim. 37.1, Phoc. 12.3 etc. It is

never friendly or neutral. See more generally on the word’s range Harvey 1990, singling out the suggestions of monetary motivation,

false charges, sophistical quibbling, slanderous attack, taking people to court, and raking up old scores; ‘sophistical quibbling’ is the

nearest to the present use.

41
See p. 187.

42
Or perhaps we should here speak of ‘implied reader’, as in such cases the text does not construct a narratee explicitly: the response

remains one of the narrator, a matter in Genette’s terms of ‘voice’ (Genette 1980, 212–62). But one cannot evade the assumption that

this ‘voice’ will not grate on the narratee, and this time the ‘implied reader’ is not unsympathetic.

43
Cf. p. 238, and also the passage from Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible which I quote there (1093c).

44
Contrast Booth 1961, 157: ‘From the author’s viewpoint, a successful reading of his book must eliminate all distance between the

essential norms of his implied author and the norms of the postulated reader.’ Not ‘all distance’, if the argument here is correct: the

remaining distance should not be large, but it may exist. The important point is that any disjunction of views should not be genuinely

alienating, and those of the ‘implied author’ should be found attractive even if not irresistible.

45
Compare the response of a modern philosopher to friends who had questioned his use of the ‘ubiquitous “we” ’ (e.g. in phrases like

‘our ethical ideas’ or ‘what we think’). ‘It refers to people in a certain cultural situation, but who is in that situation? Obviously, it cannot

mean everybody in the world, or everybody in the West. I hope it does not mean only people who already think as I do. The best I can

say is that “we” operates not through a previously fixed designation, but through invitation. (The same is true, I believe, of “we” in

much philosophy, and particularly in ethics.) It is not a matter of “I” telling “you” what I and others think, but of my asking you to

consider to what extent you and I think some things and perhaps need to think others’ (B. Williams 1993, 171 n. 7). It is hard to better

this description of the ‘invitational “we” ’, and it fits closely on to what I have been suggesting here for Plutarch.

46
And a degree of self-referentiality too: this final paragraph is sufficient testimony to that.
 13

ASPECTS OF PLUTARCH’S CHARACTERIZATION

1. Childhood and development

Immediately we consider Plutarch’s treatment of his heroes’ childhood, we find ourselves confronting a
1
strange paradox. He is clearly most interested in childhood and education; indeed, it is the exclusive
2
concern of several of his moral essays. He has a quite elaborate theory of youthful development,

drawing heavily on Aristotelian ethics: our initial ‘potentials’ or ‘capacities’ ( δυνάμεις) render us capable
of feeling and responding to specific experiences or emotions ( πάθη), and our responses gradually

ἕξεις); these eventually evolve into settled character-

constitute particular patterns of habitual activity (

ἤθη) which inform our moral choices. All that comes out particularly clearly in On Moral Virtue.
traits (

Naturally enough, he insists that moral development of character is the norm for all human beings, and
3
that education has a peculiar value in moulding character and restraining passions. Naturally enough,

too, in the Lives he makes a good deal of whatever childhood material he finds in his sources, often

straining uncomfortably to extract unreasonably large consequences from slight anecdotes – Sulla is a

good example of that. He also gives extensive space to education – to isolating the teachers of Pericles,

for instance, or stressing Lucullus’ or Cicero’s early intellectual prowess. And there are times when he

shrewdly points to the importance of influences, sometimes in ways which involve quite extensive

psychological reconstruction: the effect on the young Cleomenes of his marriage to Agis’ widow, for

instance, when she would constantly describe to him those stirring events (Ag.–Cl. 22(1).3); the

influence on Marcellus of being brought up at a time when Rome was constantly at war, so that he had

no time to indulge his supposed taste for Hellenic culture (Marc. 1); the impact on Theseus of the

heroics of his kinsman Heracles (esp. Thes. 6.8–8.2, 11.2); the effect on Coriolanus of his close and
4
dominant mother (Cor. 4.5–8). All this seems to bring Plutarch surprisingly close to the themes and

interests of modern biography, with its taste for tracing influences and psychological development, and

for bringing out and explaining individual differences.

And yet so often these interests of Plutarch seem to lead to peculiarly shallow and disappointing

results. So often his treatment of childhood itself is banal and unpenetrating; so often we are left with

very little idea of any evolution of the grown man; and, despite those few cases where he does go in for

psychological reconstruction, so often he seems to regard understanding the development of his heroes as

a surprisingly low priority. Why? It is not a shortage of material; true, he is reluctant to supplement it
5
irresponsibly – but we can also often see him failing to analyse the material he does have, or to carry

through the sort of reconstruction of which he was capable. Why doesn’t he reconstruct how the elder

Cato or Marius must have felt, when they first came from the country to join in smart city life? Or what

it must have been like for an Artaxerxes or a Timoleon in the nursery, with such dominant and powerful

brothers? Or what Agesilaus must have felt about his lameness, or Themistocles about his dubious

parentage? Plutarch has the resources to make such reconstructions, and the interest in youthful

development to encourage them: Cleomenes shows that, or Theseus, or Coriolanus; and in each case the

theme is stressed enough – rusticity, or the brothers, or the physical disability, or the bastardy. Yet the

psychological capital made of it is curiously disappointing, and we are not really led to any deeper

understanding of the heroes or their development.

Albrecht Dihle offers a most interesting explanation in his Studien zur griechischen Biographie
6
(1956), when he points to a difference between modern and ancient ideas of the personality. He

suggests that modern writers postulate a large number of varied predispositions (Anlagen) in a

personality. Some are aroused and fostered by specific experiences, especially in childhood; others

become stunted or atrophied; and we place especial weight on the irrational in describing these

distinctive experiences, and the psychic drives which they encourage or deflect. Such an analysis need

not put especial weight on the development of ‘the moral will’ or ‘moral consciousness’, though it

certainly need not deny that such a will or consciousness exists, with the function of ethically assessing
7
and censoring a person’s Anlagen and accommodating them with life’s demands: still, a figure can often

be represented as passive, a locus for the various predispositions and stimuli to fight it out. This modern

picture does clearly posit a complex process of the development of personality, even if it finds little to

say about the development of the moral will or consciousness. Plutarch, by contrast, is firmly in the

Peripatetic tradition in stressing the moral will. It is that which controls the way in which those original

‘capacities’ respond to particular emotions and experiences ( πάθη), ensuring that these are controlled
and guided in such a way that a pattern of ethical conduct ( ἕξις) is followed, which is gradually
strengthened into a stable aspect of a person’s character ( ἦθος). 8
The irrational is relevant to the

portrait, but only in defining the quality of the πάθη and the ‘capacities’ that enable us to respond to

them; and it will be natural to concentrate less on the capacities or the emotions and experiences

themselves than on the rational moral will or consciousness that masters them, something that (again in

Aristotelian fashion) will be visible in the adult’s moral choices which those settled characteristics ( ἤθη)
inform. Thus the irrational typically remains at a level below that of the literary presentation, assumed

as part of the individual’s development but not explicitly traced. ‘It is evident’, concludes Dihle, ‘that in

so narrow a biographical psychology the modern conception of development has no place.’

9
There is much to admire in this extremely subtle analysis. Dihle is certainly right to draw attention

to our view of a person’s complex blend of varied Anlagen, and his stress on Plutarch’s conception of

moral will is also illuminating: the development of such an undifferentiated moral will is very much the

register in which education is treated, at least when it is successful – in the cases of Aemilius, for
10
example, or Brutus, or even (with some qualifications) Pericles. Such a will should give one control of

the πάθη (cf. esp. Progress in Virtue 77d–78e, 82b–c); and Dihle is right to suggest that there is more

interest in emphasizing the will than in the differentiated analysis of the πάθη themselves, even in cases
where those πάθη are important to Plutarch’s view of his central figure. But some qualifications should

still be made.

First, Dihle’s analysis of modern assumptions is closer to theoretical psychology than biographical
11
practice. With some exceptions, especially the psychoanalytic school, modern biography does not

especially concentrate on these irrational elements in childhood; it may include them, but the early

display or development of rational traits tends to be much more stressed – particularly in political

biography, where the comparison with Plutarch is sharpest, and where a certain gravity and respect for
12
the subject normally inhibits too strong a stress on the irrational. Dihle’s analysis is in fact as redolent

of Proust as it is of Freud, and in many ways it suits the biographical or autobiographical novel better

than biography itself: it is suggestive that Dihle’s sole example is not a biography at all but the
13
Entwicklungsroman ‘Grüne Heinrich’. And even such novels do not characteristically analyse the

predispositions which remain stunted or undeveloped, only those which prefigure important later traits;

such an analysis is not far removed from the Peripatetic treatment of δυνάμεις and πάθη which interact
to produce later characteristics. (Dihle reasonably observes that the interaction is now described rather

differently. We tend to speak of a constant mutual interaction, with Anlagen refined and remoulded as a

result of experiences; whereas the Peripatetic analysis would regard the δυνάμεις as a constant given, and
the interaction as producing distinct ἕξεις and eventually ἤθη. But the difference is at least in part

semantic.)

Indeed, in many ways Plutarch stresses irrational πάθη more, not less, than his modern

counterparts, at least when he is describing adult figures. This is particularly clear in cases such as

Marius, Coriolanus, Demetrius, or Antony, where heroes are clearly bad at controlling their passions; but

the phenomenon is in fact much more widespread. Time and again we find Plutarch analysing heroes’

self-control, and finding them lacking: and we find this particularly frequently in cases where Hellenic
14
education is in point. Marcellus, for instance, had Hellenic tastes and did his best to indulge them in a

warlike period, but he was eventually destroyed by his inability to control his natural bellicosity. Cicero

was extraordinarily educated, yet so often he showed himself unable to match up to the emotional

demands of the political choices he had to make, and unworthily followed the instincts of his πάθη
rather than his reason: in his poor showing in exile, for instance, or in his choice of sides in the civil war,

or in his extravagant reaction to his daughter’s death. Some people did better: for instance Aemilius,

again a man with educated and Hellenic tastes, or Brutus and the younger Cato, both followers of

Greek philosophy; others worse, particularly those whose education was lacking – Marius, Coriolanus –

or whose Hellenism was defective, like the elder Cato. This link of the πάθη with education is

unsurprising, given Plutarch’s stress on education as the vital prerequisite for self-control: but this leads

us back to the original paradox. Plutarch stresses these πάθη in later life, but does very little to trace the
development of a hero’s self-control in the crucial years of his youth. Admittedly, we do sometimes find

something of the kind: Coriolanus’ mother stimulating his pride, for instance, or Heracles setting

Theseus alight with ambition. Nothing precluded such analysis; but the oddity is that it is so rare, when

it is precisely what the interest in the πάθη and their linkage with youth and education would seem to

demand. We still need an explanation, and the attitude to the irrational does not offer it but instead

makes the problem more pressing.

In fact it is questionable how far the Peripatetic theory of character illuminates this question. Indeed,

that theory would seem to encourage treatment of character-development, with its emphasis on that

development of ἕξεις and that gradual formation of ἤθη. Aristotle himself is very clear that both

intellectual and moral virtues require development, though it is of a different kind in each case (NE
2.1.1103a14 ff.); and children have their distinctive pleasures, which everyone likes to grow out of, and

their distinctive values (NE 10.3.1174a1–4, 10.6.1176b21–33, cf. 3.12.1119b5–7). It is utterly

appropriate that he should end Book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics by giving us advice on how to manage

our own development, and Book 10 by a more general treatment of education and its importance. If

anything, it is Peripatetic practice that goes the other way – the failure of Theophrastus, for instance, to

generate much interest in the background or development of individual figures: and indeed the same

goes for Aristotle himself, in his typed sketches in NE 4 and in his stray biographical comments
15
elsewhere. In fact, Aristotle and Theophrastus seem to provide their own version of the paradox we

have already noticed with Plutarch: a theory which implies a considerable preoccupation with education

and development, but a curious absence of that preoccupation in practice.

But in their cases it is easier to see why; and this may give a hint for Plutarch too. Dihle himself very

properly brings out what Theophrastus and Aristotle are doing in producing such stereotyped
16
portraits. They are not suggesting that such types exhaust the definition of any individual human’s

personality, but rather providing a convenient shorthand portrait of a particular ἤθος which an

individual may show, along, doubtless, with many other such ἤθη. And those typed figures need not
17
even preclude a measure of development; it is simply that in such cases the development would not be

very complex or interesting. Plutarch’s figures, as again Dihle stresses, are much more individuated, even

if (say) his Nicias owes something to a Peripatetic typed ‘superstitious man’ ( δεισιδαίμων). His

biographical insight is so much richer than anything we can confidently ascribe to the Peripatetics, and

if he uses their categories he does so with much more discrimination and human understanding. In

these more complex cases we might consequently expect development to be more complex too, and at

first sight it is still surprising that, in this most obvious area, we seem to have no advance at all. But

something like the same explanation may still be the right one. Plutarch’s figures may be more complex,

but not, perhaps, in a way which needs to posit a particularly singular or interesting process of

development.

Here we should follow a different hint of Dihle’s account. So far we have been talking only of the

complexity of the varied ‘predispositions’ of a child: but just as important is the differing degree of

complexity of traits in the formed, adult character, a point which Dihle has made a few pages earlier

(1956, 72). Moderns love complex characters, and particularly love the idiosyncratic, paradoxical

combination of unexpected traits – in Wilamowitz’ words, ‘the contradictions that are found in every
18
soul of any richness, and whose unification alone creates a person’s individuality’. Ancient authors

were less wedded to such quirkiness. Critics often warn us not to expect the idiosyncratic in the

characters of Greek Tragedy: the individuality of a Clytemnestra or a Philoctetes certainly remains, but
19
it is an individuality of a different sort from ours. The same applies to Plutarch. His characters too are
20
individuated, but they are what may be called ‘integrated’ characters: not stereotypes nor monolithic

characters, but those in which traits cluster readily together: a person’s qualities are brought into some

sort of relation with one another, and every trait goes closely with the next. We are unsurprised if

Antony is simple, passive, ingenuous, susceptible, soldierly, boisterous, yet also noble and often brilliant;

or the younger Cato is high-principled and determined, rigid in his philosophy, scruffy (as philosophical

beings often are), strange but bizarrely logical in the way he treats his women, and disablingly inflexible

and insensitive in public life. These are not stereotypes, but the different qualities cluster very naturally:

nothing jars, and Wilamowitz would hardly speak of such combinations as ‘the contradictions.. .whose

unification alone creates a person’s individuality’. Even an Alcibiades is not many-sided in a modern

sense, any more than Homer’s Odysseus: both can be described swiftly and adequately, and even in such

cases every trait really predicts the next. One could even talk meaningfully of ‘a sort of person like’

Antony, or Alexander, or even Alcibiades: one might not meet that ‘sort of person’ very often, but at

least their qualities group together so naturally that they could conceivably recur in the same blend in

another human being. Talk of ‘a sort of person like’ Hamlet, or Prince André, or Hedda Gabler would
21
seem distinctly more peculiar.

Such ‘integrated’ characters leave distinctly less to be explained than, in the world of the

idiosyncratic, we have come to expect. Today writers have to foreshadow or explain a considerable

multiplicity of divergent traits, and are often striving to explain why such a unique combination could

possibly have come about. With idiosyncratic characters, development is typically problematic. For

Plutarch it is much simpler. A few childhood traits, broadly sketched, can suffice, not because the adult

personality is going to show only those traits, but because any new adult traits will naturally

complement the ones we know from childhood. The infant Cato is determined, humourless, and

intense, and it is not difficult to see how these early traits group naturally with those which develop

later, the political inflexibility, the philosophy, the bizarre treatment of his women. Nothing is surprising

as the characterization deepens, and nothing requires any particularly refined explanation. It is not that
22
his characters are ‘static’, but their development is, for our tastes, curiously straightforward. Even in
the cases of the uneducated or ill-controlled, he can allow the points to come out gradually throughout

the Life, as he will be painting them with a very broad brush. If we wish, we will not find it difficult to

infer what their childhood must have been like – but, however important their development may have

been, it will not have been especially differentiated, nor necessarily very arresting. Plutarch does not

need to strain from the outset to extract every ounce of understanding, as so many of his modern

counterparts do. There is so much less to understand.

Nor, finally, should we relate this ‘integration’ to distinctively Peripatetic thought. Aristotle’s ethical

theory can leave it open for character to show any number of distinct ἤθη in any sort of relation to one
another (though it is true that his virtuous man will not vary over so large a range). The assumptions in

fact go much deeper: this integration is an almost universal ancient habit, and indeed one shown by

many more recent civilizations as well as the Greek. It is very much our post-Romantic nineteenth-,

twentieth-, and twenty-first-century culture which is the odd one out, with our particular taste for the

idiosyncratic and the quirky.

2. Aratus and ‘integrated’ characters

It is still possible to claim that some ancient authors integrated more fully than others, and that

Plutarch’s integration was particularly thoroughgoing. The comparison with his contemporary

Suetonius already suggests as much: Suetonius’ style of presentation by categories is much better suited

to bringing out a modern style of many-sidedness, and the protean complexities of a Julius Caesar
23
emerge more clearly from Suetonius’ Life than from Plutarch’s. Suetonius’ Augustus, his Claudius, even

his Vespasian are rather in the same mould. But a more telling comparison can be drawn from the case

of Plutarch’s Aratus. Polybius had commented on the man’s varied character:

He had in general all the qualities that go to make a perfect man of affairs. He was a powerful speaker

and a clear thinker and had the faculty of keeping his own counsel. In his power of dealing suavely with

political opponents, of attaching friends to himself and forming fresh alliances he was second to none.

He also had a marvellous gift for devising coups de main, stratagems, and ruses against the enemy, and

for executing such things with the utmost personal courage and endurance. But this very same man,

when he undertook field operations, was slow in conception, timid in performance, and devoid of

personal courage. The consequence was that he filled the Peloponnese with trophies commemorating his

defeats, and in this respect the enemy could always get the better of him. So true it is that there is

something multiform ( πολυειδές) in the nature not only of men’s bodies, but of their minds, so that not
merely in pursuits of a different class the same man has a talent for some and none for others, but often

in the case of such pursuits as are similar the same man may be most intelligent and most dull, or most

audacious and most cowardly. For instance some men are most bold in facing the charge of savage beasts

in the chase but are poltroons when they meet an armed enemy. I say this in order that my readers may

not refuse to trust my judgement, because in some cases I make contrary pronouncements regarding the

conduct of the same men even when engaged in pursuits of a like nature. (Polybius 4.8.1–9, 12, tr.

Paton)

24
That was a passage Plutarch knew; but, when he gave his own summary of the man’s character at Arat.
25
10, the emphasis was subtly different.

Aratus was a natural politician, great-spirited, more attentive to the commonwealth than his own affairs,

bitterly hating tyranny, and developing friendships and enmities to suit the public good. For this reason

he seems to have been less consistent as a friend than generous and merciful as an enemy: he changed

his tack in both directions according to his statesmanship, and the needs of the moment. His ambition

was to bring states together into alliances; he was eager for a union, a theatre speaking with one voice –

as eager for this as for any noble ideal. He was lacking in confidence and pessimistic about open warfare,

but the sharpest of men when it came to guileful initiatives, or secret negotiations to bring cities and

tyrants to his side. For this reason his enterprise brought many unexpected successes, but he also seems

to have failed to gain many possible successes because of his caution. The sight of certain wild beasts, it

seems, is acute at night but dulled in the day, with the moisture of the eye turning dry and insubstantial

as it cannot bear contact with the light: and in just the same way there is a sort of human cleverness

(δεινότης) and understanding ( σύνεσις) which by its nature is easily perturbed in open and public

encounters, but gains courage when it comes to secret, undercover initiatives. This sort of inconsistency

is created in gifted people by a lack of philosophical training, for they produce virtue without

knowledge as if it were a self-seeded fruit, with no cultivation…

Plutarch’s Aratus is more clearly guided by his state’s shifting needs, which prepares us for an

underlying rationality that explains some of the surface inconsistencies: Polybius began the chapter on

that note, but put it less sharply and pressed it less insistently. Plutarch’s Aratus shows ‘caution’ rather

than Polybius’ ‘cowardice’ in open warfare (and the point recurs in Plutarch’s later narrative, especially at
26
31.2–4 and 35–6): that too sits more comfortably with the initiatives he did undertake, and the
contrast becomes a more explicable one, the politician who prefers guile to the dangers of open fighting,

who shows daring in one sphere but not in a different one. Polybius’ formulation in fact captures the

difference very clearly: his Aratus shows inconsistency in, explicitly, the same sort of pursuits; Plutarch’s

two spheres are more distinct. Polybius consequently directs more attention to Aratus’ demeanour in

covert action, stressing his endurance ( κακοπάθεια) as well as his daring, and that sharpens the contrast
with the battlefield cowardice, which is inexplicably so different: Plutarch concentrates more on the

planning than the action, and the spheres are again more widely separate, one much more mental, one

more physical. And the inconsistency that remains is also dealt with differently. Polybius regards it as an

individual quirk of Aratus, and the only general truth of human nature is that such quirks are often

found – a very unusual emphasis for an ancient author. Plutarch rather stresses that the combination of

such traits is a regular one, that this sort of differentiated δεινότης is not at all unnatural, and could

easily recur. That, in the terms discussed above, is ‘integration’: Plutarch is stressing how regular the
27
cluster of traits really is. We could readily find the cluster recurring in another person, and hence it

would be natural to talk of ‘a sort of person like Aratus’: but like Plutarch’s Aratus, not Polybius’.

The end of Plutarch’s chapter confirms the relevance of childhood: ‘this sort of inconsistency is

created in gifted people by a lack of philosophical training, for they produce virtue without knowledge

as if it were a self-seeded fruit, with no cultivation’. The first point to notice is simply that Plutarch can

generalize in that way: ‘this sort of inconsistency is produced…’ It evidently happens all the time, and

regularly for the same reasons. Polybius’ generalization rather took the form that ‘any sort of

inconsistency can happen’, because humans are like that: if such inconsistency is to be explained, then

different explanations will be needed in each case. Secondly, the sort of explanation Plutarch favours

turns so very naturally to childhood; but, once again, for our tastes it is so shallow. What is there, or

what is good, comes from education: what is absent or bad comes from the lack of it. He does not feel

the need to differentiate exactly what Aratus learnt from any particular school or tutor; indeed, it is

striking that in the chapters on Aratus’ youth he said virtually nothing about education, leaving the

point for this later moment. As in Marius and even Marcellus, defective education seems important to

understanding the hero, but in the early chapters of all these Lives Plutarch does not feel the need to

trace the theme in any detail. For him, the phenomenon of this sort of δεινότης is simply regular, and

comes about for such uniform educational reasons, just like Marcellus’ bellicosity or Marius’ lack of self-

control: we can so easily work out the ways in which education must have been defective. Had Polybius

grasped the nettle of explaining his quirkier, more irregular blend of traits, the analysis of development

would have had to be distinctly more differentiated.

That concluding stress on education may still seem surprisingly intrusive and unsubtle; but it is less

surprising specifically in Aratus, where the moralism is often rather cruder and more explicit than in the
28
Parallel Lives (cf. e.g. 9.7, 19.4, 25.7, 26.4–5, 30.2, 38.5–12, 44.6). It is indeed a very pedagogic Life,

as the introduction makes clear: Plutarch is providing Polycrates with a model for his own two sons to
29
imitate (1.5–6), hoping that they will be inspired to emulate the virtues of their ancestor. But first

they need to sit at their books; the emphasis on education suits the youthful audience, and indeed a

similar point is made a few chapters later, when Antigonus’ pleasures are sadly lacking in rationality

λογισμός),
( that distinctive attribute of the rational, educated person (17.7). Not, of course, that

Plutarch would wish the sons of Polycrates to go out and try to rebuild the Achaean League; or assert

the independence of Hellas; or even emulate Aratus’ peculiar knack for getting on with foreign kings –
30
though the relevance of that to the present time might, in a cruder author, seem more immediate. But

Plutarch is not so crude; and his political sense is much too acute for the assumption of such

unsophisticated parallels between past and present. Yet there are still lessons of virtue and vice for
31
history to teach to public figures.

This peculiarly insistent moralism may prompt further suspicions about the ‘integration’. One effect

of this form of characterization is to reduce Aratus to more of a type; and it is natural to wonder if the

typical nature of such a hero goes along with a certain sort of moralism, and certain taste for the

exemplary. After all, Plutarch’s Aratus has a much clearer paradigmatic relevance than Polybius’: his

brand of ‘cleverness’ ( δεινότης) and ‘understanding’ ( σύνεσις) are represented as familiar human traits,

familiar enough for us to be on the look out for them in ourselves and others, and to draw
32
conclusions. Polycrates’ sons could indeed find, or themselves develop into, ‘a sort of person like

Aratus’: the more regular the combination of traits, the easier it is to extract morals, and the more
33
generally applicable those morals will be. It would doubtless be a mistake to assume that the search for

exemplariness is necessarily primary – that Plutarch consciously reduced a character’s singularity in order

to make it more straightforward to extract his morals for everyday life. Integration came more naturally

to him than so cold-blooded an analysis would suggest. But at least the two tendencies strengthened one

another, integration encouraging and facilitating the extraction of morals, and the taste for morals

reinforcing the assumption of integration.

 In the case of Aratus the moral can indeed be clear and protreptic. The sons of Polycrates should try

to be like Aratus in some ways but not in others; and if they set to their education like good boys, they

may prove worthy of their ancestral model, and in some ways may even improve on him. The moral,

like the character, is very straightforward.

3. Lysander

Lysander is less straightforward, both in its characterization and in its moralism: the character is much
34
less clearly a type, and the extraction of morals becomes a more delicate business. But there are

similarities too, for here again we have an ‘integrated’ character, even if a more singular and elaborate

one; here too we have an interest in childhood and childhood influences, but one which might seem

curiously shallow; and here again this is largely because even so complex a character is not too difficult

to understand. Plutarch was not straining all the time to penetrate a problematic character, as a modern

biographer might. Other things mattered more.

The interest in childhood influences is immediately clear, and so is the concern to relate Lysander to

the norms of Spartan behaviour:

(2.1) It is said that Lysander’s father, Aristocletus, did not belong to the royal family, though he was

descended from the children of Heracles. (2) Lysander himself was brought up in poverty, and showed

himself as amenable as any Spartan to training in the customs of his country: he showed too that he had

a manly spirit and was indifferent to all pleasures, except for those which honoured and successful men

win by their own glorious exploits – (3) and indeed it is no disgrace for a young Spartan to yield to

these. The Spartans expect their boys from the very first to be conscious of public opinion, to take any

censure deeply to heart as well as to exult in praise, and anyone who remains indifferent or fails to

respond to these sentiments is despised as an idle clod, utterly lacking in any ambition to excel. (4) This

kind of ambition and contentiousness, then, had been implanted in Lysander by his Spartan training,

and it would be unfair to blame his natural disposition too much in this respect. On the other hand he

seems to have displayed a gift for paying court to the powerful such as one would not expect in a

Spartan, and to have been able to bear the arrogance of those in authority when it was necessary: that is

a quality which some people regard as an important element in political shrewdness. (5) Aristotle, when

he observes that great natures, such as those of Socrates, Plato, and Heracles, are especially prone to

melancholy, notes that Lysander also became a prey to melancholy, not at first, but in his later years. (6)

The most distinctive fact about his character, however, is that although he himself endured poverty

honourably, and was never enslaved or even momentarily corrupted by money, he nevertheless filled his

own country not merely with riches but with the craving for them, and he deprived Sparta of the

admiration she had always enjoyed for her indifference to wealth. This came about because he brought

immense quantities of gold and silver into Sparta after the war with Athens, although he did not keep a

single drachma for himself. (7) On another occasion, when Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, sent

Lysander’s daughters some luxurious Sicilian tunics, he refused them, saying that he was afraid they

would make his daughters look uglier. (8) A little later an ambassador was sent from the same city,
35
Sparta, to the same ruler. Dionysius presented the ambassador with two dresses and told him to

choose whichever he preferred and take it back to his daughter: the ambassador answered that she could

choose better herself, and took both dresses away with him.

(Lysander 2, tr. Scott-Kilvert (adapted) )

36
One typical feature of Plutarch’s technique is his progressive redefinition of character. He tends to

begin by presenting traits or themes rather crudely and bluntly, only later complementing and refining

and adding the subtleties, and a character tends to become more singular as his Life progresses. The

same technique is used here to define Lysander’s relation to the conventions of his city. At first he is not

an especially singular figure: indeed, his ‘ambition and contentiousness’ ( φιλότιμον…και φιλόνικον,
37
2.4) are two of the most regular traits in Plutarch’s repertoire; and, for the moment, it is these
38
characteristics which – perhaps surprisingly, at least in the case of ‘contentiousness’ – are related to his

Spartan education (2.2–4). At this point the explicitly unspartan qualities are only his capacity to pay

court to the powerful, and his curious attitude to money: Plutarch points the paradox that he was
39
impervious to greed himself, but eventually filled Sparta with wealth, to her ultimate catastrophe. But

the Life goes on to stress how the ‘ambition and contentiousness’ – the Spartan traits – gave rise to a

much wider range of unspartan behaviour, not just in paying court to foreign potentates, but also in

Lysander’s deviousness, his versatility and enterprise, his religious unscrupulousness (explicitly

‘unspartan’ at 8.5), and his shrewd but bloody exploitation of party divisions in foreign states in the

interest of his own followers. Lysander understands and exploits unspartan qualities in others, whether
40
enterprise or greed (3, 4.6–7, 5.5 ff., 13.5 ff., 19.4), and ends as a very individual figure himself,

vitally different from the norms of his country – indeed, so unspartan that he even tries to subvert the

whole constitution (24.3–6, cf. 30.3–5, Sulla 40(2) ). He is contrasted with a series of foils who are
 41
much more predictable in their Spartan ways: first the avaricious ambassador of 2.8; then, more

elaborately, the conventional Callicratidas at 5.7–7.1, with his simplicity, pride, and justice, ‘worthy of

Sparta’ as they are (7.1); then the boorish Callibius, who does not know how to rule free men (15.7–8);

then Gylippus, who disgraces himself with his avarice (16–17.1), and fits a different but equally familiar

type, the Spartan abroad who cannot resist wealth; and finally Pausanias, with his lack of enterprise,

style, or success.

In several ways, then, Plutarch gradually brings out the singular and paradoxical features of

Lysander’s character. It is central to his point to bring out how unstereotyped a Spartan this is, how he

belies the normal expectations which are pointed by those stereotyped foils; and he ends as much less

Spartan than that introduction at ch. 2 would suggest. And yet his traits still cluster very naturally, the

resourcefulness, the capacity to exploit others, the deviousness, the unscrupulousness, and the

bloodiness; and we can see how readily all these traits complement those which were introduced in the

first chapter. The crucial ambition (philotimia) remains, and he duly rejoices in the honours (timai) he is
42
paid at 18.4–19.1; but that ambition comes to link closely with a rising contempt for others, and at

19.1 Plutarch explicitly connects the two qualities. This megalomaniac arrogance becomes a disabling

weakness, especially at 22.1–5; when it is crossed, it develops into the eventual melancholic wrathfulness

which that early chapter had foreshadowed (2.5, cf. 28.1). The melancholia, wrath, and megalomania

might have come as more of a surprise if the philotimia had not served as a linking theme: that,

presumably, is why Plutarch is at such pains to reintroduce the theme of the ambition in ch. 18, just

before the contempt and wrath become so important to the narrative. With that firmly in our minds,

nothing now seems too difficult or idiosyncratic, and we again see how even an unstereotyped, singular

figure shows traits which cluster in a very ‘integrated’ way, and how Plutarch controls his narrative in
43
order to make the grouping more natural.

Whether we quite have the psychological understanding we expect from a modern author is a

different point. How far do we really grasp what turns Lysander into so individual a Spartan? It would

be wrong, surely, to think that Plutarch traces much development in his character, except for that late

growth of arrogance and melancholia. Ch. 2 certainly links the ‘ambition and contentiousness’ to his

education, and so posits a process of development in his youth; but we do not see that development in

any depth, and thereafter Lysander does not really change from a Spartan into an unspartan, nor do we

see how those initial Spartan traits change into counterparts which are less traditional and more

subversive – interesting though such a portrayal might have been. After that general introduction in ch.

2, Lysander is fairly unspartan from the moment we see him, and the conventional Callicratidas is his

foil as early as 5.7–7.6. This is not development, though this is equally a more unconventional figure

than the introduction had led us to expect: it is rather the same technique of progressive redefinition,

the use of an initial description which is inadequate and then gradually refined. And yet the only

explanations of his character are given precisely in that initial description, where we are given only the

faintest suggestions of the character we are later to see.

Even the attitude to wealth, explicitly marked at 2.6–8 as an individual and unspartan trait, is

explained rather disappointingly. It simply seems to be related to the poverty of his family background

(a view which was clearly controversial, and one which Plutarch can only support by straining the slight
44
evidence he had). But that penury, as Plutarch presents it, only explains Lysander’s capacity to do

without wealth himself: it does not help us to understand why he developed so shrewd an ability to

exploit the avarice of others, or why he so catastrophically kept sending wealth back home to Sparta.

Given Plutarch’s capacity for imaginative reconstruction, he might so easily have built a picture of

Lysander’s first reaction to seeing foreign luxury, a mixture perhaps of inner contempt and ruthless
45
determination to exploit it for Sparta’s interests. Plutarch could even have gone further: had he wanted

to prefigure Lysander’s later insensitivity, he might have linked the contempt for wealth with a failure to

grasp what it would really mean for Sparta; had he preferred to stress the self-seeking, he might rather

have suggested a shrewd perception of exactly what wealth might mean, and of the possibilities of power

it might leave for a person who remained impervious to its charms. Yet this style of reconstruction was

not what he was here interested in, though other Lives suggest that it was well within his range: this

peculiarly rich Life already had enough paradoxes and contrasts to satisfy his taste.

And what tasty paradoxes and contrasts were these? A further oddity of ch. 2 gives one clue. It might

be natural enough to regard ‘ambition’ or ‘love of honour’, philotimia, as a product of the Spartan

educational training; ‘contentiousness’ certainly clusters closely with ‘ambition,’ but is a less expected

Spartan trait. The beginning of Agesilaus is suggestive here, for the qualities Agesilaus inherits from the

Spartan educational agoge are there his ‘common touch and kindliness of manner’ (1.5), while his

contentiousness is made a more individual feature (2.1): that too is not a wholly cogent treatment

(‘kindliness of manner,’ το φιλάνθρωπον, does not really convince as a Spartan trait), but it certainly

suggests a rather different view of the agoge from that of Lysander.

 Perhaps the reason is that in Lysander it will indeed be important to find these traits of ambition and

contentiousness recurring in other Spartans, especially in Agesilaus himself, men who had presumably

suffered the same training. What is more, this will contribute decisively to Lysander’s final reverses: for,

singular though Lysander may be, it is a peculiar irony that he is finally destroyed when he encounters

the same traits in others. His capacity to court ( θεραπεύειν) foreign dynasts was always a strength, as

2.4 stressed and as was immediately clear in his dealings with Cyrus (4.1–6): but, when he returns to

Asia Minor at 19.1–2, he himself comes to play the dynast, and it is those who pay court to him ( οί
θεραπεύοντες, 19.2) who inflame his ambition and his contempt. That is just the point where the

reversals in his fortune begin to become important, and Plutarch stresses the distaste he aroused among
46
conventional Spartans (19.3, 19.7 ff., though cf. already 14.3). Then these same ‘people who paid

court’ are instrumental in provoking the discord between Lysander and Agesilaus, when Agesilaus is so

irritated that no court is paid to him; Lysander himself has eventually to advise them to go and ‘court’

θεραπεύειν)
( Agesilaus instead, 23.5–11. Here of course it is Agesilaus’ own philotimia and

contentiousness which is at play (cf. 23.3); Lysander cannot control his own philotimia in response

(23.7); but by now, clearly, he is meeting his match. He similarly is outdone in deviousness by

Pharnabazus (20: cf. especially 20.2, ‘playing a Cretan at Cretan games’, and 20.5, ‘so Odysseus is not

the only trickster!’); and ephors and kings are showing themselves able to meddle in local party politics

as well (21.2–7). Lysander was unspartan enough; but, when he sets the tone, others can readily follow,
47
and combine to generate his catastrophe. He duly dies, in battle: and in that battle a crucial role is

played by 300 Thebans who had been accused of Laconizing and were eager to prove their loyalty

(28.12). The local feudings which Lysander had always exploited so deftly come to play a strange role at

the end.

The reversals combine to generate a peripeteia of peculiar neatness. It is indeed highly reminiscent of

tragedy, where so often people’s peculiar characteristics or strengths unleash forces which eventually

destroy them, frequently with a chilling symmetry: one thinks of Oedipus, or Clytemnestra, or Ajax, or
48
Hippolytus, or the Creon of Antigone. It is no surprise, indeed, to find a fitting dominance of tragic

imagery in the closing chapters of the Life. With Agesilaus in Asia, for instance, it is ‘like a tragedy,’

with Lysander as a chief actor playing a subordinate social role (23.6); when Lysander begins his plot to

subvert the constitution, he is ‘raising the machine, just like in a tragedy, against his fellow-citizens’

ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδιᾳ μηχανὴν αἴρων ἐπὶ τοὴς πολίτας,

( 25.2), and adduces for his case a series of

prophecies and oracles – themselves of course the stuff of tragedy; and finally ‘Lysander’s part in the

drama came to an end through the cowardice of one of his actors and accomplices’ (26.6), men who had

earlier been described as his ‘fellow actors in the dramatic plot’ ( του μύθου συναγωνισταί, 26.2).
49

After that, what more suitable setting for Lysander’s death could there be than the birthplace of

Dionysus, the god of tragedy himself (28.7)? For indeed, as often in tragedy, we are surely aware of

numinous powers at play as he meets his death, and that is particularly appropriate for one who had so

often taken the names of the gods in vain: it is not, for instance, a casual coincidence that his death
50
miraculously and paradoxically proves some ancient oracles true (29.5–12). One final irony is that

Lysander, for all his deviousness and megalomania, has usually promoted Sparta’s interest with some

sureness of touch: many for instance had been eager to see his return to Asia, rather than more of the
51
virtuous Callicratidas (5.7–8, 7.2). Even as the rift with his country grows deeper, he is still alert to

performing what service he can (23.13); it is his domestic enemies whose meddling comes to endanger

the city (21.2–7). The charge was laid against Pausanias that he had taken the Athenian people when

they were bridled by an oligarchy, and loosed them for further violence and arrogance: that increased

Lysander’s reputation as a man who had ruled in a powerful and individual style, but not to gratify

others nor theatrically ( ούδὲ θεατρικως), but in pursuit of Sparta’s interests (21.7). Clearly, Lysander is

not the only actor in this drama, nor is it only his tragedy. Torn by discord and corrupted by wealth,

Sparta is a victim too.

This is a very fine and tightly structured Life, and its moralism is thought-provoking and profound.

But few of its themes really depend on understanding Lysander’s psychology, and one can see why

Plutarch did not make this his priority. What is more, this is a different moralism from that of Aratus,

and one which combines with an ‘integrated’ character in a rather different way. Polycrates’ children

might be able to draw simple morals from Aratus’ history for their own experience; but none of

Plutarch’s audience were likely to find themselves in any remotely similar circumstances to Lysander’s, or

feel tempted to behave in any remotely similar way. True, none would feel tempted to go and assert

Greece’s independence in the style of Aratus or Philopoemen either, but in those cases latter-day

analogies could be found, and Polycrates’ sons could still feel inspired to behave with circumspect

worthiness of their Greek past. In the case of Lysander it is hard to see what even these latter-day

analogies would be: after all, no readers would find their temperament chafing against Spartan discipline

in any remotely parallel style, nor be tempted to turn themselves into any equivalent of a melancholic or
megalomaniac dynast. The moralism in such a case is of a different sort, rather closer to that of tragedy:
52
this is a more descriptive moralism, pointing a truth of human experience rather than building a

model for crude imitation or avoidance. Human nature can produce a figure like Lysander, even or

especially in a city like Sparta; and figures like that tend to generate their own destruction, in tragically

appropriate ways. For an audience brought up on ‘integrated’ characters, the more tightly Lysander’s

traits would cluster, the more convincing they might find him; to that extent, the integration of his

characterization once again reinforces the moralism, though not in the sense that Plutarch’s audience

might really fear growing into Lysanders themselves, or finding them in other people. Indeed, Plutarch’s

readers might not find themselves behaving very differently at all after understanding Lysander’s story.

But they would find their grasp of the human experience enhanced; and, if a moralist could achieve

that, he was achieving something very worthwhile.

Notes

1
This chapter overlaps closely with ch. 14, and also with some points made in Pelling 1989: in many cases I have used the same examples

in all three essays, not simply through laziness but in the hope that different slants on the same material may be mutually illuminating. I

apologize for this immodest ring of self-reference, and hope that readers will not find the circle too vicious.

2
Especially Progress in Virtue, Can Virtue be Taught? and How to Listen to Poets.

3
On the E at Delphi 392b–e, cf. e.g. How to Listen to Poets 28d–e, On Lecture-going 37d–e, Progress in Virtue 76d–e, 82b–c, and 83e–f,

On Moral Virtue 450f, On Controlling Anger 453a, God’s Slowness to Punish 551c–2d, Socrates’ Sign 584e. Inherited nature was of course

important too, as those passages show: cf. esp. Gill 1983; Swain 1989a and 1990a, 128–9 = Scardigli 1995, 233–4; Duff 1999, 72–5.

For education as a civilizing and restraining force in the Lives, cf. esp. Cor. 1.4–5, Mar. 2.2–4, Them. 2.7, Numa 26(4).10–12; Bucher-

Isler 1972, 21, 24, 49, 67–8.

4
For these examples cf. p. 311 (Ag.–Cl.); 309, 312–13 and Pelling 1989, 205–8 (Marc.); 191 n. 21 and 311 (Thes.); 155–6, 309–10

and 395–6 (Cor.).

5
Ch. 6, esp. p. 153 on his reluctance to fabricate childhood stories.

6
Dihle 1956, esp. pp. 76–81.

7
On the importance of ‘moral will’ see now the elaborate discussion of Gill 1996, with my comments below, pp. 321–9. Gill sees this

moral will as a characteristic of modern post-Kantian thought, Dihle more as a feature of Aristotelian conceptions; there is more

continuity here than either acknowledges.

8
Cf. esp. How to listen to poets 31b–c, On Moral Virtue 443d, 451b ff., and Tranquillity of Mind 467b.

9
And reviewers of Dihle were properly admiring: cf. esp. von Fritz 1956.

10
On Aemilius cf. Swain 1989d, Pelling 1989, 215–16 and p. 333 n. 67; on Brutus, Pelling 1989, 222–8 and Swain 1990b; on Pericles,

pp. 313–4.

11
Most influentially Erikson’s Young Man Luther (Erikson 1958), though ironically his book was published two years after Dihle’s.

12
Cf. for instance the example I discuss at p. 320, very different from the more Freudian register of Lytton Strachey (which admittedly

suits Dihle’s analysis better, but is scarcely typical: pp. 319–20).

13
Dihle 1956, 76: this is also noted by Gill 1983, 471 n. 16.

14
This point is extensively argued in a series of articles by Simon Swain, esp. Swain 1990a, 1990b, and 1992a; see also Pelling 1989.

15
For these cf. Huxley 1974.

16
Dihle 1956, 71–3.

17
Theophrastus: cf. Gill 1983, 469 n. 4.

18
Wilamowitz-Moellendorf 1907, 1109 = 1972, 104, a fine, provocative passage, which I subject to an extended critique in Pelling

1990. I return to this distinction between ancient and modern expectations in the next chapter.

19
Cf. e.g. Easterling 1977, 121, 124 = Segal 1983, 138, 140–1; Goldhill 1986, 174; Heath 1987, 115–23. Exactly how that residual

individuality is to be defined is a challenging question, addressed by several of the contributors to Pelling (ed.) 1990: I have my own

shot at some of the issues in Pelling 1990.

20
I develop this idea in pp. 315–21, where I give an extended comparison with the more elaborate way in which Lytton Strachey treats

childhood. For similar remarks cf. Rutherford 1986, 149–50 and n. 31; for a contrary view, Rudd 1976, 160–2.

21
Cf. p. 317.

22
On this see the thoughtful treatment of Gill 1983.

23
Cf. p. 316 and 335 n. 78.

24
Some influence of Polybius on Aratus is anyway clear (especially at 38.12 and 47–8): cf. the commentaries of Porter 1937, xv, xviii,

and Koster 1937, xvi–xvii, xxvi, li–liii, and see p. 350 and Pelling 1997a, esp. 95–107 and 258–62 for Plutarch’s knowledge of Polybius

in Philopoemen–Flamininus. But in this present case we also find some odd verbal echoes, with Polybius’ vocabulary or conceits

ὕπαιθρος, for instance (Plb. 4.8.5 ~ Arat.

transferred to Plutarch’s own summary in Arat. 10 but exploited in slightly different contexts:

ἐπιβολαις (Plb. 4.8.5) ~ ἐπήβολώτατος (Arat. 10.2), or ἐν ὄψει (Plb. 4.8.5) ~ ὄψεις (Arat. 10.4), as well as the odd emphasis
10.4), or

on πρᾳότης (Plb. 4.8.2, Arat. 10.2) and the more natural one on εύφύΐα (Plb. 4.8.7 ~ Arat. 10.5) or τόλμη (Plb. 4.8.3, 7 ~ Arat. 10.3);

the wild-beast image of Arat. 10.4 also recalls the hunting parallel of Plb. 4.8.9. Russell 1963, 22 and n. 7 (= Scardigli 1995, 359 and n.

7) observed a similar phenomenon in Plutarch’s use of Dionysius in Coriolanus, and fairly concluded that ‘it is perfectly possible that,
when he came to his own writing, whole stretches of Dionysius’ not very memorable prose were running in his head’. The same goes for

Polybius’ rather more memorable phrases here.

25
Koster 1937, xxxxiv, is enthusiastic but a little over-simple: at nobis…profitendum est, cum eadem fere de Arati moribus uterque

scripserit [my emphasis], suavitatem quandam orationis et brevitatem nos magis delectare quam loquacitatem Polybii (‘But I…must confess

that, when both have said virtually the same things about Aratus’ character, I find a certain stylistic charm and brevity [in Plutarch] more

attractive than Polybius’ verbosity’).

26
For the dispute cf. also 29.7–8: but even there Plutarch notes only that others derided Aratus’ cowardice, without explicitly endorsing

the criticisms. The contrast of Arat. 35.6 and the parallel narrative at Ag.–Cl. 25(4).9 is particularly suggestive. Aratus’ caution is at least

explicable, probably even approved, in Aratus, but derided in Cleomenes : such aspects as the smallness of Cleomenes’ force are

suppressed in the Aratus version.

27
And a very similar cluster of traits does indeed recur in Plutarch’s portrayal of Nicias, especially in Sicily: see pp. 119–20 and Pelling

2000, 47.

28
Cf. Duff 1999, 68.

29
At p. 270 I say more about the importance of this dedication, and the relevance it has for readers other than Polycrates’ sons.

30
Cf. chs. 10 and 11 for the rather less crude, more generalized ‘contemporary relevance’ of the Lives.

31
Advice on Public Life 814a–c clarifies his view on the moral lessons which history can teach contemporary politicians: cf. pp. 245–6.

32
Cf. pp. 250–1 n. 27 for Stadter’s elegant formulation of how this process might work.

33
Cf. the illuminating comments of Halliwell 1990 on Isocrates and Russell 1990 on Lysias, both of which I discuss at Pelling 1990.

34
Since this essay appeared in 1988 there have been two penetrating treatments of the moralism of Lysander, Stadter 1992 and Duff

1999, 161–204.

35
On the interpretation of this passage see Sansone 1981, Renehan 1981, and Duff 1999, 182–4. All rightly insist that Lysander should

here be contrasted with a separate ‘ambassador’. The text had hitherto been read as if Lysander himself was the ambassador, so that

Plutarch would be contrasting his earlier and later behaviour: that would be clumsy Greek, leaving ἐκ της αύτης πόλεως (‘from the

same city’) particularly pointless, and incoherent in view of Lysander’s later characterization. Unlike Duff 1999, 183, I follow Renehan

in assuming that no textual alteration is necessary to support the reinterpretation.

36
On this technique cf. pp. 312, 359, and Pelling 1988, 12–13, 25, 42–3. In Pelling 1991, esp. 121–2, and 1997f I discuss some ways

in which this approach can illuminate questions of national character in Herodotus and Thucydides.

37
Russell 1966a, 38 = Scardigli 1995, 193–4; cf. pp. 243–7, 350–3, and ch. 15, esp. p. 347 n. 24 on the connotations of philonikia;

Bucher-Isler 1972, 11–13, 31, 41, and especially 58–9; and on philotimia Wardman 1974, 15–24 and Frazier 1988a.

38
Cf. p. 295.

39
This theme recurs in Lycurgus and Agis–Cleomenes : see Desideri 1985 and Pelling, forthcoming (b).

40
There are times when close comparison with other sources reveals Plutarch’s distinctive emphases. For instance, in ch. 3 he affords

much more space than Xenophon or Diodorus to the seething entrepôt Ephesus, a very unspartan milieu which Lysander knows how to

exploit; and at 4.6–7 he puts more weight than his source Xenophon on the consequences of extracting the extra obol from Cyrus – the

extensive desertions from the enemy fleet, seduced by that greed which Lysander so shrewdly knows how to generate. But only a very

full commentary could pursue such points through the whole Life. Some of the necessary material, but little of the interpretation, is

furnished in Smits’ largely linguistic commentary (Smits 1939).

41
On this technique in Lysander cf. Russell 1966b 152–4 = Scardigli 1995, 90–4.

42
Cf. the similar point in Flamininus, where the hero’s philotimia (pp. 243–7, 350–3) is eventually mirrored by the Greek timai he is

paid (p. 350).

43
It is interesting here to note a slightly different emphasis in the comparative epilogue (Sulla 40(2).6), where Lysander is said to commit

his outrages ‘on behalf of his friends’, to secure their power in the allied states. One can see how that interpretation could fit the facts as

the Lysander narrative presents them: but it was not the tenor of the Life itself, where Lysander rather installs his friends in power in the

ruthless interest of his own, and Sparta’s, power. The narrative emphasis sits better with Lysander’s other traits, whereas that of the

epilogue would have left his character less ‘integrated’; strangely, the epilogue’s point is closer to the treatment afforded Agesilaus in his

Life, where susceptibility to friends is an important theme. So too Lysander’s ‘Spartan way of life’ ( ᴧακωνικὴ δίαιτα) is more stressed in
the epilogue (Sulla 41(3).2) than in the narrative: in the narrative we might have inferred it from his attitude to wealth, but too insistent

a stress would have sat uneasily with the emphasis on his style in courting wealthy luxurious potentates, so different from that of a

Callicratidas (5.5–7.1).

44
For the controversy cf. e.g. 18.3, Athen. 12.543b, Nep. Lys. 4. Plutarch’s presentation may be influenced by the comparison with the

poor but noble Sulla, as Owen Watkins has suggested to me.

45
Twentieth-century treatments of Russian moles in the British establishment offer suggestive parallels.

46
The placing of the digressions on Spartan wealth, 17, and the skutale, 19.8–12, is thought-provoking. The length of both may seem

clumsy, but both in different ways stress elements of distinctive Spartan tradition: and it is precisely now that Lysander’s unconventional

traits are leaving him dangerously at odds with traditional Spartan sentiment.

47
Stadter 1992, 47–8, points out that this feature of Lysander is mirrored in Sulla, and Sulla too is brought down when his own typical

behaviour is turned against him: in his case, violence and harshness, as well as a ‘willingness to toady to others’ that echoes the

θεραπεύειν theme in Lysander.

48
For the issues raised by such ‘tragic’ affinities see p. 111 n. 27.

49
Cf. Smits 1939 ad loc. συναγωνιστής can itself be used more generally (cf. LSJ s.v.: e.g. Tim. 2.4, Mar. 24.1), but hardly with τού
μύθου, or in this context of extended theatrical imagery: cf. its use in a similar theatrical cluster in Should an Old Man take part in

Politics? 783e. At Lys. 22.10 Lysander himself was Agesilaus’ συναγωνιστής when he supported him for the throne. Then it was
Agesilaus’ paternity that was in dispute; further symmetry, for now there is a new pretender and a new disputed royal birth – and

Lysander’s role is much more dubious.

50
As Duff 1999, 176, says, it is also significant that he dies at the ‘Hill of Foxes’ (Alopekos): fitting for one who has so often played the

cunning fox (esp. 7.6, ‘where the lion-skin does not reach, one must sew a fox-skin on to it’: Sulla 41(3).2 then gives a different twist,

Duff 1999, 200–1).

51
Cf. Duff 1999, 168–76. Callicratidas was already a foil for Lysander in Xenophon’s Hellenica, and a morally complex one: Moles

1994.

52
Duff 1999, 161, begins his discussion of Lysander from my categorization of its moralism as ‘descriptive’; he would, I think, accept

that claim, but argues that it is hard to pin down any such moral truth, and ‘the ethical status of the pair seems to remain deliberately

ambiguous right through to the end’. I find that analysis convincing for Lysander, less so for Sulla, even though in some ways Sulla

applies categories from Lysander in a more complex way (so Stadter 1992). For more discussion of ‘descriptive moralism’ see pp. 102–7,

113 n. 44, and ch. 10, esp. pp. 246–7 on the unstraightforwardness of extracting practical guidance for Plutarch’s contemporary world.
 14

CHILDHOOD AND PERSONALITY

IN GREEK BIOGRAPHY

Everybody notices when a great man dies; it is more difficult to notice when one is born, or when one is
1
growing up. It is not surprising that ancient biographers often faced a dearth of reliable material on

their subject’s childhood and youth; and, for writers of a certain sort of biography, the temptation to fill

this gap with the telling, fictional anecdote was difficult to resist. This is clear in biographies of literary

figures:

When Pindar was a boy, according to Chamaeleon and Ister, he went hunting near Mt Helicon and fell

asleep from exhaustion. As he slept a bee landed on his mouth and built a honeycomb there. Others say

that he had a dream in which his mouth was full of honey and wax, and that he then decided to write

poetry.

2
(Life of Pindar 2, tr. Lefkowitz )

3
Similar tales were told about Plato, Homer, Hesiod, Lucan, Ambrose, and others. Or stories could be

less supernatural: stories, for instance, of Homer’s travels as a young man to Ithaca, or of his studying

poetry with a schoolteacher named Phemius; or of Sophocles’ magnificent appearance in the chorus
4
celebrating the victory of Salamis. Some philosophers were similarly embroidered, though they tended

to become interesting when a little older, at the stage of adolescence when they were ripe for conversion.

Epicurus, for instance, turned to philosophy in disgust at a schoolmaster who could not explain the

meaning of ‘chaos’ in Hesiod; Metrocles was so embarrassed when he farted during a declamation that

he tried to starve himself to death, until Crates visited him and won him over by dropping a casual fart
5
himself. (He had thoughtfully prepared himself by eating some lupins. ) Admittedly, even literary

figures do not always get this sort of elaboration: it is remarkable how little is told about the early years

of Socrates, for example, given his central importance for the development of biography. But there are

still a fair number of such stories to be found.

It is unclear how many of these stories were made up by the biographers themselves, and how many

figured in the tradition – often oral – which the biographers were using. Either way, it is remarkable
6
how little of this anecdotal elaboration one gets when biography treated ‘political’ figures. Of course,

literary biographies are peculiarly susceptible to such embroidery, where influences and inspiration can

be engagingly rephrased in anecdotal terms. Still, it was ‘political biography’ that more often favoured

the ‘cradle-to-grave’ form, in which awkward childhood gaps would be more visible; and more was

usually known of the adult lives of political personalities, including their private lives, and there were

correspondingly more qualities which one could, if one wished, retroject into childhood. We do

occasionally find something of the kind: Alexander hears of Philip’s successes, and says in vexation to his

friends that ‘my father will leave nothing for me to do’; Cato is held out of a window by a playful
7
Poppaedius Silo, but still will not ask his father to support the citizenship proposals. And many stories

were told of the young Alcibiades, for instance the tale of a wrestling-match when he bit his opponent’s

arm. ‘Alcibiades, you’re biting like a girl’, said the indignant opponent; ‘No,’ said Alcibiades, ‘like a
8
lion.’ Indeed, it seems that material on childhood featured quite prominently in that fifth-century

precursor of political biography, Stesimbrotus of Thasos: he evidently had a considerable amount to say

about the youth and education of Themistocles, Cimon, and probably Pericles, not without a tinge of
9
malice. That was in keeping with the tradition of invective, which often concentrated on childhood

and family background: we can indeed see that the childhood of all three of those fifth-century figures
10
was already the subject of partisan controversy. But it seems that Stesimbrotus’ lead was rarely taken

up, and later writers and audiences found the childhood of political figures much less interesting –
11
particularly outside Athens, away from the democratic tradition of vigorous invective.

Plutarch is a very useful guide here, for we can tell that he was very interested in youth and

education. When he has the material, he does make a great deal of it – in Alexander, for example, or
12
Demosthenes, or Philopoemen, or Cato Minor : clearly, there were no generic rules to outlaw such

material; but remarkably often he obviously has none. He has no childish squabbles of Romulus and

Remus, usefully though they might have prepared the fratricide; no schoolboy infatuations of Antony

with any schoolgirl Cleopatra; nothing on Camillus or Flamininus to match the material about their

pairs Themistocles and Philopoemen. And it is not simply his Roman biographies – nothing on Nicias
(how he was frightened by an eclipse in his youth, perhaps? It is the type of story one might expect to be

made up); no stories of the young Agesilaus bending truth and justice to help a good-looking friend;

nothing, or hardly anything, on Pelopidas or Lycurgus or Lysander or Timoleon or Eumenes or

13
Phocion. Plutarch himself does not fabricate to fill the gaps; but this is also revealing about his

sources, for it is not likely that Plutarch is suppressing anything here, nor that there was a mass of

material that escaped his notice: he was too well informed for that. This sort of anecdotal tradition

simply did not exist for him to know.

Nor, indeed, did it really exist in Roman biography. Why don’t we find stories of Augustus hearing

of Caesar’s conquests in Gaul, and dreaming of similar glory for himself ? And one could do so much

with stories of Caligula’s youth – how he got on with his sister Drusilla in the nursery, for example.

(Suet. Cal. 24.1 has a story of their being discovered in bed together by their grandmother Antonia, but

by then they were in their late teens.) Why not a few colourful stories about the most colourful

emperors, Elagabalus or Gallienus? But what we mostly find is generalizations about youthful promise

or excess; or a routine collection of omens, portents, or prophecies of greatness. The emperor whose

youth is treated most extensively in the Scriptores Historiae Augustae is Marcus Aurelius: that Life gives

quite a full treatment of the various instructors and the honours he paid them, and tells for instance of
14
his early penchant for sleeping on the ground and wearing a rough cloak. It seems to be the affinity

with literary biography, and Marcus Aurelius’ status as an intellectual as well as an emperor, which

makes the difference. We also have something on Commodus’ youth, where the point is rather the

converse – Marcus did all he could to educate him, and it did no good at all; and on the Gordians,
15
where the size of the library features heavily. It was intellectual figures, or at least figures where the

intellectual register was appropriate, which stimulated this interest: political figures usually did not.

This is the more remarkable because neighbouring genres elaborated politicians’ childhoods in

precisely the ways which biography did not. Among the closest genres to biography were, first,

encomium and its inverse counterpart invective, and secondly, the biographical novel on the model of
16 17
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. These genres treated public men more often than literary figures, and they

certainly encouraged attention to childhood, describing it in very predictable, and often fictional, ways.

In the Cyropaedia Xenophon lays great emphasis on Cyrus’ youth, and it is full of elaboration: 1.3 is

especially telling, the sequence of precocious (and utterly infuriating) remarks he made when first

brought to Astyages’ court. Invective again favoured tales about its victim’s youth, this time of course
18
scurrilous ones: Aeschines helped his father in the schoolroom and his mother in her initiation rites

(Dem. 18.258–9, 19.199), Demosthenes was called ‘Batalos’ because of his lewd habits (Aesch. 2.99),

Alcibiades once ran off with one of his lovers (Antiphon fr. 66), Cicero handled filthy clothes in the

family laundry (Dio 46.5.1). Encomium tended not to develop such specific material, and hence was
19
less anecdotal, but it equally dwelt on its subject’s youth. We can already see this in Isocrates’
20
conventionalized picture in Evagoras, and Polybius’ later encomium of Philopoemen ‘explained who

his family were and described his training when young…setting out clearly the character of his
21
education’: that work has evidently left its mark on Plutarch’s Philopoemen. Encomium, invective, and

the biographical novel were familiar genres in the Hellenistic age. There were various works on

Alexander and his successors, for instance, which seem to have been modelled on Xenophon’s
22
Cyropaedia (though it is true that we know very little about them): in particular, perhaps, Onesicritus’

work How Alexander was Brought up, which Diogenes Laertius specifically connects with the
23
Cyropaedia. That work’s extravagant qualities are clear; less is known of Marsyas of Pella who wrote On
24
the Education of Alexander, or of Lysimachus’ Paideia of Attalus. Such works presumably did not

confine their interest to childhood: like Xenophon, Onesicritus carried the story some way past his

subject’s youth, and the emphasis on paideia embraced ‘culture’ as well as ‘education’. It was he, for

instance, who told the story of Alexander keeping the Iliad by his bedside, and the exchanges with the
25
Gymnosophistae. But childhood was surely central to the theme, and it is no surprise that some
26
romantic material has filtered into the early chapters of Plutarch’s Alexander.

Yet such Lives as Alexander and Philopoemen remain exceptional. With encomium, invective, and the

biographical novel all developing this interest in childhood, we might have expected to find similar

material with other figures too; but on the whole we do not. Even with such men as Demetrius and

Pyrrhus, figures who might well have inspired such encomia or novels, Plutarch’s early chapters do not

really suggest that he knows this type of material. He dwells on Pyrrhus’ unprepossessing appearance, for

instance, and an early military failure of Demetrius (Pyrrh. 3.6. Demetr. 5), not very tactful themes for

the encomiast or novelist. And there remain those other figures who seem clearly to have remained

unembroidered – Nicias, Lysander, Agesilaus, Timoleon, Phocion, Eumenes. This is not the place to
27
enter the controversial debate on any ‘political biography’ in the Hellenistic age; perhaps Lives of

Nicias or Eumenes were being written, but their authors eschewed such fictional childhood material;
more likely, such biographies were not really being written at all, and even the novelistic and
28
encomiastic traditions were not so rich or extensive as we might have expected. Either way, the interest

in politicians’ childhoods remained stunted; and Plutarch, when he came to write genuine political

biography, chose to do it in a style which, in this as in other ways, contrasted with those neighbouring

genres.

Why should there be this difference in treatment between cultural and political figures?

First, there genuinely seems a difference in the attitude to truthfulness, as we saw in ch. 6. In

political biography no tradition of systematic mendacity seems to have developed. That point is

fundamental, and there is no need to labour it again here; but it remains a point about political

biography, the narrative genre, and that takes us only so far. If audiences had been interested in

politicians’ childhoods, the stories would still have been made up, and, as we have seen, there were other

genres to transmit the gossip; anecdotes could readily have survived in oral tradition too. On the whole,

that did not happen. That illuminates the taste of the public as well as of the biographers, and that

public taste invites discussion.

A second explanation goes deeper. It is striking that interest in childhood was almost confined to

interest in education; given that limitation, then of course the most intellectual figures were likely to be

the most embellished. Even Plutarch helps to illustrate this: so much of the material he does have

focuses on the teachers of Pericles or Themistocles or Philopoemen, for instance, or Alcibiades’ relations
29
with Socrates, or Cicero’s or Lucullus’ early intellectual prowess; and focuses on those themes in a

fairly unimaginative way, as we shall see. Youthful behaviour, the development or prefiguring of later

traits, features largely in modern biography, and can be telling with unintellectual figures too – even

politicians. In the ancient world this receives much less anecdotal embellishment. It is not wholly

neglected – there are the stories of Cato or Alcibiades, for instance – but on the whole such points tend

to emerge in a much less colourful way, with vague generalizations about early promise or early concern

for justice or glory.

One further reason for modern biographers’ interest in childhood is the element of social mobility
30
in modern society. It is fascinating to muse on one Prime Minister (Mrs Thatcher) being a grocer’s

daughter, or another (Harold Wilson) being photographed on the steps of No. 10 as a lad, or another

(Tony Blair) wanting to be a rock-and-roll star; or on a pop musician being just an ordinary boy in

Form 3B, getting into all the usual scrapes and not getting very good marks. The ordinariness gives the

reader a strange frisson of intimacy: such paradoxical success could have happened to people like

ourselves. In the ancient world ordinary people did not on the whole become politicians, but they did

sometimes become literary figures. And – a related point – ancient politicians did not feel the same need

as their modern counterparts to play on the public’s interest in their youth, and conspire in creating a

sort of mythology of their own childhood. A striking example of that is Churchill’s famous description
31
of his first Latin lesson. He cared about portraying himself as an early dullard, knowing that his

audience would love it. Ancient political audiences were not so bothered about such things, and the

politicians were less concerned to create this feeling of intimacy. They had no use for such myths.

This has brought us on to self-portrayal, and indeed in ancient autobiography we can see a similar,
32
but more elaborate, contrast. Egyptian and Near Eastern dynasts might talk about their childhoods,

sometimes in a very individual way. Thus the Egyptian Amen-hotep II (c. 1447–1421 Bc)wrote proudly

of his youthful horsemanship, how he trained the best steeds of Memphis, how he was charmed by his

visits to the pyramids; and the Assyrian Assurbanipal (668–626 Bc) described his schooldays with

enthusiasm – the difficulties of learning division or multiplication, or the way he was made stupid, even

perhaps ‘addled’ (the reading is admittedly uncertain), by the beautiful script of Sumer or the obscure
33 34
Akkadian. Greek and Roman politicians were more reticent. It is notable, for instance, that Plutarch

knew little of Aratus’ youth and virtually nothing of Sulla’s, though he probably knew both men’s

autobiographies. ‘Annos undeuiginti natus…’ (‘When I was nineteen…’), begins the Res Gestae; and

though Augustus certainly said more of his youth in his Autobiography than he did in the other work –

he did discuss his family, and seems to have mentioned Cicero’s dream that he would one day be Rome’s
35
salvation – he was still well into the complicated history of 44 by Book 2. Political autobiography does

seem to have been largely res gestae, the record of a man’s achievements, with all the limitations that

suggests. That was the way politicians wished to be remembered.

Literary self-portrayal came to strike a different note. At first the tone is similar enough: Plato’s
36
Seventh Letter begins with events when Plato was in his twenties. Isocrates’ Antidosis has a great deal to

say about the value of his form of paideia, defending his role as a moulder of the minds of the young,

but of his own youthful development he says not a word. Such works are still distinctively apologies,

defences of a man’s career: childhood material would not have sat very comfortably here (just as both

Aeschines and Demosthenes attack each other’s childhood with specific charges, but defend their own
 37
with brief, dignified generalizations). By the Augustan period Nicolaus of Damascus was fuller,

including the admiration of his contemporaries for his remarkable educational prowess (FGrH 90 fr.

131.1) – not that there is much individuality in such conventional self-praise: it is indeed very similar to

Nicolaus’ account of Augustus’ childhood in the Life of Caesar, or to Josephus’ portrayal of himself in his
38
Autobiography. But Nicolaus adds some anecdotes about his various early wise remarks, and those are a

little more distinctive: about Aristotle and the Muses, for instance, or about ‘education being like a

journey through life’ (fr. 132.2–3). In later authors the individual note becomes more marked. Lucian,

with whatever degree of seriousness, tells of his early skill at wax-modelling, and how it let him down
39
when he was apprenticed as a sculptor. Galen goes further, not merely representing himself as a

singular figure but also introducing an element of analysis and explanation: he talks of his luck in being

educated by a father who was skilled in communicating mathematics and grammar, then at fifteen led

him to philosophy, then allowed him at seventeen to switch his talents to medicine when warned to do

so by a dream; and he sets out to analyse what exactly he learnt from philosophy, and comment on the
40
value of that early mathematical training in saving him from Pyrrhonian scepticism.

Galen’s analysis recalls Horace’s tribute to his father (Satires 1.6.67–92), and that is one of several

‘autobiographical’ Latin poems (if that is quite the right word) which leave very personal pictures of

schooldays. Just as Horace strikingly recalls the school where the sons of centurions swung their satchels

(Satires 1.6.72–3), so Ovid tells how he tried to write prose, and the words naturally fell into verse

(Tristia 4.10.23–6). Once again, Marcus Aurellus seems to fill a special position, and his ‘autobiography’

– if, once again, that is the right term for his To Himself, είς έαυτόν – finely describes those early days

and early influences, as he analyses precisely what he owes to his great-grandfather, grandfather, parents,

and various tutors, and finally to the gods:

Thanks to Diognetus I learnt not to be absorbed in trivial pursuits; to be sceptical of wizards and

wonder-workers with their tales of spells, exorcisms, and the like; to eschew cockfighting and other such

distractions… It was the critic Alexander who put me on my guard against unnecessary fault-finding…

Alexander the Platonist cautioned me against frequent use of the words ‘I am too busy’ in speech or

correspondence… To the gods I owe it that the responsibility of my grandfather’s mistress for my

upbringing was brought to an early end, and my innocence preserved.

(To Himself 1.6, 10, 12, 17, tr. Staniforth)

Marcus really analyses the formation and development of his character. That is some way from a
41
Josephus or even a Nicolaus; this is an individuality which probes the mind, analyses the ways it is

different (not merely superior), and seeks to explain the differences. One begins to feel some intimacy

with someone who writes like this, just as one later comes to know St Augustine, with his pictures of the

miseries of his schooldays, or his reading Virgil and weeping for the woes of Dido, or his robbing a pear-

tree, or the profound effect when he read Cicero’s Hortensius, or his engaging habit of setting on passers-
42
by and turning them on to their heads. But such self-revelation and self-analysis is developing a

tendency which is already visible in Marcus, even in Lucian and Galen, and indeed in Horace and Ovid

too – and of course in the poets’ case in a way which goes far beyond the explicitly autobiographical

poems. There is no hint that politicians’ autobiographies were anything like so personal or so intimate,

and childish stories and influences would have sat far less well with their dignity, their gravitas. And this

note of intimacy gives an important contrast with politicians’ biographies, not just autobiographies.

This intimacy of psychological portrayal, this revelation or analysis of the ‘real person’, is not something

which became part of the generic tradition, any more than it became conventional to invent a fund of

early anecdotes.

II

So far we have been exploiting Plutarch for what he can tell us about the biographical tradition; if he

did not include childhood material, we have been provisionally assuming that the stories did not exist

for him to know. That assumption is a fair one, but only because Plutarch was both extremely well
43
informed, particularly about Greek heroes, and extremely interested in childhood and education. We

can indeed often see him making the most of whatever slight information he does know – in the Sulla,

for instance, where he strains to extract large inferences from two insubstantial anecdotes; or in the

Gracchi, where (despite an extreme paucity of material) he puts great stress on the influence of the

mother Cornelia, emphasizing that the paideia she gave the boys was even more influential than their

inherited nature in forming their characters (1.7); or in Lysander and Agesilaus, where again he has little

information, but tries hard to relate both men’s personalities to their Spartan training. The precise

qualities thus explained are admittedly very different: it is Lysander’s ‘ambition and contentiousness’
44
(2.4), but Agesilaus’ ‘common touch and kindliness of manner’ (1.5); but at least Plutarch’s interest in

the subject is clear and insistent.

 That prompts further questions about his technique. These examples already suggest that he was

concerned to explain character-development; elsewhere he stresses that such development is normal with
45
all individuals. But how effectively does he trace that development? What sorts of points does he try to

extract from childhood? Does he even try to investigate the ‘real person’, in the way that Augustine and

Marcus Aurelius and even Horace reveal themselves and analyse their debts to others? Evidently, we shall

find some differences; and here it may be interesting to explore the distinction Christopher Gill

developed between ‘character’ and ‘personality’, in particular his suggestion that Plutarch’s approach is

typified by an interest in ‘character’ whereas modern writers more usually adopt the viewpoint of
46
‘personality’. Childhood is a promising area to test that distinction, for modern biographers so

typically exploit childhood influences and experiences in explaining their subject’s personality; and they

are characteristically both individuating their subject, isolating the ways in which he or she is different

from other people, and trying to understand and explain those differences. That certainly fits Gill’s

‘personality-viewpoint’; in what ways is Plutarch’s approach different?

The most usual sort of item we find is what one could call ‘the routine generalization’.

Romulus seemed to be more intelligent and politically shrewd than Remus; in his encounters with his

neighbours in the countryside he showed that he was more a leader than a follower…

47
(Rom. 6.3)

Aemilius was rather different from many of his contemporaries: he had no time for judicial oratory, and

the greatest distaste for demagogic techniques; it was not that he could not do such things, but he

preferred to seek a reputation for bravery, justice, and good faith, in which he immediately outshone

everyone.

(Aem. 2.5–6)

Timoleon was patriotic and unusually gentle – except that he nourished a peculiarly intense hatred for

tyranny and for evil people. In his military campaigns he showed such a finely balanced character that

he displayed great understanding as a young man and great bravery in his old age.

(Tim. 3.4–5)

Cleomenes was ambitious, large-spirited, and no less well-endowed than Agis for living a disciplined

and simple life. But he lacked Agis’ extraordinary caution and mildness: by nature his spirit was easily

goaded, and he was inspired to pursue his ideals with peculiar ferocity. He thought it best to dominate

people if they were willing, but honourable even if they were not, and even if he had to force them in

the proper direction.

(Ag.–Cl. 22.4–5)

Cyrus had from his early youth a sort of vehemence and extreme intensity, whereas the other one

[Artaxerxes] seemed gentler in everything and naturally less violent in his impulses.

(Artax. 2.1)

This sort of thing is not limited to Plutarch, incidentally – the beginning of Suetonius’ Titus is very

similar; and such generalizations are indeed so routine that we can surely sense the biographer’s own

hand. He is simply retrojecting aspects of the men’s later careers, and inferring what sort of boy the man

must have been. And in these cases at least, the biographer is not fabricating, even if no such material

stood in his sources. He is simply inferring what must have been true: this is ‘creative reconstruction’,
48
not fiction.

Sometimes the reconstruction is more elaborate. It may make negative points: Marcellus was

basically a soldier, but he ‘had enough enthusiasm for Greek paideia and literature to make him respect

and admire those who excelled in them, though he himself had never had the leisure to study or learn

these subjects as much as he would have wished’ (Marc. 1.3). Once again, that is surely no more than an

inference from Marcellus’ later career: this was the man who enthusiastically carried off the Greek

treasures from Syracuse, but had to devote most of his life to Rome’s perpetual wars (1.4–5); and he also

showed some of the weaknesses which Plutarch associates with the uneducated soldier, in particular a
49
lack of self-control. Or the reconstruction may be fairly circumstantial, even though it is not

anecdotal. Agis had been brought up in luxury by his mother and grandmother, but even before he was

twenty ‘he tore off all the bodily decoration and adornment that suited his beauty, and stripped himself

of all extravagance and escaped from it, priding himself on the rough cloak, and went on in search of

the Spartan food, baths, and way of life’ (Ag.–Cl. 4.1–2). Plutarch knew of the famous ladies (cf. 7.2–4,
50
19–20) and of the prominence of female wealth in this degenerate Sparta (6.7, 7.5–7); it was clear

that Agis did pride himself on his rough Spartan cloak (14.3–4); at some time he must have abandoned

foppery for asceticism; and it would surely have been in adolescence. Further circumstantial
reconstruction is found in Coriolanus, where we hear of the envy of his youthful rivals, ‘so that they

excused their inferiority by attributing it all to his physical strength’ (2.2). Similar envy emerges later in
51
the Life, and it seems that this again is part of an extensive retrojection.

Coriolanus is indeed interesting here. There are other occasions when Plutarch dwells on his heroes’

relationships with their mothers – in the Lives of Agis and the Gracchi, as we have seen, and also

Sertorius and Demosthenes. One does not want to make Plutarch into a mantic pre-Freudian, and his

treatment does not normally go very deep; but the perspective of Coriolanus is more enterprising.

Others do this in search of fame and glory; Marcius’ aim was his mother’s approval. Nothing could

make him feel more honoured or happier than for her to hear him being praised, or see him being

crowned, or to embrace him in tears of delight… Marcius felt he owed his mother the joy and gratitude

which would normally fall to a father as well, and could never be satisfied with giving Volumnia

pleasure or paying her honour. He even chose his wife according to his mother’s wishes and request, and

he continued to live in the same house with her even after his wife had borne their children.

(Cor. 4.5–7)

This is one case where we can be sure what Plutarch was doing to his sources, for it is clear that he is
52
dependent on Dionysius of Halicarnassus here; and it is interesting how little Dionysius offers to

support Plutarch’s recasting. From Dionysius he knew the famous scene where his wife and mother,

together in the same house, were persuaded to set off to urge Coriolanus to give up his campaign against

Rome (AR 8.40.1, etc.): thus Plutarch knew that ‘they continued to live in the same house even after

marriage’. But the psychological recasting, ‘he even chose his wife according to his mother’s wishes and

request’, seems to be his own inference. Coriolanus was that sort of man, his wife and mother were

evidently close – of course the mother must have approved, and of course her approval must have been

the decisive factor. From a speech of Dionysius Plutarch also knew that Coriolanus was an orphan. But

that speech reads very differently (8.51.4): ‘when have I ever been free of grief or fear from you, from

the moment you reached manhood? When have I ever been able to rejoice, seeing you fighting war

upon war, battle upon battle, gaining wound upon wound?’ That really is very limp, and it is hardly

Plutarch’s (or Shakespeare’s) Volumnia: Plutarch’s Volumnia weeps with joy at Coriolanus’ martial

successes.

In chapter 6 (pp. 152–6) I discussed what Plutarch thought he was doing when he rewrote his

source-material like this, and again argued that it was creative reconstruction: he was working out what

sort of background and experience must have built the strangely impressive but dysfunctional figure

whom he knew. If that is right, we might not regard it as a particularly unrespectable or uninteresting

thing to be doing. Erikson’s influential biography of Martin Luther, for instance, is not playing wholly

different games: he is reconstructing Luther’s early relationship with his father rather than his mother,

and admits frankly that his method is to start from later events and read back what the childhood
53
relationship ‘must have been’ like. It is vastly more elaborate than in Plutarch, with its extensive

Freudian psychoanalytic apparatus: but not, perhaps, conspicuously more convincing.

Such an analysis leads us back to Gill’s distinction of ‘character’ and ‘personality’. In this case it is

surely hard to deny Plutarch a considerable interest in ‘personality’: is Plutarch not really trying to get

inside Coriolanus’ skin, to work out why he acted in a way which was so distinctive, and to relate it to

what was individual in his personal background? It indeed demonstrates Plutarch’s capacity to draw an

exemplary moral from a very individual case, for at Cor. 4.1 he has already distinguished an easily

quenched and a more stable form of ambition; these are evidently types which will recur in others, but

the genesis within Coriolanus of this type of firm, stable ambition is related not merely to his nature but

also to his individual circumstances and motives. Alcibiades, too, develops an intensely individual
54
figure. It is true that Plutarch initially describes Alcibiades’ character in a disappointing way, as

embodying ‘the desire for honour and to be first in the state’ (2.1) – as Russell says, ‘one of the
55
commonest passions in Plutarch’s repertoire’. So far that suits ‘character’, subsuming to an exemplary

class and inviting ethical judgement rather than identifying what is individual and different. But ancient

authors often begin by stating a truth in a very general way, then gradually correct and complement and

redefine, so that we are finally left with a subtler picture. And as Alcibiades progresses the man becomes

much more singular: no one else could behave with this charming outrageousness, or with such

versatility and flair. Here we clearly have the individuation which one associates with a ‘personality’; as

we also do in, say, Lysander, where the man gradually emerges as an extremely unspartan figure, running
56
counter to normal expectations in several interesting ways.

Whether in these cases we quite have the psychological understanding is a different point; we shall

return to that. But there are other portraits where the psychological register is surely present. Consider

for instance Theseus. The impact on Theseus of Heracles, whose heroics were so recent, is immediately
made a psychological point. Theseus was related to Heracles, and this, he felt, put a special burden on

him; Heracles’ successes would not let him sleep; the desire for such glory ‘inflamed’ him; he learnt from
57
Heracles how to make a punishment fit the crime or the criminal… (6.8, 8.2, 11.2). If one compares

earlier treatments of this relationship, Isocrates for instance only talks of Theseus doing things ‘that were
58
fitting to their kinship’; it seems to be Plutarch who moves into the psychological register, and helps

us to understand Theseus’ own view of his debt. Similarly in Cleomenes : it is Plutarch who reconstructs

the effect on the young Cleomenes of marrying Agis’ widow. ‘He would ask her often about what

happened, and listen carefully as she told of Agis’ plans and purposes…’ (Ag.–Cl. 22(1).3). In

Cleomenes’ case that was combined with the influence of the shrewd philosopher Sphaerus (23(2).3–6).

As with Theseus and Coriolanus, we have a very individual set of circumstances and influences, and an

analysis of the external pressures on the men: all this fits Gill’s category of ‘personality’, with the

individuation, the psychology, the concern to understand. Exemplary morals can doubtless also be

drawn, but we have already noticed Plutarch’s capacity to use individual cases to point general ethical

truths.

Yet Gill does of course have a case, and we may still feel that Plutarch’s analysis does not go very

deep, that it takes disappointingly little empathy to understand a Theseus or a Cleomenes. The men’s

youthful circumstances may be singular; the men themselves, less so. Take another aspect of Theseus.

Plutarch knew something about Theseus’ early erotic adventures: he mentions one at 29.1, his rape of a

girl called Anaxo when he was still at Troezen, and adds that he tended to rape all the daughters of the

monstrous figures he killed. Theseus’ taste for women will become an important theme later in the Life,

and will in fact be the climactic point in the epilogue comparing him with his pair Romulus. Theseus

carried off Helen too when she was just a girl, he had this disturbing tendency to get involved with

Amazons, and so on. Had Plutarch wanted to sketch in as much as possible of Theseus’ personality at

the outset, he would certainly have found room for those early rapes; that is what modern political

biographers would do, if they happened to find themselves writing a Life of Theseus. Plutarch preferred

to hold it back: he thought it artistically superior to begin by dwelling on Theseus as a great hero, then
59
gradually introduce the various darkening shades to fill out and qualify the picture. Again, it is the

technique of gradual redefinition, which means that ancient writers often hold back important
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information till later than a modern would expect. Here Plutarch wants to collect all the shady affairs

together towards the end of the Life to prepare the path for the final downfall.

We can see something similar in Cato Maior. When Plutarch first introduces Cato’s proud hostility

to Greek culture, he does so in rather appreciative tones. It is only later, after he has established the

grander and more impressive aspects of Cato’s personality, that he will revert to this, and begin to trace

how this attitude had weaknesses as well as strengths, and in important respects Cato was diminished by
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such antihellenism. All that is certainly still an interest in personality: these are individual figures, and

one comes to comprehend them fairly well. But it means that, in the early chapters, Plutarch is not

pulling out all the stops all the time to help us to understand people. That is not his only concern, and

other literary considerations may carry more weight.

That said, one often feels that Plutarch is simply not doing as much as he can to understand people

anyway – it is not just a question of holding things back, but of not doing it at all. Indeed, we are now

close to the real paradox of his technique. For all his stress on education and character-development,

Plutarch’s own presentation of the childhood of particular heroes is often extraordinarily banal: so banal,
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indeed, that distinguished critics can claim that he gives no idea of development at all – an

overstatement, but an understandable one. Antony, for instance, is one of the Lives which generates a

real interest in psychology, as Antony’s mental torment becomes so clear. Given his make-up – that blend

of susceptibility, simplicity, bluffness, and nobility – we can certainly understand why he was so

peculiarly vulnerable to Cleopatra, and then so agonized and torn. It is once again an individual

portrait, a ‘personality’. But Plutarch makes no real attempt to explain why Antony came to have that

particular make-up: that is precisely what a modern biographer would regard as the first priority.

Influences are indeed a major preoccupation of a modern biographer; Plutarch too is interested, as

we saw when he related traits of Lysander and Agesilaus to the Spartan educational system. But the way

he introduces the point in Lysander is eloquent. ‘His ambition and contentiousness were derived from
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his Spartan education, and we should not greatly blame his nature for this’ (2.4). The point, it seems, is

not introduced primarily to explain: the explanatory force is a means to an end, to guide our moral

judgement and dissuade us from too hasty a condemnation. Similarly, in Marcellus it is important to

know that Rome was so beset by wars, but mainly so that we should not be too harsh on Marcellus for

neglecting his literary education. Explanation is again at the service of ethical assessment. The treatment

of family, too, is uneven. Sometimes the analysis of family background can genuinely illuminate

hereditary traits (Antony, Brutus) or important aspects of youthful environment (Gracchi, Cleomenes,
Coriolanus); but just as often the treatment of lineage is simply casual and curious, as in Fabius, Pyrrhus,

Phocion, or Aemilius.

Nor is the quest for understanding pursued insistently elsewhere. We saw this in the last chapter,

where we toyed with some of the psychological reconstructions Plutarch might have made, had he so

chosen (pp. 284, 294–5): what Lysander would have felt when he first saw foreign luxury, how the

country boys Marius or the elder Cato would have felt when they first met those smooth men of the

city. How, too, must Demosthenes have reacted when his mother denied him the chance to study (4.4)?

What must Pompey have felt to have such a harsh and unpopular father (Pomp. 1)? Did that affect his

own quest for popularity (esp. Pomp. 57), or even for love (Pomp. 2, 53, 74–5)? Plutarch could make

that sort of psychological reconstruction – we have seen that from Theseus, Coriolanus, and Cleomenes –

but, usually, that was not his way.

Even the crucial aspect of education is presented rather than explored. Only very rarely does

Plutarch analyse precisely what a figure has derived from his particular tutors or particular philosophical

school. When Cicero himself talks of his philosophical education, he can explain how he acquired some

useful dialectical skills from the Stoic Diodotus (Cic. Brut. 309): when Plutarch treats Cicero’s early

Life, he is interested not in what Cicero got from philosophy, but in introducing the idea of a choice

between two lives, the life of learning and the life of achievement, between which Cicero had to
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choose. Brutus is presented as the philosopher in action; but there is little interest in isolating what he

learnt from being an Academic rather than any other sort of philosopher, and the Platonism adds little
65
more than some extra point to the linking with Dion. It is in fact most typically when education is

deficient – in Coriolanus, for instance, or Marius, or even Marcellus – that the point really helps us to
66
understand their personalities, for it then helps to explain their distinctive flaws.

Pericles is particularly interesting here, for this is one of the few cases where Plutarch does try to

discriminate what his hero learnt from his tutors. Anaxagoras specifically taught him to be above

superstition, for instance (6), and how to include impressive natural philosophy in his rhetoric (8.1).

Still, even here all his educators tend to be telling him the same things, in particular guiding him towards

a specific political style: Anaxagoras gave him ‘a majesty and mental spirit ( ϕρóνημα) that was too

weighty for demagogy’ (4.6); Zeno then defended that dignified public demeanour (5.3); Damon at

least encouraged and guided his political ambitions, and was suspected of helping him towards tyranny

(4.3, 9.2). That gives a hint of Plutarch’s reasons for developing the theme so fully. It matters a lot to

him that Pericles had so good an education, but only because with so many good tutors he must have

developed a particularly high intellect and character, ϕρóνημα. It does not go any deeper than that: but
this was itself deep enough to land Plutarch in terrible difficulties over his characterization. It was a great

trouble to him that in his early years Pericles adopted various disreputable popular techniques to

establish his position; and Plutarch comes up with the uncomfortable judgement that Pericles’
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behaviour was ‘contrary to his own nature, which was not at all democratic’ (7.3). He does not seem

to have faced the question whether this was really compatible with his admiration for Pericles’ integrity
68
and greatness of spirit. It is not that Plutarch did not have a perfectly good model to use, that of the

youthful leader of the people who becomes more moderate as he grows older: there is a certain amount

of that in Caesar, Pompey, and even Cleomenes. But it will not do here simply because Pericles was so

thoroughly educated, and hence must have developed a character which was above genuine demagogy at

an early stage. The analysis is not really very profound, and tends to regard education simply as

something you have either had or not had, rather like a vaccination: if you have had it, then you ought

to be immune from certain dangers for ever. Here, as so often, Plutarch’s preoccupation with education

is disquietingly superficial. Pericles’ education created the problem for Plutarch’s characterization; but

the analysis was too shallow to solve or even illuminate that problem at all satisfactorily.

Take Alcibiades, too. Plutarch makes a fair amount of his growing up in Pericles’ house, and of his

relationship with Socrates. But the interesting thing about it is simply that, despite all his flair and

excesses, he was still the sort of man to listen to Socrates; there is no attempt to explore what Socrates

might have told him about the Athenian democracy, for instance, or the admirable aspects of Spartan

military culture. How much more he could have made of the relationship with Pericles, too. He has an

anecdote where Alcibiades hears that Pericles is thinking out a speech in which he would submit an

account of his magistracy to the Athenian people; Alcibiades promptly reflects that it would be ‘better to

think out how to avoid giving accounts to the Athenians’ (8.3). But that is all. Consider the following

passage:

Alcibiades was inspired by Pericles’ power, which he saw around him every day; but he was deeply

disillusioned by the ingratitude the Athenian demos showed him. He considered where Pericles had

perhaps made mistakes: perhaps his haughtiness was out of keeping with a younger generation, perhaps

more affability and charm was needed. He also saw what Pericles had achieved, and determined that he
too, one day, would have a great achievement that would be his own, and he would make Athens indeed

prince of Greece.

But Plutarch did not write that, I did. He had the wherewithal to make that sort of psychological

deduction, but he had enough to say about Alcibiades if he simply described the peculiar flair and

glamour of his political style. Trying to understand what made him the sort of politician he was could,
69
in this Life, be discarded. Understanding people was just one among several things which he was

trying to do; it was not always the priority. That is a fundamental difference between Plutarch and

modern biography.

III

This is largely because, for ancient biography, there was less in the adult personality to understand.
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Plutarch individuates his personalities; he has a rich and differentiated vocabulary for describing traits;

but it remains true that he, like most or all ancient writers, has an extremely integrated conception of
71
character, and that his figures are consequently individual in a way which we find oddly limited. The

differing elements of a character are regularly brought into some sort of relationship with one another,

reconciled: not exactly unified, for a character cannot be described with a single word or category, and is

not a stereotype; but one element at least goes closely with another, and each element predicts the next.

Antony has his simplicity, his άπλóτης or ‘oneness’,

72
which leaves him so vulnerable to flatterers or

more powerful personalities (Curio, Fulvia, Cleopatra); that helps to explain why he is so passive. The

simplicity goes well with his soldierliness too, and the rumbustious sense of fun he shares with his men

– and then goes on to share with Cleopatra, so that the same qualities both build and destroy his

greatness; the soldierliness and the leadership then go well with the nobility, which he shows for instance

in honouring the fallen Brutus at Philippi (22.6–7); that nobility goes closely with his capacity to be

inflamed by Roman values and duty, and therefore to feel his shame intensely at the end – the head-in-

hands scene as he sails from Actium (67), the Roman suicide (76), the fine dying words, ‘a Roman, by a

Roman valiantly vanquished’ (77.7). It all fits together very tightly: not as a stereotype, for these are all

distinct traits; but they are closely neighbouring traits, and we are not surprised that Antony shows them

all. In modern terms, his personality exemplifies a ‘syndrome’ of traits which are independent but which

one naturally finds in combination, rather than a set of characteristics which are all deducible from a
73
single original ‘source-trait’.

74 75
This is typical. The younger Cato’s high principle and resolution go with his Stoicism, and that

in its turn goes with his determination to feel shame only at the truly shameful: that explains his

scruffiness, his strange but (to him) logical treatment of his women, perhaps even his drunkenness (cf.

6.1–4); but this singleness of purpose also goes with a disabling lack of political insight and flexibility. In

the last chapter I discussed how Plutarch turns Aratus into a much less peculiar mixture than he was in

Polybius (4.8): there is now a particular ‘sort of cleverness and understanding’ which explains his

apparent inconsistencies, and is represented as a regular feature of human nature (Arat. 10.4–5). We saw

too how Lysander’s ruthlessness, deviousness, and unscrupulousness all combine readily with his

personal ambition and pride: the combination may be unexpected, especially in a Spartan, and he is
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certainly individuated – yet those characteristics still bind together tightly. Even Alcibiades’ ‘many-

sidedness’ is not the sort of complexity we find in a modern counterpart, any more than, say, Homer’s
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Odysseus is ‘many-sided’ in quite our sense. It still requires only a rather limited list of categories to

capture an Alcibiades or an Odysseus: each trait still predicts the next, and the reader swiftly gets the

idea. Such characters are arresting, not intriguing: this is a very different sort of complexity from what

we shall see in, for instance, Strachey’s General Gordon. The same really applies to Sulla, even though

Plutarch goes out of his way to stress his ‘inconsistency’ (Sulla 6.14–15). And Caesar’s ambition,

determination, and ability are the traits which control that Life: we would bring out the man’s many-

sidedness in a different way – one which in fact is closer to Suetonius, whose rapidly shifting categories
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lend themselves to such protean complexity.

Plutarch’s ‘integrated personalities’ are nothing unusual in the ancient world, though it is arguable

that his integration is peculiarly thorough and complete, as those comparisons with Polybius and

Suetonius suggest; but his characters are clearly very different from the more complex figures which
79
modern writers like to develop. He would indeed find it rather difficult to cope with some of the

quirky combinations so familiar to our popular awareness: the Maharaja with four Rolls-Royces whose

only ambition is to compete at Wimbledon, the England fast bowler whose delight is writing poetry, the

distinguished philosopher with an obsessive preoccupation with the workings of the British telephone

system.

The more developed portraits of formal biography tell the same story. Lytton Strachey’s ‘New

Biography’ is in some ways a special case as his work was so consciously iconoclastic, but it makes the

point particularly plain. Strachey is always straining for the unexpected. Here we are presented with
personalities whose traits do not sit at all comfortably together, whose combination in a single

individual is paradoxical: Gordon earnestly tracing the location of Old Testament sites around

Jerusalem, Bible in hand; but also approaching military operations with vigour and dynamism; but also

hiding himself from his troops and staff for bouts of brandy and soda; but also, when coolly sober,

bombarding the Ambassador in Cairo with utterly contradictory telegrams about the military situation,

sometimes thirty a day. Dr Arnold towers darkly in his gown and religion; but also he finds it humanly

difficult to get out of bed in the morning; but also he cavorts with his children on the hearthrug; but also

he suffers from a strange hypochondria. When Eminent Victorians was published, Virginia Woolf wrote
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to Strachey about his Gordon:

My only criticism, which I ought to hesitate to give until a second reading, is that I’m not sure whether

the character of Gordon altogether ‘convinces’. I felt a little difficulty in bridging the gulfs, but 1 rather

think this is inevitable from the method, which flashes light and dark this side and that…

These ‘gulfs’ capture something quite important. One may dispute whether Strachey does make Gordon

convincing; but if he does, it is a great tribute to his art, and it is indeed a primary task of a biographer

in this genre to bring together such almost random, sometimes conflicting, traits in a single individual

personality. And the only thing that brings them together is that single individual. Gordon may have

combined all those traits, but there is little in the traits themselves to predispose us to expect their

combination.

This contrast naturally affects the characters’ exemplary quality. Even with Plutarch’s most

individual figures, we can still naturally talk about what may happen to ‘a sort of person like Antony’

when he encounters a ‘a sort of person like Cleopatra’: such figures will certainly not recur often, but at

least their traits combine so readily that a recurrence is conceivable. One would not talk of ‘a sort of

person like General Gordon’, for so paradoxical a combination must be unique. It would of course be a

mistake to think that this was Plutarch’s reason for the integration, to believe that he characterizes in this
81
way to make the extraction of morals more straightforward. That is to start from the wrong end, as if

our modern assumptions were unquestionably right or natural, and Plutarch’s different approach

required explanation. In fact, this taste for the quirky is very much a modern fad. Plutarch’s

characterizing technique rests on assumptions which he inherited and saw no reason to question, and

indeed which few other cultures fundamentally questioned until the nineteenth century (though it is
82
true that few cultures integrated quite so thoroughly as the Greeks). Similar points – and similar

modern comparisons – can so easily be made with other Hellenic genres, epic, historiography, or drama:

it makes much more sense to talk of ‘a sort of person like Odysseus’ or Hector or Pericles or Orestes

than ‘a sort of person like Pierre’ or Anna or Churchill or Hamlet – or even less dominating figures such
83
as Masha or Nina in The Seagull. The integrating assumptions clearly went very deep, and it would be

facile to derive them from a straightforward interest in the exemplary. The integration certainly goes

well with the drawing of exemplary morals, and in some cases will have encouraged or facilitated that

process; equally, the taste for morals reinforced the assumption of integration; but the causal relation of

the two was surely delicate and tangled – and, of course, wholly, unconscious.

This fundamental difference between ancient and modern has its impact on the treatment of

childhood. Plutarch can give that telling anecdote or generalization prefiguring the ‘sort of person’ that

Alcibiades or Cato or Aratus is going to be. It is not going to be a paradoxical combination of divergent

traits, any or all of which might be usefully prefigured. And Plutarch can develop his technique of

gradual refinement: the traits he is going to develop will not wholly call into question those which we

know from the beginning, they will just sharpen and complement them. Contrast Strachey on Florence

Nightingale:

What was that secret voice in her ear, if it was not a call? Why had she felt, from her earliest years, those

mysterious promptings towards…she hardly knew what, but something very different from anything

around her? Why, as a child in the nursery, where her sister had shown a healthy pleasure in tearing her

dolls to pieces, had she shown an almost morbid one in sewing them up again?

(Eminent Victorians 120)

One can tell how Plutarch would have used the story of the dolls: a straightforward, and not very

imaginative, foretaste of her later concern for healing. Strachey is very different: now the elder sister

takes ‘a healthy pleasure’ in tearing the dolls apart, while Florence’s behaviour is ‘almost morbid’: ‘it was

very odd; what could be the matter with dear Flo?’ Strachey brings out how paradoxical and unexpected

the behaviour is: it still prefigures the later person, who is demoniacal in her pressure for work, driving

more passive assistants into early graves, but it prefigures those more individual traits in a distinctly

more individual way. Still, elaboration need not guarantee success, and this is not good writing. The

anecdote stretches credibility (‘it is difficult to think of dainty Parthe “tearing up dolls” ’, wrote an
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indignant family friend ); the psychology is dark but forced. Plutarchan simplicity and restraint might

after all have been better.

Childhood anecdotes also prefigure the clashing elements in a personality. It is distinctive of

Strachey’s Cardinal Manning that his ability and ambition are more weighty than his piety, though the

piety is real enough; and the clash of these elements leads to psychological strain, which Manning is

powerful enough to cope with – again, we notice how singular a person this is, and how unplutarchan it

is to have such conflicting tensions. So in his childhood we have the piety, in a very evangelical

household. At the age of four he was told by a cousin of six that God wrote down everything we did

wrong, and for some days his mother found him sitting under a kind of writing-table in great fear. ‘I

never forgot this at any time in my life, and it has been a great grace to me’, wrote Manning later – and

Strachey notes it, with a typical, slightly malicious hint of the self-righteousness as well as the piety.

‘Yet’, Strachey goes on, ‘on the whole he led the unspiritual life of an ordinary schoolboy’, and more

noticeable was ‘a certain dexterity of conduct’. At Harrow

he went out of bounds, and a master, riding by and seeing him on the other side of a field, tied his horse

to a gate, and ran after him. The astute youth outran the master, fetched a circle, reached the gate,

jumped on to the horse’s back and rode off.

(Eminent Victorians 6)

It is a much less expected story for a future Cardinal, and yet it prefigures something more important

than the piety. So childhood anecdotes are here used to focus two conflicting traits, and the paradoxical

one carries the greater weight. The whole technique is more complex, and the characterization again

incomparably more singular, than in Plutarch.

With so much more to understand in the adult figures, there is therefore more to prefigure; we

might expect there to be more for the child to develop, too, and more that could be related to specific

influences. Here we can trace a growing interest through Strachey’s oeuvre. A few points are traceable

even in Eminent Victorians : Manning’s evangelical home, or Nightingale’s closeted childhood in the

Derbyshire country house, carry some explanatory force; or there is the more delicious point about

Arnold:

It is true that, as a schoolboy, a certain pompousness in the style of his letters home suggested to the

more clear-sighted among his relatives the possibility that young Thomas might grow up into a prig;

but, after all, what else could be expected from a child who, at the age of three, had been presented by

his father, as a reward for proficiency in his studies, with the twenty-four volumes of Smollett’s History of

England?

(Eminent Victorians 183–4)

But it is left at that, and there is no clear interest in tracing in detail how particular influences shaped a

child’s development. Most of the ‘understanding’ is to be reached by considering the man himself or the

woman herself, not their society; that is still in the Plutarchan tradition. And indeed, there is

comparatively little development to trace: Manning is already showing the same tensions as later.

By Queen Victoria that has changed. We have a chapter on ‘Antecedents’ as well as one on

‘Childhood’, and Strachey is very concerned indeed to depict the importance of the uneasy atmosphere
85
in the royal family. Her christening, for instance, provoked a marvellously embarrassing scene; that

does reveal something about the uncomfortable background against which she grew up – the

background which finally erupted in a public tirade against Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent,

delivered by William IV before 100 embarrassed guests at a birthday dinner, again a story in which

Strachey revels. He is concerned to point influences, too: of governesses, of her uncle the king of

Belgium, of her father’s political sympathies and associations, and of the lack of robust masculine friends

– ‘It was her misfortune that the mental atmosphere which surrounded her during these years of

adolescence was almost entirely feminine’ – which may explain why she was so mesmerized when

handsome male cousins visited, including the youthful Prince Albert. Then in Elizabeth and Essex
86
Strachey points Elizabeth’s ‘seriously warped sexual organization’, crucial for understanding the way

she handled English noblemen and foreign kings. This is explained by ‘the profound psychological

disturbances of her childhood’ – the early beheading of her mother, the bewildering sequence of

stepmothers, finally the extraordinary sexual attention of Catherine Parr’s later husband Thomas

Seymour, with his habit of bounding into her room, tickling her in bed, and slapping her bottom. The

Freudian influence by now is clear, and this detailed tracing of influences takes us some distance from

Plutarch.

This preoccupation with influences and understanding is of course what we now expect. It is

particularly clear in Erikson, but for instance Emil Ludwig’s Bismarck is also similar – the bad relations

with his distant, theatrical mother, always too busy to have him at home, which led to his neurosis,
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cynicism, and ‘refractory and unequable nature’; no wonder he came to despise the liberal ideas his

mother espoused, and no wonder his reaction was so ambivalent to the harsh, whipping, military school

his mother sent him to. Tickling, bottom-slapping, and whipping tend to be less typical of the more

regular genre of political biography, less highly wrought than Strachey, less self-conscious and artistically

pretentious, distinctly more respectful, and in some ways closer to the grave, dignified genre of multi-

volume Victorian biography which Strachey was striving to replace. But this preoccupation with

influences and understanding remains dominant. Not quite at random, one could take Philip Williams’s
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fine book on Hugh Gaitskell.

There are in fact some surprising similarities with Plutarch. Williams too is concerned with

education, though the points are made in greater detail. The Dragon School was ‘a highly unorthodox

and notably unconventional preparatory school…masters were known by their nicknames’. Later, his

public school Winchester was ‘much less philistine than most of its contemporaries. Intellect was not

despised as at Rugby or Harrow.’ There is often the routine generalization, more pointed than in

Plutarch but showing rather the same flavour: ‘at prep school, Winchester, and Oxford alike, he was

unusually unpossessive and behaved as a “natural socialist”, treating everyone as equal and everything as

held in common’. One wonders exactly what that means, and what really lies behind it: surely a measure

of retrojection from later years? And there is the telling anecdote, too, which one suspects is not always

subjected to rigorous historical criticism: ‘he once startled a strange lady in the street by chanting to her

from the pram: “Soon shall you and I be lying | Each within our narrow tomb” ’. But what is different

here is that perpetual quest for understanding, clearly the author’s first priority. The chapter is headed

‘Seeking Something to Fight For’ – the psychological register which Plutarch sometimes moves into, but

generally eschews. There is the interest, again, in isolating influences: ‘to his mother he owed the gaiety

and friendliness…the strong Burma connections had – surprisingly – no apparent influence on his life,

outlook, or policy. Separation from his parents possibly did have such an influence’; ‘Winchester’s heavy

emphasis on self-restraint helped Hugh to keep under firm control the strong emotions that seethed

beneath a placid surface.’

What would Plutarch have made of all that? It is quite alien to his manner, even in the passages

where he is trying to understand: we are moving into a quite different register when we seek to isolate

such broad influences. Plutarch would have been perplexed; and he would also have felt the irony that

he is now regarded as the man with the taste for fiction, while the moderns regard themselves as

reconstructing truth. Williams’s reconstruction of these influences is much more moderate and cogent

than those of Strachey, Erikson, or Ludwig, but all rest on a very slender foundation. Winchester was

like that, and Gaitskell was like that too; Bismarck’s mother and Luther’s father were unsatisfactory, and

Bismarck and Luther turned out the way they did; Thomas Seymour was sexually peculiar, and

Elizabeth was arguably a bit peculiar too; hence there must have been a causal connection. Plutarch

would have thought all this a new, peculiar brand of imaginative reconstruction; and I am not sure that

he would have been too impressed.

Postscript (2001)

Constructing Personalities: a Tale of Two Gills

In this 1990 essay I exploited the distinction Christopher Gill had developed between ‘character’ and
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‘personality’. If we speak of ‘character’ we are more likely to be subsuming an individual to a category:

one can usually put some sort of adjective in front of ‘character’ – ‘irascible’, ‘generous’, ‘surly’, ‘vain’,

‘sinister’, and so on. ‘Personality’ for Gill is more concerned with defining how an individual is different

from others, identifying the areas in which that individuality is defined. ‘Personality’ further involves, to

a greater degree than ‘character’, understanding a person: getting inside his or her skin, gauging what it

is that makes her or him tick. ‘Personality’ also tends to be less judgmental than ‘character’, more

concerned to define and render intelligible the person and less concerned to categorize as good or bad.

In one of his papers (1983) Gill suggested that the fundamental contrast between Plutarch and modern

biography can be put in those terms: Plutarch is typically more concerned with character, modern

biography with personality.

I made some reservations clear at pp. 308–12. In Coriolanus, in particular, we seem to have a real

concern to understand the factors which shaped the man’s nature: that seems to fit ‘personality’. At the

same time Plutarch insists that, however peculiar the influences which moulded Coriolanus, he still fits

an identifiable human type, that of the ‘more stable’ form of ambition (4.1: p. 310 above); and he

certainly encourages moral evaluation of Coriolanus’ behaviour, for this is one of the most ethically

charged of the Lives. Both of these features seem rather to fit Gill’s ‘character-viewpoint’. There may be

other difficulties too in applying the distinction to Plutarch. Sometimes he individuates (Alcibiades or

Timoleon), sometimes makes his heroes closer to a class (Crassus or Numa); sometimes he is both

individuating and evaluating (Pompey or Nicias), sometimes not doing much of either (Alexander and

Caesar). It puts matters too roughly, I think, to claim that Plutarch adopts a character-viewpoint rather
than a personality-viewpoint: there is too much of both, even if the ‘character’ aspect weighs more

heavily than we would expect in a modern biography.

Still, that character–personality distinction can still be illuminating, and some points that I made in

this essay could helpfully be put in those terms. One way of capturing Plutarch’s interest in education is

to say that Hellenic culture, when it is present, is more a question of character than of personality: it

encourages us to ask more evaluating questions; it counts as a plus, but not always a decisive one, on the

moral scale; it may make some (but only some) of the figures more akin to types (Brutus, perhaps,

perhaps even Flamininus, but not really Cicero, nor Marcellus, nor the elder nor even the younger

Cato). What it does not particularly do is help us to understand them, though in Cicero’s case it may

help us to understand some of the tensions and temptations which he felt (p. 313). An absence of

education by contrast does help us to understand people as ‘personalities’, as it offers an explanation why

a Marius or a Coriolanus or a Marcellus found a certain passion more difficult to control: the lust for
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revenge, or for victory at all costs, or in Marcellus’ case to engage Hannibal in single combat. It also

encourages us to dwell on the ways in which certain critical flaws cohere closely with moral strengths, so

that we develop a stronger, more integrated picture of a man’s nature. That does not preclude

evaluation, but it certainly promotes understanding too.

One can see, too, why the different aspects which Gill associates with the two viewpoints should

cohere, in particular why the ‘character-viewpoint’ has more categorization and evaluation but less
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understanding: this is not simply an English semantic accident. The more one comes to understand

why someone should be the way she is, the less straightforward it is to blame her, or even to praise her.

If society is to blame for making a boy delinquent, if the marital condition wrecks a woman or a man, if

a costly education gives someone a surface smoothness or a cultural depth or a knack for getting high

grades in examinations (or for that matter an irritating insouciance or arrogance) – in all these cases we

may feel it more problematic to dispense punishment or rewards, or simply dismissiveness or esteem,
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than we might otherwise have done. Increasingly, this is a problem in the modern courts; it was a
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problem which was felt as early as Gorgias and Euripides and Antiphon and Thucydides and Aristotle.

It is not surprising that there should be a right-wing backlash encouraging us to ‘understand a little less
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and condemn a little more’, and that in itself brings out how difficult it is simultaneously to

understand and to condemn. If Plutarch nevertheless manages in a Life like Coriolanus to combine

understanding and evaluation, that may be because his moralism usually deals in more complex

concepts than simple ‘condemnation’, and because he is interested in probing and exploring ethical

experience as well as in praising, blaming, inspiring, and deterring. We saw some of that in chapter 10.

In his 1996 book Gill addressed some of these problems in a different way. The character–personality

distinction is now laid aside. Instead he develops a more ambitious duality, distinguishing a

‘subjective/individualist’ and an ‘objective/participant’ approach to personality. His treatment is richly

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nuanced, and I summarize it here only at the cost of considerable simplification. First, the

‘subjective/individualist’ strand, which Gill takes to capture a main strain in post-Cartesian and post-

Kantian modern philosophy. This strand seeks an important element of personhood in the unifying ‘I’,

a single distinct personal entity which imparts selfhood. In the Cartesian strand, that is a psychological

thesis: a unifying consciousness which makes me what I am, the ego who cogito. In the Kantian strand,

that is more an ethical thesis: the essence of ethical thought consists in the autonomous will, where this

important ‘I’ works things out, reaches my own decision and thereby defines my own self. This can

dispense with any great interest in the part this ‘I’ is playing in society; or, if society comes into it at all,

it may be that I am asserting my autonomous individuality against that society as a self-determining

decision-maker.

Gill’s project is to develop against this subjective/individualist ‘unifying I’ a different perspective,

which he finds much more characteristic of Greek thought, the ‘objective/participant’ strand. It will be

helpful to distinguish the Cartesian (psychological) and Kantian (ethical) components here (and we will

later see reasons to wonder if Gill brings them together too closely, though he has various subtle points

to make about their relation). On the psychological side, Gill reasonably observes that the usual model

for Greek decision-making is rather ‘the self in dialogue’ (the sub-title of his book). This builds on the

model of the external discussion, several people in the room, discourse or logos as an interpersonal thing;

then it figures our own internal decision-making in the same way, constructing several internal ‘voices’

in dialogue. He interestingly (1996, 14–15) relates this to dominant literary genres, emphasizing the

importance of agonistic dialogue in the major Greek genres: that contrasts with the dominant single-

voice expressive genres that have dominated in the modern, especially Romantic and post-Romantic

period – the lyric poem, the song, the novel. That is part of the ‘objective’ element in this strand, the

tendency to think of internal decision-making on the model of, or at least in ways similar to, something

external and separate.

 The Kantian, ethical strand is rather different. This is more concerned with treating ethical choices

less as autonomous and self-standing phenomena but more as embedded in the code or codes of one’s

society: that is the ‘participant’ element in his ‘objective/participant’. On this view to be a ‘person’ is

essentially to be a participative member of a society and its (doubtless complex and non-univocal)

ethical code. One contributes to the definition and redefinition of this code by making a series of

responses and gestures, in the big instances exemplary gestures – and this is a notion which Gill develops

most profitably in discussing the great cases in epic and tragedy, Achilles in Iliad 9, Sophocles’ Ajax,

Euripides’ Medea. All are distinct characters making ethical choices, but they are hardly autonomous

and society-independent. One can certainly see why the notion of the exemplary gesture is here a

helpful one: in their cases, the ‘self ’ is ‘in dialogue’ with the norms of a society, or at least responding to

ill-conceived conduct by others (Agamemnon, Jason) which the society either encourages or empowers,

either endorses or has no strategy to repress. And in those cases we can also see the ‘self in dialogue’ in

that other, first sense, the self in dialogue with itself, as these great individuals weigh up the alternatives

with rival internalized voices very much in the style of an external to-and-fro of two speakers, in the

dramatic cases with a mode of soliloquy which moderns either find unrealistically schematic and yes-I-

will-no-I-won’t (Medea) or simply misinterpret (as so often with Ajax and ‘deception’).

It is not my concern here to give any sort of ‘review’ of Gill’s book: that has been done very well by
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others, and the issues it raises are most complex. My purpose here is more limited, and still confined

to biography, which is not the focus of the 1996 book. Do Gill’s new categories illuminate biography,

especially Plutarchan biography, in a way that the old ones did not?

Let us take first the ‘participant’, Kantian side of the analysis. Plutarch is indeed most interested in

relating people to their societies and evaluating them in terms of their ‘participation’. In chapters 5, 7, 9,

and 10 we saw Plutarch’s interest in defining the nature of those societies as well as of the individuals,

and exploring the (often recurrent) political circumstances with which the figures had to deal as well as

the characters of the figures themselves. In the present chapter we saw how those circumstances are

regarded both as explaining the characters (Coriolanus and Marcellus are what they are partly because

Rome was the way it was), and as conditioning our ethical valuation: ‘Lysander’s ambition and

contentiousness were derived from his Spartan education, and we should not greatly blame his nature

for this’ (Lys. 2.4: above, pp. 293, 312); Caesar may be less blameworthy, and Brutus more, because

Rome’s political malaise needed doctoring (Brut. 55(2).2: pp. 258–9, 376). It is also fundamental to
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that valuation to consider what an individual contributed to that society. Lysander may be

praiseworthy for his personal restraint, but we also need to consider what damage he did to Sparta,

introducing that concern for money to which he was himself immune (ch. 13, pp. 291–5, and Pelling,

forthcoming (b) ). And a figure who cannot acclimatize at all to his society may get understanding, but

not much sympathy, nor usually much approval: that is particularly true of Coriolanus, but also in

different ways of Marius and Nicias and Crassus and even the younger Cato (Phoc. 3.1–2). This fits the

one side of Gill’s analysis very well: Plutarch analyses, not just people, but people in their society.

Whether one would extend this point to other biographies is a different question, for Suetonius does

not do this so much, nor for instance does Diogenes Laertius. We may again here be grazing a theme

touched in chapter 7 (p. 188), Plutarch’s concern to write a coherent series which told stories about

Athens, Sparta, and Rome as well as about the individual politicians. In that case of course he is

concerned to set those figures against their societal backgrounds.

What of the other side of Gill’s analysis, the post-Cartesian psychological side? Does Plutarch too

typically conceive, and portray, a ‘self in dialogue’? There will be questions here both of

conceptualization, how Plutarch figures his heroes, and of technique, whether he makes use of such

internal dialogue to convey the way they are. My main concern will be with technique.

The main genres which Gill treats in his book are epic, tragedy, and philosophy, and his shift of

analysis works particularly well for these. In epic and tragedy in particular, the grand characterizing

scenes are so often concerned with moments of choice and decision, particularly when dilemmas are

agonizing and balanced. Should Agamemnon kill his daughter, or Medea her sons, or Ajax himself?

Should Achilles return to the fight? These are moments when the self is indeed in dialogue, and so this

new analysis is particularly well suited for exploring these agonizing moments. Yet this mode of

characterization is much more typical of dramatic literature than of everyday life. We tend to

characterize friends, and for that matter public figures too, more in terms of behaviour patterns than of

life-defining moments, and in everyday life we often characterize by concentrating on their unreflecting

moments and responses – especially when we think those responses might have been more reflective

than they were. We might still find the personality–character distinction better equipped to deal with

these patterns, whether we are subsuming to a group and praising or condemning a ‘character’ – she is

so sensitive, he is so hysterical, she is so devious, he is so embarrassing when drunk; or seeking to explain

a ‘personality’ – she was given such a hard time by her parents that it is not surprising that she breaks
out, he has been working so hard that one can understand that shortness of temper, they had such a bad

experience in opposition that one can understand why they have turned into control-freaks now.

It is no surprise if biography here aligns more closely with ‘everyday’ life, presenting people in terms

of their dispositions, what they usually do and how they usually react, rather than concentrating on the

great moments of decision. What is striking, though, is the degree to which Plutarch tilts that way. For

it is part of his technique too to highlight ‘great moments’, crafting what Françoise Frazier has called his
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‘grandes scènes’. Many of those do concentrate on agonizing decisions: should Coriolanus leave

Rome? Should he desist before his mother? Should Antony forsake his men? How can he cope with

himself when he has done it? Should Caesar cross the Rubicon? And it may well be that Plutarch would

have figured those agonizings in the way Gill suggests, with a ‘self in dialogue’, and different internal

voices being heard. The theoretical framework he builds in On Moral Virtue portrays ethical debate in a
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way close to, though not quite identical with, Gill’s picture; and there are many passages in the
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Moralia where he scripts particular ‘internal dialogues’ for himself as he weighs moral problems. But

whatever may be true of his conceptualization of such moments, his technique is not to use those

‘conflicting voices’ as part of his characterizing repertoire. Consider again Pericles’ decision to give

himself to the demos ‘contrary to his own nature, which was anything but populist’ (παρά τὴν έαυτού
ϕύσιν ἥκιστα δημοτικἡν οΰσαν, Per. 7.3: above, p. 314). We are left in no doubt as to his motives; but
there is no telling internal dialogue to characterize him, no agonizing. Nor is there when Alcibiades goes

off to Sparta and treachery and regal seduction (Alc. 22.1); nor when Cato lends his wife to Hortensius

for a year or so to let him produce an heir (Cato Min. 25.3). Even if we take Lives with more of an

internal, psychological register, we find little agonizing. Pompey for instance makes a great deal of that

uxoriousness which distracts him from politics and warfare (esp. Pomp. 53, 74–5: above, p. 100).

Distraction, yes; passion, yes; even conflicting drives, yes; but not articulated like that, not with

conflicting internal voices and strongly characterizing uncertainty or agonizing.

Let us take some of those Lives where we might particularly expect such characterizing indecision.

Even there the search for agonizing gives meagre results. Cicero, we saw (p. 313 and n. 64), makes a

good deal of the choice between the two Lives, scholarly or political; yet the moves to and from
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scholarship, both at the beginning and the end, are simply responses to the political situation. No self

in dialogue there. When Cicero wonders whether to join Pompey, Plutarch seems to be exploiting a

letter or letters where Cicero was genuinely agonizing; but in Plutarch himself the reflections are
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perfunctory, and notable mainly for their simplifying of what Cicero actually said. For Plutarch,

Cicero’s choice is eventually made swiftly, and from simple vanity: he is so irritated that Caesar had used

Trebatius as a go-between instead of writing himself.

What of Coriolanus? We may half-remember agonizing there: should he stand for the consulship?

Should he show his wounds to the stinking commons? But if we do we are half-remembering

Shakespeare, not Plutarch, who makes nothing of the choice at all (Cor. 14.1–2). The nearest we come

to agonizing is two passages, first 21.5 after he has been exiled but before he has decided to go to

Antium and Attius Tullus:

He stayed for a few days in a country estate by himself, and was torn by many considerations suggested

to him by his wrath ( θνμός) – that nothing is fair or useful except to pursue the Romans for revenge; so
he decided to mount a fierce war for them against a neighbouring enemy.

That may be an ‘exemplary gesture’ but it is hardly agonizing, and hardly internal dialogue: all the

‘considerations’ seem to be pulling the same way. Then 34.3, when the women arrive as he is delivering

judgements:

He wanted to stay in those unswerving and inexorable counsels, but was overcome by his emotion and

shattered by the sight. He could not bear to allow them to approach him still sitting, so he came down

from the tribunal at swifter than walking pace and met them, embracing first and longest his mother,

then his wife and his children, no longer sparing either tears or greeting, allowing himself to be carried

away by his emotion as by a flood.

This is closer. He is torn between passion and friendship (as Achilles is torn, often a close intertextual
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presence in Coriolanus); but the psychologically telling touch is in the gesture, especially the stress on

his mother’s arms more than on his wife’s. In the scene which follows, we certainly sense Coriolanus’

psychology, but not by having it described nor by hearing his internal voices. The voice we then hear is

his mother’s, rather a loud and forceful voice, and she knows the right words to say: the appeal to what

he owes her, the stress on the point that he will not be betraying the Volscians, and the simple bullying.

From Coriolanus himself, we hear first silence (36.1), the most expressive thing of all from this highly

vocal figure; then a simple acknowledgement of collapse.

 No internal voices then, or rather only voices which are inferred from behaviour and from others’

voices, not from Coriolanus’ own thought-processes; but we do certainly have the other side of the

‘objective–participant’ analysis, the dialectic between the individual and his world, the attempt and the

failure to find a way to keep a sense of ‘selfhood’ and integrity against the norms of his society, a world

which includes family as well as city. That produces the exemplary gestures, the first of rejection as he

goes into exile, the second of acquiescence as he returns; but they come without being articulated in

internal debate. Once again, this may well be more a matter of technique, Plutarch’s reluctance to

present internal dialogue directly, rather than conceptualization; he simply finds better ways to intimate

an agonized self than to describe it. Drama inevitably, and epic at least naturally, presents such dilemmas

in direct speech; Plutarch’s manner can be subtler, but it may still be that such dialogue existed. So I am

not arguing that Gill’s 1996 analysis is in any way wrong-headed; it simply does not capture Plutarch’s

technique.

Let us end this survey of agonizing moments with Caesar at the Rubicon (Caes. 32), a passage which
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Brenk has compared with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon at Aulis: will Caesar cross, will Agamemnon strike,

or will he desist? Yet, viewed from our present angle, the differences seem more striking than the

similarities. At Aulis Agamemnon may well be trapped by ‘necessity’ ( άνάγκα, Aesch. Agam. 218) and

may well have a choice which is no real choice; yet the way he articulates the choices, the way perhaps

he makes the decision his own, can still be felt as characterizing. That is certainly the way the chorus see

it: ‘for dreadful, disgraceful-counselling frenzy, the source of troubles, gives false confidence to mortals’

βροτούς θρασύνει γὰρ αίσχρóμητίς τάλαινα παρακοπὰ πρωτοπήμων,

( Agam. 222–3).
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The

Agamemnon passage is one which we constantly relate to other indications of what Agamemnon is like.

It also responds very well to the categories of Gill 1996, both psychologically (the conflicting voices)

and ethically (the response of the individual to the culture which imposes a decision on him).

But Caesar?

Caesar himself spent the day where people could see him, visiting some gladiators and watching them as

they trained. Shortly before evening he bathed and prepared himself, then entered the dining-room. He

spent a little time with the dinner-guests, then rose from his seat as darkness was beginning to fall. He

spoke politely to the others, asking them to wait for him, for he would soon return; but he had already

told some of his friends to follow him, not all together, but each by a different way. He himself took one

of the hired carriages, and first drove off in a different direction, then turned and took the road for

Ariminum. On his way he reached the river that marks the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and the

rest of Italy. The Rubicon is its name. Thoughts came upon him on this very brink of danger, and he

was turned this way and that by the greatness of his enterprise. He reined in the horses, and ordered a

halt. Silently, within his own mind, his thoughts veered first one way and then the other, and this was

when his resolve was most shaken; and for some time he also spoke of the dilemma with his friends that

were present, including Asinius Pollio – if he crossed, how great the ills which it would bring upon the

world; how great the story of it they would leave among later generations. Then, finally, as if with a

burst of passion, he abandoned his counsels and hurled himself forward into the path that lay before

him. As he went he uttered those words which so often serve as the prelude for some incalculable risk or

audacious enterprise: ‘let the die be cast’. Then he moved swiftly to cross the river. He galloped the rest

of the journey, and burst into Ariminum before dawn and took the city.

It is said that, the night before he crossed, he dreamed a monstrous dream. It seemed to him that he was

lying with his own mother – the unspeakable union.

(Plutarch, Caesar 32.4–9)

This is the closest we have yet seen to agonizing, and to internal voices. There is some parallel to the

Agamemnon too in the feeling that this is a choice which is no real choice, that events have by now

borne along so far that (perhaps) it is a question of enacting and marking the decision rather than really

making it. But we might notice first how unrelated the considerations are to the Caesar we see elsewhere
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in the Life. Caesar is ambitious, certainly; he is sensitive to the fame of an Alexander (11.4–5); but

this notion of ‘fame for later generations’ is not something developed in this Life, though it obviously
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could have been (that theme is left for the metatheatre of Shakespeare, J.C. III.i.111–16). Nor is the

concern for the ills that his actions will bring on the world. That formulation dramatizes the moment,

but it does not particularly characterize the man. Nor does the uncertainty itself characterize: it is out of

character, in fact, for Plutarch’s Caesar is not a man to hesitate. The fact he does so now is a way once

again of marking the magnitude of the decision, big enough even to give a Caesar some pause; it is not
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crucial to our understanding of what sort of person he is.

So we have found the ‘Kantian’ side of Gill’s 1996 analysis illuminating for biography; it is illuminating

for Caesar too, for what makes this night so momentous is precisely the challenge which Caesar is

putting to his society, his refusal to conform to its norms. That is why he feels he must act; that is why
that action will bring so many ills to the world. This is an exemplary gesture par excellence (‘how great

the story of it…’), even if it is more than that as well. The ‘Cartesian’ side, however, is more

problematic. However dramatic Plutarch is as a writer, however much at times he borrows from
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tragedy, he does not borrow or dramatize like this : any internal voices are left for us to infer. He

prefers to capture his figures by other means, especially by tracing their dispositions to act in particular

patterns. And for analysing those patterns the earlier distinction between personality and character,

however rough it sometimes seems, continues to be heuristically valuable.

Perhaps there is a wider implication. One part of Gill’s project, one he achieves with some

distinction, is to make a contribution to modern ethical philosophy. Like Bernard Williams in Shame
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and Necessity, he finds Greek literature especially fruitful for finding moral test-cases, and showing

how they were analysed with assumptions which are thought-provokingly different from our own.

Tragedy, dealing as it does in extreme situations and appalling dilemmas, is particularly rich in such test-

cases, it is natural – and richly productive – for Gill, like Williams, to concentrate on those moments

when tragic figures decide what to do, and to explore the way those figures are to be judged. Yet, if there

is anything in the argument here, tragedy is also in important ways atypical; this is not the way we

evaluate people in real life, where recurrent patterns and behavioural dispositions are more important.

Nor is it simply a distinction between these single climactic moments and the more protracted ways in

which we build up pictures of our friends. When Aristotle speaks about ‘character’, ἦθος, he means
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those qualities of a person which lend a particular quality to what he or she does; to judge a person’s

act at a climactic moment, we must also take into account what other things that person has done or

tends to do. The same speech can be gauged differently depending on the moral character of the
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speaker. It is one thing for Achilles to criticize Agamemnon, quite another for Thersites, and that is

not just a question of status: Plutarch himself speaks with approval of the Spartans when they responded

to a good proposal from a worthless person by asking a respected elder to make it instead (Advice on

Public Life 801b–c). If one cannot finally separate assessment of an action from assessment of the

person, it is worthwhile to think more closely about how we do assess the people; and even in tragedy
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that is rarely a matter of judging a single action, however crucial that one climactic decision may be.

It may be that here historiography and biography have something to teach us that tragedy cannot.

Notes

1
‘A great man’, I fear, is appropriate for a discussion of childhood in ancient biography. There was certainly interest in women as

personalities: that is especially true at Rome (see esp. Hallett 1984 for the importance of daughters), but even at Athens there are

Aspasia, Xanthippe, Phryne, and a few others. There was interest too in relating female personalities to certain influences, especially in

terms of family characteristics: Porcia (Brut. 13, 53.5–7), Cornelia (Gracch. 1), and the eloquent Hortensia (Val. Max. 8.3.3, App. BC

4.32.136–34.146); it was especially interesting when women of fine lineage went wrong, at least as men would put it – Sempronia (Sall.

BC 25), Clodia, Julia. But there is little biographical interest in women (Diogenes Laertius’ Hipparchia is an exception, 6.96–8, and so

later is that other philosopher Hypatia, on whose legend see Dzielska 1995), and girlhood anecdotes prefiguring the adult woman are

not found. Even Cicero’s invective did not develop any interest in the infant Clodia; even the lubricious interest in famous hetairai did

not come up with anything on young Aspasia’s charms; even Cleopatra has to wait until she is twenty-one for Julius Caesar, a carpet, and

her entry into fantasy and legend.

Since this essay was written, several works have interestingly explored the ways in which childhood was viewed in antiquity: see Golden

1990, esp. 1–12 on the similarities and (more usually) differences from the adult personality; more generally, Wiedemann 1989 and

Evans 1991, 166–209.

2
Cf. Lefkowitz 1981, 59, 155–6.

3
Homer: Lefkowitz 1981, 24. Plato: Riginos 1976, 17–21. Hesiod and Lucan: Suet. Life of Lucan pp. 178–9 Rostagni. Ambrose:

Paulinus, Life of Ambrose 3.2–5 (a reference I owe to Thomas Wiedemann). Others: Riginos 1976, 19 and n. 39; Lefkowitz 1981, 59 n.

12.

4
Homer: Lefkowitz 1981, 3, 20–2, 140–1. Sophocles: Lefkowitz 1981, 77, 160; cf. 93–4.

5
Epicurus: Diog. Laert. 10.2, Sex. Emp. Against the Professors 10. Metrocles: Diog. Laert. 6.94 (cf. 6.96 on his sister Hipparchia). On

stories of the young Plato, see Riginos 1976, 39–52.

6
Any distinction between ‘literary’ (or ‘cultural’ or ‘intellectual) and ‘political’ biographies must be understood roughly: cf. pp. 147 and

164–5 nn. 25 and 28. Leo’s distinction in terms of generic form has long been recognized as imperfect (cf. Momigliano 1993, 87–8;

Geiger 1985, 11–19), and men such as Cicero and M. Aurelius are both cultural and political figures. ‘Cultural’ biographies themselves

straddle a large range, from propagandist tract to curious gossip. But, as I argued in ch. 6 (esp. p. 147) and will argue again here, certain

important distinctions of content can still be made: here I agree with Geiger 1985, 18–29.

7
Alex. 5.4; Cato Minor 2.1–5. If the argument of ch. 6 is accepted, Plutarch would not have made up these stories; they are thus evidence

for the texture of the material which he found in his sources as well as for his own interests.

8
Plut. Alc. 2.2–3; other stories scattered through 2–9, discussed by Russell 1966a.

9
FGrH 107, esp. frs. 1, 4, 6. He was evidently interested in Pericles’ private life (frs. 10–11), and some of Plutarch’s material on Pericles’

youth may also derive from him: cf. Stadter 1989, lxii–lxiii. On the character of his work, cf. the contrasting views of Schachermeyr

1965 and Meister 1978, and now Engels 1993.

10
Invective: pp. 303–4. The youth of Cimon and Pericles was clearly the subject of contemporary exchanges: cf. Cim. 4.4, 4.6–9, with

15.3; and the attacks on Pericles’ ‘educators’ Damon and Anaxagoras (Per. 4.3–4, 32, etc.). For Themistocles, cf. Plut. Them. 2.6, 2.8,
3.2, with Frost 1980, 67–70, 72 ad locc. As Frost emphasizes, the controversy lasted into later generations: cf. Xen. Mem. 4.2.2; POxy.

xiii.1608 (Aeschines Socraticus).

11
Theopompus (FGrH 115) and Idomeneus (FGrH 338) wrote ‘on the Athenian demagogues’, perhaps consciously following

Stesimbrotus. Schachermeyr 1965, 20–1, claims that they showed a considerable ethical interest in paideia, and suggests that

Stesimbrotus was similar. Yet no particular concern with education is visible in Theopompus, FGrH 115 frs. 85–100; Idomeneus

perhaps had more (FGrH 338 fr. 13 on Aeschines’ education; cf. fr. 2 on his mother, and fr. 15 on Phocion’s father), but this is a natural

consequence of his use of material drawn from invective (cf. e.g. frs. 9, 12), and nothing suggests that he was really judging politicians

‘mit schulmeisterlichem Stirnrunzeln’ (‘with schoolmasterly frowns’, Schachermeyr).

12
In such cases we can often offer specific explanations for the material’s availability. Phil., for instance, is informed by Polybius’

encomium, and Alex. both by encomium and by works such as that of Onesicritus (see pp. 303–4); Demosthenes perhaps by literary

biography; Cato Minor by the martyrological tradition (pp. 10, 13, 47).

13
Cf. also pp. 284 and 294–5, where I fantasize about some other childhood material – there psychological reconstructions rather than

anecdotes – which Plutarch might have made up, had he been that sort of writer.

14
SHA M. Aurel. 2–3; cf. 4.9–10.

15
SHA Comm. 1; Gord. I 3; Gord. II 18; cf. Anton. Geta 3–4.

16
Cf. esp. Momigliano 1993, 65–100.

17
Not of course that cultural figures were immune: the attacks on Epicurus and Aristotle have much in common with the exchanges of

Aeschines and Demosthenes. Epicurus too was attacked for assisting his father in his school for a paltry fee, and he apparently retorted

that Aristotle took to soldiering and selling drugs after squandering his patrimony: Diog. Laert. 10.4, 8.

18
Cf. Nisbet 1961, 194; Dover 1974, 32–3.

19
Cf. Halliwell 1990, 56–7.

20
Isoc. Evag. 21–2.

21
Polybius’ own description of the work, 10.21.5–6. Cf. esp. Plut. Phil. 3–4, and for Plutarch’s use of it and the complicated relation of

Polybius, Plutarch, and Paus. 8.49–52, Pelling 1997a, 95–107 and 154–66.

22
See p. 165 n. 30.

23
FGrH 134 T 1 = Diog. Laert. 6.84.

24
FGrH 135–6, 170: cf. Momigliano 1993, 82–3.

25
FGrH 134 fr. 38 = Plut. Alex. 8.2; fr. 17 = Strabo 15.1.63–5, Plut. Alex. 65. On Plutarch’s use of Onesicritus, cf. esp. Hamilton 1969,

xxxi, liii, lvi–lvii.

26
Cf. esp. Hamilton 1969, liii, lvi–lvii, and on Plutarch’s (cautious) use of Onesicritus in the Life, above, p. 147. Not all of this youthful

material will come from Onesicritus: Eratosthenes is cited at 3.3, Hegesias of Magnesia at 3.6, Aristoxenus at 4.4. But some may well be

specifically Onesicritus, esp. on Alexander’s education in 5.7–8.5 (cf. Hamilton on 5.7); possibly 6 (cf. fr. 20 = Alex. 61; Brown 1949,

20); 8.2 = fr. 38. The important point is the more general one, the traces in Plutarch’s material of this encomiastic and novelistic

tradition.

27
See Geiger 1985, 30–65, and above, pp. 147 and 164–5 n. 28.

28
Timoleon is an especially interesting case: despite his glorification by the historian Timaeus, there was apparently no serious attempt

to embellish his childhood in the manner of encomium or the novel, and nothing suggests that he was the subject of any political

biography. Cf. Geiger 1985, 55 n. 89.

29
Per. 4–6; Them. 2; Alc. 6; Cic. 2; Lucull. 1.4–8, 44(1).4; cf. below, pp. 313–14.

30
I owe this point to Tim Cornell.

31
Churchill 1930, 24–6.

32
Ancient self-portrayal is treated magisterially by Misch 1950: see also Weintraub 1978, chs. 1–2; Gentili and Cerri 1988, 73–9; Most

1989.

33
Pritchard 1969, 1.244–5; Luckenbill 1927, 2.378–80. In general, Eastern texts developed a greater interest in politicians’ childhood,

as Momigliano 1985 and 1993 stresses (though, elaborating a thesis of Helene Homeyer, he builds too much on the very special case of

Cyrus the Great): this can be traced in the Persian material collected, with particular reference to Cyrus, in Gera 1993, 13–22. Such an

interest may well have influenced Xenophon’s portrayal directly, and through him the later Greek tradition of biographical novels. Its

influence on biography itself was probably less than Momigliano suggests.

34
Rutilius Rufus’ Latin autobiography was possibly an exception: certainly, Cicero was suspiciously well informed about his education

2
(cf. R-E ia. 1270; Peter, HRR i , cclvii). But even here Cicero probably did not know enough to infer his age correctly (Lael. 101; cf.

Vell. 2.9.6; R-E ia. 1269); and it anyway seems likely that Rutilius presented himself as a philosopher as well as a politician (cf. e.g. Sen.

Ep. 24.4).

35
Frs. 3, 4, 7 M; Suet. Div. Aug. 8.1 suggests that little was known of his life before his late teens. In his Life of Caesar Nicolaus of

Damascus was perhaps writing ‘on Augustus’ paideia’ in the manner of the Cyropaedia and Onesicritus (cf. Jacoby on FGrH 90 frs. 125–

30, introductory n.); but, although he clearly knew the Autobiography, he could still find little more than a page to write about Augustus’

youth (4–11).

36
Riginos 1976, 39, comments on Plato’s reticence about his youth throughout the dialogues.

37
Attack: above, pp. 302–4; defence: Aesch. 2.146, 167; Dem. 18.257. On autobiography as self-defence, cf. esp. Most 1989.

38
Nic. Dam. Vit. Aug. esp. 4–6 (cf. above, n. 35); Jos. Autobiography 7–9.
39
Lucian, Dream 1–3. On the sophistication of the self-portrayal there see now Gera 1995.

40
Galen, On the Order of his Own Books 88; On his Own Books 116.

41
As Misch 1950, 479–80, rightly stresses. Nic. Dam. and Jos.: n. 38 above.

42
Conf. 1.8–9, 13, 2.4–8, 3.3–4. Augustine’s interest in childhood was not confined to his own: cf. his fine portrait of his mother

Monica, with her youthful weakness for winebibbing (9.8).

43
His interest in education is clear, as we saw in the last chapter and shall also see in the next: the most relevant essays are Progress in

Virtue, Can Virtue be Taught?, On Listening to the Poets and On Moral Virtue : the last is especially full on the psychological processes

involved (cf. pp. 283–8). For education as a civilizing and restraining force in the Lives, see esp. Cor. 1.4–5; Mar. 2.2–4; Them. 2.7;

Numa 26(4).10–12; Bucher-Isler 1972, 21, 24, 49, 67–8.

44
See pp. 293, 295.

45
See p. 297 n. 3.

46
Gill 1983, 1986, and 1990: see my discussion above, pp. 321–9.

47
On this passage and its role in Romulus see now Tatum 1996, 144–6.

48
For this distinction, see Pelling 1988, 33–6 and ch. 6, esp. pp. 153–6, where I say a little more about such childhood reconstructions.

49
I discuss Marcellus more fully in Pelling 1989, 199–208; cf. also Swain 1990a, 131–2, 140–2 = Scardigli 1995, 239–40, 254–9. On

the deficiencies of the military man cf. esp. chs. 15 and 18 on Coriolanus.

50
More on Spartan wealth, and the (morally complex) way it is associated with women, in Pelling, forthcoming (b); and on Plutarch’s

interest in these grand Spartan women see Powell 1999.

51
So Russell 1963, 23 = Scardigli 1995, 362.

52
Russell 1963. I discuss this instance more briefly at pp. 155–6 and more fully at pp. 394–8, where I link it with other reinterpretations

of Dionysius’ material.

53
Erikson 1958, 37, 47, 50 (cited at p. 167 n. 68), 65.

54
Though ‘individual’ in a way which requires further definition, and which shows some differences from modern approaches and

assumptions. Cf. ch. 13, esp. pp. 286–8. On Gill’s character–personality distinction see also pp. 321–2.

55
Russell 1966a, 38 = Scardigli 1995, 193–4: cf. above, p. 293.

56
I discuss the characterization of Lysander in ch. 13, pp. 292–7. On this technique of progressive redefinition of character see pp. 293–

4 and n. 36; also n. 60 below.

57
On the importance in the Life of this ‘raring to go’ (Larmour) cf. p. 191 n. 21.

58
Isoc. Helen 23; cf. Diodorus 4.59.1, and other passages listed at R-E Spb. xiii. 1204. The absence of anecdote is here especially

striking; contrast the pleasing Hellenistic story of Paus. 1.27 7 (= FGrH 607 fr. 4; cf. R-E Spb. 1058), which Plutarch may well have

known. The seven-year-old Theseus met Heracles over dinner; Heracles took off his lion-skin, and everyone else thought it was a real

lion and fled. Theseus stayed.

59
On the moral complexity which this adds to the Life see also pp. 186–7 and esp. 198–200.

60
This is a refinement of the basic narrative technique discussed briefly by Fraenkel 1950, iii. 805. In Pelling 2000, 69, 89–93 I try to

extend the analysis to other authors, especially Thucydides (on whom see also Rood 1998, index s.v. ‘delay, narrative’). For a related

technique in Aristophanes cf. Russo 1994, 34–7.

61
Cf. Pelling 1989, 214–15.

62
‘The hero is there, all in one piece’: Cilento 1961, 109; quoted with approval by Russell 1966b, 145 = Scardigli 1995, 83 in the course

of an interesting discussion (144–7 = 81–6). Cf. also Misch 1950, 291; Buchler-Isler 1972, 61; Frazier 1992, 4535 and 1996, 78–9.

The more precise formulation of Gill 1983, 476, is very fair: ‘even when the author regards the theme of character-formation as relevant

to his narrative (as Plutarch clearly sometimes does), the actual process of personal development is very lightly sketched’.

63
See above, p. 293.

64
On this ‘clash of lives’ cf. esp. Moles 1988, 11–12, 151, 185, 193; on the way this dominates the early chapters, also Swain 1990b,

194–5 and Pelling 1989, 216–17. See also p. 326 and n. 102.

65
Pelling 1989, 222–8, especially 223–4; Swain 1990b, 201–3.

66
Simon Swain has argued in a most interesting series of articles (esp. Swain 1990a, 1990b, and 1992a, summarized in Swain 1996,

140–4) that paideia tends to be explored more thoroughly in Roman Lives than in Greek: so often the nature, and particularly the

deficiencies, of a Roman’s education explain where he went wrong in later life, especially when control of the passions is in point. I

argued something similar myself, but more crudely and without the same emphasis on a Greek–Roman distinction, in Pelling 1989.

67
Cf. pp. 129–30. Aem. 30.1 provides a particularly interesting parallel. Aemilius authorized the enslavement of 150,000 men and the

devastation of 70 cities. That presented Plutarch with similar problems, for Aemilius too has been presented as a distinctively cultured

figure: so ‘this in particular ran counter to his nature, which was reasonable and noble’. So also with the well-brought-up Gracchi,

eventually led astray ‘contrary to their nature’ (Gracch. 45(5).5). It is figures like this whose lapses are felt as particularly problematic. Cf.

Gill 1983, 478–81: ‘his analysis [of apparent character-change in Sulla and Sertorius] depends on his view of good character (fully

developed, reasoned excellence of character), and his conviction that it guarantees emotional continuity regardless of circumstanccs’

(481). As Gill stresses, it is precisely paideia that imparts this ‘fully developed, reasoned excellence of character’.

68
Stadter 1987 and 1989, xxxviii–xliv, acutely illustrates the rhetorical problems which this stage of Pericles’ career presented, and the

importance of this ‘out of character’ analysis to Plutarch’s narrative strategy; but the criticisms levelled by Gomme, HCT i. 65–6, and
Connor 1968, 114, still have some force. This particular narrative strategy was an uncomfortable one, but Pericles’ education forced

Plutarch to adopt it. Cf. also pp. 129–30, where I discuss how this passage fits into Plutarch’s conception of fifth-century Athenian

politics.

69
Cf. Frazier 1996, 76–8, who similarly brings out Plutarch’s failure to trace any development in the young Alcibiades; she puts

particular stress on the lack of any clear chronology (cf. also her p. 93; Russell 1966a and 1973, 118–19), with the narrative sometimes

seeming to deal with a very young person, sometimes with a near-adult.

70
See esp. Bucher-Isler 1972.

71
I also exploit this idea of an ‘integrated character’ in ch. 13, esp. pp. 288–91. For similar remarks, see Rutherford 1986, 149–50 and

n. 31. Rudd 1976, 160–2, has a stimulating and cultured discussion to which I am indebted, though perhaps he underestimates the

distance between ancient and modern assumptions. Cf. also Dihle 1956, 76–81; n. 77 below.

72
Ant. 24.9–12; cf. Pelling 1988, 181–3 ad loc.

73
For terms and discussion, see e.g. Cattell 1965, chs. 3–4. ‘Source-traits’ do not work for Plutarch’s characters (pace e.g. Garzetti 1954,

xliii–xlix): so, rightly, Bucher-Isler 1972, 60, though at 82 she oddly thinks that this detracts from their cogency as individual

personalities; Frazier 1996, 85–6.

74
Much useful material can be gleaned from Bucher-Isler 1972, 25–46, though her approach is austerely lexical. Her pp. 39–45,

exemplifying ‘Gleichzeitiges Vorkommen gegensätzlicher Tugenden’ might be expected to provide counter-examples: but in fact many of

άνδρεία (‘manly courage’) does not combine at all uncomfortably with αίδώς, άπάθεια,
the ‘virtues’ are not particularly ‘contrary’ (e.g.

γνώμη, δεινότης, δικαιoσύνη, or έγκράτεια (‘shame’, ‘unsusceptibility’, ‘intelligence’, ‘cleverness’ or ‘extraordinariness’, ‘justice’, or ‘self-
control’), to take only her first six cases); and in some cases where the combination is more surprising Plutarch himself explains why the

grouping is an easy one (e.g. it was natural that someone of Marcellus’ period, education, and tastes should become πoλεμικός,
σώϕρων, and ϕιλάνθρωπος (‘warlike’, ‘restrained’, and ‘kind to his fellow-men’, Marc. 1.2) ).
75
This formulation may help to explain why Cato’s Stoicism is allowed more explanatory force than most heroes’ education or

philosophy: that point was noted in Pelling 1989, 229–30, and explained in Swain 1990b, 197–201. Stoicism more distinctively

explains Cato’s lack of concern for conventional opinion, and that is important in relating the scruffiness, for instance, to the high

principle.

76
See pp. 288–91 (Aratus) and 292–7 (Lysander).

77
Cf. esp. Rutherford 1986. The same goes for Tacitus’ Licinius Mucianus (Hist. 1.10) and Horace’s Tigellius (Sat. 1.3.1–19), pace

Rudd 1976, 161–2. Such ancient figures are, in Aristotelian terms, ‘consistently inconsistent’ (Poet. 1454a27–8) – and much more

predictably inconsistent than modern counterparts. Mucianus’ inconsistency, influenced as it is by Sallust’s Sulla and Catiline (BJ 95, BC

5), is indeed stereotyped rather than singular (cf. Griffin 1977, 21–2 = 1985, 39–40). Plutarch’s Sulla too has something in common

with this type; so does Livy’s Antiochus Epiphanes (41.20). Cf. now Frazier 1996, 86–9, Gribble 1999, 265–70, 274–5, and Duff 1999,

227–31: Duff accepts that Plutarch’s Alcibiades is ‘integrated’ around this trait of inconsistency (227 n. 67 and 240, cf. Gribble 265,

268).

78
Notice for instance how Plutarch treats Caesar’s physical appearance and sickness, including his epilepsy, in Caes. 17.1–3: ‘…he never

made his physical weakness an excuse for slacking, preferring to use campaigning as a way to strengthen his physique: his way of fighting

against his illness and keeping his body fit was a prescription of long marches, simple diet, nights in the open air, and constant hard

work…’ So even a feature which does not seem to fit, his physical weakness, is made to play a part in the picture of his formidable

generalship: the frailty illustrates the drive with which he fought against it. Contrast Suet. Div. Iul. 45.1, who treats the physical

appearance and the epilepsy as self-standing points, without the same concern to ‘integrate’ them tightly with his other traits. For other

examples in Suetonius’ Claudius (33.2, 35, and 39) cf. Pelling 1997d, 125 and n. 34, where I illustrate the point by a contrast with

Cassius Dio.

79
For most interesting treatments of ancient and modern assumptions, cf. Dihle 1956, 76–81, which I discuss at pp. 283–8, and

Halliwell 1986, 149–52.

80
Letter of 28 Dec. 1917: Woolf and Strachey 1956, 68.

81
The integration does not even invariably aid the moralism. One of his ethical interests is the demonstration that human nature is very

varied, and can produce people like this (cf. esp. Cim. 2.5; Ag.–Cl. 37(16).8), an insight which should encourage rather than impede an

interest in idiosyncrasy.

82
Shakespeare’s characters strike us as more individualized than their ancient counterparts (e.g. Gould 1978, 46–8); but Dr Johnson

praised them differently: ‘In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual: in Shakespeare it is commonly a species’

(Preface to his 1765 edn. = Wimsatt 1960, 59). Johnson’s tastes were those of his day. Cf. Bradbrook 1935, 50–4.

83
Cf. ch. 13, esp. p. 287. The nearest ancient parallel to a modern ‘complex personality’ is perhaps afforded by divine ‘personalities’.

Gods do often combine a multiplicity of traits or associations which do not group naturally, most clearly Apollo and Hermes, and

arguably Artemis: that, doubtless, partly springs from the amalgamation of the associations of discrete local cults (see e.g. Sourvinou-

Inwood 1978). The treatment of childhood is consequently more varied: the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, for instance, does introduce

that range of different qualities, all pointed by anecdotes about the god’s first days – not merely the inventiveness (making the lyre), the

mischief-making (the stealing of Apollo’s cattle, both on his first day alive), and the charm he exercises on both Zeus and Apollo himself,

all qualities which could be held to be neighbouring, but also the flair for beguiling song, which seems less naturally related. This

contrast of divine and human raises interesting points: for instance, an unusually singular combination of human traits is presented by

Achilles in the Iliad, and one wonders about the relevance of his divine parentage. But that cannot be pursued here.

84
Mrs Rosalind Nash, in a most entertaining article (Nash 1928; cf. Sanders 1957, 203). For other criticisms of the passage, see Holroyd

1968, 287–8.

85
Strachey 1924, 16–17.

86
Strachey 1928, 20.

87
Ludwig 1927, 29.

88
Williams 1979. I also exploit this passage in ch. 6, p. 157.
89
Especially Gill 1983, 1986, and 1990. I discussed the issues raised by the distinction briefly in Pelling 1989, 230–2, and borrow some

material from that discussion here.

90
Esp. Marc. 28, cf. Pel. 2 and Marc. 33(3).6–8: more on this in Pelling 1989, 199–208, esp. 205–7.

91
As I grumpily suggested in Pelling 1989, 231.

92
This emerges from many of the papers in Brooks and Gewirtz 1996, e.g. Minow 1996, 31–2, on ‘one-downmanship’ (the I’m-a-

worse-victim-than-you-are syndrome), Ferguson 1996, 86–8, on the ‘ethos of victimization’, and Gewirtz 1996, 142. See also Sykes

1992.

93
That is, in Gorgias’ Helen, in the debate of Helen and Hecuba in Euripides’ Trojan Women 860–1059, in Antiphon’s Tetralogies, in

Thucydides’ Plataean debate (and arguably in the presentation of the origins of the war in Book 1), and in Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 3. 1110b9

ff., 1111a21 ff. and elsewhere. I explore this further in Pelling 2000, 71–2, 94–5, and 100–1.

94
Rather unexpectedly, the phrase originates with the not specially illiberal John Major, commenting in 1993 on juvenile crime after the

atrocious murder of a toddler.

95
Gill sets out and explains his categories in his introduction, 1996, 1–18. Among the crucial examples he then explores are those of

Achilles in Iliad 9 (pp. 124–54, 190–204), Jason in Euripides’ Medea (pp 154–74, 216–26) and Ajax in Sophocles’ Ajax (pp. 204–16).

96
In particular, Waterfield 1997, Blundell 1998, and Cairns 1998. One point which Cairns especially probes is the analogies Gill sees

between his epic and dramatic examples, which are taken as ‘second-order’ reflections on shared ethical norms in extreme situations, and

philosophical discussions which build on and also challenge and revise those norms. That clearly has application to my discussion of

Plutarch’s moralism in ch. 10, and is a recurrent interest in the more elaborate treatment of Duff 1999: does Plutarch challenge accepted

norms as well as exploring their application to crucial issues? The question is a good one, but less relevant to the concerns of this present

chapter, and I do not address it here.

97
This is a major theme of Frazier 1996, esp. her Part II (95–170), stressing that Plutarch presents and evaluates his heroes against ‘le

devoir absolu d’agir au service de la cité’ (169). She goes on to trace the impact of this on Plutarch’s scheme of virtues, e.g the

interpretation of dikaiosune (‘justice’) and sophrosune (‘prudence’ or ‘practical sense’) as ‘social virtues’, 189–5, or the retexturing of

andreia (‘bravery’ or ‘manliness’) as courage deployed in the city’s interest rather than blind heroism, 180–9. In an earlier article (Frazier

1987) she brought out how frequently comparison centres on parallels in the political circumstances that the two men had to face: so

also van der Valk 1982.

98
Frazier 1992.

99
Close to, because On Moral Virtue too has a picture of internal contestation, as reason interacts with emotion. In a well-ordered soul

the passionate, emotional side will itself be habituated in Aristotelian fashion (pp. 284–5) into reasonable responses: this is analogous to

‘the unforced cohesion of the parts’ rather than ‘the conscious control of one part (or set of parts) by another’ which Gill argues for Plato

(1996, ch. 4, esp. 245–60: quotation from 245), and his argument that Euripides’ Medea faces a clash of rationalities rather than a

conflict of passion and reason (216–26). Not identical, because Plutarch argues elaborately against a single unified psyche and an

assimilation of emotion to logos (446f–9a): among his targets there is Chrysippus, whose analysis of Euripides’ Medea along these lines is

championed by Gill (1996, 226–39). At 441e–2c Plutarch also seems to take Plato as arguing for a more straightforward control of

emotion by reason than Gill would think, and differentiates him more sharply from Aristotle.

100
e.g. Advice on Public Life 813d, Tranquillity of Mind 471c, How to Listen to the Poets 16e, Talkativeness 514e–f, Keeping One’s Health

122e, Control of Anger 463d–f, Progress in Virtue 77f–78a (Diogenes) and 85a–b, Against Colotes 1119a–b, and even The Intelligence of

Animals 969a–b (dogs too ponder like that). Plutarch need not have envisaged real decisions as consciously reached in so stylized a way;

this can be seen as a mannered counterpart of the deliberative process – but, if it is an equivalent, it is still a telling equivalent. Cf. Gill

on Plato and others, 1996, 252–3.

101
Cf. Cic. 3.3, 3.6–7, 4.3, 4.4, 32.5–7, 36.7–9, 40–1.

102
Cic. 37.3, exploiting at least Cic. Att. 8.7(155).2 and perhaps some other letters as well, e.g. Fam. 7.3(183).1–3, Att. 7.3(126).5,

7.12(135).3, 7.13(136).1–2: for this issue and for Plutarch’s simplifications, cf. Pelling 1989, 219 and n. 28 and Moles 1988, 186 ad

loc. (‘eloquent simplification’). There is no need to doubt that Plutarch knew the letter(s) at first hand: cf. pp. 16, 21 and 42 n. 140.

103
Below, pp. 388 and 407 n. 5.

104
Brenk 1987b, 324–7: ‘Caesar’s role is primarily the psychological conquest of his own restraints and fears, set in the gloomy

framework of irrationality overcoming cautious prudence and respect for law’ … ‘Plutarch’s Aeschylean Caesar’. Frederick Brenk kindly

confirms to me that he was thinking especially of a parallel with Agamemnon at Aulis, a theme he had developed in an earlier

unpublished paper.

105
No passage in Greek literature is more disputed, and this is hardly the place to enter the fray. But the parallel with Eteocles in Seven

Against Thebes seems to me the telling one, where the chorus similarly find disquieting Eteocles’ acquiescent reaction at 686–719: other

factors may be making the course of action inevitable, but Eteocles still makes the choice his own. Gill 1990, 22–9, here has some very

good remarks.

106
I discuss that passage at p. 257.

107
That is particularly remarkable because we do find something of ‘fame for the future’ in the paired Life Alexander, especially at 14.9

(above, p. 257).

108
There may well be another sort of uncertainty here, the uncertainty of reader or narratee as to how to interpret ‘the unspeakable

dream’. Is that a dream which is causing Caesar’s hesitation, one sent supernaturally from outside to mark the monstrosity of his action?

Or is it caused by the hesitation, internally generated by his own uneasy conscience? We cannot know, any more than Caesar himself

could know. I discuss this at Pelling 1997b, 200–1.

It takes us some way from Gill, but it is interesting to compare Marshall 2000, 78–80, who contrasts Plutarch’s Rubicon scene with

Shakespeare’s modes of depicting internal conflict. She acknowledges a degree of internal debate in Plutarch’s scene, but adds that

‘[v]irtually no emphasis is given to Caesar’s own realization of the moment’s importance. What matters are his words, how the moment

was publicly communicated. Lucan [at 1.183 ff.] comes closer to granting Caesar an interior consciousness…’ That seems to me an

overstatement, but it does bring out how the internal debate could have been deeper. In treating Plutarch’s dream she then enters into a

world which is eloquently different: ‘The dream offers a trace of female presence, located with Caesar’s consciousness and experienced as
internal otherness. Thus the drama produces the sense of interior space while simultaneously attesting to the potency of the largely

repressed female portion of Caesar’s identity. Figuring the representative of his mother within the consciousness of Caesar creates the

impression of psychological complexity: “Rome” within is simultaneously “room” within (pronounced the same in early modern

England). The episode illustrates how Plutarch, in the translated version Shakespeare consulted, used gender difference to create the

sense of an other within the self.’ I express no view on whether Shakespeare might have read Plutarch like this; but if he did, it was not a

reading which is true to Plutarch’s text – certainly not to the Life as a whole, nor really to this scene. Plutarch had the resources to create

something like this picture, though scarcely with all the Lacanian refinements: it is not crass to read Coriolanus in a similar way. But

Caesar does not develop either the notion of psychic conflict or an interest in gender in a sufficiently sustained way to make such a

reading plausible. The absence of the feminine from Caesar (p. 260) is not an absent presence, it is just an absence.

109
See p. 111 n. 27.

110
B. Williams 1993.

111
For this notion of ‘characterful action’ cf. Halliwell 1986, ch. 5. esp. 151.

112
Cairns 1982, esp. 204. Cairns explains Cleon’s echoes of Pericles (Thucydides 3.37.2, 40.4) in terms of allusion to Thersites and

Achilles. I am uncertain about that, but the ethical assumptions we are here discussing are anyway relevant.

113
Pelling 1990, 256–7.
 15

RHETORIC, PAIDEIA, AND PSYCHOLOGY

IN PLUTARCH’S LIVES

Friedrich Leo listed six categories often found in a Life’s opening chapters: family,

appearance, character, way of life, education, and style of speech (γἐνος,

1
It is with the relation of these last two

categories, paideia and logos, that I am here concerned.

It goes without saying that both categories are extremely important to Plutarch,

and not confined to opening chapters. As a child of Greek rhetorical culture, he could

not fail to be sensitive to logos : he frequently stresses the important of rhetoric as a

tool for politics ( ὅργανον is the favourite word). 2

His interest in education, especially

Greek education, is equally clear, as we have seen in the last two chapters: recent work,

especially by Simon Swain, has brought out how central the notion of paideia is to

many of the Lives, especially the Roman Lives, and in particular how the presence or

absence of Greek paideia tends to condition the range of ethical questions which
3
Plutarch asks about his subjects. It is clear, too, that paideia and logos belong closely

together. Plutarch can show interest in the rhetorical teachers of prominent political
4
figures (both Caesar and Cicero studied with Apollonius Molon ); and it is

unsurprising that the two categories should so often be treated in close connection
5
with one another.

The precise way in which the two categories connect remains striking. We might

have expected a man’s rhetorical style, or his degree of rhetorical skill and success, to

be represented as a consequence of his particular teachers: for logos, in other words, to

be explored as a product of paideia. And that is what we find – with the most extreme

and famous cases, Demosthenes and Cicero. Demosthenes is mesmerized by the

brilliance of his teacher Callistratus into dedicating himself to the pursuit of rhetorical

glory (Dem. 5.4–7, with added speculation on what he learnt from Isaeus, Isocrates,

and even Plato); and Cicero tours Asia and Rhodes to learn his rhetorical trade from

the greatest masters before plunging back into Roman politics (Cic. 4). Here, then,

paideia is what generates logos, both in fostering a particular rhetorical style and in

lending an individual the rhetorical virtuosity which will enable him to become pre-
6
eminent in politics.

Yet these are, indeed, the most extreme cases. Elsewhere we find rhetorical style
7
treated more as if it springs directly from a person’s nature. That, of course, is what

makes it such a telling part of the biographer’s repertoire: style is a prism for viewing

the man himself.

Fabius’ style fitted his life perfectly. There was no affectation in it, no empty, populist

showiness; but there was intellect, showing a distinctive and extreme form and depth

in its formulation of epigrams, very much (they say) in the style of Thucydides.

(Fab. 1.7–8)

Cato’s style did not strive for novelty or cleverness: it was correct, intense, and rough.

Yet still this roughness of thought was overlaid with a certain charm which played on

the listener’s ear, and the admixture of the man’s distinctive character added to the

dignity a pleasure and humour which had its own human attractiveness.
 (CatoMin. 5.3)

Antony spoke in the so-called Asianic style, which at that time was in vogue: there

were many similarities between the style and the man himself, boastful,

whinnying,full of empty prancing and uneven pretension.

(Ant. 2.8)

Of course, such a presentation need not preclude the importance of paideia as

well: we could always say that an individual selected the teachers which suited his

temperament, or drew from the tuition what he found congenial. But we would be the

ones saying this: Plutarch does not say it himself, but leaves the impression that the

relation between style and character is a simple and direct one.

There is, however, a further and subtler way in which paideia and logos interact.

For Plutarch, one distinctive contribution of Greek paideia is the way it teaches

control of the passions; a second, the way it builds a sympathetic interest in and

understanding of other people, and a consequent ease and sensitivity in personal

interaction. This is where Coriolanus and Marius fell down:

The same man (Coriolanus) bore witness to the truth of the view that a naturally

generous and noble disposition, if it lacks education (paideia), will produce many evil

fruits along with the good, in the same way as naturally good soil which is not tilled.

Coriolanus’ energy and strength of mind constantly led him to attempt ambitious

exploits, the results of which were good for Rome; but these qualities were combined

with violent rages and uncompromising strokes of self-assertion, which made it

difficult for him to combine with others… Of all the blessings which humans enjoy

through the favour of the Muses, there is none so great as the process of taming and

humanizing the natural instincts through education and study (ύπò λόγου καί

παιδείας), so that by submitting to reason we acquire balance and avoid excess.

(Cor. 1.3–5).

Marius is said never to have studied Greek literature, or to have used the Greek

language for anything serious, saying that it was absurd to learn a language whose

teachers were other men’s slaves. Plato would often say to the philosopher Xenocrates,

who had the reputation of being too surly and uncouth, ‘My dear Xenocrates, do

please sacrifice to the Graces’; and in the same way, if Marius had been persuaded to

sacrifice to the Greek Muses and Graces, he would not have brought his career, with

its glorious commands and political achievements, to so ugly a conclusion, cast

aground by rage and by untimely ambition on the shores of a most savage and brutal

old age.

(Mar. 2.2–4)

Thus too Philopoemen spent more of his energy and ambition on military

education than he needed, closing his mind to all philosophical and literary paideia

other than military manuals; and this lack of education is subtly related to the

distinctive ‘contentiousness’, philonikia, which so often compromised his political

8
style. As we saw in ch. 14 (pp. 309, 312–13) Marcellus offers another case of a man

whose education was affected by the Roman preoccupations of the day: in his case, the

long sequence of wars which denied him the leisure to indulge his natural taste for

Greek culture and literature (Marc. 1.3–5). In his case, too, it is arguable that cultural

deficiency can be linked to behaviour later in the Life, in particular the man’s
9
impetuosity and lack of self-control. Coriolanus, Marius, Philopoemen, Marcellus: it

does indeed seem as if soldiers are, for Plutarch, particularly prone to such educational
10
onesidedness. Such ‘contentiousness’, such infectious passion, such roughness in
personal interactions are just the thing for the barracks or the battlefield, but they

tend to leave a man out of his depth when it comes to the subtler relationships of

personal and political life.

Rhetoric too requires a sensitive understanding of other people: in this case,

understanding of an audience’s psychology. That point is formulated most powerfully

by Aristotle in the Rhetoric, but it goes back much earlier: regretted by Plato, for it
11
leaves the orator no better than a confectioner or beautician; exploited by

Thucydides, whose Nicias knows that his cautious rhetoric cannot compete against

the enterprising vitality of the Athenian national character (‘my words may well be no

match for your natural tendencies’, 6.9.3) whereas his Alcibiades knows so well how to

tickle the Athenian tummy; and implicit already in Homer, whose Odysseus is so

adept at finding the right thing to say for a particular listener.

In Plutarch too it is unsurprising that the personal insensitivities of the

undereducated are mirrored in their rhetorical performance. They fail to find the right

things to say because they fail to control their emotions and fail to understand their

audience, whether we think of Coriolanus’ tactless harangues or Marius’ brash

vauntings as he introduced his military reforms, those

speeches brimful of arrogant overconfidence and hybris which infuriated the leading

citizens…it was not a matter of shallow, unthinking braggadocio; …it was rather that

the demos, in its pleasure at the senate’s humiliation and its perpetual habit of

measuring a man’s spirit by his verbal boastfulness, was carrying him away and urging

him on to be relentless in attacking the elite as he played to the mob.

(Mar. 9.3–4).

In warfare, Marius can be relied upon to say the right thing, and has a gift for
12
establishing rapport with his listeners. But this is not the last time in the Life when

Marius’ peacetime logos – or once or twice his absence of logos, his aggressive and

contumacious silences – mark a failure to check his passions, particularly his disastrous
13
taste for popular goodwill; nor is it the last time when we see his logos misfiring in

politics, generating the wrong response because he has failed to read his audience
14
aright. Failure to control the passions, failure to react sensitively to others – these are

the classic symptoms of a deficient paideia; and logos, even though (as we saw) it is not

figured as springing directly from that paideia, proves a valuable touchstone for

exploring a man’s educational strengths and frailties.

The ways in which rhetoric depends on audience rapport can have interesting

variations, and the rest of this chapter will examine one of the most complex cases, the

pair Coriolanus–Alcibiades. Both men have rhetorical skills, but in each case the

rhetorical effectiveness is suggestively intermittent. Coriolanus, like Marius, can

produce the right rhetoric on the battlefield: at Corioli he not only finds the right

encouragement for his troops (8.5, 9.1–2), he also accepts their plaudits with dignity

and aplomb (10). Such rhetoric does not need to be subtle. On the battlefield
15
Coriolanus vented his indignation in loud ‘shouts’ (8.3, 8.5, 9.1), which certainly

touch the spot with his men: Plutarch has just noted, rather intrusively, the demand of

the elder Cato that the good soldier should ‘be fearful and irresistible to his foe not

just with his hand and his blows, but also with the tone of his voice and the sight of his

face’. Those men duly respond in kind, acclaiming their hero with ‘shouting and

tumult’ βοὴ καὶ θορυβος,

( 11.1, cf. 9.5, 10.6). But this shouting also offers a

precursor of the political struggles which lie ahead. Cato’s language is echoed

particularly closely in the trial-scene at 18.3, when Coriolanus refused to display any

humility, but instead ‘showed in the tone of his voice and in the expression of his face a
fearlessness which bordered upon contempt and arrogance’. The same tones are by

then catastrophic. Even the register in which Coriolanus couched his martial

encouragement at Corioli has hinted at the trouble which looms. When the danger

was first approaching, he called on his aristocratic peers ‘not to fall short of the

commons in fighting for the fatherland, but to show that they were their superiors in
16
virtue rather than in power’ (7.4); Plutarch has developed this battlecry into an

assertion – a potentially divisive assertion – of natural superiority.

It is not surprising that such rhetoric does not transpose well from the battlefield

to the forum, when Coriolanus has to deal with a different sort of ‘shout’: this time,

the shouts (13.1, 17.3) of the demagogues, whose manipulative and boisterous
17
handling of the commons he is ill-equipped to handle. But this is not because he is

simply rhetorically deficient. On the contrary, Plutarch underlines that he was ‘one of

the most skilled and powerful speakers’ ( ήν

39.6), and gives us an unusually extended example of that rhetoric in direct speech

(16.5–7): this is particularly striking because Plutarch portrays a Rome which at this
18
stage knew nothing of Greek education – itself an indication of how separately he

tends to treat paideia and logos. That rhetorical skill may seem to leave it paradoxical

that he is so much at a loss at his trial, so readily outmanoeuvred by the devious

tribunes (20); but the paradox is only an apparent one.

For he had not expected this [the tribunes’ change of tack], nor did he have any ready

fund of persuasive extempore argument to put to the demos: in fact, when hepraised

those who had campaigned with him he was shouted down by the greaternumber who

had not been part of those campaigns.

(20.6)

Coriolanus’ rhetoric is deficient precisely because it is only a matter of technique, the

formal set speech: he cannot improvise because he has no natural understanding of the

techniques his opponents are likely to employ, and the arguments his audience want

to hear. Early in the Life Plutarch had elaborated the homely speech of Menenius

Agrippa, whose comparison of the state to the human body was a palmary example of

how to speak the language his audience could understand (6.3–5). When Shakespeare

borrows the same foiling technique (Coriolanus I.i.50–161), he couches Menenius’

speech in conversational banter, question and answer with a responsive crowd –

‘extempore rhetoric’, indeed. As so often, Shakespeare is taking further a contrast

which is already implicit in Plutarch’s own text, in this case the contrast between the

rhetoric which understands its audience and responds to it and the rhetoric which
19
does not.

Alcibiades’ rhetorical manner is equally striking. Plutarch again emphasizes that he

was a good speaker δυνατός…εἰπει̑ν,

( 10.4), and can there quote the most

unimpeachable authority, Demosthenes himself. But what Plutarch goes on to say

about his rhetoric seems most surprising:

If we believe Theophrastus – a connoisseur of speech and unsurpassed among

philosophers for his knowledge of history – Alcibiades was unmatched for his skill in

identifying what needed to be said; but he was not fluent when it came to finding not

merely what to say but the language in which to say it. He often stumbled in mid-

speech, and fell silent, and left pauses when he could not find the words, thenpicked

himself up again very carefully.

(Alc. 10.3–4)
That scarcely sounds like the model orator; and yet we are left with no doubt of his

rhetorical impact on the Athenian demos, not least in persuading them into the

Sicilian expedition. He gets away with it because of his natural rapport with the

audience: he so perfectly mirrors their own nature, that vitality, that flair, that
20
enterprise, that charisma. During his first public speech he allowed a quail to escape

from his cloak, and the Athenian public rushed around, helping him to find it (10.1–

2). These are people who get on. They naturally find his stumbling style an engaging

idiosyncrasy, not an irritating tic.

Yet his interaction with the demos is sufficiently complex that at other times

Alcibiades seems to say exactly the right things, and they have no effect at all: his plea

to the Athenians to try him before he leaves for Sicily, when he accurately detects the

‘malice’ ( κακοήθεια) of his opponents (19.5–7); his letter advising them to beware of
Phrynichus, which they wrongly assume is a case of a personal vendetta (25.13); his

order to avoid engagement which Antiochus disastrously ignores (35.6–8), yet

Alcibiades still takes the blame. Thrasybulus then accuses him of

…luxuriating away his office and entrusting command to his cronies, men who owed

their influence to being his close drinking friends and his partners in sailor gossip, so

that he could make money sailing around, debauching away, getting drunk, frolicking

with the Abydan and Ionian courtesans, with the enemy anchoredjust a little way

away.

(36.2)

The charge is false: Plutarch’s own narrative has made that clear. But the truth did not
21
matter, Alcibiades’ reputation did. ‘The Athenians believed it’ (36.4). ‘If any man

was ever destroyed by his own reputation, that man, it seems, was Alcibiades’ (35.2),

and we can see how it happened. It was precisely the charismatic and outrageous

aspects of his character which initially created the rapport with the Athenians: now it

is the same aspects which ensure that his logos will not be believed, that the Athenians

will think his words spring from personal antagonisms, ambitions, or vices. With

Alcibiades as with Coriolanus, the rhetorical relations play a part in the wider picture

of the men’s shifting relationships with their states: and Alcibiades, incomparably

more sensitive and insightful and educated than Coriolanus, can ultimately manage
22
his audience no more successfully.

Let us end by returning to Coriolanus. Is it fanciful to think that this contrast

between prepared and extempore rhetoric has a Platonic ring? One thinks especially of

the Phaedrus, with its suspicions of the fixed text and its preference for a dialectical

exchange which can avoid predetermined positions, adapt to the shifting requirements

of the discussion, and be sensitive to each new interlocutor. What makes the

suggestion less fanciful is the fact that Plato is already in the air by that point of
23
Coriolanus A few chapters earlier we have heard that:

Coriolanus had always given free rein to the spirited and contentious part of his soul

as if there

were some inherent grandeur and greatness of will in those qualities, and he had never

allowed the characteristics of gravity and tolerance ( ò τ δ’ ἐμβριθὲς καὶ πρᾳ̑ον) – so

central to political life – to be textured by discourse and education ( ὑπò λόγου καὶ
παιδείας). He never understood that a man who aspires to play a part in public life

must avoid at all costs that stubbornness which, in Plato’s phrase, is the natural

companion of solitude, but rather must mingle with other people, and even come to

love the capacity to accept injury, so derided by some. Coriolanus on the other hand

was always a simple fellow and obstinate, and he thought victory and domination over
everyone and in every circumstance

was a mark of courage, not of the

weakness and softness which generate rage ( ò τ ν θυμòν) like an abscess springing from
the wounded and suffering part of the soul…

(15.4–5)

This brings us back to that stress on education: as we saw in the first chapter, it is

logos and paideia which might have given the right texture of gravity and toleration.

Instead Coriolanus gives free rein to ‘the spirited and contentious part of the soul’,

again picking up that introductory statement at 1.4 when we heard of Coriolanus’

‘violent rages and uncompromising strokes of self-assertion’

In this present passage both θυμοειδές (‘spirited’) and ϕιλόνικον (‘contentious’)

are suggestive words. It is unclear whether Plutarch’s audience would have taken the

etymology of ϕιλόνικον to be ‘love of quarrels’ ( νείκη) or ‘love of victory’ ( νίκη):

24
probably they felt both associations, and both associations are relevant here. The

‘love of victory’ is what one wants in a soldier, but once again we see how that can be

disastrous in politics, as it topples over into that desire for ‘victory and domination

over everyone and in every circumstance’; and this is precisely because of the ‘quarrels’,

νείκη, which such contentiousness inspires. We noticed earlier that it was particularly
the military men who found such quarrelsomeness a difficulty in politics: now we can

better understand why.

It is the other term of the pairing, that ‘spirited’ ( θυμοειδές) part of the soul,

which is more distinctively Platonic, and raises the analysis to a new psychological

level. The language recalls the ‘parts of the soul’ so important in the Republic; the

explicit Platonic allusion to ‘stubbornness, the companion of solitude’ helps us to pin

the hint down. In the Republic this ‘spiritedness’ ( ò τ θυμοειδές) is a quality essential

to the state (e.g. 376), but it is associated distinctively with courage and warfare: it is

this which makes a person brave ( ἀνδρει̑ος, 375a, 410d, 442b) – but it also makes a

person hard to live with in everyday life, and one needs to have an injection of

‘gentleness’ ( πραὀτης, 375b–c, cf. Laws 731b). This part of the soul is therefore

particularly in need of careful education (401b–12a, 441e–2a). When the Republic

fully develops its tripartite picture of the soul, we come to see that ‘spiritedness’ is

associated particularly with the middle class, that of the ‘helpers’, whose function in

the state is that of warfare (440d–1a, 441e–2c). Thus the Platonic vocabulary

reinforces the suggestions of ‘contentiousness’, τò ϕιλόνικον, which is later closely

linked with such ‘spiritedness’ (548c, 550b, 581a–b, 596c). These are indeed the

characteristics that mark out the soldier, and they are exactly the qualities which

rendered Coriolanus so great and so useful to the state – yet now also so menacing and

so destructive.

So a complex picture has here been built of Coriolanus’ strengths and weaknesses,

which – as so often in Plutarch – turn out to have a very close relationship to one

another. Platonic psychological categories enable us to understand his failure to

understand others. It does not follow that the man was psychologically beyond saving:

a good education would have ensured that those hard, tough qualities were properly

exercised and tempered. And Coriolanus’ rhetoric turns out to be closely integrated

with the rest of the portrayal. For all his natural rhetorical skill, his failure to

extemporize marks a falling short in another Platonic category, and further reflects the

crucial lack of adaptability which the rest of the Platonic analysis has exposed. So

logos, paideia, and psychology are indeed closely linked. The lack of rhetorical
adaptability exposes Coriolanus’ educational failings, but not in the crude sense that

education would have set him the right sort of extemporizing exercises. Education

would have moulded his own psychology in such a way as to understand the

psychology of others, a gift without which no speaker, then or now, can hope to

succeed.

Notes

1
Leo 1901, 180–2. On γένος see Pérez Jiménez, forthcoming.
2
e.g. Advice on Public Life 801c–2e, A Philosopher should Particularly Converse with Princes 777b; Fab. 1.7, Cato

Min. 4.3, Cic. 32.6, Crass. 3.3, Cato Mai. 1.5, Ant. 27.4.

3
Cf. esp. Swain 1990a, 1990b, 1992a, and 1996, 139–45; see also above, pp. 313, 321–2 and 333 n. 66, and

Pelling 1989.

4
Caes. 3.1, Cic. 4.5. But it is true that rhetorical teachers are treated more rarely than their philosophical

counterparts

5
e.g. Luc. 1.2–7, Crass. 3.3–8, Brut. 2.1–8, Cato Min. 4–5, Aem. 2.5–6, and Dem. 5.4–5.

6
A further case might be Caesar, if the argument of p. 93 is accepted about the reordering of material in Caes. 1–

3.

7
Wardman 1974, 222–34, collects and discusses examples.

8
Cf. esp. Phil. 3–4; I also discussed this in Pelling 1989, 208–9, and more fully in Pelling 1997a, 125–35. See

also Walsh 1992, 208–33.

9
I discussed this in Pelling 1989, 199–208; see also Swain 1990a, 131–2, 140–2 =Scardigli 1995, 239–40, 254–

9.

10
More on this in Pelling 1996, xxvi–xxix. Compare the emphasis at Galba 1 on thedangerous and reckless

irrationality of ordinary soldiers when they are out of control: inthat Life too he exploits Platonic allusion to

make the point (Ash 1997, 191–6).

11
Gorgias 464b–6a.

12
Cf. esp. Mar. 16–17.1, 20.7–10, 24.1–2, 36.7–9: note that this paraded childhoodomen carried conviction

among those who heard it: ‘they believed it’ ( πιστεύσαντας,36.9).

13
Cf. esp. Mar. 28.3–6, 29.6–7, 30.2–5, 43.2–4, 44.8, 45.8–9, 45.12.

14
Cf. Mar. 30.6, 34.7, 43.3.

15
There is considerable improvement here on his source Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who has nothing of all this

‘shouting’ (AR 6.92–3): see also pp. 391–2.

16
Again there is nothing of this in Dionysius.

17
More on this at pp. 391–2.

18
Swain 1990a, esp. 136–7 = Scardigli 1995, 247–9, on Coriolanus and his rhetoric and education: cf. also his

132 n. 52 = Scardigli 1995, 240 n. 52 on other Romans whowere good speakers before the time when Plutarch

thought Greek education reachedRome.

19
Below, pp. 388–91.

20
Above, pp. 125–8.

21
οἱ δὲ ’A θηναι̑οι πεισθέντες (36.4), in its brevity and bleakness as effective as Thucydides’ ‘they were

persuaded’ ( οί δὲ πεισθέντες) at 1.135.3. There, as here, a great man is overthrown in a moment of popular

credulity. I say more about Plutarch’s picture of Alcibiades’ fall in Pelling 2000, 52–8; cf. also Duff 1999, 237–9,

Gribble 1999, 281–2.

22
So this is a sort of answer to the question put by Frazier 1987, 74: ‘Quel point commun trouver.. .entre

l’Athénien raffiné, disciple de Socrate, habile flatteur et redoutable opportuniste, et le rude Romain sans

éducation, emporté et inflexible?’ Frazier too finds an explanation more in the actions of the two men and in the

political circumstances they had to face than in their characters.

23
We also go on to have a considerable use of Plato in the paired Life Alcibiades, particularly but not only when

Alcibiades’ relations with Socrates are in point: Russell 1966, 40–1 = Scardigli 1995, 196–8, and 1973, 127;
Pelling 1996, xlvii–xlix; Gribble 1999, 270–6; and now esp. Duff 1999, 206–14 on the use of Platonic

categories in treating Coriolanus and his anger, and 216–18, 224–7 on the Platonic allusions in Alcibiades.

24
νει̑κος and νίκη are found before Plutarch’s day: cf. e.g.for -νικ-, Gorg. Helen 4, Plato
At least, plays with both

Phileb. 14b6–7, Rpb. 9.581a10–b2, 582e4–6, 586c9–d1,Arist. Rhet. 1363b1, 1368b21 ( ὁ δὲ ϕιλόνικος διὰ
νίκην…), 1370b32–3, 1389a12–13;for -νεικ-, Dion. Hal. AR 2.75.3, LXX Prov. 10.12, Ezek. 3.7–8. The
manuscripts of Plutarch, as of other authors, tend to spell the word indifferently ϕιλονίκ- and ϕιλονεικ-(Ziegler

1969, xix, claims that ϕιλονικία is the more usual form, but his apparatusentries sometimes suggest differently,

e.g. on Alex. 52.9). Some of Plutarch’s own languagesuggests that the -νικ- connotations were more strongly felt,

such as his references to τò ϕιλόνικον καί ϕιλόπρωτον in Alcibiades’ character (Alc. 2.1, cf. Tranquillity of Mind

471d, Advice on Public Life 811d, On Herodotus’ Malice 856a) and the link withπρωτεύειν at Ages. 2.2), or

ϕιλονικει̑… νίκη…νίκη at Fab. 10.7 (cf. Marc. 31(1).11,Advice on Public Life 811d, Intelligence of Animals
971a) or the combination with ἀήττητοςat Alex. 26.14, Alc. 30.7. Equally, the word frequently clusters with

words like ὀργή (as atCor. 21.6, Phil. 3.1, Flam. 22(1).4 and 7), θυμός or θυμοειδης (as in Cor. here at 15.4–

5and at 1.4), and ἔρις or δύσερις (as at Phil.. 17.7): that almost as strongly suggests a link with νει̑κος. It is

unlikely that we are dealing with two separate words here, for thetypical link with ϕιλότιμος occurs equally in

cases where the -νικ- (e.g. Ages. 2.2–3) andwhere the -νεικ- (as in the Philopoemen cases) would be more

appropriate. It is very likelythat both sets of association were simultaneously felt.

 16

SYNKRISIS IN PLUTARCH’S LIVES

Any scholars writing on this topic in 1950 would have known exactly what to do: they would have

concentrated on the so-called synkriseis (in the plural), the brief comparative epilogues which conclude

almost all the pairs, and would have discussed how central these were to Plutarch’s concerns; they might

even still have thought it necessary to defend them against attacks on their authenticity. We owe it to

Hartmut Erbse that discussion of synkrisis now focuses on wider and more interesting questions. In
1
1956 he made a strong case for regarding synkrisis as a basic part of Plutarch’s techniques: a Life’s

leading themes are often greatly influenced by its pair, both in the selection of material and in its

presentation and interpretation. Erbse’s own analysis of Demosthenes–Cicero illustrated this point very

clearly, and since then several scholars have taken Erbse’s hint, drawing interesting conclusions about
2
other pairs. In a subject as large as this it is indeed natural to concentrate on one or two pairs, and in

this chapter I will do the same. But, of course, one problem is that it is so difficult to generalize about

the Lives. Synkrisis is certainly vital to Plutarch’s technique in some pairs; yet it is not difficult to find

others where our understanding of one Life is not especially enhanced by its pair: works like Lysander–
3
Sulla, for instance, or Phocion–Cato Minor ; or Agesilaus–Pompey; or even Alexander– Caesar. In that

last pair something is made of the comparison – we do for instance have the young Caesar inspired by

reading about Alexander (Caes. 11.5–6), almost, as Syme puts it, as if he knew he would be matched
4
with Alexander in Plutarch’s parallel Lives 150 years later; then he immediately thrusts forward ‘to the

outer Ocean’, forcing his way to the bounds of the inhabited world in language redolent of Alexander

(12.1, cf. 22.6, 23.2); but surely the comparison is distinctly less emphasized than we might have

expected, given Alexander’s importance as a model for Roman statesmen, and the importance of the

theme of ‘monarchy’ in explaining Caesar’s fall.

In this chapter I shall concentrate on some pairs where comparison is clearly important, and I shall

try to draw attention to the varying ways in which Plutarch exploits synkrisis to deepen our

understanding. I shall also speculate a little on the reasons why in three pairs – Aemilius–Timoleon,

Sertorius–Eumenes, and Coriolanus–Alcibiades – Plutarch reverses his normal order, discussing the

Roman before the Greek. But I shall also suggest that the epilogues themselves are often distinctly less

impressive and illuminating than they are now sometimes thought to be, even in pairs where the basic
5
comparative technique is indeed important.

First, a pair where we should naturally expect comparison to be important, the only pair where Plutarch
6
discusses two contemporaries – Philopoemen and Flamininus. The continuity of themes through the

pair is perfectly clear. ‘Philopoemen’s faults arose through philonikia, Flamininus’ through philotimia ,

says Plutarch in the first chapter of the epilogue (Flam. 22(1).4), and he has done his best to

characterize the two figures with these two neighbouring traits. He introduces Philopoemen’s philonikia

strongly at Phil. 3.1 – and though he in fact has few opportunities to stress Philopoemen’s philonikia in
7
the narrative itself, which offers little real support for this leading characteristic, he at least does what he

can. For instance, at 17.7 Plutarch criticizes him for contentiousness, when he is so eager that he, rather
8
than Flamininus and the Romans, should be the one to restore the Spartan exiles. Yet that episode also

brings out how neighbouring the qualities of philonikia and philotimia are: it has so much in common

with various actions of Flamininus which Plutarch attributes to philotimia, in particular his anxiety to
9
retain his Greek command rather than allow any successor to step in and gain all the credit.

Yet for most of the Life Flamininus is devoting his philotimia to a more laudable end, freeing the

Greeks and then leading them to peace and harmony. It is interesting that Plutarch does not romanticize

this liberation in the manner of many writers; he brings out very clearly that such freedom was a matter

of political necessity for the Romans; and Flamininus’ motive is this desire for honour, not anything
10
more altruistic or sentimental. It is no coincidence that Plutarch then dwells on the honours,

including divine honours, which the Greeks paid him (and, incidentally, on his chagrin when the

Aetolians did not pay him enough, or when Philopoemen himself seemed to Flamininus to be winning
11
more than his fair share of the acclaim). He had always been philotimos, and these are the answering

timai.

The themes of freedom, and of Greece, are themselves further links between the two Lives.
12
Philopoemen fights for liberty (his series of wars against tyrants is particularly stressed), and is ‘the last
13
of the Greeks’, reviving Greece’s glory long after its time; but it is then Flamininus who gives the
Greeks their liberty, at that unforgettable scene at the Isthmian Games (Flam. 10–11). Plutarch, like

Polybius 18.44–6 (who is presumably his main source) and Livy 33.33.5–7, stops to recreate the

thoughts of those present at that great occasion: and the differences of emphasis among the three

authors are clear. Polybius and Livy concentrate on the Romans – their greatness of spirit, their

clemency, their altruism. Plutarch focuses more on Greece than on Rome:

They thought about Greece and all the wars it had fought for freedom; and now it had come almost

without blood and without grief through the championship of another people, this finest and most

enviable of prizes… Men like Agesilaus, Lysander, Nicias, and Alcibiades had been great warriors, but

had not known how to use their victories to noble and glorious ends; if one discounted Marathon,

Salamis,Plataea, and Thermopylae, and Cimon’s victories at the Eurymedon and in Cyprus, all Greece’s

wars had been fought internally for slavery, every trophy had been alsoa disaster and reproach for

Greece, which had generally been overthrown by its leaders’ evil ways and philonikia.

(11.3–6).

Then he turns, rather briefly, to the Romans, these foreigners who had finally brought Greece their

freedom, ‘liberating them from their harsh despots and tyrants’. That stress on philonikia is most
14
interesting, for that is of course the word for Philopoemen; and indeed that final phrase ‘liberating

them from harsh despots and tyrants’ in many ways suits the emphases of Philopoemen rather than

Flamininus (for Flamininus conspicuously failed to carry through the war against the Spartan tyrant

Nabis, 13.1–4). Plutarch will return to some of the themes of this chapter in the epilogue, where he will

stress that Philopoemen’s battles were themselves ‘against other Greeks’; ‘Philopoemen killed more

Greeks as general of the Achaeans than Flamininus killed Macedonians when fighting for Greece’ (Flam.

22(1).3), and so on. Plutarch is clearly developing a theme throughout the pair, stressing the

uncomfortable consequences for Greece of such contentiousness, even when it is found in so admirable

a man as Philopoe-men; its more healthy equivalent was Flamininus’ philotimia, at least when he
15
devoted it to winning the Greeks their freedom and their peace.

So far Plutarch’s own justification for his comparative technique, as he brings it out for instance at
16
Virtues of Women 243b–d, seems to work very well: even when two great men are similar, their

qualities may show significant variations, and dwelling on the differences can help us to understand

important aspects of those individuals more clearly. Here we can draw more interesting conclusions by

seeing how much difference the usually slight distinction between philotimia and philonikia really made.

And so far the moralism seems rather crude: philotimia and Flamininus seem much better and worthy of

imitation than philonikia and Philopoemen. But in the epilogue Plutarch himself does not state that

contrast in anything like so unqualified a fashion, and other aspects of his treatment of Flamininus
17
make one pause. It is characteristic of Plutarch, in his best work, to bring out how the same qualities

contribute both to a man’s greatness and to his flaws: for instance, the elder Cato’s antihellenism, his

attitude to wealth, his austerity, his lack of compromise; or Antony’s warmth, his spontaneity, his

soldierliness, and his fundamental simplicity. So it is here with Flamininus, and Plutarch shows us the

weakness as well as the strength of that philotimia.

That emerges most strongly in his final execution of Hannibal. Plutarch does give some space to the

justifications which might be given (21.7–13), but seems rather clearly to disapprove:

Flamininus’ natural philotimia won credit, as long as it had sufficient scope in the wars I have

described… But when he gave up his command he was criticized, as one who could not restrain his

intense lust for glory even when the rest of his life did not allow for action. In this way he became

hateful to most people because of his violence against Hannibal.

(20.1–3).

And Plutarch goes on to give an elaborate and vivid description of Hannibal’s death (20.4–11) –

surprisingly elaborate, as this seems to be in danger of unbalancing the Life (he has nothing at all to say

of Flamininus’ own death, for instance). Perhaps he is just making the most of whatever material he can

to fill out an unsatisfactory gap in his sources, who clearly had little to say of Flamininus’ old age; but

one suspects there is more to it than that. For the description of Hannibal’s death has some clear and

interesting parallels with the end of Philopoemen, where Plutarch gives a similarly lavish account of

Philopoemen’s own last days (18–21). Philopoemen, like Hannibal, seemed set for a peaceful old age;

but his character would not let him rest, and when already in his seventies and in poor health he set off

on a new campaign against the Messenians. He was captured, and kept prisoner in an underground cave

(19.4): just as Hannibal met his end in underground caves, again carefully described (Flam. 20.7–8).

Philopoemen, like Hannibal, was beset by a relentless and unforgiving personal foe; in both cases

Plutarch dwells on the last words, as the hero takes the fatal chalice; and in both cases the killers meet
with strong criticism from their own countrymen for such lack of magnanimity to a great adversary

(Phil. 21.1–2, Flam. 21.1–6).

It does not look as if these parallels can be coincidental. Once again, Plutarch is surely encouraging

us to compare Philopoemen and Flamininus in their leading characteristics, and trace the consequences:

and here the moral implications are rather different. Flamininus’ philotimia inflicts on another the sort

of final undignified humiliation which Philopoemen’s philonikia brings on himself. In both cases, it is a

sort of patriotism that drives them on, Philopoemen against the Messenians and Flamininus against

Hannibal; their philonikia (or philotimia) will not let them rest even in old age, and in each case leads

them to this final humiliation, suffered in the one case, inflicted in the other. Earlier Flamininus’

philotimia brought great gifts to a great people, the Greeks, and consequent credit to himself; now it is

killing a great person and disgracing himself. The pattern is a very neat one, and again brings out how

close is the unity of the pair.

One last point before we leave Philopoemen and Flamininus. We can see that comparison underlies

the whole narrative in the way Erbse suggested, guiding the characterization and the emphases and

helping us to grasp important points more clearly; but the epilogue itself is contributing little to this.

Some points – like the contrast between philotimia and philonikia, or the different degrees of benefit to

Greece – are indeed formulated clearly there: others are not. There is not very much on freedom, for

instance, or on vindictiveness, or on the similarities between the two men’s philotimia and philonikia.

One finds several unexpected remarks and slants as well. The epilogue makes much of anger, a theme

which has not been especially insistent in the narrative: when Philopoemen destroyed the Spartan

educational system, that is now seen to be an act of anger (Flam. 22(1).6) – but that was not very clear

in the narrative at Phil. 16, where Plutarch rather set out the rational justification for so extreme a step.

Philopoemen’s fatal campaign against the Messenians is now presented as another act of anger (22(1).7),

again in a way which was not brought out clearly in the narrative at Phil. 18. Themes which were

morally complex in the narrative – Philopoemen’s taste for monomachy, or his seizures of authority, or

his pressing for freedom-fighting even in extreme circumstances – now emerge much more simply in

24(3). Often in these epilogues, even in cases such as this where synkrisis is clearly important to the pair
18
as a whole, it is hard to resist the impression that Plutarch is extemporizing, making points which had

not been in the front of his mind when he was composing the narrative.

We find the same sort of thing elsewhere. Quite often, anecdotes are included in epilogues that were

omitted from the narrative: the most striking example is the story in the Comparison of Nicias and

Crassus which he admits ‘escaped my notice when I was composing the narrative’, a story of Crassus

striking a certain L. Annalius in the senate (Crass. 35(2).3). Erbse suggested that all such cases were in
19
fact deliberate omissions from the narrative: that suggestion is convincing in some cases (including in
20
fact one case in the Phil.–Flam. epilogue, Flam. 23(2).6), but less convincing in others. We also find

many cases where stories seem to be interpreted rather differently in the epilogue from the narrative. A

famous case comes in Coriolanus, where Plutarch twice mentions a story of Dionysius of Halicarnassus,

alleging that Coriolanus sent a message to the Roman magistrates falsely accusing the Volscians of
21
plotting an assault on the Romans at the games. In the narrative (Cor. 26.2) he appears to reject the

story as out of keeping with Coriolanus’ simple nobility; but he seems to accept it in the epilogue (Alc.

41(2).4), as a striking illustration of the lengths to which Coriolanus’ anger drove him. We should not

try to explain away the weakness of these epilogues: even though comparison is often important, the

epilogues are not always a particularly impressive aspect of it.

22
The same thing emerges if we turn to Demetrius–Antony, my second main example. Again, the

epilogue itself is disappointingly weak. Perhaps we should not particularly stress the point that its whole

emphasis is uncomfortably trivial after the grandeur of the closing narrative – for instance, the

concluding point that ‘Antony took himself off in a cowardly, pitiful, and dishonourable way, but at

least (unlike Demetrius) did not allow the enemy to take him’ (93(6).4). Such moralism is indeed crude,

it indeed seems childish to be preoccupied with ordering the two men in this and other categories – but
23
this is a feature of Plutarch’s moralism which must simply be accepted. Most centuries have found

such moralism less uncomfortable and alien than our own.

It is more worrying that important themes of the pair remain untouched. There is nothing, for

instance, on the two men’s response to their fluctuating fortunes, though (as we shall see) that is really

quite important; flattery, too, is a crucial topic in both Lives – in Antony the flatterers are Cleopatra and

her court, while Demetrius was corrupted by the excessive honours voted him on several occasions by
24
the Athenians. Demetrius’ fortunes are indeed closely reflected in his relations with the Athenians,
25
who receive his favour with enthusiasm but come to suffer terribly: that theme too recurs in Antony, in
26
a more muted way. And the epilogue also again shows considerable discord with the narrative. To take
just one or two instances: in the epilogue he stresses that Demetrius was the more generous of the two,

but that is largely inspired by his nobility to enemy dead (89(2) ); Antony’s notorious ‘donations of

Alexandria’ (Ant. 54) may be culpable, but they certainly complicate the picture. Demetrius’ killing of

the Macedonian regent Alexander was treated very differently in the narrative: there, at Demetr. 36,

there was a clear implication that Alexander was himself plotting to murder Demetrius, who was

therefore acting in self-defence (esp. 36.12); but in the epilogue that charge seems to be ‘false’, merely

fabricated by Demetrius to give a dishonest justification for the murder (92(5).3). Once again in fact

this epilogue seems too much of an afterthought, and its low intellectual level is clear.

Still, one can perhaps understand why these epilogues should sometimes seem disappointing. In

them Plutarch likes to make his points, especially his moral points, fairly simply, switching swiftly from

one hero to the other; yet in his successful pairings the real implications of the comparison may resist

formulation in simple terms, as for instance in Philopoemen and Flamininus. In the epilogues, too, as
27
Erbse points out, Plutarch generally dwells on the differences, just as he does in both Philopoemen–

Flamininus and Demetrius–Antony. In a successful pairing the similarities may be the more striking

points, and he tends to allow these to emerge implicitly from the narrative. He usually gives an outline

of the points of contact in the prologue: thus Demetrius and Antony

both liked love and drink, they were soldierly, generous, extravagant, and hybristic. Their fortunes

showed corresponding similarities. All through their lives both won great successes and great failures,

conquered and lost great tracts, unexpectedly failed and recovered beyond their hopes, and then one

died in his enemies’ hands, the other very close to this.

(Demetr. 1.8).

But, just as within an individual Life he often introduces a hero’s traits crudely and refines them as he
28
goes on – Alcibiades’ ‘ambition and desire to be first in the state’, for instance – so within a pair he is

reluctant to enumerate all the similarities at the outset, again preferring to deepen the suggestions as the

narrative proceeds. It would have been clodhopping to dwell on the importance of Athens or of

flatterers in the prologue, where he is eager to move on to the story; yet the themes are so basic to the

narrative that it would be difficult to formulate sharp differences at the end. The points are clear enough

not to need explicit articulation.

Plutarch’s imagery helps to bring out the continuity of the two Lives. A recurrent feature of both is

imagery of the theatre. The flatterer Aristodemus hailed Antigonus as ‘king’, setting a fashion which

corrupted the rulers’ minds and behaviour ‘as if they were tragic actors’, changing their manner with the

dress of their new role (Demetr. 18.5); Lysimachus remarked of Lamia, Demetrius’ famous courtesan,

that he had never before seen a whore on the tragic stage (25.9); we return from Lamia to the campaign

of Ipsus ‘as if from a comedy to a tragedy’ (28.1); Demetrius pardons the Athenians in a speech in the

theatre, entering like a tragic actor (34.4); the Macedonians commented that Pyrrhus alone was a

worthy successor to Alexander, while Demetrius and the rest were only actors imitating the man’s pomp

and majesty (41.5) – ‘and indeed there was a genuine tragedy of Demetrius’ in his theatrically

extravagant dress, especially a cloak carrying an image of the universe (41.6–8), which he later put aside

‘like an actor, no longer a king’ (44.9). His funeral finally was ‘tragic and theatrical’ (53.1); and ‘now
29
that the Macedonian drama is complete, it is time to bring on that of Rome’ (53.10). The primary

reference of much of this is to what we might call Demetrius’ ‘theatricality’, the glamorous dress,

spectacle and pretension; but the air of ‘tragedy’ is also important, for such display portends the final

catastrophe. The ‘Roman drama’ of Antony less insistently continues the theme. Antony wears his tragic

mask for Rome, his comic for Alexandria (29.4); on campaign a crucial tactic ‘looks theatrical’ (rather

oddly, 45.4); the Alexandrian donations appear ‘tragic, arrogant, full of hatred for Rome’ (54.5); and

finally he ‘takes himself off ’ (the last words of the pair, 93(6).4). Demetrius has established the pattern,

and we know that such glamour presages disaster. The Roman drama plays itself to a similar
30
conclusion.

Another feature is the two Lives’ sequence of maritime tableaux. Demetrius’ immense warships,

built for use as well as display, are lavishly described (43.5–7); his fleet is a marvellous sight even to his

enemies (20.7–8); when the Athenians are suffering from famine, they watch as Demetrius’ ships fight

off a relieving fleet (33.7–8); the Life ends with the slow homeward procession of his funeral barge (53).

His ships had reflected and contributed to his greatness, and such a naval display is an appropriate final

ceremony. Antony’s ship-tableaux are more suggestive. Under Caesar, he wins a spectacular naval

success, and Plutarch dwells on it (7). The finest display is of course Cleopatra’s barge, with all its

magnificence (26): yet there are some suggestive echoes of Demetrius’ funeral barge, and one already

senses what catastrophe Cleopatra may bring. Another elaborate naval banquet, this time on Sextus

Pompey’s ship, seals Antony’s share of the world – but with Octavia as his bride (32); when a rift

threatens, the fleets gather once more off Misenum, ‘a remarkable sight’ (35.5) – and now it is Octavia
who deflects the danger: but Antony immediately leaves her for the east, and for Cleopatra. It is finally

by sea that Antony blindly insists on fighting at Actium (62, 63, 64.2–4); after defeat he can only sit

alone at the prow, a marvellous tableau (67.1); and at Alexandria the last naval scene is a fiasco, when

Antony’s fleet surrenders without a fight (76.1–2). The ship-scenes mark crises which at first end in

glamour and success, but finally bear catastrophe and disgrace: and Cleopatra is as central to Antony’s

fall as she was to his splendour. Once again the two Lives show a continuous technique. Demetrius

establishes such naval tableaux as an index of greatness and failure, Antony exploits that index

elaborately.

The comparison also explains some of Plutarch’s choice of material. In Demetrius he emphasizes that

Demetrius’ excesses never compromised his military efficiency (2.3, 19.4–10), and the point recurs in

the epilogue (90(3) ). The stress is presumably designed to contrast with Antony, who loses his crucial

campaign for love; but the emphasis sits uneasily with the narrative itself. At 9.5–7, for instance,

Demetrius secretly meets the beautiful Cratesipolis, and makes an undignified escape when surprised by

his enemies; later the Macedonian army refuses to go on toiling to keep Demetrius in luxury (44.8).

Antony is then unusually full on Antony’s father (1), presumably influenced by the large role played by

Antigonus in Demetrius; and Plutarch can introduce the notion of ‘contending for Caesar’s succession’

more casually because of our familiarity with the struggles of the Diadochi of Alexander (16.3). But he

does not overdo the technique. In Demetrius, for instance, both the courtesan Lamia and Demetrius’

principal wife Phila are prominent, but Plutarch does not develop and contrast the characters as he does

with Cleopatra and Octavia; and the theme of divine imitation is much more stressed in Antony than in

Demetrius. He certainly has no time for the trivial, coincidental similarity. For instance, Lamia’s famous

banquet (Demetr. 27.3) could have been elaborated as parallel to Cleopatra’s (26.6–7); Seleucus’

entertainment (Demetr. 32.1–3) shares features with the dinners of Antony, Octavian, and Sextus (Ant.

31–2); Demetrius’ army (Demetr. 46–47.1), like Antony’s (50), suffers great losses in a Median

campaign. It is not clear whether Plutarch intends us to notice such casual parallels, but he does not

explicitly emphasize them.

There are nevertheless times when memories of Demetrius genuinely enrich the narrative. After the

reverse of Mutina in early 43 BC Plutarch writes of Antony’s resilience to changes of fortune:

He was naturally at his best in adversity, and it was then that he came closest to being a good man.

When men are brought down by an overpowering catastrophe,it is common enough for them to

recognize what virtue really is: but it is indeed rare for people in adversity to live up to their ideals and

avoid behaviour they would condemn. Many are so weakened that they give in to their accustomed

ways all the more, and their resolve is shattered.

(17.4)

The mutability of fortune is much more familiar from Demetrius than from Antony itself, particularly at

that point of the Life, where we have seen much of Antony’s veering character but little of his veering

fortunes. Demetrius has also accustomed us to a great man’s resilience in such adversity – but he hardly

‘recognized what virtue really is’, as became clear when he collapsed to his ‘accustomed ways’ in his

disgraceful alcoholic death (Demetr. 52, where Plutarch’s disapproving language is very strong). Antony

can be set against that pattern. Here at Mutina and again in Parthia he will assert himself nobly in

adversity, and indeed show a virtue far superior to Demetrius’. But at Actium he too will collapse, and

his ‘accustomed ways’ will fatally assert themselves – in his case, love for Cleopatra. In Antony’s case

there is more interest in his mental struggle: he indeed always ‘recognizes what virtue really is’, and at

the end he will know his shame. But, try though he may, the pattern established by Demetrius and

recalled in this passage will be inescapable, and Antony too will fall.

This technique recurs in several pairs. All Plutarch’s heroes are naturally individuals, but still the first

Life often reflects an important normal pattern, the second Life exploits it with an interesting variation;

and this can help to explain why in three pairs (Aemilius–Timoleon, Sertorius–Eumenes, and Coriolanus–

Alcibiades) the normal order of the heroes is reversed, and Plutarch takes the Roman before the Greek.
31
Aemilius points the familiar moral that Fortune – and Fortune is very important in this pair – may

strike a man at the height of his prosperity; this is then reinforced by the stress on the fall of Perseus in

Aemilius and that of Dionysius towards the beginning of Timoleon (13–15). That draws attention to the

singularity of Timoleon’s own good fortune in his final years, which Plutarch can now naturally describe
32
in peculiarly lyrical tones. Sertorius displays the way in which hardship can corrupt a man’s character,

if his virtue is not solidly based (10.6, cf. 25.6). Eumenes then appears all the more admirable for his

constancy and dignity during a more complex career (cf. Eum. 9.2). Coriolanus–Alcibiades, too, fits this

pattern: Coriolanus is a much more straightforward figure than Alcibiades, and his story is more
33
straightforward too.
 Even when the Greek as usual comes first, a similar technique can sometimes be seen. From Pericles

we know the ways of demagogues, the fickleness of the people, and the sort of leadership they demand.

That clarifies the dangers Fabius runs by exercising his dictatorship in the way he does. Agis and

Cleomenes are more straightforward radical idealists than the Gracchi, whose motives are complicated

by their ambition; but Ag.–Cl. does provide a straightforward model of the opposition which such

radical programmes will inspire, and the extreme measures to which the idealist is forced: in Gracch. we
34
see a subtler version of the same sequence. Brutus is a more remarkable tyrannicide than Dion;
35
Aristides’ fairness is less complex and qualified than the elder Cato’s; and so on.

Demetrius, then, establishes the pattern of mutability of fortune. Tyche, eutychia, and metabole are
36
key words, and Plutarch digresses elaborately on Fortune at Demetr. 35. His narrative technique makes

the point more subtly, for several times he epitomizes the fluctuation by deliberately rapid movement

from one startling vicissitude to the next (33, 39, 43, 48). Fortune raises Demetrius and Fortune casts

him down: there is comparatively little interest in his character as a causal force. He is a spectacular man
37
to whom things happen. It is fundamentally military disaster which brings him down, and as we have

seen Plutarch tries to bring out that his excesses did not affect his campaigns. Still, it is not coincidence

that Plutarch juxtaposes his most elaborate description of Demetrius’ outrages (23–7) with the disaster

of Ipsus (28–9), even if the outrages do not cause such disaster. We know that a man with such flaws

and ‘tragic’ ostentation will suffer catastrophe, rather as in tragedy we often know that a hybristic

character will fall, whether or not the hybris causes his fate. Persons with such vices do not prosper: the

pattern is simple and familiar.

Demetrius is really a comparatively straightforward figure. He does not particularly struggle against

his vices: and indeed, until his alcoholic final days, there is little psychological interest in him at all.

Antony is deeper, just as Cleopatra is more subtle than the Athenian flatterers who had corrupted

Demetrius. (The moral criticism of Demetrius is correspondingly cruder and more insistent than of

Antony: Plutarch can simply denounce Demetrius – esp. 42.8–11, 52 – in a way which his intense

involvement with Antony would make inappropriate.) Antony tries to tear himself away and assert

himself as a general, and he intermittently succeeds. There is no simple decline in Antony as there was

in Demetrius, and unlike Demetrius he retains almost to the last his capacity to lead and inspire his

men. He preserves a nobility and a stature which Demetrius lacks; he struggles against his fate, and we

feel for his mental torment. Eventually he succumbs, and this time the downfall is clearly owed to his
38
own character: in Antony, the role played by Fortune is slight.

Even in the traits which link the men closely, differences are therefore felt – differences which

resisted formulation in the simple terms appropriate to the concluding synkrisis itself. Demetrius

establishes a clear, simple, and familiar paradigm of what happens to a brilliant but corrupted hero. In

Antony we see the tension in the man himself, struggling to break away from that familiar pattern. It is a

large part of his tragedy that he falls as completely as Demetrius: he cannot escape. His frailty eventually

presages catastrophe as surely as Demetrius’ more straightforward vice: but it is a much more complex

case, and a much more complex story.

In rather the same way Coriolanus paints an unsophisticated soldier who, when he becomes a

renegade, ultimately destroys himself; its pair Alcibiades then presents a complex man with much more

flair, charm, and (importantly for Plutarch) education, who nevertheless falls into a tellingly similar

pattern. Alcibiades’ relationship with the demos is distinctly warmer and more complicated than

Coriolanus’ – but eventually he cannot really manage them any more than Coriolanus could, and

cannot avoid re-enacting his more flamboyant version of the other man’s fate. One can again see why
39
Plutarch chose to reverse his normal order, and take the simpler story of Coriolanus first.

In both cases, we again have, on a much larger scale, an initial crude presentation (Demetrius,

Coriolanus) which is then developed and refined (Antony, Alcibiades). This is a familiar technique in

ancient literature. One thinks of how Herodotus begins by stating a very simple picture of a tyrant’s

strengths and weaknesses in Book 1, then sets the more complex cases of Darius and Xerxes against that

pattern; or how Thucydides introduces Themistocles as a simple paradigm of how the Athenians treat

their great men just as he is introducing the more complicated case of Pericles (1.135–8); or even how

Virgil begins the Aeneid by stating Rome’s mission in simple and glorious tones, which will later be

deepened and qualified – or how he later introduces Hercules and Cacus as a clear example of justified

furor ridding the world of a monstrous threat (Aen. 8.185–275), then encourages us to measure the

more complex case of Aeneas’ killing of Turnus against that very simple pattern, and wonder how far it
40
corresponds.

I should certainly not wish to suggest that Plutarch adopts the technique in all his pairings: indeed,

we have seen how varied his technique can be. But I do suggest that this is often an important technique,
and one to which we are perhaps less sensitive than we ought to be.

Postscript (2001)

This 1986 paper now seems very dated. At the time there was still not much interest in synkrisis; I

emphasized the importance of Erbse 1956, but that paper had little impact for a long time. It was

Stadter 1975 on Pericles–Fabius, a paper which in hindsight I should have stressed more, which set more

of the pattern for future work, showing in detail how the themes of each of the two Lives are influenced

by those of its the pair. By the time my own paper was written Stadter 1983–4 had extended that idea to

Themistocles–Camillus, and there had also been some brief but suggestive remarks by Geiger on the

importance of comparison to the structural rhythm of Aemilius–Timoleon (1981, 104 = Scardigli 1995,

189–90). But it still seemed much bolder then that it does now to argue for thoroughgoing synkrisis in a

pair, and that may explain a certain defensiveness in the way I framed the argument (cf. Preface, pp. x–

xi). Since then the approach has become much less controversial, and a whole series of treatments have
41
extended it to other pairs. Commentaries too now regularly include sections on the importance of the
42
pairing. True, historians culling material from a particular Life only rarely turn their eye to its pair, but

even this is improving: Bosworth 1992 shows how relevant that approach can be for a historian

interested in Eumenes, for instance.

My defensiveness in 1986 showed itself particularly in two qualifications: first, that there were some

pairs where comparison was not really very important; secondly, that the comparative epilogues

themselves were not the most interesting aspect of synkrisis, and were often frankly not very good. As for

the first of those concessions, it is ironic that the examples I took – Lysander–Sulla, Phocion–Cato Minor,

Agesilaus–Pompey, and Alexander–Caesar – have all now been the subject of studies, some of them my
43
own, which have stressed, precisely, the importance of synkrisis.

The second point has provoked more interesting debate. My disparaging approach was not out of

tune with other treatments of the time; Moles 1988, 25, launched an uncompromisingly forceful attack

on the concluding synkrisis of Demosthenes–Cicero, and Stadter 1989, xxxii, – not a scholar to be

insensitive to synkrisis – remarked on the ‘rather pedestrian’ nature of the Pericles–Fabius epilogue: ‘As

often in these comparisons,’ he added, ‘Plutarch’s muse seems to leave him here.’ My own

disparagement has not gone without distinguished supporters, but scholarship has moved on, and it has
44
not gone without dissent either.

In 1986 it seemed natural to disparage the epilogues because they did not pick up themes from the

narrative; it now seems more interesting to speculate on why they do not pick up those themes (I indeed

did some of this even here, p. 354), and to regard narrative and epilogue as complementing one another

in subtler ways. The epilogues may be inviting us to reassess what we have heard, skilfully insinuating

another possible slant or viewpoint. I adopt this approach in my treatment of Thes.–Rom. in chs.7 and8,
45
and more generally in treating terminal rhythm in ch. 17. Duff 1999, 243–86, develops this idea of

constructive dissonance and destabilization in a much more elaborate way. I am now broadly in

sympathy with these critical strategies. If I feel less universal enthusiasm for the epilogues than Duff

does, this is simply because I find that technique more successful and thought-provoking in some cases

than in others. ‘Reassessment’ is all very well, but some of these epilogues disquietingly gear down rather

than up, trivializing the narrative’s suggestions on both an ethical and an interpretative level, thought-

diminishing rather than thoughtprovoking. But I concede that there can be point even in terminal

remarks which seem unequal to the moral complexities which have preceded (p. 239).

This critical approach is relevant to another question I addressed unsympathetically in 1986, the
46
new material or new slants which the epilogues sometimes introduce. Such dissonance then seemed to

me clearly an embarrassment; it seems to Duff a sophistication. Duff (1999, 257–83) stresses

particularly that the rhetoric and rhythm of the synkriseis often requires ‘ammunition’ (257) to be used
47
in a different way; the need for some equality between the two figures may require some moral

straining in favour of or against one of them; and in particular the moral criticism tends to be harsher

and less indulgent than in the narrative (on this see also ch. 17 below), so that matter treated generously

or omitted in the narrative may be used more censoriously here. That approach works well in most

cases, but there remain some where it is more difficult to explain, not why material should be included

or treated negatively in the epilogue, but why it was omitted or treated differently in the narrative. One

is the omission from Nicias of the capture of Melos (Thuc. 3.51: above, p. 164 n. 19), which becomes

important in the epilogue at Crass. 36(3).5: there are good reasons for its inclusion there (Duff 1999,

272), but it is hard to see why the narrative omitted it. I am not sure that I was wrong to speak of

‘afterthoughts’ in this paper (p. 354) and at Pelling 1988, 20, nor to say (p. 353) that ‘it is hard to resist

the impression that Plutarch is extemporizing, making points which had not been in the front of his

mind when he was composing the narrative’.

 I should now, however, put more weight on this ‘impression that Plutarch is extemporizing’ as a

matter of self-presentation, a deliberate impression, one fostering a particular atmosphere of relaxed,

almost conversational engagement between narrator and narratee. It conveys the idea that such

retrospects may often allow alternative perspectives, as new questions come to mind and new

recollections spring from the writer’s well-stocked memory (p. 42 n. 142). If he admits that this memory

has been fallible (Crass. 35(2).3) that suits the indulgent atmosphere too. This coheres with the points I

make at pp. 274–5 about narrator–narratee complicity: the reader may sometimes choose to disagree on

the final verdict, but is assumed to be thoroughly engaged in the exercise, convinced of its value, and

sympathetically indulgent to the narrator and his intellectual strategies, including his diffidence and his

acknowledgement of provisionality and possible human error.

If Plutarch is playing for such indulgence in his ideal narratee, I am sorry that in 1986 I was

insufficiently attuned to give it to him.

Notes

1
Erbse 1956.

2
Cf. esp. Stadter 1975 (on Per.–Fab.) and 1983–4, 358–9 (on Them.–Cam.); Geiger 1981, 104 = Scardigli 1995, 189–90; Bucher-Isler

1972, 74–8. For more recent work see below, nn. 41–2.

3
On this extraordinarily imprudent remark see Preface x–xi, pp. 359–60 and n. 43.

4
Syme 1985, 1. On this passage see also p. 257.

5
This is another statement which now seems too brash: see pp. 360–1.

6
I reused some of this material, with some elaboration, in Pelling 1989, 208–14, and explored it further in Pelling 1997a, 125–35. My

focus there was more to relate the characterization of Philopoemen to the way Plutarch treats his limited and over-military education

(Phil. 3): that echoes themes which I have developed in the previous two chapters (pp. 309–10, 340–1), and return to at pp. 400–3.

7
Walsh 1992, 210–11.

8
More on this at pp. 242–7.

9
Flam. 7.2, 13.2: cf. pp. 219, 242–3, and Pelling 1997a, 299–304. For the similarities of philotimia to philonikia cf. Swain 1988, 344.

10
Cf. esp. Flam. 2.3–5, 5.1–2, 12.6; Badian 1970, 53–7.

11
Flam. 12.8–10, 13.3–9 (cf. Phil. 15.1–3); Flam. 16.5–17.2.

12
Phil. 8.3, 10, 12.2, 12.4–6, 16.5.

13
Cf. esp. Phil. 1.5–7, 17, 18.2, 21.10–12, Flam. 23(2).1–2, 24(3).4.

14
I draw out further implications from this philonikia–theme at p. 182 (Phil.–Flam. as a pair which therefore treats the cities as well as

the individuals) and pp. 243–7 (a contemporary resonance for Plutarch’s own time, but one which is left oblique). On the suggestions of

philonikia – probably both love of victory and love of quarrels – see p. 347 n. 24.

15
On this theme cf. Swain 1988, 340 and n. 17, 343–5, Walsh 1992, 219–21, and for the ways in which Plutarch does and does not

explore Flamininus’ philotimia, Pelling 1997a, 249–58.

16
Cf. also Phoc. 3.6–8. For discussion of the Virtues ofWomen passage and others where Plutarch advocates comparison as a moral and

intellectual exercise, cf. Stadter 1965,9–12, Swain 1992b, 105–6, Desideri 1992, 4475–8, and Duff 1999, 247–8.

17
Walsh 1992 seems to me to overstate the negative aspects of Philopoemen’s characterization, just as he understates Plutarch’s

reservations about Flamininus; the moral he draws – ‘What Greece needs now, Plutarch seems to be saying, are politicians who are the

opposite of Philopoemen and like Flamininus’, 217 – seems to me over-simple, as ch. 10 will have made clear. I discuss this more fully at

Pelling 1997a, 139–47 and 309–8, and argue that the moral evaluation is more balanced: so also Swain 1988, 345–7.

18
So I wrote in 1986, and so I still think: but see p. 361 for the different way I should now like this ‘extemporization’ to be taken.

19
Erbse 1956, 416–19.

20
In 1986 I added that I did not find it especially convincing for the Crassus case. I now find it more so: cf. p. 42 n. 142 and p. 361.

21
Russell 1963, 21 = Scardigli 1995, 358–9.

22
I reused some of this material in the introduction to my commentary, Pelling 1988, 18–26, but elaborated it there in several ways.

23
Russell 1973, 142.

24
Cf. esp. Ant. 24.9–12, 53.8–11; Demetr. 10–13, 23.4–6, 24.9–12, 26.

25
Demetr. 8–13, 17–18, 22–4, 27.1–3, 30, 33–4, 40.7–8, 42.2.

26
Ant. 23.2–4, 33.6–34.1, 62.1 (Greece in general), 68.6–8, 72.1. Cf. Sulla 43(5).5, where Athens is important in another comparison.

27
Erbse 1956, esp. 401–2.

28
Cf. p. 293 on Lysander and pp. 310–11 on Alcibiades.

29
For the theatrical imagery of Demetrius cf. de Lacy 1952, 371; Pelling 1988, 21–2. Continuity of theatrical imagery can also be found

through Philopoemen–Flamininus: Phil. 11.1–4, 15.1, Flam. 7.6, 10.3, 10.7, 11.3, 12.4, 13.3, 19.8: Pelling 1997a, 219 n. 92, 287–8,
301. That links with the ‘crowning’ which is so important in the epilogue (24(3).5: above, p. 274), for theatres, sometimes, were where

crowns were awarded.

30
For more on Plutarch and tragedy, and the complex methodological issues the question raises, cf. pp. 98 and 111 n. 27; also pp. 130–

1 on Nicias, 187, 197–204 on Theseus and Antony, 296 on Lysander, and ch. 18 on Coriolanus.

31
For Fortune in Aem.–Tim. cf. Swain 1989d and Desideri 1989.

32
The reading of Desideri 1989 has something in common with this: esp. 205–11, on the themes of virtue and fortune in Aem.–Tim.,

then ‘Timoleonte è un caso più difficile…’ (209).

33
Cf. p. 344. I do not think the Cor.–Alc. ordering is just a question of chronology (thus Russell 1966a, 38 n. 8 = Scardigli 1995, 192 n.

8): nor does Duff 1999, 206 n. 3.Cf. p. 408 n. 12 below.

34
Erbse 1956, 416.

35
This idea of ‘theme and variation’ has met with some approval: e.g. Swain 1990a, 145 = Scardigli 1995, 263 and 1992a, 315 on Cim.–

Luc.; Swain 1990b, 200 on Phocion–Cato Minor ; Stadter 1992, 42, 47 and n. 30 on Lys.–Sulla; Ingenkamp 1992, 4306–19, on Gracch.

(p. 229 n. 43, above); Duff 1999, 205–6, 250, 302.

36
5.6, 19.4, 25.5, 28.1, 31.6, 32.7, 37.3, 38.1, 38.8, 41.8, 45, 47.3–6, 48.4, 49.5, 50.1, 50.6, 51.1, 52.1.

37
Plutarch might have related the Athenians’ desertion of Demetrius (30) much more closely to his outrages (23–4, 27.1–3). Plutarch’s

Pompey is another ‘man to whom things happen’: above pp. 100–2 and Pelling, forthcoming (b).

38
Brenk 1977, 160–1, contrasting Ant. 36 with On the Fortune of the Romans 319f.

39
Duff 1999, 205–40 gives a much more elaborate account of the Coriolanus–Alcibiades pair, but agrees (205–6) on the technique of

placing the more elaborate case of Alcibiades against the simple Coriolanus paradigm. Cf. also my comments on their speaking styles in

the previous chapter, pp. 342–6.

40
Cf. esp. Buchheit 1963, 116–33, though the conclusions he draws seem to me simplistic.

41
Cf. esp. Larmour 1988 on Thes.–Rom. and 1992 on Them.–Cam.; Swain 1988 and Walsh 1992 on Phil.–Flam., along with my own

further remarks in Pelling 1997a, 87–94, 289–91, and esp. 325–31 on the formal epilogue; Swain 1989d and Desideri 1989 on Aem.–

Tim.; Stadter 1992 on Lys.–Sulla; Bosworth 1992 on Sert.–Eum.; Georgiadou 1992 on Pel.–Marc.; Harrison 1995 on Demetr.–Ant. and

Ages.–Pomp.; Powell 1999, 399–401 on Ag.–CL–Gracchi; Pelling, forthcoming (b) on Ag.–CL–Gracchi and Ages.–Pomp. Among general

treatments are Frazier 1987, Valgiglio 1992, 4022–6, Swain 1992b, Desideri 1992b, Boulogne 1994, 62–71, and Nikolaidis,

forthcoming. The outstanding treatment now is that of Duff 1999: synkrisis is central to that book’s concerns, and as well as a chapter

on ‘Synkrisis and the Synkriseis in the Parallel Lives’ (243–86) he has detailed studies of Pyrrh.–Mar., Phocion–Cato Minor, Lys.–Sulla, and

Cor.–Alc.

42
Commentaries: Moles 1988, 19–26, on Dem.–Cic.; Pelling 1988, 18–26, on Demetr.– Ant.; Stadter 1989, xxx–xxxii, on Per.–Fab.;

Konrad 1994, xxxi–xxxiii, on Sert.–Eum.; Heftner 1995, 19–22, and Shipley 1997, 9–24, on Ages.–Pomp.; Georgiadou 1997, 29–32, on

Pel.–Marc.; and many of the volumes in the Rizzoli and Lorenzo Valla series (full bibliography at Duff 1999, 250 n. 25).

43
On Lys.–Sulla, Stadter 1992 and Duff 1999, 161–204; on Phoc.–Cato Minor, Duff 1999, 131–60; on Ages.–Pomp., Harrison 1995,

Shipley 1997, 9–23 (admittedly stressing divergences more than similarities, but that is a purpose of synkrisis too), Heftner 1995, 19–22,

Duff 1999, 275–8, and Pelling, forthcoming (b); on Alex.–Caes., Mossman 1988, 92 = Scardigli 1995, 226–7; above, p. 257, and below,

pp. 378–82.

44
Support: Rosenmeyer 1992, 227 n. 42, Ingenkamp 1992, 341, Mossman 1994, 60. Dissent: esp. Larmour 1992, 4156, 4159–62,

Swain 1992b (implicitly), Duff 1999, 257, and Nikolaidis, forthcoming.

45
In ch. 17 I also adopt this approach in addressing a further question raised by Erbse, why four pairs (Phocion–Cato Minor, Alex.–Caes.,

Them.–Cam., and Pyrrh.–Mar.) do not have formal epilogues: in the 1986 paper I grazed that topic in an indecisive paragraph which I

have here suppressed.

46
For further cases of reinterpretation and new material in the epilogues see below, pp. 376–7 and n. 58; Pelling 1988, 20, Larmour

1992, 4160–2, Konrad 1994, xxxii, and now especially Duff 1999, 257–83.

47
On this presumption of equality cf. also Swain 1992b; Nikolaidis, forthcoming; and below, p. 386 n. 64.
 17

IS DEATH THE END?

CLOSURE IN PLUTARCH’S LIVES

Closure in biography may seem straightforward. This form of historical writing might even evade the

constant worry of those who stress the textuality of history, the role of the writer in imposing beginning
1
and end points that are essentially factitious, simplifying a messy continuum. Human life does have a
2
clear beginning and it does come to a full stop, and that would seem to be that: death is surely the

place to end.

Yet in Plutarch it is more complicated. For one thing, his artistic unit is not the individual Life, it is

the pair: the end of a single Life is a temporary resting point, no more. And even the second Life of a
3
pair does not conclude it, for it is usually followed by a comparative epilogue, picking up a selection of

themes and comparing the two characters. Just as all the lines of a Life may seem to be brought together,

the whole pair moves into a new register in these epilogues, and the way the themes are revisited will

emerge as interesting and bold.

Other people’s deaths

Is death the end? Often it is; but it is striking how often a Life ends with someone else’s death, not the
4
principal’s. Thus Caesar ends with the death of Brutus, and Crassus with that of King Orodes. More

than a quarter of Plutarch’s forty-six Parallel Lives fit this pattern: the other examples are Numa,

Lucullus, Marcellus, Pelopidas, Agesilaus, Demosthenes, Brutus, Camillus, Marius, and Cato Minor. There

are five further cases where deaths are hinted at rather than described, or where another person’s death

provides the last significant incident, though not the ending itself: Eumenes, Coriolanus, Pompey,
5
Sertorius, and Flamininus.

These make an interesting set of cases. Several of them deal with a sort of posthumous vengeance,

tracing the way in which a man’s killers met their end: Crassus, Eumenes, Demosthenes, Pelopidas, Pompey,
6
and most elaborately Caesar, a case to which I shall return. Or the point may rather be a telling contrast

with the principal: Tullus Hostilius caught religion in his old age, but it was a poor equivalent of Numa’s

genuine religious feeling, and Tullus was duly blasted by a thunderbolt. Then there are cases of what we

might call the completion of the principal’s own death, instances where a second individual found his or

her own destiny so entwined that the two deaths were almost inseparable: Porcia, wife of Brutus,

swallowing the coals to share his death; or Cato’s son and his follower, who both found an appropriate

death at Philippi, where Cato’s cause finally died too; the death of Sertorius’ associates, or of the son of

Marius at Sulla’s hands. In Flamininus it is the completion of the life rather than of the death:

Flamininus hounded down the aged Hannibal in a way that rounded off Flamininus’ own career,
7
marking an unsettling culmination of his aggressive ‘love of honour’, philotimia. All this needs to be

put in a wider setting, and we will find that many of the other Lives fit into the same categories. Such

‘completion of the death’ is especially interesting: another person’s death is not the only way in which

that can be marked, as we shall see. But this listing already suggests two preliminary points.

First and obviously, Plutarch’s readiness to carry on the story some way beyond his principal’s death.

Antony is the most spectacular example among the other Lives, with ten chapters devoted to Cleopatra’s
8
last days when Antony is already dead. There are good reasons for such an expansion: this is another

case where two deaths have become entwined, and the two lovers’ stories have become one (so much so

that Antony’s death is not even directly stated, but only implied in a participial phrase at 78.1). Plutarch

has no rules for ending a Life, and he can carry on the story until it reaches several different sorts of rest.

Statistics are here suggestive. The Parallel Lives average forty-five Teubner lines devoted to posthumous

material, between one-and-a-half and two pages. That is something like 4% of the Lives’ total bulk. And

that is quite a lot: a representative sifting of modern biographies would show a much smaller figure. In

Plutarch, the average conceals quite a large spread. Camillus has nothing at all; five Lives have more than

one hundred lines, Antony, Romulus (boosted by an apotheosis), Pelopidas, Caesar, and Lycurgus. There

seems to be an attempt to keep a balance between paired Lives, and also between ends and beginnings.

Thus Camillus has nothing before the hero’s birth as well as nothing after his death; and Solon–Poplicola

makes an interesting example, a pair that could easily have had some expansion at both beginnings (on

historical background) and both ends (on aftermath or family), but in fact has very little in any of the

four places. Then there is Agis–Cleomenes–Gracchi, the elaborate double pair, which has similar amounts

of posthumous material in all four Lives (44, 61, 62, and 62 lines) and develops similar themes across

the four cases – their countrymen coming to miss them, their noble womenfolk, some shared deaths,
the continuing struggle, the emergence of adversaries in their true colours. In this chapter I shall take

several pairs, rather than Lives, as test cases: if one Life is posthumously interesting, its pair tends to be
9
posthumously interesting as well.

The second preliminary point is rather different. It will already be clear that the Lives exploit

closural devices familiar from other genres: Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s work on English lyric poetry has
10
here already acquired the status of a classic. Death is a prime example of a motif that conveys a

closural feel, but other ‘natural’ ends are also frequent, especially in poetry and the novel: dusks,

departures, journey’s ends, winters, old age, and so on. Thus the ending of Sertorius, which dwells not

only on the deaths of the man’s old associates but also on one person who ‘grew old in penury’, may

look doubly appropriate. Other devices explored by Smith include some self-referential authorial

intrusion; then also, less predictably, a closing generalization (an ‘unqualified assertion’, and one not

always the most obvious or natural to draw from the preceding work) or an arresting vignette of one sort

or another. I now pass to considering some ways in which the other closural devices recur in Plutarch’s
11
work.

Terminal devices and terminal restfulness

12
First, the authorial intrusion. It may be a straightforward self-referential transition, particularly when

Plutarch moves over to the concluding synkrisis: ‘These, then, are the things that seemed to us worth

recording among the traditions concerning Marcellus and Pelopidas’ (Marc. 31(1).1); ‘So, Sosius, you
13
have the life of Demosthenes on the basis of what we have read or heard’ (Dem. 31.7). Or, though

surprisingly rarely, it can be a cross-reference to another work, something that is a feature of many a

cycle of modern novels (and of scholarly articles): ‘The details are given in my Life of Scipio’ (Gracch.
14
21.9) or ‘in my Life of Timoleon’ (Dion 58.10). It can be a reference to a tradition, an honour, or just

a family that extends down ‘to our own day’, as in Themistocles, Antony, Aristides, or (outside the Parallel

Lives) Aratus. I shall return to these in a moment.

There is also a subtler form of authorial intrusion. One pervasive characterization within Plutarch’s
15
Lives is easy to miss, and that is his characterization of himself. Self-characterization as well as self-

reference is relevant here, that projection of the generous, perpetually interested and curious, ethically

concerned but sympathetic, learned and knowledgeable, sometimes bumbling scholar with a taste for a
16
good story and a warm feeling for humanity. Many of these endings leave a particularly strong

impression of Plutarch the man. We often see authorial generosity toward a hero in defeat, or the desire

to find some sort of compensation for his death: such features evidently fit the self-projection as a figure

of sympathetic humanity. We may also notice how often Plutarch ends a Life with a parade of
17
scholarship, presenting himself as a figure of learned detachment. In Aristides, for instance, he

accumulates the evidence for Aristides’ poverty by quoting Demetrius of Phalerum three times,

Callisthenes, Hieronymus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus, Aristotle (with a cautious note on authenticity), and

Panaetius; other, less spectacular examples are found in Theseus, Romulus, Solon, Themistocles, Brutus,

Lysander, and Sulla. In several of these Lives, especially Aristides and Solon, the closing scholarship
18
matches and mirrors a similar parade in the opening chapters; and we again notice a tendency to find

similar phenomena in paired Lives (Theseus and Romulus, Lysander and Sulla).

Some of these parades figure in the more pedantic and scholarly Lives, such as Theseus, Romulus, and

even Solon. Plutarch works particularly hard to make these figures on the borders of myth look like the

stuff of authentic, rationalized history (Thes. 1.5, ‘to purge them of the mythical and make them look
19
like history’), and a list of scholarly authorities here makes the whole enterprise look more sober and

respectable. But it is also notable how often such parades conclude very different sorts of Lives, works

that have revelled in the dramatic, the vivid, and the immediate: Themistocles, Brutus, Lysander, Sulla. In

such cases it is rather a stepping back from an exciting story, one that has sometimes been told in

admiring tones (Aristides) but more often with moral disquiet (Lysander, Sulla), to move into a register

of judicious and knowledgeable detachment. Such a tone is then appropriate for a new start and a new

level of engagement, perhaps for the second Life, perhaps for the moral summing-up of the synkritic

epilogue.

The ‘summarizing vignette’ is another category where Plutarch aligns with the patterns familiar from
20
other genres: Peden, for instance has brought out how frequently Catullus closes poems in that way,
21
and the last chapter of Herodotus would be another example (though not a straightforward one). In

Plutarch such anecdotal vignettes often capture something important. Take Philopoemen, for example.

When Corinth fell, an unnamed Roman wanted to destroy all Philopoemen’s statues and other

memorials, but Mummius and the Roman envoys refused to allow him: their respect for Philopoemen’s

virtue was too great, even in an enemy. In Lysander we find several such vignettes. After his stormy final
years, Plutarch now stresses the respect felt by the Spartans when they discovered his poverty. Then an

anecdote reprises several of the Life’s themes: Agesilaus wanted to reveal a document showing Lysander’s

revolutionary plans, but the wise Lacratidas said that it was better to let his plans die with him. The

final note is one of more respect, with the Spartans fining the men who wished to marry Lysander’s

daughters but gave up their suits when they discovered their poverty. Cicero also has two anecdotal

vignettes:

I gather that many years later Augustus was visiting one of his grandsons. The boy had a book of Cicero

in his hands and, terrified of his grandfather, tried to hide it under his cloak. Augustus noticed this and,

taking the book from him, stood there and read a great part of it. Then he handed it back to the young

man with the words: ‘A learned man, my child, a learned man and a lover of his country.’

Directly after Antony’s final defeat, when Octavian was consul himself, he chose Cicero’s

son to be his colleague. It was thus in his consulship that the senate took down all the statues

of Antony, cancelled all the other honours that had been given to him, and decreed that in

the future no member of the family should bear the name of Marcus. In this way Heaven
22
entrusted to the family of Cicero the final acts in the punishment of Antony.

(Cic. 49.5–6)

These three instances have different styles, but they also have something in common. I have called

them summarizing vignettes, but that is not quite right: in each case they recall the tumult and passions

of the man’s life – Philopoemen’s honourable battles with Rome, Lysander’s revolutionary ideas and his

rift with his countrymen, Cicero as victim of both Octavian and Antony; but in each case the point is

now the sense of rest, the passion spent, the respect of the old antagonists, the end of the struggles rather
23
than the continuation. So it is rather a modifying vignette, just as in other authors and genres we often
24
find a modifying generalization. That also recalls some of the instances in our preliminary listing of

Lives, those which ended with someone else’s death. Here we find some of the same categories. It may

be the posthumous revenge, as in Cicero, with his son’s revenge on Antony. But in all three of these new

cases there is also something of the ‘completion of the death’, with the stress on the magnanimous

respect of old antagonists (Mummius, the Spartans, Augustus), and the feeling that with the death of
25
the principal the issues died too. These are not endings that pose questions, that cast in doubt the

man’s greatness, that point to struggles that outlive the principals: these are endings that are calm, that

close themes down, that point respite after conflict. It is all restful: quite skilful, not difficult, not – so

far – very challenging.

We can add some other restful, reassuring elements. Let us take another typical category of

posthumous material, the tracing down of the fortunes of the family. Sometimes it is mainly for

interest’s sake: in Themistocles, for instance, whose descendant and namesake was one of Plutarch’s
26
schoolfriends (Them. 32.6); and perhaps Marcellus, suitably lugubrious and morbid as the name of the

younger Marcellus might be (Marc. 30.10–11). But even in these cases, the respect enjoyed by a man’s

descendants also underlines the generous appreciation paid by posterity to the man, however qualified

the impression we may just have received of his final years. Such notices can be more suggestive, even if

they are not specially elaborate. Take Cato Maior. So much of that Life has centred on the way in which

Cato managed his own household. There have been reservations, especially on his attitude to his
27
slaves; but at least he has been enlightened about his own children, always trying to get home for bath

time, and giving great care to their proper education. He even wrote the Origines for their benefit (ch.

20). It is a pleasing continuation of that idea to have the younger Cato coming out so satisfactorily a few
28
generations later, at least as he is briefly presented here (27.7).

Antony is the most interesting case. The Life had started with an interest in heredity, with an

anecdote about Antony’s prodigal father. Now, after the finest death scene of all, we have something of a

false closure.

So died Cleopatra. She had lived for 39 years; of those 22 had been as queen, and more than 14 as joint

ruler with Antony. As for Antony, some say that he was 56,some 53. Antony’s statues were taken down;

Cleopatra’s remained standing, for Archibius, one of her friends, had given 2,000 talents to Octavian to

save them from sharing the fate of those of Antony.

(Ant. 86.8–9)

But the Life does not in fact end there. We still have a chapter to come, and it is a very enterprising one,

tracing Antony’s own descendants through five generations and subtly suggesting how many of the same

themes come back with them: heredity once again, just as in that first chapter. Finally we reach Nero,

‘who reigned in our own day and killed his mother and almost destroyed the Roman empire with his
29
frenzy and lunacy: he was descended from Antony in the fifth generation’. The links between Antony
and Nero are evidently more than casual. Like father, like son, and like great-great-great-grandson, too:

the parallel with the two Catos is an interesting one. But there are also parallels with those other Lives

which feature posthumous vengeance. Antony’s family won in the end, and Octavian was eventually

succeeded by Antony’s descendants. Contrast the end of Cicero, with that different emphasis – Cicero’s

son as consul at the time when the senate decreed the destruction of Antony’s statues and the

prohibition on the name Marcus in Antony’s family. If Plutarch had so chosen, Antony too could have

finished on that item, which would have marked a completion of the death in a different way. But that

would be too ungenerous, too annihilating for Antony’s own Life. This wider perspective of the five

generations is more thought-provoking, and even for Antony it allows the reflection that defeat was not

total.

One feature may not seem to fit. This may be a more generous ending toward Antony himself, but

it is scarcely generous to Nero: ‘He reigned in our own day and killed his mother and almost destroyed

the Roman empire with his frenzy and lunacy.’ The moralism is particularly crude and blunt, and it

grates after the closing chapters, where Plutarch has become so dramatically involved in the death

scenes. There has earlier been moralism of this dismissive stamp, but largely in the first third of the Life,

and the moralism has recently been more subtle and muted. True, this cruder moralism here focuses on

Nero rather than Antony; but Nero, too, is afforded rather more sympathy elsewhere in Plutarch’s work
30
– after all, he did liberate Greece. But again the change in moral register is pointed, and it prepares for

the similarly blunt moralism of the following synkritic epilogue. I have already suggested that the typical

parades of scholarship, apart from presenting Plutarch as a learned researcher, are also helpful in shifting

the tone in preparation for the more detached estimates of the epilogue. This is something of the same

technique, except that in Demetrius–Antony the moral tone of the synkrisis is not at all detached. It ends,

for instance, with shrill disapproval of the manner of Antony’s death, something we should not have
31
inferred from the narrative itself. This final chapter of Antony, with its shift toward moral disapproval,

marks a stepping back of a different sort from the dramatic involvement and sympathy of the death

scenes; it is once again a transitional device.

New perspectives?

Some of these features – the posthumous revenge, the respect of the antagonist, the notion that defeat is

not total – are reminiscent of a technique familiar from tragedy: for tragedy, too, typically offers some

‘restitution’ or ‘compensation’ in a closing scene – a posthumous honour, perhaps, or a festival,

32
something to satisfy our feeling for humanity. Of course, we have to be careful how we put this. In

Plutarch and in tragedy, it evidently does not make everything all right, it is not as bland as all that. It is

cold comfort for Hippolytus, for instance, to think of the virgins of Troezen offering hair-offerings
33
before their marriage, just as it is not that reassuring a thought that Antony’s final compensation will

almost lead to the destruction of the Roman world.

When we think of the ends of tragedies, it is more the differences than the similarities that strike us.

For instance, it is familiar to find discordant tensions at the end of a play: at the end of Medea, audience

members may find it unsettling to reflect on what they have been brought to sympathize with earlier in

the play, and certainly feel uncomfortable that Athens, of all places, will now play host to the child-
34
killing murderess. That is a different degree of discomfort from anything we might feel at the end of
35
Antony. We might compare Sophocles, too – all those plays that end with discordant strands: Oedipus

at Colonus, with the loyal daughters trudging back to Thebes to discover what they will find there;

Trachiniae, with Hyllus forced to marry Iole, and ‘all this is nothing but Zeus’; Philoctetes, and the

ethically sensitive young Neoptolemus warned to ‘respect the gods’ as he sets off back to Troy, where

Priam and the altar await him – and perhaps Heracles’ epiphany only adds to the disquiet. Here again

we have to be careful how we put it. These new strands evidently do not deconstruct the whole earlier

texture of the play; but we are still presented with thought-provoking new perspectives, with a feeling of

open questions and of the provisionality of any response. Tragedies, or at least many tragedies, do not

have the same taste for the comfortable resting-point as we have been tracing in Plutarch.

In historiography, too, we sometimes find the radically new perspective, though this is seldom so

uncomfortable as in tragedy. The end of Dio 56 is one example, with its redirection of our attitude to
36
Augustus; the various emotional strands at the end of Livy 22 are also interestingly disconcerting.

There is even a case for considering Annals 6.51 in this context, given how strangely that final summary
37
sits with Tacitus’ own earlier narrative. In Herodotus’ final chapter too there are multiple strands of

thought: several of those strands problematize any straightforward polarity of Greek and barbarian, East
38
and West. Particularly illuminating here is a different case, the end of Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum;

with it we shall take the first of our extended examples, Cimon–Lucullus.

Terminal generosity: Cimon-Lucullus

First, the closure of the Bellum Iugurthinum.

39
At the same time our generals Q. Caepio and Cn. Mallius fought badly against the Gauls. All Italy

had been quivering in terror. At the time, and to our own day, the Romans have felt that all else is prey

to their valour, but that they fight with the Gauls not for glory but for survival. Still, after news arrived

that the African war was finished and that Jugurtha was being brought to Rome in chains, Marius was

elected consul in absentia, and Gaul was assigned as his province. As consul he celebrated a triumph,

very gloriously, on January 1. And at that time all the city’s hopes and resources rested with him.

(lug. 114)

That is a marvellous end, especially as Marius and Sulla have been brought so close together in the

closing narrative, and especially as the corresponding initial frame (5) has made the suggestion of the
40
coming civil war explicit.

It is also very different from Plutarch’s technique. Plutarch can certainly use a final chapter to set his

story in a wider historical perspective, but he tends not to use that perspective to cast new or ironic or

qualifying shadows in the manner of Jugurtha. Contrast the end of Cimon.

After his death no Greek general was to win another brilliant success against the barbarians. Instead, a

succession of demagogues and warmongers arose, who proceeded to turn the Greek states against one

another, and nobody could be found to separate or reconcile them before they met in the headlong

collision of war. In this way the Persians gained a breathing space, but the power of Greece was

incalculably weakened. It was not until several generations afterwards that Agesilaus carried the Greek

arms into Asia and fought a brief campaign against the king’s generals along the Ionian coast. Yet even

he achieved nothing of great consequence before he was overwhelmed in his turn by a flood of

dissensions and disturbances within Greece and a second empire was swept from his grasp. In the end he

had to return, leaving the tax-gatherers of the Persian Empire still collecting tribute among the allied

and friendly cities, whereas not one of these functionaries, nor even so much as a Persian horse, was to

be seen within fifty miles of the sea, so long as Cimon was general.

(Cim. 19.3–4)

And then the posthumous honours for Cimon.

The similarity and the contrast with Jugurtha are both clear. The Jugurtha passage has the effect of

putting the African war in its place, even perhaps of rather diminishing it; the real struggle is only just

beginning. We are reminded of the great storms ahead for Rome, especially civil storms, and the

transience of this present collaboration of Marius and Sulla. The Cimon passage, too, introduces

reflections that could easily have diminished Cimon’s achievement: it could have become an ‘all in vain’

passage – Cimon’s work did not come to much, his successes were soon wiped out by a flood of a

different sort of history, by those internal Grecian wrangles that not even Cimon had been able to

prevent. Yet, clearly, that is not the tone at all. The failures of his successors do not diminish his

achievement, they heighten it: they project the gloom against which Cimon’s brilliance stands out. The

closing sentences of our two passages bring the point out. Plutarch’s transition to the honours is natural

after such enthusiasm for Cimon; in the last sentence of the Jugurtha, the ‘hopes’ founded on Marius

sound a quizzical and ironic note.

So subsequent failures in Plutarch highlight success, and do nothing to undermine it. It is the same
41
effect as at the end of Philopoemen, mentioned earlier. There we have the flash forward to subsequent

Roman respect, but its context – Mummius, the destruction of Corinth, the Roman takeover – could

again have served to underline the ‘all in vain’ suggestion; within a generation Rome could afford to pay

that sort of bland respect, because the cause he had fought for had died. But once again that is not the

effect. The hint of subsequent reversals does not diminish Philopoemen; instead, it underlines how great
42
was his achievement, when so much of the tide was running against him. There are cases where

Plutarch goes even further to avoid the ‘all in vain’ suggestions: the ends of Nicias or Demosthenes, for

instance, where ‘all in vain’ would not be too far to seek, but again we find the generous mode instead.

Nicias had always known it would end in tears, Demosthenes had always known the dangers of the
43 44
venal sycophant: less ‘all in vain’ than ‘I told you so’. The main exception is Aratus, where we do

have a foresnap of how his unsatisfactory son wrecked everything and his cause was lost. The tone there

is genuinely much more negative than in the otherwise closely similar Philopoemen. Aratus is a self-
45
standing Life, outside the series of parallels, and therefore does not have a synkrisis to follow. That may

be significant: I shall return to this.

If comparison is important, we ought to consider Lucullus, the pair of Cimon. In some ways at least,

Lucullus was very much Plutarch’s sort of person: a public man, who accepted the responsibility of the

talented to serve the states, but also a man of intellect and culture, who would feel the pull of a quieter,
more civilized style of life. He belongs with Epaminondas, Scipio Aemilianus, Pelopidas, Marcellus, and

Cicero. It was men like these to whom Plutarch turned first when he came to write the Parallel Lives,

and all of these figured in the first five pairs of the series.

In Lucullus’ case, the pull eventually became too great, and his final years were spent in torpor,

luxury, and excess: too old, he thought, for statesmanship, he lived the life of the glutton and the roué

instead. Or so, at least, people claimed. This drift into retirement was naturally essential to any moral

evaluation, and Plutarch was in a difficult position. His own view was clear: even in old age, an able

man has no right to turn his back on public life; a drift into torpor and luxury is the most undignified

retirement of all. That is set out clearly in Should an Old Man Engage in Politics? In that moral essay

Lucullus himself serves as a powerful example – and a wholly negative one (785f–6a, 792b–c).

Yet too strident a disapproval would sit uncomfortably in this Life. That was partly for reasons

particular to the pair. Plutarch begins by mentioning a specific debt of his home town Chaeronea to

Lucullus (Cimon 1–2). There had been a scandal when the commander of the local Roman garrison was

sexually harassing a local boy, and it had ended with the murder of the commander and his entourage.

Lucullus had stepped in to exonerate the town: now this Life should be a grateful tribute in recompense.

But there are more general reasons, too. Plutarch favours ethical generosity in treating human weakness,

for reasons he sets out in the introduction to this very pair: one should not suppress human frailties, but

like a portrait-painter one should not overemphasize them either (Cimon 2.3–4). We have also seen that

he does not like to end a Life on an uncomfortable note. Quiet, respectful repose is rather the

appropriate terminal register.

The way he handled the problem is interesting. The pairing with Cimon itself helps: Cimon, too,

had a shady private life, and the scandal in his case was a good deal less respectable than in the case of

Lucullus – incest with his looseliving sister, a series of affairs, not to mention lack of education. All that

in the first chapter of the narrative of Cimon (4): it is an astonishing way to begin a basically

sympathetic portrait, but one that immediately establishes private lapses as a typical concomitant of

public achievement. Then the treatment of Lucullus’ retirement itself is a good deal less strident than

the tones of Should an Old Man Engage in Politics? might lead us to expect. Plutarch does not conceal it:

indeed, some six chapters are devoted to it (38–43). As he had said at Cimon 2, one should not suppress

such things. Nor does he play down the moral issue. His disapproval of the banqueting is especially clear

(ch. 40), and the section is introduced by a long debate where the case for and against such retirement is

aired (38.2–5). Yet the balance of that chapter is still generous. Much more space is given to excuse than

to denunciation, and the criticisms are devalued by giving them to biased rivals. ‘Here he was,

abandoning himself to this life of pleasure and extravagance: did he not realize that he was too old for

dissipation, not for politics or command?’ But that is what ‘the supporters of Pompey and Crassus’ said
46
(38.5). It is what Plutarch had said, too, in the moral essay, but he does not say it here.

Hellenism also helps. Plutarch is always generous to lovers of Greece and Greeks: here he has

prepared the theme earlier, with specific acts of generosity to Greeks, as well as with a general emphasis
47
on Lucullus’ civilized justice in dealing with subject states and individuals. Now it is Greek visitors he

is regaling at his mansion in 41.2 (the story does not depend on it, and Plutarch did not need to say so);

the scholars who visit his library at 42.1–2 are again, naturally, Greeks: his house is a ‘genuine home

from home for the visitors to Rome, a pavilion of Greek culture’. Then Plutarch stresses his interest in

Greek philosophy (42.3–4). This passage, like that on the libraries, has no particular connection with

his retirement, and it uses material relating to a much earlier period of his life. But Plutarch prefers to

delay the points to here, and the effect is to distract attention from the torpor and the gluttony and to

redirect it toward the culture and the scholarship. This is a civilized retreat, not a selfindulgent wallow.

That indeed is how the opening chapter had proleptically introduced the motif. ‘When he grew older

this [his culture and education] became a type of retirement after a life full of rivalry and contests; he

allowed his intellect to find rest and leisure in philosophy, and cultivated the contemplative side of his

mind, curtailing his ambition and granting it a timely demise after his struggle with Pompey’ (1.6). We

now revisit the theme in much the same terms, and the ring composition is of a simple kind.

The final illness, too, tells a story, but here the ring is subtler, and is part of a wider pattern of

thematic recall.

Cornelius Nepos claims that it was not age or disease that took away his mind, but it was caused by

drugs, administered by one of his freedmen called Callisthenes. The drugs (says Nepos) were given him

to win his affections for Callisthenes, for this was supposed to be their effect; but in fact they weakened

and destroyed his intellect,so that even before his death his brother Marcus had to take over his property

to administer.

(Luc. 43.2)
A sad end, though one that is partly and typically retrieved by the popular affection shown at the funeral

(43.3). But it is also an end that recalls many of the man’s best qualities. The brotherly closeness is one

thing; that is the note on which Plutarch ends the Life at 43.4, just as he had included it in the first

chapter (1.8–9). The tale also recalls some of that story of Chaeronea that had begun the pair, an erotic
48
liaison of superior and inferior that goes murderously wrong. In several ways we have come full circle,

and the closing chapters recall the opening, not merely of Lucullus itself (the brother), but also of Cimon
49
and of the pair (the sexual liaison). But that is only part of the recollective pattern, for ‘Callisthenes’,
50
the misguided freedman, is surely a Greek. The philhellenism, so stressed throughout, has gone awry.

Any form of repetition, particularly if it has some variation suggestive of finality, can be a force for
51
closure: that is emphasized by Smith. This sort of flashback mirroring is therefore particularly suitable

for the end of a Life, and it is an unsurprising trait of Plutarch’s writing to recall a hero’s glorious
52
moments as he declines and dies. This is not the clearest case, but there is something of that here.

In Lucullus, then, we have a more extended example of terminal generosity, even after a Life that has

opened up most serious moral problems. It is striking that a large proportion of such delicate moral

issues tends to be opened up towards the end of Lives – Flamininus hounding down Hannibal, Pompey

forsaking the duties of a commander by giving in to pressure to fight at Pharsalus, Lysander turning into

a revolutionary, Fabius resenting Scipio, Philopoemen destroying the Spartan educational system,

Brutus maltreating an ally, Theseus raping Helen, and so on. The questions are opened, but Plutarch

feels the need to close them down before the Life finishes. We have seen how final chapters tend to be

unproblematic, and Lucullus is now a clearer case of how Plutarch may work for several chapters to end

his Life with a friendly, sympathetic envoi.

Perhaps we do not find that very surprising: we, too, do not like to be rude about the recently

departed. But the modern analogy may be misleading. Perhaps we would be wise to appeal to the
53
influence of funeral rhetoric in explaining the ancient phenomenon, not to a shared cross-cultural

human sensibility and feeling of propriety.

Terminal synkrisis: the questions reopened

If we move on to the synkritic epilogues themselves, we find one reason why we should not appeal to

that simple feeling of propriety, for Plutarch is very ready to introduce perspectives that swiftly qualify

that terminal generosity. In Life after Life, the synkritic chapters do raise the awkward moral questions;

the ends may have closed the issues down, but the synkriseis open them straight up again. In the case of

Cimon and Lucullus, the first question of the epilogue broaches the contrast with Cimon, the man who

died at the peak of energetic activity, not drifting into excess. That is not atypical: take Dion and Brutus.
54
I have argued elsewhere that Brutus in particular tends to avoid moral problematic. That is true of the

Life, but it is certainly not true of the epilogue. Should Brutus have turned against Caesar, when Caesar
55
had done so much for him? That was conventionally the great moral issue about Brutus, and in the

Life Plutarch sidesteps it; but he confronts it squarely in the synkrisis. The comparison with Dion poses

the question, whose tyrannicide was the purer? However alien we find that mode of comparison, it gives

the question immediacy and bite. And did Caesar deserve to be killed at all? There was a view that
56
Caesar was the least harmful remedy for the ailing state, and Plutarch airs it here – but again in the

synkrisis, not in the Life itself, where the tyrannicide had been cloaked in unquestioned respectability.

Other epilogues, too, raise awkward moral questions that the Lives themselves had elided. Aristides

had painted its hero’s famed poverty in admiring tones, whereas Cato Maior had been appreciative of

Cato’s old-fashioned diligence in caring for his home; it is the epilogue that brings the two themes
57
together, and makes each of them seem more morally ambivalent. The same is true of Crassus’

extravagant military aspirations, which the synkrisis discusses more thoughtfully than the Life does;

elsewhere new doubts are expressed, on Cleomenes’ revolutionary tactics, for instance, or on the
58
circumstances of several deaths – Antony, Eumenes, Nicias, and Philopoemen. Elsewhere the moral

questions are not new ones, but nonetheless counter the restfulness of the end of the narrative. Thus

Demosthenes–Cicero reopens the awkward questions of earlier parts of Cicero – the badly timed

witticisms, the self-praise, the undignified and unconstructive behaviour in exile, the unprincipled
59
fostering of Octavian; Theseus–Romulus reminds us of Theseus’ rapes, the forgetfulness that killed

Aegeus, and the deaths of Hippolytus and Remus. There are times, too, when particular actions are

recoloured in the synkriseis, and usually the principal’s motives come out worse than in the

corresponding narrative. In Coriolanus itself, Plutarch rejects a story that Coriolanus sent a disastrously

deceptive message to the Roman magistrates (26.2); in the epilogue, he accepts it, and puts it down to
60
the man’s extreme anger (Alc. 41(2).4). In Demetrius, the Macedonian regent Alexander seemed to be

plotting to kill Demetrius, and Demetrius struck him down in self-defence (Demetr. 36, esp. 36.12); in

the synkrisis, the charge of Alexander’s plotting appears to be ‘false’, a disingenuous fabrication of
 61
Demetrius himself (Ant. 92(5).4). Such inconcinnities do not show Plutarch at his best, but they do
62
reflect the wider sense in which the synkriseis are less morally generous than the narrative.

Today’s response to the synkriseis tends to be one of impatience. We do not find the nursery

moralism attractive, and the whole principle of comparison seems artificial. Carelessness and
63
superficiality are not far to seek. But another way of looking at it would be to see these chapters as

reopening these issues which the closing chapters have closed. The modern, or postmodern, taste is for

aperture rather than closure; if we could only stomach the questions that Plutarch finds it so natural to

ask, we might join all those generations who have found the synkritic chapters admirable. They do raise

thought-provoking moral issues, and they usually leave the fundamental comparative questions – who is

the better man, whose was the greater achievement – open in the fullest sense, or at least declare a
64
draw.

Terminal irregularity: pairs without epilogues

There are four pairs that lack a concluding formal synkrisis – Phocion–Cato Minor, Themistocles–

Camillus, Pyrrhus–Marius, and Alexander–Caesar. It used to be assumed that they had been lost, but
65
Erbse (1956) argued that Plutarch deliberately omitted synkriseis for those pairs; he suggested that the

similarities were either so great (Phocion–Cato Minor) or so slight (e.g., Pyrrhus–Marius) that there was

nothing very illuminating to say. That particular explanation is not cogent: similar problems did not
66
stop Plutarch writing synkriseis elsewhere. But Erbse may still have been on the right lines, and our

present angle, relating this to the closures of the respective Lives, might be more productive.

Certainly, in each of these pairs the second Life has a striking end. Phocion and Cato Minor are
67
linked by the Socratic elements in each man’s death, though the comparison is not straightforward.

Cato cannot finally manage the calm and dignity of Socrates or Phocion: he cannot even deliver the

death blow very well because he has just injured his hand striking a slave, and the final agonized

struggles are not pleasant or serene. But it is clear that this final scene of the Cato is peculiarly dramatic,

even given Plutarch’s general capacity to surpass himself at the end; one can understand if he was

reluctant to compromise so fine an ending with a formal synkrisis, and preferred to leave it as it is,

especially as the implicit comparison with the dying Phocion is so loud. Some of the material he might

have used is transposed into the introduction to Phocion, where he has an unusual amount to say about

the Roman as well as the Greek.

Then there is Pyrrhus–Marius. We earlier noticed Plutarch’s taste for the favourable ending, avoiding

terminal disquiet in the Life even if he goes on to raise it in the synkrisis, and there are few exceptions to

this ‘friendly farewell’. One disquieting end was that of Aratus, mentioned earlier: no synkrisis there, for

that is outside the series of Parallel Lives. There are perhaps two other exceptions, and one of them is
68
indeed Marius. That ends without sympathy for Marius, so undignified in his final ambition, and

then with the even worse younger Marius, who himself fell in battle against Sulla a few years later. Thus

what is exceptional in one way again turns out to be exceptional in another: Plutarch’s usual terminal

rhythm could not have worked here.

Themistocles–Camillus is exceptional in a different way. Camillus is the one Life that is the nil case at
69
either end, and both its terminus and its beginning are the most perfunctory of them all. Admittedly,

it is not clear to a modern audience why that should have excluded a synkrisis; we might rather have

expected it to make a different sort of rounding off more desirable. But our own tastes may be an

unreliable guide. We should simply notice that the absence of a synkrisis is again found in combination
70
with an ending that is irregular in a quite different way.

What about Alexander–Caesar, our last example? No one can doubt that Caesar ends marvellously –

perhaps the finest ending of them all. It bears extended quotation.

Caesar died at the age of fifty-six, outliving Pompey by a little more than four years. He had sought

dominion and power all his days, and after facing so many dangers he had finally achieved them. And

the only benefit he reaped was their empty name, and the perils of fame amid his envious fellow

citizens.

His great guardian spirit, which had watched over him in life, continued to avenge his

murder, pursuing and tracking his killers over every land and sea, until not one remained, but

everyone had been punished who had had any contact with the killing in thought or in

execution. The most remarkable human event concerned Cassius, who after his defeat at

Philippi killed himself with the very dagger he had used against Caesar. As for the

supernatural, there was the great comet that shone brilliantly for seven nights after Caesar’s

death, then disappeared; and also the dimming of the sun’s rays. For that entire year the sun

rose pale, with no radiation, and its heat came to earth only faintly and ineffectually, so that
 the air hung dark and thick on the earth because of the lack of radiance to penetrate it. The

crops consequently never matured, but shrivelled and withered away when they were only

half-ripe because of the coldness of the air.

More than anything else, it was the phantom that appeared to Brutus which gave a

particularly clear sign that Caesar’s killing had been unwelcome to the gods. It happened like

this. Brutus was about to transport the army from Abydus to the other continent: it was

night-time, and he was resting as usual in his tent. He was not asleep, but deep in thought

about the future. They say that this man needed less sleep than any other general in history,

and spent many hours awake and alone. He thought he heard a noise by the door, and looked

toward the lamp, which was already burning low. He saw a terrifying apparition of a man, a

giant in size and menacing to look at. At first he was frightened, but then he saw that the

apparition was doing and saying nothing, but just standing silently by the bed. Brutus asked

him who he was. The phantom replied: ‘Your evil genius, Brutus. You will meet me at

Philippi.’ For the moment Brutus calmly replied ‘I will meet you there’, and the phantom

immediately went away.

In the following months Brutus faced Antony and the young Caesar in battle at Philippi.

In the first battle he defeated and forced back the detachment stationed opposite himself, and

drove on to destroy Caesar’s camp. When he was about to fight the second battle the

phantom visited him again at night. It said nothing, but Brutus recognized his fate, and

plunged into danger in the battle. Yet he did not die fighting. After the rout he took refuge on

a rocky prominence, and forced his breast against his naked sword, with a friend, they say,

adding weight to the blow. So he met his death.

(Caes. 69)

And perhaps I should leave it there, just commenting on the fineness of the ending: no wonder Plutarch

was content to leave it there too. Still, we can also adopt the same approach as with Phocion–Cato

Minor, and wonder if there is some implicit comparison with Alexander here, which is as

thoughtprovoking as any formal synkrisis – to us, indeed, with our distaste for the formal comparisons,

distinctly more interesting. The point could be summarized as the relation in the two Lives between the

religious and the secular, or (better) the supernatural and the down-to-earth and human. This

apparition does not come wholly from the blue; the pair has done something to prepare the way.

First, Alexander. That Life also has a finely wrought ending: death has been in the air for some time.

The replies of the Gymnosophistae were decidedly morbid (Alex. 64); just before that point his horse
71
Bucephalas and his dog had both died, and he had extravagantly founded cities to commemorate both

(61). He himself was wounded all but fatally (63.12), just before (expressively) coming to the bounds of

his conquest and turning back. Then we have other deaths – memorably Hephaestion, with Alexander
72
playing Achilles to his Patroclus; that Homeric reminiscence has its own suggestions, and we know

that Alexander’s own death, like Achilles’, cannot be far away. First we meet Calanus, the suicidal Indian

sage (69), who builds his own pyre and bids the Macedonians farewell. His parting words are powerful

ones. ‘He will see Alexander soon, at Babylon’ (69.6): the closeness to Caesars ‘You will meet me at

Philippi’ is clear. The most moving aspect is the taut, emotional response to all this. The atmosphere is

bizarre, with Alexander himself dismayed and gloomy at the omens and the deaths, but responding with

strained, extreme passion – his grief, his drinking bouts, his terror, his rage. It seems an unreal world,

except that we know that death is near, a death that is very real; so are the dangers to people like

Cassander (74.2–6). Alexander had begun as a pupil of Aristotle, in particular learning medicine (8).

The difference between the clean and healthy Greek atmosphere of the beginning and the fevered

hypochondria of the end, deep in an alien world, is beautifully conceived and executed.

One thing is continuous from beginning to end – Alexander’s divine aspiration. The end of
73
Alexander has been lost, but I have argued that we have a fragment from it:

It is said that, as Alexander realized his life was departing, he wanted to drown himself secretly in the

Euphrates: his object was to disappear and leave behind the story that he had now returned to the gods,

just as he had come from them. But Roxane realized what was in his mind, so they say, and stopped the

plan; Alexander said to her with a groan, ‘so you envied me, wife, the fame of apotheosis and

immortality’.

The passage expressly recalls the beginning of the Life – ‘He had now returned to the gods, just as he had

come from them! That is the ‘story’ that Alexander now wants to ‘leave behind him’ – but Plutarch’s early

narrative had left a different impression. Chapters 2–3 raised the possibility of divine birth, but the end

of each section was there rationalistic and deflating. Plutarch discussed whether Olympias had been

visited by a snake: he aired several possibilities, but gave most emphasis to the most rationalistic, the
version that Olympias simply practised cultic snake-handling. He also included the story that Olympias

confided a divine secret to Alexander, but again ended with an alternative and less supernatural version,

with Olympias bursting out, ‘Won’t Alexander stop slandering me before Hera?’ The Life includes other

Hammon material as well, but Plutarch remains largely detached and noncommittal. Our new fragment

fits perfectly. Alexander is pathetically foiled, and the divine aspirations are deflated yet again, here by

his wife as initially by his mother.

In Caesar, death is again in the air, but it is all dealt with in a much more political and pragmatic
74 75
way. Caesar is politically forced, by the pressure of rule, to use unsatisfactory friends (esp. Caes. 51);

they make him unpopular; the forces of opposition are gathering. There are omens (especially at 63),

more omens than in Alexander, and Shakespeare was to find them useful for Julius Caesar. Even

Plutarch’s Caesar is a little disturbed, but he is still inclined to minimize them. What he finds unsettling

is Calpurnia’s reaction rather than the omens themselves (63.11), and it is a point about people rather

than about the firmament. Here it is not Plutarch who is doing the deflating, but Caesar himself;

Alexander unduly deflated the religious register, Caesar is dangerously playing it down. True, Calpurnia

finally persuades him to change his mind; but Decimus Brutus readily persuades him back, partly with,

once again, the political argument, 64.5: What will the senate think? How will his friends be able to

deny that this is a matter of tyrant and slaves? The political atmosphere is already too fraught for him to

frustrate them like this. Caesar goes, and he dies.

76
The death itself is in the main realistic and human; then its first sequel, the lynching of Cinna the

poet, again points to the force and violence of the human passions. That takes us to 69.1, which is

phrased so as to sound strongly closural:

Caesar died at the age of fifty-six, outliving Pompey by a little more than four years. He had sought

dominion and power all his days, and after facing so many dangers he had finally achieved them. And

the only benefit he reaped was their empty name, and the perils of fame amid his envious fellow

citizens.

Yet that closure is a false one. Rather as we saw with the similar false closure in Antony, there are still

themes unfinished; and here the themes touch on something more than human. The omens have

already suggested that there is something more in the air; that is also stated by the element in the death
77
scene that was not strictly human and rationalistic, the place where it all happened:

All that [the story of Artemidorus, and his failure to force his way through to Caesar with news of the

conspiracy] might simply be the result of coincidence, but it is harder to explain the place where the

senate had gathered on that day, the scene of the murder and the violence. For it had a statue of Pompey

lying on the floor, and the whole building had been dedicated by Pompey as one of the additional

decorations to his theatre. That gave an indication that there was some heavenly power directing events

and guiding the plot into action at this very spot. Indeed, there is a story that Cassius looked at the

statue of Pompey before they attacked, and called him silently to his aid, even though Cassius was

sympathetic to the teachings of Epicurus; but it would seem that, in this critical and terrifying moment,

a type of frenzied emotional transport drove out those earlier rational calculations… He fell by the

pedestal on which Pompey’s statue had stood, perhaps by chance, perhaps dragged there by the assassins.

It was drenched in streams of blood, so that it appeared that Pompey himself had presided over the

vengeance inflicted on his enemy, lying there beneath his feet, still writhing convulsively from his many

wounds.

(Caes. 66.1–3, 12–13)

Here, too, Plutarch is careful to keep the focus heavily on the human side: the effect on Cassius is

phrased in naturalistic and psychological terms; and it only ‘appeared’ that Pompey presided over the

death, when in fact this was a matter either of chance or of the conspirators’ engineering. But the

language remains clear: ‘that gave an indication that there was some heavenly power directing events’;

and that supernatural register eventually asserts itself in that final chapter, after the false closure, with

the demonic apparition. Alexander may have aspired to play a divine game, but it is Caesar who

ultimately plays it.

I do not suggest that there is a crude or straightforward conclusion to draw from this. It is surely not

that ‘the divine ultimately took more thought for Caesar, so Caesar must have been greater than

Alexander’, even though Plutarch is more inclined than we are to phrase questions in this ‘Who is the

greater?’ mode. It may even be that the final intrusion of the supernatural is a sort of commentary on

the whole pair. However much anyone – Olympias, Roxane, Plutarch himself, Caesar – tries to evade a

divine involvement, there will still be some supernatural accompaniment and concern with events so

momentous as these, and men so great. But there is no need to pin down the suggestions in that way

either. We can surely be content to leave the end as it is, open and thought-provoking. This is certainly a

case where we find a new perspective and a new set of reflections, an exception to Plutarch’s usual
preference for avoiding such terminal redirection. There is a sense of rest as well, with the posthumous

vengeance and the concluding death, but it is still rare to have so arresting a new perspective so close to

the end. Again, this is not the usual closing rhythm; again, a closing formal synkrisis could not have

fulfilled its usual role; again, the implicit comparison with Alexander could have struck Plutarch as

enough, and not to be compromised by a lamer, formal equivalent.

Envoi

Aristotle knew that the events of a single life were not enough to give a work unity (Poetics 8.1451a16–

19); he also asked whether the end of a life might be too soon to allow an adequate judgement on its

happiness (Eth. Nic. 1.10–11, 1100a10–1101b9). Cradle to grave may not be enough. That is doubly

true of Plutarch, where a pair has two cradles and two graves, and the themes need much finer

modulation. That modulation does not always follow the same pattern, for Plutarch does not write to

formulas. But the synkritic framework is used thoughtfully and pervasively; and the variations in his

style of closure are intimately related to those of his comparative technique.

Notes

1
Bibliography on this point could be equally endless; perhaps most influential has been White, especially 1973, 1978, and 1987. Mink

1987, esp. 47–48, 68–72, and 136–37 emphasizes the linkage of ending and explanation, as a story’s configuration becomes clear

retrospectively: cf. also Fusillo 1997, 223. On particular endings in classical historiography, cf. recently D. Fowler 1989, 116–17;

Henderson 1989; Kennedy 1991, 177; and the various papers in Roberts, Dunn and Fowler 1997, where this chapter itself first

appeared. The ending of Herodotus continues to be particularly absorbing: cf. Boedeker 1988, Herington 1991, Moles 1996, Dewald

1997, and Pelling 1997f.

2
Cf. Nuttall 1992, 201.

3
There are four exceptions, which are considered below.

4
The last word is in fact άπέθανεν, ‘died’: similarly in Crassus, Cato Minor, Marius, Camillus, and Flamininus (if we treat the transitional
sentence as part of the synkrisis; see next n.).

5
Thus Flamininus gives its closing chapters to the death of Hannibal, then notices Flamininus’ own demise in a brief sentence of

transition (Flam. 21.15): ‘We have not discovered any further political or military achievement of Flamininus, but he met with a

peaceful death: so it is time to consider the comparison.’ This is conventionally printed as part of the Life; it might equally be regarded

as the first sentence of the synkrisis. As e.g. with Demetr. 53.10 and Gracch. 1.1, such questions and divisions are artificial.

6
See pp. 378–9, where the closing chapter is quoted.

7
Cf. pp. 350–3 and Pelling 1997a, 249–58.

8
Cf. Pelling 1988, esp. 16–17; D. Fowler 1989, 116. Duff 1999, 137 n. 25, collects other examples where Lives carry the story some

way past death.

9
On comparison and its importance see ch. 16 and the works quoted there.

10
Smith 1968; for fuller bibliography, cf. esp. D. Fowler 1989 and Roberts, Dunn and Fowler 1997.

11
As we shall see, they recur throughout the Parallel Lives, and also in the self-standing works Aratus and Artaxerxes; but not,

interestingly, in Otho, though Galba has a strong enough closure. That is further confirmation that the Lives of the Caesars was conceived

as a continuous series (cf. p. 188): the reader is not expected to stop at the end of Otho, and it looks as if Otho 18.3–4 could equally have

been considered as the opening of Vitellius.

12
I discuss this tendency to terminal (and proemial) self-presentation more in ch. 12, esp. pp. 269–70.

13
Cf. Cic. 50(1).1, with a very similar formulation leading into the pair’s synkrisis. That has the effect of ringing and marking off the

whole of Cicero, and also of drawing atten- tion to Plutarch’s own role as researcher: cf. below. For further self-referential transitions, cf.

Flam. 21.15 (see above, note 5); Lys. 30.8; Demetr. 53.10; Alc. 40(1).1; Popl. 24(1).1. For the modern tendency to terminal self-

reference, D. Fowler 1989, 109–13; for ancient instances, notice Xenophon’s conclusions to Hellenica (discussed in Pelling 1999, 327–

8), Cyropaedia, and Lacedaimonion politeia; also Fusillo 1997, 212–13.

14
Also Cato Min. 73.6; Cor. 39.11. For modern novel-series, cf. Torgovnick 1981, 13–14, 23. The end of Crime and Punishment is a

striking example. An interesting variation is the terminal suggestion that another story is beginning, which could be the subject of a

second work (ibid.).

15
Stadter 1988, 292, and 1989, xlii, has written perceptively on this.

16
Or, in Stadter’s formulation: ‘The feeling of being in contact with an understanding and intellectually curious person, someone who is

serious yet not stuffy, aware of life in all its manifestations, yet deliberately avoiding the unseemly and trying to present the best side of

his subjects’ (1988, 292). Stadter was writing in particular about the proems; they are mirrored in this respect by the conclusions. I say

more about this in chs. 10 and 12.

17
Cf. n. 13 above. Livy, too, sometimes ends books in this way (Books 4, 7, 8, 30, 37, 39). I here put this point in terms of the relation

of the author (or implied author) to the material, or more precisely in the projection of this relation to the implied audience, a matter in

Genette’s terms of ‘voice’ (Genette 1980, 31–2, 211–62). It could equally be phrased in terms of the emotional engagement encouraged

in the narratees. Such an assumed harmony between authorial and audience engagement is not unusual, though it is not universal either;

but in Plutarch the harmony is unusually close and complete. That reflects the persuasive and rhetorical charm whereby he assumes the

same moral standpoint in his audience as in himself, something that in its turn helps to make his further moral inferences more

acceptable. Stadter (1988, 293) again has some perceptive remarks. – Or so I said in 1997. In ch. 12 I discuss some cases where a

dissonant, ‘cross- grained’ narratee is envisaged (pp. 272, 276–7); that may seem to contradict what I said in this note. But the awareness

that others may be dissonant can also have the effect of cementing the bond with the regular, consonant, sympathetic narratee.
18
On the proems of Aristides and Solon, see Stadter 1988, 287–8; on Aristides, Pelling 1990, 22–3.

19
In ch. 7 I say more about Theseus’ proem, its project of ‘rationalization’, and the diffident rather than pedantically confident self-

characterization suggested by the string of quotations.

20
Peden 1987; cf. Schrijvers 1973, 154, on Horace.

21
On the end of Herodotus see works cited in n. 1.

22
Notice the summarizing ‘in this way…’: some dozen of the other Lives end similarly. Cf. P. Fowler on Lucretian epiphonemata, 1997,

116, 120. For further points about the Cicero anecdotes, especially their elaboration of earlier themes in the Life and the pair,see Moles

1988, 200–1.

23
This does not exclude the possibility that the issues might reappear in later genera- tions, including Plutarch’s own: in particular, the

tensions between Greek contentious- ness and Roman oppressiveness (Philopoemen) and between philosophical culture and autocratic

domination (Cicero) would both have contemporary resonance. I explore the first of those aspects in ch. 10. Lysander is interesting here

too. The effect on Sparta of the wealth he imported has been stressed earlier (esp. 2.6 and 17–18: see pp. 292–5 and Pelling,

forthcoming (b) ). That theme might have returned explicitly in the final chapter, but it does not; the impression, at least the surface

impression, of the closure is rather that danger has been set aside and rifts have been healed, with an emphasis on private penury rather

than public wealth.

24
Cf. Smith 1968, index s.v. ‘terminal modification’. This category seems to prove particularly illuminating for ancient texts: cf. Nagle

1983 and Reeve 1984.

25
There is an eloquent contrast here with Lycurgus, one of the Lives with the greatest bulk of posthumous material. His achievement did

not die with his death, which indeed he engineers to safeguard his achievement; the final story therefore needs to be taken down to Agis

and Lysander. This, too, is a ‘completion of the death’, but in the case of Lycurgus it takes centuries. Cf. also Tim. 39.7.

26
At pp. 269–70 I also comment on the way this conveys an intimation of the intel- lectual milieu which Plutarch and his friends share,

a world in which the past still counts.

27
Above, pp. 200–1, and Pelling 1989, 214–15.

28
This interest in Cato’s descendants mirrors that in his ancestors at Cato Mai. 1.1–3: cf. Antony, discussed at pp. 369–70 and Pelling

1988, 10, 117, and 325.

29
This assumes the reading έπιμανως (Solanus, Jones) rather than έπιφανως at 87.8. For more detailed commentary on the closure, cf.
Pelling 1988, 322–7.

30
God’s Slowness to Punish 567a; cf. Jones 1971, 16–19, 120; Russell 1973, 2–3; for a different view, Brenk 1987a and 1992, 43, 56–75.

31
Ant. 93(6); cf. Pelling 1988, 19–26, 325.

32
Stinton 1975; cf. Moles 1988, 24, 200; Pelling 1988, 323. I am not implying that such emotional ‘restitution’ is the only, or even the

main, reason for including such aitia.

33
Eur. Hipp. 1422–30. Nor does it make things more reassuring that Artemis herself seems to sense no inappropriateness there; nor (in

one sense) is there any, for Artemis presides over the virginity-to-marriage transition as surely as she presides over chastity itself.

Hippolytus has been one-sided not merely in following Artemis so exclusively and rejecting Aphrodite, but also in picking and choosing

among aspects of Artemis herself.

34
Cf. esp. Eur. Medea 847–50. In Pelling 1997c, 220–2 and 2000, 198–203, I try to disentangle more strands in the possible range of

audience reactions to Medea.

35
Cf. esp. Roberts 1987 and 1988.

36
Cf. the exhaustive discussion of Manuwald 1979, 131–6, and for a different approach Pelling 1982b, 224–5 and Rich 1989, 104–8.

37
See Woodman 1989, though I am unconvinced by his attempt to minimize the discordance between obituary and narrative. A version

of the view of Koestermann (1963, 1:38), rejected by Woodman, is more attractive: different parts of Tacitus’ narrative suggest to the

reader different, and not straightforwardly reconcilable, explanatory strands. I say more about this in Pelling 1997d, 122–3 n. 25;

Woodman 1998, 241 says more too.

38
See esp. Dewald 1997 and Pelling 1997f.

39
male pugnatum: the important combination of a moral register (‘badly’) with one of success and failure is hard to capture in English,

but is important to the passage’s suggestions.

40
On the end of the Jugurtha and its function within the work, see esp. Levene 1992; on spes in Sallust, so often illusory or frustrated,

see Scanlon 1987, esp. 1, 40, 61 on the final sentence. The end of Catiline is also forward-looking and thought-provoking, though in

slightly different ways: cf. P. Fowler 1997, 134.

41
Above, pp. 368–9.

42
The end of Pericles is similar. We are given a hint of the way the war will go, the abandonment of his advice, the rise of the

demagogues. But there is nothing of the ‘all in vain’ here; this is simply a pointer to how much Athens would come to miss him. This is

terminal laudation once again, not terminal redirection.

43
Nic. 30.3, Dem. 31.6.

44
And to an extent Marius and Alcibiades: cf. p. 378 and below, n. 68. Demetr. 53.8–9 might also belong here, with its survey of the

generations until Macedon fell to Rome; but the principal point here is to aid the transition to the ‘Roman drama’ of Antony, 53.10, and

the tone is not specially charged.

45
Here and elsewhere, its moralism is also cruder than that of the Parallel Lives. The Life is written for the impressionable sons of his

friend Polycrates, and filial imitation is a suggestive theme: cf. p. 291.

46
On this terminal generosity to Lucullus see also Swain 1990a, 144 = Scardigli 1995,261–2; Swain 1992a, 312–14; Duff 1999, 260–1.

On this particular exchange of gibes between Pompey and Lucullus, cf. pp. 73–4 above.

47
Generosity to Greeks: 18, 29.3–5, 33.4 (cf. Swain 1990a, 143 = Scardigli 1995, 260, and 1992a, 314); Murena, Plutarch emphasizes,

was ham-fisted in comparison, 19.8–9. General justice: 4.1, 7.1–3, 20, 23.1–3, 24.6–7. Contrast Tigranes, whose friction with Greeks is

stressed only here (21.3–5, 22), not for instance in Pompey.

48
Cim. 1–2.

49
On similar rings in the novel, cf. Fusillo 1997; but biography is naturally more wistful, with the earlier themes re-emerging in death

rather than in a restitution of initial order.

50
Compare the way in which ‘Philologus’ plays a crucial role in the demise of the philhellene Cicero: Cic. 48.2, with Moles 1988, 200

and Pelling 1989, 222.

51
Smith 1968, esp. 31, 42–4, 48–9, 155–66.

52
For clearer cases, cf. the closures of Pelopidas and Marcellus: Pelling 1989, 207–8.

53
Cf. especially Dihle 1987.

54
Pelling 1989, 222–8.

55
Cf. esp. Rawson 1986, and see above, p. 254.

56
Brut. 55(2).2; similar praise at Ant. 6.7. Cf. pp. 258–9, 324.

57
Especially at Cato Mai. 30(3)–31(4): above, pp. 200–1, 275 and 312.

58
Crassus’ aspirations: Crass. 37(4). Cleomenes’ tactics: Gracch. 44(4).2–3, 45(5).2; deaths: Ant. 93(6).4 (discussed above), Eum.

21(2).7–8, Crass. 38(5).4, Flam. 22(1).7. Cf. above, pp. 351–2, 360–1 and 363 n. 46; Pelling 1988, 20.

59
Cf. Moles 1988, 200, on Cic. 49.3–6 and the following synkrisis.

60
Russell 1963, 21 = Scardigli 1995, 358–9: cf. p. 353.

61
Pelling 1988, 20.

62
Duff 1999, 263–83 discusses this ‘closural dissonance’ in much more detail: he too stresses that it often takes the form of less

generosity in epilogue than in narrative. See my remarks above at pp. 360–1.

63
Cf. the criticisms which I formulated in ch. 16. As I acknowledge at p. 360, I may well have put the point too strongly in that essay’s

1986 form; this passage in the 1997 paper was intended as a correction.

64
The verdict is left open explicitly at Luc. 46(3).6, and implicitly in most of the other cases. Even in pairs where the rhythm of the

argument seems to tilt the scales toward one man or the other, this is not made explicit, and the issues are usually made to seem finely

balanced: Theseus–Romulus, Aristides–Cato Maior, Pericles–Fabius, Dion–Brutus, Aemilius Paulus–Timoleon. A draw seems suggested by

those summaries which give each man the advantage in a particular area; Sulla 43(5).6, Flam. 24(3).5, and Gracch. 45(5).7. The clearest

exception seems Solon–Poplicola, where Poplicola, oddly enough, seems to emerge as the winner: Duff 1999, 260. Some equality

between the subjects of comparison was in fact an expectation of ancient rhetorical theory: cf. Swain 1992b, adducing Theon Prog.

2.112.20 ff. Sp., and Hermogenes Prog. 19.14–19 Rabe, and Duff 1999, 257–62.

65
For Erbse, Green 1978, 23 n. 118 and (with qualifications, and for very different reasons than Erbse’s own) van der Valk 1982, 306–7

and 329. Against, Larmour 1992, 4175–7, Swain 1992b, 111 and on balance Duff 1999, 253–5. Duff considers the argu- ment which I

put in this paper, but is concerned that it works less well for Them.–Cam. than for the other three pairs.

66
Cf. Wardman 1974, 207; Larmour 1992, 4176.

67
On this see now Duff 1999, 131–60, esp. 143–4 on the deaths.

68
‘Perhaps two exceptions’: the other I had in mind was Alcibiades, which in 1997 I limply added was ‘a genuine exception’. I now think

that the last chapter of Alcibiades is much too ambiguous to be cast as simply negative: cf. Pelling 1996, lvi–lvii (written after the 1997

paper though it appeared before it); Duff 1999, 239–40.

69
See above, p. 366. Notice also that there is no transitional sentence between the Lives.

70
A sceptic might retort that the terminal abruptness of Camillus could equally suggest that a more leisurely ending has dropped out of

the manuscript tradition. But the precise phrasing of the final words – ‘Camillus’ death grieved the Romans more than those of all the

others who at that time, and in that plague, met their deaths’ – fits a regular closural pattern: cf. pp. 365–6. Further, in view of the usual

symmetry between the beginning and the end of Lives, the irregularly abrupt beginning of Camillus lends support to an equal

irregularity at the end.

71
Given the prominence of Bucephalas and the Achillean suggestions that are beginning to crowd into the Life, it may not be fanciful

here to think of Achilles’ horse Pedasus, the mortal animal who keeps pace with his divine companions (Il. 16.152–4), but whose death

comes to prefigure Patroclus’ at Il. 16.467–9.

72
Cf. Mossman 1988.

73
In Zonaras 4.14 p. 304: cf. Pelling 1973.

74
Cf. Mossman 1988, 92 = Scardigli 1995, 226; Pelling 1997e.

75
More on the forces destroying Caesar at p. 258 and in Pelling 1997e.

76
Cf pp. 184–5, where I discuss the contact and contrast with the death of Romulus at Rom. 27–8.

77
Cf. Mossman 1991, 117–18.
 18

THE SHAPING OF CORIOLANUS:

DIONYSIUS, PLUTARCH, AND SHAKESPEARE

Coriolanus offers a unique opportunity to trace the moulding of a Shakespearian character and plot. It is

not just that we can trace his adaptations of Plutarch with particular precision, though it is true that he

stays nearer to his Plutarchan original here than in the other Roman plays: many of the verbal echoes are

very close, especially at the tensest moments – Coriolanus’ speech to Aufidius in IV.v, Volumnia’s

decisive harangue in V.iii – and there are also notable similarities in conception. But there is more.

Plutarch’s own methods are particularly clear, for – most unusually for him – he owes virtually all his

material to a single source, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and we can trace Plutarch’s own transformations
1
in detail. This was done in 1963 in a seminal article by Donald Russell; the implications for

Shakespeare are worth tracing. Time and again we find Shakespeare – of course unconsciously, for he

surely did not know Dionysius – responding to and developing those features which are Plutarch’s own,

where Plutarch has improved on his source through his own creative reinterpretation. There is a

continuous process here, with Plutarch taking the dramatic reshaping and character-moulding half-way,

and Shakespeare finishing the task.

Some of this is no surprise. Plutarch is a highly dramatic writer, with strong visual scenes and tense

personal encounters, and many of his scenes might already seem shaped for the theatre. Menenius and

the commons, Martius and Cominius after Corioles, the candidature for the consulship, the trial, the

arrival at Aufidius’ house, and particularly the final collapse before the women’s embassy – all have a

peculiar tautness and sharpness of focus, and all transposed readily for the stage. Plutarch also has the

problem of shaping a biography from the sprawling historical narrative of Dionysius, where the

Coriolanus story spreads over three books; of course he develops a stronger sense of the man’s character

and uses this to unify the material, whereas Dionysius allowed Coriolanus’ story to be only one part,
2
though a vital one, of a wider historical theme. Some of Plutarch’s favourite devices for smoothing
3
narrative, such as temporal compression and conflation of similar items, are similar to Shakespeare’s; it

is natural that the events, which take years in Dionysius, are compressed to seem a matter of months in

Plutarch, and the important political sequence takes place on a single day in Shakespeare.

Still, even such routine matters often have further implications. It is Plutarch, we shall see, who

turns this into a tragedy of anger, and Shakespeare takes that over; yet the anger is different.

Shakespeare’s Coriolanus typically loses control. His determination to act ‘mildly’ in the trial collapses as

swiftly as his self restraint with Aufidius in the final scene. That suits Shakespeare’s even more rapid

development of the plot. The glory of Corioles, the immediate rebuff in the elections, and now this

swift further humiliation: no wonder control is hard to keep. Plutarch’s Coriolanus is not so much of a

temper-loser. He is discomfited in the trial, thrown by the unexpected twist the accusations take, but he

is not so enraged. His distinctive anger comes later as he goes into exile: it is wrath rather than rage,

long-breeding, concealed, particularly dangerous, and Plutarch makes the point explicit (21 = Narrative
4
and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare 525–6: below, p. 399). Achilles’ wrath in the Iliad is hinted,
5
certainly for Plutarch and probably for Shakespeare too; but the anger we become used to in

Shakespeare is the anger of Iliad 1, with a man cheated of his proper recognition and enraged beyond

measure by sudden humiliation. In Plutarch it is the later, more stable and brooding wrath, as Achilles

lingers in his tent, torn and agonized. And when Shakespeare’s rage has to develop in a similar way, once

Coriolanus has left Rome and his anger has to stand the test of time, we ask more questions about

whether he will be able to sustain it when the final pressure comes.

Elsewhere, too, apparently routine matters can illuminate fundamental issues of the two texts. A

recurrent theme will be the manner in which Shakespeare, even as he transforms Plutarch in so many

ways, does so to develop Plutarch’s own themes.

First scenes: Menenius and the commons

In Dionysius the Menenius episode is separate: his fable is inspired by the secession of the plebs which

led to the tribunate. True, that fable (6.83–7) is delivered shortly before Corioles and Martius’ first

appearance (6.92); but for the moment we hear only of Martius’ valour, not of his political

intransigence, and there is no contrast between the two men’s political styles. It is not till 7.21 that

Martius the intransigent appears, and by then Menenius is dead. His obituary rounds off Book 6 (6.96):

that is a prominent position, and Menenius’ simple moralism doubtless has a wider paradigmatic role
 6
for the Struggle of the Orders. But this is some way from the sharp and particular contrast with

Coriolanus which Plutarch and Shakespeare develop.

Plutarch integrates Menenius into Coriolanus’ story, but does not take it far. Martius is not closely

involved in the secession which evokes Menenius’ fable: he only expresses fears of the revolutionary

consequences, then disapproves, with some nobility of temper, of the concessions which the aristocrats

grant (5–7 = NDS 510–11). Menenius’ style, addressing the commons in their own language, simply

sets a model against which Martius’ later inflammatory manner can be gauged.

It is Shakespeare who keeps Menenius alive for the whole episode, and develops the hints which
7
Plutarch gave. In I.i Menenius’ capacity to interact with the commons is captured not merely by his

earthy style, but also by the constant interruptions from plebeians and his skilful playing off them; the

contrast is sharpened by bringing Martius more strongly into this scene, and immediately developing

the impatient, cursing flood of his rhetoric – so impatient of ‘proverbs’, I.i.203, when Menenius had

been so proverbial himself. That sets the tone for those later scenes when Menenius’ moderating manner

is at odds with Coriolanus’ wrath. But the contrast is not morally straightforward. Whereas Plutarch’s

Menenius seems to provide a clear-cut positive example, Shakespeare leaves a more equivocal figure.

‘You slander,’ he claims at I.i.74–6, ‘The helms o’th’state, who care for you like fathers, When you curse

them as enemies’. We already sense that this is an over-bland view; and that Menenius slips into
8
comforting father-imagery a little too readily. Is he not too much of the ready diplomat, knowing like

the tribunes how easily the commons can be led, if only one gets the style right? Is he not play-acting in

precisely the way Coriolanus will later find so unbrookable? Plutarch introduces the contrast of the two

men, but Shakespeare makes it thought-provoking.

Whatever the moral texturing, this systematic foiling makes it more interesting that Menenius

shares, and makes clear he shares, so much of Martius’ intemperance with the commons; and he has the

right style to say it to their faces (e.g. I.i.152–61, IV.vi.130–40: compare his tone with the tribunes in

II.i). That reflects a wider contrast between Plutarch and Shakespeare. There is little to be said for

Shakespeare’s commons, and Martius’ denunciations ring true: cowardly, petty, feckless, ready at the end

to disown all the actions they earlier relished (IV.vi.141–59, V.iv.35–8). True, they are capable of a

nobler response when treated nobly; true, the adroit tribunes are even more unlikeable; true, the

patricians hardly convince as masters of paternal concern. But still one cannot call the moral scales
9
evenly balanced, and they are indeed much less balanced than they were in Plutarch.

That is interesting. Plutarch is normally sympathetic to elite causes; but not here. The first political

issue in Plutarch centres on the usurers (5 = NDS 509), a question Shakespeare almost ignores, and here

the commons clearly has the stronger case. The next disturbance centres on the patricians’ desire to send

a detachment of plebeians to plague-stricken Velitrae (12–13 = NDS 515–17). The issues are more

complex than that, but again one understands the plebeians’ indignation; and again Shakespeare almost
10
ignores the issue. In Plutarch the commons’ initial response to Coriolanus’ consular candidature is one

of respect, ‘thinking it would be a shame to them to deny and refuse the chiefest noble man of blood,

and most worthy person of Rome, and specially him that had done so great service and good to the

common wealth’ (14.1, cf. 15.1 = NDS 516–17): that is one of the few positive suggestions which

Shakespeare takes over (II.iii init.). But when they change their minds in Plutarch, it is not because they

are the mindless fodder for the manipulative tribunes as they are in that Shakespearian scene; the

tribunes are prominent elsewhere in Plutarch but absent here, and the plebeians make up their own

minds quite thoughtfully. Later they respond readily to a moderate gesture from the senate (18.1 = NDS

522), and they prevent the tribunes’ vindictiveness from going too far (18.4 = NDS 523). They certainly

respond to Coriolanus’ own rage with rage of their own, and like him they confound battle and politics:

After declaration of the sentence, the people made such joy, as they had never rejoiced more for any

battle they had won upon their enemies, they were so brave and lively, and went home so jocondly from

the assembly, for triumph of this sentence.

(20.8 = NDS 525)

But Coriolanus has here set the tone, and they have followed. They can still take the lead, ahead of the

senate, in their readiness to bring the conflict to an end (29 = NDS 533: below, p. 403).

In Dionysius the political rights and wrongs are of absorbing interest, though it is difficult to carry

away a coherent picture of the text’s sympathies; but there are certainly some instances, as with the

usurers (cf. 6.22), where the patricians are less clearly in the wrong in Dionysius than they will be in

Plutarch. Plutarch has his own reasons for that. He pairs Coriolanus with Alcibiades. In Alcibiades the

ordinary people again have some friendly and biddable features, though they can be a formidable enemy
11
when roused: they have something of Alcibiades himself about them. Coriolanus cannot manage his

commons, ready though they can be to respond to his better features. Alcibiades is much more gifted,
and has the political flair to mesh with his quirky and enterprising commons; but eventually he can

manage them no better than Coriolanus can, and falls to just as certain a disaster. Coriolanus, the

simpler first Life, sets the pattern, and Alcibiades plays a complex variation on it: I argued earlier that
12
this is why Plutarch reverses the normal ordering of Greek and Roman Lives.

Why, then, does Shakespeare’s text change the commons back to something less attractive, in a way

which so many critics have found so gratingly offensive? There may well be reasons in the contemporary
13
political background, or in Renaissance views of the mob, or even – however uncomfortably for

moderns – in Shakespeare’s own sympathies: that ground has been well traversed by critics. But a
14
simpler point, as Bradley in particular saw, concerns the texture of audience engagement with the

hero. Plutarch, we noted, barely involves Martius in the first political exchanges. By the time the Life

shows his political impatience, we have seen his better qualities in childhood and at Corioles, and can

understand the faults without totally distancing ourselves from him. If we had Plutarch’s more

reasonable commons in Shakespeare’s first scene, the emotional distancing from Martius might well be

too great. We need not put this crudely in terms of a ‘sympathetic character’: Coriolanus’ grandeur

defeats a simple view of sympathy. It is rather the sort of issue which the audience is encouraged to dwell

on: not the rights or wrongs of the commons’ case, but the wisdom or folly of Martius’ style. The

isolation which Shakespeare’s Martius finds is not one of political sympathies nor of personal affection:

the patricians share his feelings about the commons, and their grief as he departs for exile is deep (IV.i).

It concerns methods. He alone finds the institution of the tribunate hard to cope with; he alone cannot

bend to a more blandly compromising style. It is because he is right about the commons’ faults that he

becomes tragic, that correct insight turns to self-destruction.

Corioles

Plutarch turns Corioles into a more individual feat of Martius’ heroism. He makes the mass of the army

initially reluctant to join Martius as he forces his way into the town (8.6 = NDS 512); Dionysius had

rather stressed how many had followed him (6.92.5). Shakespeare takes this further, and presents

Martius as more isolated still. Thus at I.iv.40 ff. Shakespeare has the commons follow Martius into the

city only at the end of the scene, after he has achieved his heroic deeds. ‘Alone I did it’, he can claim in

his final indignation (V.vi.116). In Plutarch it is after he is joined by his men that he does most of his

glorious fighting. Shakespeare also takes Martius’ contempt for the common soldier further, for instance

at I.iv.30 ff., I.v.1–8, and I.vi.42–4.

This is more than the regular exaggeration of the hero’s role, ready though both Plutarch and

Shakespeare are to highlight their figure’s contribution. Both Plutarch and Shakespeare are concerned to

prepare at Corioles for later counterpart scenes in civic life, scenes where Martius’ aggressiveness,

impatience, and pride will be catastrophic rather than glorious. We have seen how Shakespeare, more

suggestively than Plutarch, makes Coriolanus’ political isolation an important motif, and the commons

more inglorious. It is in keeping with both themes that the common soldiers at Corioles are initially

more shameful, and need more inspiration before they respond to his lead.

Shakespeare seizes on another Plutarchan touch to point the dangerous parallels between Martius on
15
campaign and in the forum. When the commons turn to plunder, Plutarch’s Martius vents his

indignation in a ‘shout’ (9.1 = NDS 512): there was nothing of that in Dionysius. We have heard

already of the man’s massive war-shout, where Plutarch had noted, most intrusively, that the elder Cato

had demanded that the good soldier should be ‘not only terrible, and fierce to lay about him, but to

make the enemy afeared with the sound of his voice and grimness of his countenance’ (8.3 = NDS 512).

Those shouts are duly seen to good effect in the fighting itself (8.3, 8.5 = NDS 512), but those

indignant shouts at the plunder offer a precursor of the political struggles. Cato’s language will be

echoed in Plutarch’s trial-scene at 18.3 = NDS 522, when Coriolanus refused to display any humility

but ‘gave himself in his words to thunder, and look therewithall so grimly, as if he made no reckoning of

the matter’ (the echo is even closer in the Greek). At Corioles, all is well: as so often, Coriolanus is

answered in kind, and the ‘marvellous great shout’ which greets him is one of acclaim (11.1, cf. 9.5,

10.6 = NDS 515, 513, 515). But enough has been done to create unease for the future. It will not be
16
only Coriolanus’ ‘shouts’ which recur. For Plutarch, ‘shouting’ typifies the demagogue; and the

tribunes will duly ‘shout’ and ‘cry’ in ways which Coriolanus will find trickier to handle (13.1, 17.3 =

NDS 516–17, 521).

Shakespeare again takes many of these hints, and uses them to point a similar pattern. Here too

Martius is greeted in kind. When he curses the rabble, they sullenly reject his appeal (I.iv.46–9); after he

addresses them nobly, they follow him willingly (I.vi.66–85). That cursing of the commons in I.iv

recalls his initial cursing speech in I.i, and we will hear much in a similar vein later; in Shakespeare too

he ‘shouts’ (stage-direction at I.vi.24), and we hear from Lartius of ‘the thunder-like percussion of thy

sounds’ (I.iv.61). Shakespeare combines it with another effective theatrical gesture, the throwing of caps
into the air; we have already heard of that, on Martius’ own lips, as the commons reacted with joy to the

appointment of the tribunes (I.i.210–12). Now it is Martius himself who is greeted thus. When the

men do respond to his lead, ‘they all shout and wave their swords, take him up in their arms, and cast

up their caps’ (stage-direction at I.vi.75); then, when he refuses ‘a bribe to pay my sword’ (so very

different from their own concern for material profit), ‘they all cry “Martius! Martius!”, cast up their caps

and lances’ (stage-direction at I.ix.40); as he returns, so he thinks to the consulship, ‘the commons made

a shower and thunder with their caps and shouts’ (II.i.258–9). This too will not last, and as he goes

magnificently into exile the plebeians cry ‘Our enemy is banished, he is gone! Hoo-oo!’: They all shout,

and throw up their caps (stage-direction at III.iii.137; recalled by Menenius at IV.iv.132–3). Shakespeare

borrows both the shouting and the pattern which it points, as the commons respond in kind to the

different sorts of lead, in battle and in politics, which Coriolanus gives.

The consulship

Dionysius does not make much of the consulship. For him, the rift centres on corn. Coriolanus’

electoral rebuff is introduced only in an initial retrospect, explaining why his opposition was so much

more open and violent than that of his fellows.

For he had stood for the consulship at the last election with the support of the patricians, and the

commons had opposed him and prevented his election. They were cautious of the man’s brilliance and

his audacity, fearing that these qualities would lead him to try to overthrow the tribunate; and they were

particularly nervous because of the unprecedented enthusiasm shown by the patricians for his election.

(7.21.2)

Plutarch expands this to have the people initially willing to elect him (14.1 = NDS 517–18), but

then their minds are turned by his tumultuous and contemptuous arrival in the forum on election day,

accompanied by his patrician supporters (15.2, cf. 15.5–6 = NDS 518, 519). So Plutarch builds a real,

particular incident from what in Dionysius is merely the fear of patrician support: it is only later, during

the corn disputes, that we hear in Dionysius of these arrogant young patricians who escorted Coriolanus

everywhere (7.21.3). Plutarch also introduces the question of Coriolanus’ wounds (14.2, 15.1 = NDS
17
518), though there is no hint of any reluctance to show them. He is borrowing here from a later

passage in Dionysius, where Coriolanus readily shows off his scars during his trial (7.62.3). The real

interest of the episode, though, comes in Coriolanus’ response to his failure: again Plutarch goes beyond

Dionysius, who simply has ‘the man was stirred by anger at this outrage…’. Plutarch is here moved to

his extended discussion of the military character and its political limitations (15.4–5 = NDS 519: below,

p. 401); he also plays with the effect of those other extreme young aristocrats (15.6 = NDS 519), the

way their constant company and encouragement must have stirred up the man’s passions. But this still

does not provoke the decisive rift with the commons. That comes with his fiery speech on the corn issue

(16 = NDS 520–1), which brings in the deftly calculating tribunes.

For Shakespeare the consulship is more important still, and he transfers some incidents from the

grain dispute, especially the manipulative tribunes. It is now the consulship, not the grain, which

provokes Coriolanus’ decisive outburst. In one sense this compression may make the tribunes’ and

commons’ opposition more reprehensible, concerned as they now are only with the personal issue of
18
Coriolanus’ honour; but for Plutarch too the case against Coriolanus is fundamentally based on his

ferocious contempt for the tribunes’ power (17.4), and here he and Shakespeare are at one. Nor are the
19
grain issues ignored by Shakespeare, for much of this material is transplanted to I.i, where Martius’

impatience with the commons’ material demands is made very clear.

It is better to ask why the consulship provides so appropriate a focus for Coriolanus’ anger in both

Plutarch and Shakespeare; and in each case it will surely be because it centres on merits, honours, and

deserts. Dionysius, concerned with the leading themes of Rome as a whole, can afford to concentrate on

the grain issue and the interminable constitutional complexities of the tribunate. Plutarch’s focus on the

consulship gives a stronger concentration on Coriolanus himself, but there is more to it than mere

biographical focusing. For Plutarch makes questions of reciprocity central: the response in kind to the

man’s leadership at Corioles, and the more wrathful response in kind which follows in politics; his

determination to pay out Rome for its ingratitude; the agonizing complexity when that reciprocity

clashes with the reciprocal devotion he owes to his mother. No wonder that Plutarch emphasizes his

determination to receive the recognition he has earned, and then to pay the commons back for their

humiliation. No wonder, either, that Shakespeare welcomes something of that emphasis, even though he
20
does not develop the reciprocity theme so insistently as Plutarch. For his Coriolanus, too, has a strong

sense of earning. These are the honours he has earned: it is indeed the feeling that the commons expect

grain when they have not earned it, when their cowardice gives them no right to expect anything, which

helps to unify his expectations for himself with his contempt for the feckless plebeians.
 There remains the striking difference between Plutarch and Shakespeare: the wounds. Plutarch’s

Coriolanus has no difficulty in showing them. That indeed gives a strong visual and emblematic focus

to his feeling of desert, and this is doubtless why Plutarch transferred the motif from its later setting in

Dionysius. It is Shakespeare who develops the reluctance, and makes it so extraordinarily expressive. We
21
naturally think of this as modesty; it has more to do with pride. Plutarch raised the issue why the

Romans insist on their candidates wearing a special white gown: perhaps it was to allow them to show

any wounds, but perhaps it was also to show them humble and deferential to the commons (14.2 =

NDS 518) – something that Shakespeare’s Coriolanus could hardly brook. But the pride is not just

before the commons. He cannot bear to hear his ‘nothings monstered’ even among his peers (II.ii.76),

and the ‘monster’ imagery ties into a more pervasive motif. It would be a travesty to present these

wounds in this context, as if they were gained for personal advancement rather than for his country, just

as it would be a travesty to allow the commons to develop its own ‘monstrous’ qualities as the many-

headed ‘Hydra’ (III.i.93, cf. II.iii.17, IV.i.1–2). Doubtless these are two elements of the same prideful

thing: he simply cannot understand the deficiencies which lead the plebeians to regard such courage as

very remarkable. That, for him, is a mark of their insensitivity to genuine honour.

Something of this theme is already there in Plutarch, but Shakespeare makes it suggestively

different, just as he puts so much more emphasis on this ‘pride’; and that cannot be discussed without

also considering Volumnia.

Volumnia

First, her name. Dionysius calls the mother Veturia and the wife Volumnia. Plutarch makes the mother

Volumnia and the wife Vergilia. It is conceivable that the change was deliberate. For Plutarch and for his

Latin-knowing audience, the virginal sound of ‘Vergilia’ might have seemed appropriate for the younger,

deferential woman – what Dr Johnson called her ‘bridal modesty’. But it is hard to see any motive for

abandoning ‘Veturia’, and, disappointing though it is, we should probably regard the change as a simple
22
mistake. If, as Russell suggests, Plutarch wrote much of his work from memory, the slip is easier to

understand.

Dionysius inevitably gives the mother a large role, and for twenty-five pages she dominates the final

encounter. But that scene is largely unprepared. We can trace a drift towards the theme in the preceding

episode, where the senatorial ambassadors dwell on the danger to Rome’s womenfolk and the miseries

and perils of Coriolanus’ family (8.24.4–5, 25.1, 28.1–3), and Coriolanus thanks them for the care they

have taken of the family (8.29.1). Earlier Dionysius had mentioned, but not elaborated, the scene of

farewell (7.67: below, p. 399). That is not much. Dionysius’ mother is also a very different figure from

the mighty Volumnia of Plutarch and Shakespeare. Compare, for instance, her reaction when asked to

undertake the embassy. She begins with recollections of Coriolanus’ uncompromising words as he left;

she wonders, rather conventionally, what words she might possibly say to him, and concludes

Nor should you be pressing us women to ask from him things which are not just in the eyes of mortals

nor holy in the eyes of gods, but you should let us piteous creatures be, just as we have been cast low by

fortune, and allow us to lie humiliated without suffering any further impropriety.

(8.42.2)

Contrast Plutarch’s version, ending in terms which breathe the majesty of Rome:

But yet the greatest grief of our heaped mishaps is to see our poor country brought to such extremity,

that all hope of the safety and preservation thereof is now unfortunately cast upon us simple women:

because we know not what account he will make of us, since he hath cast from him all care of his

natural country and common weale, which heretofore he hath holden more dear and precious than

either his mother, wife, or children. Notwithstanding, if ye think we can do good, we will willingly do

what you will have us: bring us to him I pray you. For if we can not prevail, we may yet die at his feet,

as humble suitors for the safety of our country.

(33.8–10, NDS 538)

Nor does Dionysius’ mother appeal to Coriolanus in anything like the same tones as in the later

adaptations. She claims:

You have made me the most unfortunate of mothers. For what time has there been, since I brought you

to manhood, which I could spend without grief or fear? When could I be of good cheer, seeing you

launch war upon war, fight battle upon battle, suffer wound upon wound? Then, from the time you

took up the public life of politics, what pleasure could I take on your account? That was when I was

most miserable, seeing you in the middle of civic faction. Those very measures which brought you

acclaim, when you were strong-spirited in fighting the plebeians on behalf of the aristocracy, filled me

with fear, as I called to mind how mutable human life could be…
 (8.51.4–52.1)

That is not Plutarch’s Volumnia, or Shakespeare’s: they would have been horrified if he had not been

fighting war upon war and suffering wound upon wound; nor would they have timidly regretted his
23
civic antagonisms.

Plutarch introduces Volumnia much earlier, and makes her explain something of her son’s character.

Early in the Life, just after Martius’ first successes, Plutarch makes him exemplify the type stirred on by

early fame:

Where contrariwise, the first honour that valiant minds do come unto, doth quicken up their appetite,

hasting them forward as with force of wind, to enterprise things of high deserving praise. For they

esteem, not to receive reward for service done, but rather take it for a remembrance and encouragement,

to make them do better in time to come: and be ashamed also to cast their honour at their heels, not

seeking to increase it still by like desert of worthy valiant deeds. This desire being bred in Martius, he

strained still to pass his self in manliness: and being desirous to show a daily increase of his valiantness,

his noble service did still advance his fame, bringing in spoils upon spoils from the enemy. Whereupon,

the captains that came afterwards (for envy of them that went before) did contend who should most

honour him, and who should bear most honourable testimony of his valiantness. In so much the

Romans having many wars and battles in those days, Coriolanus was at them all: and there was not a

battle fought, from whence he returned not without some reward of honour. And as for other, the only

respect that made them valiant was they hoped to have honour: but touching Martius, the only thing

that made him to love honour was the joy he saw his mother did take of him. For he thought nothing

made him so happy and honourable, as that his mother might hear everybody praise and commend

him, that she might always see him return with a crown upon his head, and that she might still embrace

him with tears running down her cheeks for joy… Martius, thinking all due to his mother that had

been also due to his father if he had lived, did not only content himself to rejoice and honour her, but at

her desire took a wife also, by whom he had two children, and yet never left his mother’s house

therefore.

(4 = NDS 507–8)

Very little of this is owed to Dionysius. He mentioned that Coriolanus was an orphan, but only in a

passing mention in the mother’s speech (8.51.3): Plutarch’s main theme, that desire to please his mother

as the mainspring of Coriolanus’ quest for honour, seems wholly his own construct: this is what

Coriolanus needs to be if he is to be so susceptible to his mother’s final pleas. From Dionysius Plutarch

also knew the scene where the mother and wife, together in the mother’s house (8.40.1), were persuaded

to set out to the camp. This, clearly, is where the family lived, and that is the basis for Plutarch’s final

remark that ‘he yet never left his mother’s house’. The further step, that it was at his mother’s desire that

he took his wife, is again his own psychological reconstruction, as we saw in ch. 14 (p. 310). Mother

and wife are clearly close, so of course Volumnia must have approved of Vergilia as a wife, and of course a

man like this would allow his mother’s views to decide the matter.

That is pure Plutarch. We recognize the same sensibility that dwelt on, and often elaborated, other

majestic Roman women: Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, or Porcia, Brutus’ wife (Gracch. 1, 8, 24, 40,

Brut. 13, 23, 53); and perhaps particularly Octavia in Antony, where he went well beyond his sources in

developing the grave Roman matron, representing Roman values just as Cleopatra represents those of
24
the luxurious East. For Plutarch, an important part of understanding Rome was understanding her

great women.

This is recognisably also the Volumnia of Shakespeare, and the relationship of mother and son

which is introduced at the outset:

FIRST CITIZEN:Though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for his

country, he did it to please his mother and to be partly proud, which he is, even to

the altitude of his virtue.

(I.i.35–8)

Not the most definitive of verdicts, for this citizen is unfriendly, and the ‘for the country’ theme is not

to be so lightly dismissed: but all three elements, patriotism, filiality, and pride, capture something

central to the man.

Again, though, Shakespeare goes much further. Having introduced Volumnia so forcefully, Plutarch

leaves her alone for most of the Life. We simply find wife and mother ‘weeping and shrieking out for

sorrow’ (hardly the Shakespearian Volumnia) as he leaves them for exile (21 = NDS 526). In particular,

Plutarch has no hint of the distance which we find between Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and his mother,
visible in both candidature and trial. Volumnia’s response to the glory of Corioles is to think of the

consulship (II.i.140–1), and the two view the prospect with different voices.

VOLUMNIA: I have lived

To see inherited my very wishes

And the buildings of my fancy. Only

There’s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but

Our Rome will cast upon thee.

CORIOLANUS:Know, good mother,

I had rather be their servant in my way

Than sway with them in theirs. (II.i.190–6)

Then it is Volumnia who persuades her son to submit to the humiliation of a trial, and speak mildly

(III.ii). It is not that she herself has any better view of the commons:

CORIOLANUS:

I muse my mother

Does not approve me further, who was wont

To call them woollen vassals, things created

To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads

In congregations, to yawn, be still and wonder,

When one but of my ordinance stood up

To speak of peace or war.

Enter Volumnia

I talk of you

Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me

False to my nature? Rather say I play

The man I am.

VOLUMNIA: O, sir, sir, sir,

I would have had you put your power well on

Before you had worn it out. (III.ii.7–18)

Volumnia has to press him to do something he finds unthinkable, to be ‘false to his nature’. The

theatrical imagery (‘I play the man I am’) frequently recurs, and Coriolanus is not the man to play a
25
part. She knows the way to speak to her soldierly son, and draws the comparison with military ruses

(III.ii.46–51, 59); even so Coriolanus has only to frame the prospect to find it impossible (III.ii.110–

23, ‘I will not do’t’). It is only as Volumnia breaks away and admits failure that Coriolanus capitulates
26
(III.ii.123–30): exactly the same rhythm as we shall find in the Volscian camp at V.iii.172–82, ‘Come

let us go’, when the prospect of breaking with his mother’s wish shatters Coriolanus’ resolve. The

fragmentation of Coriolanus is achingly clear, so unwilling to be false, yet so uneasy at the prospect of

his mother’s disapproval: that unease, indeed, was already apparent with that discomfited initial ‘I talk

of you, Why did you wish me milder?’

In one sense this is most unplutarchan. There is no dissonance between mother and son in Plutarch,

where Coriolanus is himself eager for honour after honour to please his mother. Shakespeare has

transferred that ambition for honour from the son, leaving him more diffident, to the mother, at the
27
same time making it something more crude and cross-grained: she is uncompromising in ends and

therefore compromises over means. We can now understand why Shakespeare introduces that reluctance

to show the wounds. Volumnia never doubts that he must and will do so (II.i.141–2, ‘There will be

large cicatrices to show the people, when he shall stand for his place’), and the wounds become

emblematic of the rift between mother and son.

Yet this too is a development of a Plutarchan theme, and not merely in the sense that it further

elaborates Plutarch’s own elaboration of Volumnia’s role. In the Volscian camp Plutarch too has a

Coriolanus who has to choose and who cannot break with his mother, despite all the momentum of past

actions which have brought him to this. Shakespeare introduces such a choice earlier, and as the

embassy reaches the camp that makes us readier to suspect that, now as before, he will be unable to

sustain his stance to the end. But that too is already the case in Plutarch, for the emotional intensity of

their meeting prepares the ground decisively for Volumnia’s words (34.3–4 = NDS 538–9), and we can

understand how they may be effective – though in both authors we cannot expect the issue to be easy.
28
Shakespeare of course introduces so much more: the expressive kneelings, the emphasis on ‘nature’,
29
the even tauter use of silence. But it is still the same rhythm, in a subtler and richer transfiguration.

Understanding Coriolanus
It was one of the most fundamental insights of Greek characterization that a hero’s faults and virtues are

intimately related. The same qualities build and then destroy. That was true of Homer’s Achilles, of

Oedipus, Ajax, Antigone, Medea; it was true of Herodotus’ Persia and Thucydides’ Athens; and it is

certainly true of many of Plutarch’s heroes, his Caesar, his Antony, his Alcibiades, his Alexander, his
30
Pompey.

It was even true of Dionysius’ Coriolanus. After the man’s death Dionysius summarizes his career

(8.60–1). He emerges as a man of great spirit, of generosity, even of some political skill. As for his faults,

he lacked graciousness, mildness, and the power to please or conciliate. But the decisive point was his

uncompromising commitment to justice ( δικαιοσύνη, τὰ δίκαια). ‘It was nothing else but that passion
for exact and extreme justice which drove him from his country and deprived him of the enjoyment of

all his other blessings.’ It prevented him from compromising in his dealings with the ordinary people at

Rome; and it eventually destroyed him, because he felt he could not withdraw from the legal procedures

among the Volscians, but had to submit to any punishment they might inflict according to their laws.

31
This emphasis on justice is not wholly unprepared by the preceding narrative, but it is still not

what we should have expected. Only a few chapters earlier, for instance, Dionysius had put more stress

on Coriolanus’ desire for ‘good reputation, the thing about which he cared most’ (8.54.3); earlier we

had heard more of his ‘natural stubbornness’ (7.34.2). But this emphasis on Coriolanus’ rigid justice

does cohere with the scene just before this summary, where his refusal to withdraw from the Volscian

legal process offered his enemies the chance to destroy him. With a little straining, this summary

extends the characteristic backwards, and relates his earlier career to the same trait; and we see how this

taste for justice, something naturally seen as a virtue, turns out critical to his destruction.

Plutarch’s Coriolanus is very different. The stress on justice is still important, and indeed is

developed to a wider concern with problematic reciprocity (above, pp. 393–4); but the central point has
32
changed. For Plutarch it is his anger which drives him to such extremes. When Coriolanus bids

farewell to his wife and mother, Dionysius presents the scene as a model of restraint. Coriolanus

contrasted with the abandoned emotion of his followers and family, and ‘was not seen either to bewail

or to lament his own fate or to say or do the least thing unworthy of his greatness of soul’ (7.67).

Plutarch transforms the scene. Coriolanus’ apparent impassivity is still stressed, but Plutarch insists it

belies the seething passions beneath:

Not that he did patiently bear and temper his good-hap, in respect of any reason he had, or by his quiet

condition: but because he was so carried away with the vehemency of anger and desire of revenge, that

he had no sense nor feeling of the hard state he was in, which the common people judge not to be

sorrow, although in deed it be the very same. For when sorrow (as you would say) is set afire, then it is

converted into spite and malice, and driveth away for that time all faintness of heart and natural fear.

And this is the cause why the choleric man is so altered and mad in his actions, as a man set afire with a

burning ague: for when a man’s heart is troubled within, his pulse will beat marvellous strongly.

(21.1–2 = NDS 525–6)

33
And this, surely, is also the way Shakespeare’s scene can and should be played (IV.i). For all the

apparent calmness of Coriolanus, there are hints of the rage to come, when this suppressed rage will be

‘set afire’:

While I remain above the ground you shall

Hear of me still, and never of me aught

But what is like me formerly. (IV.i.51–3)

This ‘lonely dragon’ (IV.i.30) is powerful yet.

Plutarch cares about understanding his heroes, not simply describing them: can he explain this

depth of rage? Here Dionysius offered only clues. One promising theme Plutarch chose not to relate to

this dominant trait, and that was the early orphanhood. On the contrary, Coriolanus’ case

….taught us by experience that orphanage bringeth many discommodities to a child, but doth not

hinder him to become an honest man, and to excel in virtue among the common sort.

1.2 = NDS 505–6)

No, Plutarch goes on, the explanation for Coriolanus’ character is to be sought in a different aspect of

his early background: it was a matter of his education.

This man also is a good proof to confirm some men’s opinions that a rare and excellent wit untaught
34
doth bring forth many good and evil things together: like as a fat soil bringeth forth herbs and weeds

that lieth unmanured. For this Martius’ natural wit and great heart did marvellously stir up his courage,

to do and attempt noble acts. But on the other side for lack of education he was so choleric and
impatient that he would yield to no living creature: which made him churlish, uncivil, and altogether
35
unfit for any man’s conversation. Yet men marvelling much at his constancy, that he was never

overcome with pleasure, nor money, and how he would endure easily all manner of pains and travails:

thereupon they well liked and commended his stoutness and temperancy. But for all that, they could

not be acquainted with him, as one citizen useth to be with another in the city. His behaviour was so

unpleasant to them, by reason of a certain insolent and stern manner he had, which because it was too

lordly was disliked. And to say truly, the greatest benefit that learning bringeth men unto, is this: that it

teacheth men that be rude and rough of nature, by compass and rule of reason, to be civil and

courteous, and to like better the mean state than the higher.

(1.3–5 = NDS 506)

Nor was it simply accident, or his mother’s choice, that he should be educated in this deficient way.

It was a feature of the Roman values of the day.

Now in those days valiantness was honoured in Rome above all other virtues: which they called Virtus,

by the name of virtue self, as including in that general name all other special virtues besides. So that

Virtus in the Latin was as much as valiantness.

(1.6 = NDS 506)

Plutarch’s strong belief in the civilizing force of education is often seen elsewhere: it is important, for

instance, in his Marius (esp. 2.3–4), in his Philopoemen (esp. 3–4), in his Marcellus (esp. 1.3–5). All of

these were military men who failed to control their impetuosity or aggression in political life, and all

suffered for it. This is not coincidence. These are not just cases of men who chance to have one merit

(military skills) and one unrelated failure (lack of self-control), for it is again precisely the same features
36
which mould the soldier and mar the politician. That was the emphasis in that first chapter here,

where those ‘marvelling at his constancy’ and other virtues were deeply offended when they found the

same qualities recurring in his dealings with his fellow-citizens; that too is the theme of Plutarch’s most

elaborate discussion of Coriolanus’ character, inserted at the point where his candidature has been

rebuffed.

He was a man too full of passion and choler, and too much given to over self-will and opinion, as one of

a high mind and great courage, that lacked the gravity and affability that is gotten with judgement of

learning and reason, which only is to be looked for in a governor of state… For a man that will live in

the world must needs have patience, which lusty bloods make but a mock at. So Martius being a stout

man of nature, that never yielded in any respect, as one thinking that to overcome always, and to have

the upper hand in all matters, was a token of magnanimity, and of no base and faint courage, which

spitteth out anger from the most weak and passioned part of the heart, much like the matter of an

impostume: went home to his house, full freighted with spite and malice against the people…

(15.4–5 = NDS 519)

Once more we see the stress on education: it is ‘judgement of learning and reason’ that might have

given the right texture of ‘gravity and affability’. And once more we see precisely the qualities one needs

in a soldier but not in the forum, a man ambitious ‘to overcome always, and to have the upper hand in
37
all matters’. We can recognize here the Shakespearian hero who also has been too ‘bred i’th’wars’ to be

politically accommodating (III.i.318, cf. III.ii.81–4), who so catastrophically confuses battlefield and

market-place, who thinks to pile corpses upon corpses here as well (I.i.195–8, cf. III.i.237–42). We

recognize too a more elaborate psychological basis for the Shakespearian figure who cannot play a part

or be false to himself; and who cannot therefore even play tricks on his hated Romans in the war, as his

Plutarchan prototype had done (26, 27.5–6, Comparison with Alcibiades 41(2).4 = NDS 530–1, 545):

there again Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is a more extreme version of Plutarch’s original. He is one and the

same in all his manifestations, a single-sided person.

For Plutarch this absence of civilizing education was a general truth of the society, not a particular

point about Coriolanus, and a whole band of extreme patricians behaved just as badly (15, 17.1, 19.3–4

= NDS 518–19, 521, 524). Critics often say something similar about Shakespeare, making Coriolanus
38
the quintessential Roman who embodies the faults of his society as a whole: if they are right, this

would be another example of Shakespeare taking further what Plutarch started. But perhaps that is too

simple a view of Shakespeare. It is true that Martius can speak the same language as Titus Lartius, for

instance, as he can never speak with the commons: witness their banter about the horse (I.iv. init.). (Not

that everyone is so close to him: one often senses a coolness towards Cominius.) It is true, too, that the

patricians largely share his view of the commons. But we have already seen (pp. 389–91) that

Shakespeare’s focus rests largely on political style rather than sympathies, and that in this respect

Coriolanus is much more isolated and less typical of his society. It is this inability to compromise, not

the sense of martial honour, which invites explanation. It certainly bemuses many observers in the play
itself. And this makes the understanding of Coriolanus a much more particular thing in Shakespeare

than in Plutarch.

Shakespeare here takes up the approach which Plutarch rejected, linking the dominant trait to the

circumstances of Coriolanus’ parenthood. True, the explanation Plutarch rejects is the absence of a
39
father, whereas Shakespeare’s point is the presence of the strong mother. The tones in which

Shakespeare’s Volumnia curses the commons leave us in no doubt where Coriolanus got it from (e.g.

I.iii.34–5, III.ii.7–12, 24, IV.ii); so do the gruesome tones in which she greets her son’s bloodshed (e.g.
40
I.iii.1–17, 40–6, II.i.141–2), much more gruesome than anything in Plutarch; and the complacent

tones in which Volumnia and her friend Valeria contemplate the young Martius’ tearing of a butterfly

(‘how he mammocked it!’, I.iii.58–66) make it clear what the domestic atmosphere must have been.

Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck’dst it from me,

But owe thy pride thyself. (III.ii.128–9)

So Volumnia chides him, at the first crucial moment when she turns away from her pleas, and puts him

under unbearable pressure. But that raises the further question: can such valiantness, such contempt for

the ordinary, such a taste for honour really be imbibed without some pride as well? She seems to have

tried, too, to train him in bearing fortune’s greater blows with restraint and calculation:

CORIOLANUS:You were used

To say extremities was the trier of spirits;

That common chances common men could bear;

That when the sea was calm all boats alike

Showed mastership in floating; fortune’s blows

When most struck home, being gentle wounded craves

A noble cunning. You were used to load me

With precepts that would make invincible

The heart that conned them. (IV.i.3–11)

But can such a military temper coexist with a peacetime ‘noble cunning’? In many ways it is Volumnia,

not Coriolanus, who combines the barely compatible. We can understand how difficult the man will

find it to live up to all her precepts at once, just as we also sense how impossible he will find it to prove

untrue to so strong, and so basically similar, a character.

Those words are spoken by Coriolanus as he goes into exile. He has never yet been able to adopt a

‘noble cunning’. Now he is going to try, as a means of entering Antium. He has hated wearing the

candidate’s robe, and despised playing parts; now at Antium ‘Enter Coriolanus in mean apparel,

disguised and muffled’ (stage-direction at IV.iv.1). Will he be able to fare better here? The soliloquy he

utters on the route – ‘Oh world, thy slippery turns!’ (IV.iv.12–26) – reminds one of Ajax’s great speech

in Sophocles (646–92), where Ajax resolves on suicide but in terms which those closest to him

misunderstand. Ajax reflects on a world of shifting friendships and changing roles, a world which those

who love him misinterpret him as accepting; but, for Ajax as for Coriolanus, this is a world in which the

audience suspect he will have no comfortable place.

Mirrorings: Antium and Rome

It is not just the commons who respond to Plutarch’s Coriolanus in kind. Once Coriolanus invades and

the commons wish to make peace, the senators are so outraged at his betrayal that they resist. Plutarch

wonders why. Perhaps it was their ‘self-will to be contrary to the people’s desire’; or their determination
41
that ‘Martius should not return through the grace and favour of the people’; or because they ‘were

thoroughly angry and offended’ by his attacking the whole state when only a few had offended him (29

= NDS 533). Contentiousness, petty factionalism, anger: all these reasons suggest that the senate too

had caught Coriolanus’ tone. And wherever Coriolanus turns, he now finds, or moulds, people like

himself: the Volscians, whose recent defeats had increased their ‘malice and desire.to be revenged of the
42
Romans’ (21.6 = NDS 526); and Aufidius, whose desire for revenge and ‘greatness of mind’

(phronema, 22.3 = NDS 527) again recalls language often used of Coriolanus himself (e.g. ‘as of a high

mind and great courage’, 15.4 = NDS 519; cf. 13.4, 18.2 = NDS 517, 522). It is this universal

aggressiveness, irascibility, and pride which create a world in which Coriolanus’ own passions can wreak

such shattering consequences.

Shakespeare again develops much of this. Well can Menenius criticize the tribunes for their ‘pride’,

for instance (II.i.23–42). The commons too have their own pride (or so at least Martius sees it, I.i.168);

and several critics have suggested that Coriolanus’ bitterness against the commons is intensified by a
43
sense in which he sees some of his own worst qualities in them. But most interesting is his treatment

of Aufidius. There is a crude sense here too in which the two mirror one another, as each state’s great

champion; that, perhaps, is how Coriolanus himself sees him, and that is what stimulated his initial
 44
hopes that Aufidius might take him in. Aufidius’ initial welcoming speech to Coriolanus, rich in

homoerotic suggestions, again suggests the greeting of a twin self. Most interestingly, his chilling use of

nuptial imagery recalls not only Coriolanus’ language, but Volumnia’s too:

AUFIDIUS:Know thou first

I loved the maid I married; never man

Sighed truer breath. But that I see thee here,

Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart

Than when I first my wedded mistress saw

Bestride my threshold. (IV.v.116–21)

Compare both:

Martius (to Cominius): O, let me clip ye

In arms as sound as when I wooed, in heart

As merry as when our nuptial day was done,

And tapers burned to bedward. (I.vi.29–32)

and:

VOLUMNIA: If my son were my husband, I should freelier rejoice in

that absence wherein he won honour than in the embracements of

his bed where he would show most love. (I.iii.2–5)

For Coriolanus’ ears, his mother’s tones are an even more telling way of mimicking his inmost being.

But there is more to Aufidius, and by this stage of Shakespeare’s play we know it even if Coriolanus

does not. Dionysius had delayed the mention of Aufidius’ envy till very late (8.57), after Coriolanus’

collapse before the women. Plutarch moves the theme earlier, introducing it just before Volumnia’s final

plea (31.1–2 = NDS 534, building on the earlier hostility of 22.2 = NDS 526–7). Shakespeare again

takes this further, introducing Aufidius’ animosity at the very beginning (I.i.226–30, I.ii esp. 34–6,

I.viii, I.x). In Plutarch we therefore have a sense of the forces gathering against Coriolanus even as he

gives in to his mother’s pleas, forces which will eventually destroy him; in Shakespeare we know this

even earlier, before Coriolanus turns to Antium and Aufidius. We have been given a hint of what

Aufidius’ hospitality will mean:

Where I find him, were it

At home upon my brother’s guard, even there,

Against the hospitable canon, would

I Wash my fierce hand in’s heart. (I.x.24–7)

An alter ego for Coriolanus? Hardly! The audience may admittedly at first be unclear what to make
45
of that mimicking of a second self in IV.v, but they at least know it may be a manipulative ruse. A

scene or so after his welcome, Aufidius’ time-biding and plotting are very clear:

When, Caius, Rome is thine,

Thou art poor’st of all; then shortly art thou mine. (IV.vii.56–7).

Aufidius finds role-playing far truer to his nature, and it is he, not Coriolanus, who has a nature in tune

with Volumnia’s advocation of ‘a noble cunning’ (IV.i.9).

The end comes amongst the Volscians, and the way Plutarch’s Volscians call Coriolanus to account

(39 = NDS 543–4) recalls many of his troubles in Rome, particularly the trial. Here once again, his

popular enemies in Plutarch feel some ‘reverence’ for him (aidos, 39.5 ~ 15.1, 18.3 = NDS 543 ~ 518,

522); here once again he agrees to stand trial (the language is similar, 39.3 ~ 20.2 = NDS 543 ~ 524).

But here again the deft politicians are too adept for him, with their shouts and their accusations:

…those that were of the conspiracy began to cry out that he was not to be heard, nor that they would

not suffer a traitor to usurp tyrannical power over the tribe of the Volsces, who would not yield up his

estate and authority.

(39.8 = NDS 543)

So now it is the Volscians, not merely Romans, who regard him as a traitor; again the charge is one of

tyranny, as it had been at Rome (20 = NDS 524), and this time it is decisive. But the underlying reason

is that ‘envy’ of his rivals, especially Aufidius, that envy which even in Plutarch we have known for some

time. This again is the counterpart of something we saw at Rome, where the envy began with his peers

(2.2, 10.7–8 = NDS 506–7, 515), then seeped down to the commons (13.6 = NDS 517). And all this is
46
again a great improvement on Dionysius.
 This recall of earlier scenes and themes is appropriate for a conclusion: we sense the ring being

completed. But the tragic suggestions go deeper. By now Coriolanus has relented, and wants only peace

between the two peoples. But the passions have gone too far. Others have always followed his political

tone: now he is trapped by the forces he has himself unleashed, and a version of his own past comes

back to destroy him, while the lesser man survives.

Shakespeare’s end again takes the themes further. Once more we have the similar rhythm, the deft

conspirators, the hostile mob; Coriolanus loses his self-control, in the way that Shakespeare’s figure has

so often done before; and, here as in Rome, his own outburst of anger stimulates a similar anger among

the commons. Again as so often in Rome, his temper breaks with the accusations that penetrate closest

to the truth of his greatness. Here as there, the charge of treachery is one he cannot bear: all he has

done, we so often have heard, was ‘for his country’. Or, as the citizen had suggested in the play’s first

minutes, was it rather ‘to please his mother’ (I.i.37, above, pp. 396–7]? Now, memorably, it is the ‘boy

of tears’ gibe that shatters any mild resolve.

In Plutarch it was the Roman factionalism which was recalled. Shakespeare adds a further

recollection, that of Coriolanus’ military greatness. The scene is Corioles itself, not Plutarch’s Antium,

and Coriolanus is slain on the ground which earned his name. Almost his last words are to recall that

glorious ‘fluttering’ of the Volscians (V.vi.114–17). When Aufidius has killed him, he stands on his

corpse (V.vi.131), and this recalls, but poignantly reverses, Volumnia’s bloody vision in her first scene:

He’ll beat Aufidius’ head below his knee

And tread upon his neck. (I.iii.47–8)

That vision was inspired by Coriolanus’ greatness; and there are other words of Volumnia we recall as

well, her image of her son treading on her womb (V.iii.122–4, echoed by Vergilia and the boy). Once
47
again one penetrates Coriolanus’ essence by hearing his mother’s words, not his own.

So glory, not merely faction, is terminally recalled. That is not Plutarchan – or, rather, not

Plutarchan here. For Shakespeare has adopted something which is elsewhere one of Plutarch’s favourite

techniques. Marcellus’ final rashness (Marc. 28) recalls the glorious earlier monomachies (esp. 2.1, 7);

Pelopidas’ death, and the posthumous vengeance, recall some details of the capture of the Cadmeia (Pel.

8, 32, and 35). Lucullus ends on the note of his brother’s affection, one of the Life’s more uplifting

themes; there is also a hint there of homosexual affections (he went mad when a freedman tried to win

his affections with a love potion), and these echo the Chaeronea affair which he handled so well at the
48
beginning of the pair (Luc. 43, Cim. 2). Solon at the end ventures into the marketplace to denounce

Peisistratus just as he did earlier to deliver his inspiring poem on Salamis (Sol. 8.2, 30.6). Antony meets

his death in Alexandria, the city where he began his military career as a glamorous young cavalryman

(Ant. 3). Even as Shakespeare here outdoes Plutarch in thematic intricacy, he does so in a distinctively

Plutarchan way.

Conclusion

Plutarch pairs Coriolanus with Alcibiades, and most critics would think Alcibiades the greater work,

wider-ranging, more skilfully textured, more thought-provoking. In comparison with Alcibiades,

Coriolanus remains a caricature. Yet one can still understand why Shakespeare preferred to adopt

Coriolanus, leaving Alcibiades for very selective exploitation in Timon of Athens; and that is not merely

because Coriolanus is already so theatrical, already so unified. In Alcibiades we find a hero with charm

and style, someone who meshes and interacts with his countrymen in a range of subtle ways. In

Coriolanus, with the single exception of Corioles, the hero does not interact with his countrymen, he

clashes and confronts; he does not speak with them or even (Menenius-like) speak their own language,

he shouts at them and past them; he feels himself misunderstood and rejected by people who ought to

be in his debt; he is a lone figure facing an alien world. Such a figure would naturally attract

Shakespeare’s tragic sensibility; one need only think of Richard III and King Lear. But it embodies a

tragic figure who goes further back, to Sophocles’ Ajax and beyond him to Homer’s Achilles. Coriolanus

represents Plutarch’s version of this classical figure; and the chilling starkness with which the lines are

drawn, less subtle and blurred than those which suit an accommodating charmer like Alcibiades,

remains central to the figure’s absorbing power.

The affinity between Plutarch’s technique and Shakespeare’s suggests a further reflection. It may be

no more than a question of a similar artistic sensibility, responding to the same elements and detecting
49
the same tragic potential. But should we go further, as Judith Mossman does, and sense Plutarch’s

tastes helping to mould Shakespeare’s sensibility as well as chancing to prefigure it? That distinctively

Greek stress on the figure who is built and destroyed by the same traits; that strongly unified character,

whose different aspects cohere in so integrated yet catastrophic a way; that insight into the trap laid for a

calmed soul by his own more turbulent past. All these themes are easy to find in the tragedies and
histories: how much has Shakespeare learned from his (doubtless long-standing) immersion in Plutarch?

Are we here touching the shaping of Shakespeare himself, not just of Coriolanus? Such a question is for

mere Plutarchans to ask and for Shakespearians to discuss. But even Plutarchans would be interested in

the answer.

Notes

1
Russell 1963.

2
A theme which is predominantly concerned with the strengths and weaknesses of the infant Roman Republic, as it copes with the first

stages of the Struggle of the Orders. Some of Dionysius’ own thematic is not unsubtle. Gabba 1991, 81, 84, suggests that Dionysius

elaborated Coriolanus in implied contrast with Thucydides’ paradigmatic account of the faction at Corcyra (3.82–4). Greek faction was

bloody and catastrophic, its Roman counterpart was resolved peaceably: Dionysius makes the point explicit at 7.66.5. Gabba understates

the Roman political frailties as well as strengths which Dionysius’ narrative exposes, but the implied contrast with Thucydides remains

an interesting and plausible suggestion.

3
This is traced for Coriolanus by Russell 1963. I explore the use of these techniques in other Lives in ch. 4, esp. pp. 91–6.

4
On the relation of this wrath to the way Plutarch treats anger elsewhere, especially in On Controlling Anger, see Duff 1999, 212–13 and

Roskam and Verdegem, forthcoming. – In this chapter Plutarch references are given both to the Teubner edition and to North’s

translation, as printed in G. Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. V (London and New York, 1964: henceforth

NDS). I have modernized North’s spelling and punctuation.

5
At least in the rather cruder and more arrogant version of Achilles Shakespeare had recreated for Troilus and Cressida. On the

importance of the Achilles paradigm cf. Brower 1971, esp. 29–83, 354–81; Miola 1983, 197–8. Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Iliad

itself is problematic: for recent discussion cf. Martindale and Martindale 1990, 91–120, arguing that for Troilus and Cressida he knew at

least Chapman’s Seven Books of 1598 (Books 1–2, 7–11); if so he would surely have delved in Latin or French translations, or talked

with more learned friends, to discover how it all went on. – To stress Achilles is not to reject the importance of Virgil’s Turnus, as argued

by Velz 1983. In Virgil Turnus himself often intertextually suggests Achilles, so the suggestions are inextricably interconnected. – For

Plutarch’s knowledge and exploitation of Homer see now Alexiou 2000, esp. 59, 65, on Coriolanus and 60–1 for his use of Achilles

elsewhere; on this latter theme cf. also Mossman 1988 on Achillean elements in Alexander and 1992 on those in Pyrrhus.

6
As it does in Livy 2.32.8–12, which Shakespeare also probably knew (NDS 497–8). The juxtaposition with Coriolanus is there more

suggestive, but Livy treats Coriolanus’ story as only one phase in the widening rifts, immediately followed by Sp. Cassius’ popular

counterpart (2.41). Livy’s Menenius is a foil for more than Coriolanus. – Barton 1985 argues that Shakespeare draws on a wider reading

of Livy and owes to him the conception of Roman historical change, that change which Coriolanus is resisting. But there is nothing here

which cannot be inspired by the Lives.

7
He may well have known Menenius’ speech from other sources as well: it was a Renaissance commonplace. Cf. NDS 459, 551–2; Gurr

1975; Muir 1977, 238–9; Martindale and Martindale 1990, 150–1; Bliss 2000, 12–13. Morwood 1998 interestingly links Menenius’

soothing performance in Shakespeare with the first simile of Virgil’s Aeneid, where an authoritative statesman quells an unruly mob

(Aen. 1.148–53). Morwood wonders if Virgil has the historical Menenius in mind; if there is a link (and the similarities seem less close

to me than to Morwood), we might also wonder if Shakespeare is evoking Virgil. If so, the differences would be as expressive as the

similarities: Virgil’s statesman cows the mob into respectful silence (silent arrectisque auribus astant, ‘they grow quiet, and listen with ears

pricked’), and he talks to them; Shakespeare’s equivalent talks with them, and they talk back. – Cf. also above, p. 343, on the way

Plutarch and Shakespeare contrast Menenius and Coriolanus in their rhetorical style.

8
Just as he does at the end, in his father-like (V.i.3, ii.67, iii.10) embassy to Coriolanus. If Shakespeare’s knowledge of Homer is

conceded (n. 5), then new significance comes to this fatherliness. Priam’s mission to Achilles in Iliad 24, where Achilles gazes on Priam

and sees his own father Peleus, becomes a suggestive paradigm, and the abrupt collapse of Menenius’ equivalent more pathetic. But a

father-like appeal has not the power of a genuine mother’s. That, it seems, Menenius cannot grasp (V.iv init.). His ‘he had not dined’

(V.i.51) also trivializes expressively, and in a way which is over-complacent about his own diplomatic deftness. This recurrent food-

register (also at IV.ii.48–51) is interesting, especially as his fable of the belly is delivered tactlessly to famished men – another

unplutarchan touch, for in Plutarch the issue is not grain but representation. Here ‘[h]e thinks of man as ruled by his stomach’, Cantor

1976, 31; cf. Honigmann 1976, 175–81, and especially Hale 1971 on the failure of the analogy to reflect or direct reality. As

Honigmann implies (179), he should be played by a visibly well-fed actor.

9
As MacCallum 1910, 518–48, brought out: his thorough discussion is still useful. The divergence from Plutarch should be a difficulty

for those who make Shakespeare’s presentation sympathetic to the people (e.g. Muir 1979, 172–3, who oddly claims that ‘the alterations

he made in Plutarch’s account have the effect of presenting us with a more favourable idea of the citizens’, and especially Patterson 1989,

120–53).

10
He borrows a phrase from it for Coriolanus’ gleeful reaction to a Volscian attack: ‘I am glad on’t. Then we shall ha’ means to vent Our

musty superfluity’ (I.i.223–4, cf. Cor. 12.5 = NDS 516).

11
Cf. above, pp. 125–8: the demos is more versatile and less grim in Alcibiades than in the parallel narrative in Nicias.

12
pp. 357–9. The simpler view is that of Russell 1966a, 38 n. 8 = Scardigli 1995, 192 n. 8, pointing to Coriolanus’ chronological

priority: cf. Demosthenes 3.5, ‘let us discuss the older figure first’. But that does not explain the other two pairs where the Roman comes

first, Aemilius–Timoleon and Sertorius–Eumenes. Cf. p. 362 n. 33.

13
On this see above, pp. 254 and 263 n. 12, and works cited there, especially George 2000.

14
Bradley 1911–12, 460–2.

15
More on this at pp. 342–3.

16
Cf. p. 224 and n. 120.

17
Plutarch was most interested in this Roman electioneering practice of baring one’s wounds: cf. Roman Questions 276c–d with Leigh

1995.

18
Thus Oliver 1959, 57.
19
The transfer of the grain material to I.i indeed gives it more prominence, and may well be connected with the contemporary

background: grain shortages were dispiritingly familiar to Shakespeare’s audience, and the issue would generate immediacy and

engagement. Cf. pp. 254 and 263 n. 12 and e.g. Patterson 1989, 132–3; George 2000, esp. 69–70.

20
Notice that, though following Plutarch so closely in Volumnia’s great speech, he suppresses the part that deals precisely with the

niceties of reciprocity (36.2–3 = NDS 540, ‘Dost thou think it honourable for a noble man to remember the wrongs and injuries done

him, and dost not in like case think it an honest noble man’s part to be thankful for the goodness that parents do shew to their children,

acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to bear unto them?’ etc.). Instead of emphasizing this desire for repaying in kind,

Shakespeare stresses how he will do this: as Bradley 1911–12, 466–8, brought out, it is through the burning of Rome. That is an

unplutarchan theme.

21
Nuttall 1983, 119, objects to the word ‘modesty’. For him, the reluctance should not be seen as any such ‘co-operative’ societal virtue:

this, he claims, is too much of a shame culture for that, and this Coriolanus too competitive and glory-based. That argument is too

simple in itself. This Roman society, like all others, resists description in so simple a term, and Coriolanus’ motives have included ‘for his

country’: that is co-operative. But Coriolanus can still reasonably dislike the elision of this ‘co-operative’ motive implicit in treating the

wounds as a career-move, and that returns us to ‘pride’.

22
Russell 1963, 22 = Scardigli 1995, 359–60.

23
Cf. pp. 155–6 and 309–10.

24
Cf. Pelling 1988, esp. 13–14 and notes on 31.2, 35.2–3, and 54.1–5.

25
Just as Homer’s Andromache knows the only way to persuade her Hector is to find a soldierly argument: the walls are so weak here,

they need a defence (Il. 6.433–9). A little earlier Volumnia’s pleading ‘I am in this Your wife, your son…’ (III.ii.64–5) suggests

Andromache’s immediately preceding ‘you are my father and my lady mother, you my brother, you my strong young husband…’ (Il.

6.429–30); and later the role given the son’s childishness in V.iii, esp. 70–5 and 127–8, surely recalls Astyanax in the same Homeric

scene (cf. Brower 1971, 368, 379). Chapman’s translation of Book 6 appeared precisely in 1608, the date often suggested for the play’s

composition. Similarly Plutarch’s important ‘orphanage bringeth many discommodities to a child…’ (1.2 = NDS 506, quoted at p. 400)

recalls Andromache’s despairing lament for her son’s future at Il. 22.477–514, especially ‘the day of orphanhood makes a child wholly

wretched.’ (490). In both texts the allusions presumably emphasize the world of distance between Andromache’s family and Volumnia’s.

26
As Bradley 1911–12, 468–9 observed.

27
The phrase of Ellis-Fermor 1961, 66, observing that much of Volumnia’s pleasure in her son’s wounds is ‘in their market-value’.

28
Though this too grows from something, if not in Plutarch, at least in North: Heuer 1957, 52–3.

29
But there is an expressive silence in Plutarch too: 36.1–2 = NDS 540, ‘he held his peace a pretty while, and answered not a word’.

30
More on this at, particularly, pp. 182, 258, 295–6, 343–4, and Pelling 1988, 13–15 and 1997e.

31
Cf. e.g. 7.23.1 and 4, 7.34.3–4, 8.2.2 and 5, 8.54.3, all concerning Coriolanus himself. There is also a wider sense in which all

Dionysius’ Book Seven, concerned as it is to explore the clashing perceptions of justice in the Struggle of the Orders, prepares the

emphasis here.

32
As Russell 1963, 21, 27–8 = Scardigli 1995, 358–9, 370–1 brings out. This emphasis was not wholly absent from Dionysius, and even

occurs briefly in his final summary: ‘he lacked the ability to conciliate and to react with moderation, whenever he was angry with

anyone’ (8.61.1). Earlier, cf. esp. 7.21.3, 7.34.5, 7.45.3, 8.22.1, 8.50.1 and 3. But it is much less prominent a theme in Dionysius than

in either Plutarch or Shakespeare.

33
Pace (among others) the New Penguin editor G.R. Hibbard, ‘Nowhere else in the play does Coriolanus appear to better advantage

than in this scene of leave-taking which is developed out of a few lines in North.’ (233). That is to reduce Shakespeare’s scene to

Dionysius’ equivalent rather than Plutarch’s. Pujante 1990 similarly finds the key to IV.i in North, but emphasizes ‘.he had no sense nor

feeling of the hard state he was in’ [words which in fact are pure North, and have no equivalent in Plutarch], and gives us a Coriolanus

in shock from his banishment. This too is a possible way of playing the scene.

34
On Plutarch’s interest in such ‘great natures’ cf. Duff 1999, index s.v.

35
Not the happiest of translations. The Greek says ‘made him not easy but awkward for people to accommodate themselves to in

company’, and presumably prepares for his difficulties in combining with the commons. Plutarch develops the point a few lines later by

talking of his ‘encounters in politics’, which North renders with his ‘they could not be acquainted with him, as one citizen useth to be

with another in the city’. Critics (Bradley 1911–12, 464, Granville-Barker 1946, 103, and recently among others Thomas 1989, 155)

reasonably observe that Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is easier with his peers than North’s ‘churlish, uncivil, and unfit for any man’s

conversation’ suggests, and count this as a transformation: but it is a transformation which unconsciously recreates the Plutarchan

presentation which North had obscured.

36
See also pp. 340–6. It is scarcely possible to be more wrong than Farnham 1950, 211: ‘As Plutarch sees it, there was nothing

paradoxical about the nobility of spirit shown by Coriolanus. His good qualities were thoroughly good and his bad thoroughly bad, and

the two sets of qualities were quite separate.’

37
The word at 15.4 is φίλόνίκος, picked up in 15.5 by this ambition ‘to overcome always, and to have the upper hand in all matters’: for
the suggestions of philonikia, probably combining both ‘love of victory’ and ‘love of quarrels’, see p. 347 n. 24.

38
‘Not an aberration but the epitome of the value system’, Thomas 1989, 176, cf. 219: also e.g. Cantor 1976, 15; Miola 1983, 165;

Martindale and Martindale 1990, 148–9. Hatlen 1997, 298, now links this question with the problem of Coriolanus’ sense of selfhood:

‘In Coriolanus the issue of identity is posed first of all as a debate over the question of what it means to be a Roman.’

39
It is understandable that Coriolanus has proved unusually receptive to psychoanalytic criticism, esp. Adelman 1980; cf. now Hatlen

1997, 404–11 and other works cited there. Not merely the characterization but also the imagery encourages such an approach: images

of (especially distorted) nurturing are frequent, and Coriolanus’ ubiquitous language of orality in various forms – stinking breath,

multitudinous tongues, teeth to be cleaned, voices to be given – is likely to be connected. This man of tirades is obsessed with mouths, a

very oral figure.

40
Or at least in Plutarch’s Volumnia: Honigmann 1976, 173–4, suggests that she may be modelled on the formidable Spartan mothers

Plutarch described in his Agesilaus and Pyrrhus.

41
Thus North, rightly: they did not want Coriolanus to owe his recall to the commons. The Greek reads literally ‘.. .they did not wish

the man to return for the commons’ sake’ [or ‘thanks to the commons’, χάριτι του δήμου]. Russell 1963, 26–7 = Scardigli 1995, 369,

interprets this as ‘they thought it in the better interests of the demos that Martius should not come back’ and concludes that Plutarch

wished to give the patricians the better of the motivational doubt. That takes ‘for the commons’ sake’ closely with ‘wishing’ rather than

with ‘return’. If that were right, the implication would be important, for we would have patricians responding to factionalism with

moderation rather than Coriolanus-like ferocity; but that interpretation of the Greek seems forced, and so generous a picture of the

senators grates with the rest of the passage.

42
Plutarch’s name for him is unclear. Dionysius calls him Attius; Plutarch’s manuscripts are split between ‘Autidius’ and ‘Amphidius’. For

clarity’s sake I have here kept North’s and Shakespeare’s ‘Aufidius’ throughout, even for Dionysius.

43
Thus for instance, Adelman 1980, 135–6; Paris 1991, 175.

44
Cf. Waith 1962, 130–2; Velz 1983, 66–7; and esp. Adelman 1980, 138–40.

45
So, sensibly, Poole 1988, 87–9.

46
Dionysius has nothing of the tyranny theme, though he does make something of the accusation of treachery (8.57.3, 58.2, 58.4). The

‘envy’ at Rome is a great elaboration on Dionysius: cf. Russell 1963, 23, 25 = Scardigli 1995, 362, 366–7. Dionysius does however have

some Volscian envy of Coriolanus (8.57.2–3), but he treats it much less skilfully.

47
Cf. pp. 326–7, where I make similar points about Plutarch’s treatment of the climactic scene with Volumnia: yet again, Plutarch’s

distinctive touches are very like Shakespeare’s.

48
Above, p. 375; cf. also pp. 180–2, where I adopt a version of this approach in discussing Theseus–Romulus.

49
Mossman 1994, 73 and 1997.
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 Index IV

INDEX OF TOPICS

abduction by aliens 190 n. 10

aetiology 173, 177–8, 194 n. 55

allusion 122–4, 136 nn. 20 and 22, 136–7 n. 25, 138 n. 39,

139 n. 43,197–9, 203, 267–8, 275–6, 344–6,346 n. 10; see also

intertextuality

Amazon-stories 176–8, 189, 199

ambition 242–7, 292–7, 350–3, 366,378, 395–6; see also

contentiousness, glory

anger 387, 399–400, 403, 405, 407 n. 4

antiquarianism148

Apophthegmata 17, 22, 58, 65–90

arguments from silence 48, 61 n. 21,146

assistants 24, 65

Atthidography 174–5, 188

audience: see narratees

autobiography 305–7

autopsy 40 n. 120, 161, 170 n. 95

beginnings 144, 269–78, 339, 354, 365–7, 373–5, 377–8

bias 145

biographical focus 3–7, 53–5, 96–107,130–4

biographical novels 147, 153, 303–4

biography and history 102–7, 130–2,143–95, 207–11 and

passim

biography, ‘literary’ and ‘political’147,161, 164 n. 25, 164–5 n.

28, 301–7,330 n. 6

blurring 272–3, 275

change, awareness of? 213–14, 240,242–3

character and characterization 53–4, 62 n. 39, 102–7, 130,

143, 155–6, 159, 205, 283–347, 387–411 and passim; see also

development, integrated characters, personality

character-change? 283, 314, 333–4 n. 67; see also

development of character

characterization by reaction119–20,374

childhood 140 n. 60, 147, 153–7, 283–338, 390; see also

paideia

chronology and chronological distortion 92, 143, 145, 253–4,

334n. 69, 387

cities 172–3, 182–5, 187–8, 189–90n. 3, 192 n. 29, 194 n.

57, 242, 292–5, 300 n. 46, 324, 341, 343–4, 395, 400–2, 406,

410 n. 38

clientela 220

cliometrics 166 n. 43, 174

closure 144–5, 153, 269–78, 281 n. 32, 351–5; see also

synkritic epilogues, terminal generosity, terminal modification,

terminal recall of great moments

collation 41–2 n. 139

comedy 261

Commentarii 23–4

comparison: see synkrisis

competition 274

compression 92

conflation 31 n. 21, 91–2, 107–8, 109n. 2, 387

contemporary texture?134, 141 n. 62, 239–247, 253–65, 291,

296–7, 300 n. 52, 369–70, 384 n. 23, 409 n. 19; see also

timelessness

contentiousness 182, 243–7, 261, 274, 292–5, 341, 344–5, 347

n. 24, 350–3, 403, 410 n. 37; see also ambition, military men

and their limitations

creative reconstruction 69, 77, 93–4,119–22, 152–6, 202,

284, 294–5, 301–15, 320–1

critical ability and habits 48, 52, 143–52, 173–8, 189

cross-fertilisation10–11

cross-grained narratees 272, 276, 383n. 17

cross-references 7–10, 136 n. 21, 387

death153, 365–86; see also closure

decertainizing 250 n. 25

dedicatees 84–5, 270–2, 279 nn. 15 and 16, 291

defamiliarization 250 n. 25

demagogues 135, 141 n. 61, 181–4, 208, 212, 215, 217–18,

223–5, 226–7 n. 11, 240–2, 313–14, 341–3, 372,389–92, 405

democracy 258–9, 261, 302, 314–15

demos, treatment of 5–7, 53, 55, 58, 63 n. 57, 68, 104–5,

108, 113–14 n. 55, 114 n. 57, 125–34, 180–4, 201, 207–36,

241–2, 257, 261, 314,341–4, 358, 388–94, 397–8, 401–3

development of character 283–8, 307–15, 318–19, 334 n. 69;

see also childhood, paideia

dialogue, internal conflict figured as 322–9

dictation 24, 66

Dionysiac elements 197–206

displacement of items 37 n. 88, 92–4,107–8, 246

divine personalities 335 n. 83 ‘

doctrine of present things’175–9

education: see paideia

εικός arguments 145, 176–80, 185–6

encomium 147, 153, 303–4

ends: see closure

equites, treatment of 212–13, 220, 222,261

erotics 186–7, 198–9, 203–4, 260,403–4; see also personalia

exemplary gestures 323–8

extempore speech 343–6

fabrication of context 95–6, 110 n. 18

fabrication of detail: see creative reconstruction

false naïveté178–9, 185 fiction: see truth first-person

statements 269–78

focalization 280–1 n. 30

foreshadowing 181–9, 194 n. 55, 391,394–5

Fortune 98, 101, 185, 354–8

freedom 182, 243–7, 256, 350–1

friends 258

funeral speeches 375–6

generation gap at Athens 124, 128

genre 147–8, 152, 158–62, 164–5 n. 28, 188, 195 n. 68, 207–

10, 259–60, 301–2, 304, 325–9, 330 n. 6;

see also biography and history, and biography, ‘literary’ and

‘political’

girlhood 329–30 n. 1 glory 219, 230 n. 51, 242–3, 350, 393–8,

409 n. 21

gods, involvement of 171–206, 378–82

Greece, focus on 18–19, 93, 154, 182, 224–5, 236 n. 128, 240,

242–7, 270, 285–6, 312, 350–2, 372, 374–5

Hellenistic political biography?147,164–5 n. 28, 304

heredity 369–70

hour-glass structure 224

ideal reader 85

ideology 248, 257–9

idiosyncrasy 287–8, 315–22

imagery 98, 111 n. 27, 112 n. 36, 198, 201–3, 205 nn. 4–5,

258–9, 355–6, 389, 394, 397–8, 408 n. 8, 410–11 n. 39

inconsistency 316, 334–5 n. 77

individuality, individualism 127,131–2, 307–29

influences (on a character) 306–15,318–20, 393, 400–3; see

also psychology

inscriptions, use of 40 n. 120, 144, 146,148

‘integrated’ characters 205, 287–97,315–21, 407

interpretatio graeca 88 n. 31, 212–13,215, 217–25

interrelation of Lives 44 n. 169, 86n. 18, 132, 160–1, 187–8,

275; see also synkrisis

intertextuality 122–4, 136–7 n. 25, 169 nn. 87 and 90, 171–

95, 205 n. 8, 326,344–6, 347 n. 23, 379, 388, 407 n. 5,408 n.

7, 409 n. 25; see also allusion invective 302–3

invention: see creative reconstruction

invitational ‘we’ 282 n. 45

irrationality 284–6

Italians, treatment of 211–17

journalism 170 n. 97

justice 398–9, 410 n. 32

Latin, Plutarch’s knowledge of 2, 61n. 19, 76, 82, 270–1, 279

n. 13

‘law’ or ‘licence’ of ‘biographical relevance’ 53–4, 180–1, 393

legal analogy 145, 170 n. 97

libraries 17, 22, 25

licence to improve on truth152–62

manipulation of material 91–6, 152–6,180–1, 208–17, 223–

5, 246, 298–9 n. 26, 299–300 n. 43, 387–8, 394–8and passim

memory 1, 7, 20–2, 48–9, 52, 65, 67, 69, 71–2, 76, 80, 96,

118–19, 145, 298 n. 24, 353, 361, 394

metaphor 157–8, 168 n. 74

method of work 1–53, 65–90, 118–22

metus hostilis 200–1, 224–5

military men and their

limitations 100–1, 218, 240, 261, 309, 315, 339–47, 391–4,

397–8, 400–2

‘mirror-scenes’ 126, 138 n. 33, 159–60,243, 403–6

monarchy 103–4, 181–2, 184–5, 254,258, 349; see also tyranny

morals and moralising 6–7, 55–7,82–4, 102–7, 113 n. 44,

132–3, 150–2, 165 n. 41, 166 n. 49, 186–7, 197–206, 208,

237–65, 270, 275, 291, 296–7, 310–13, 317, 321–2, 351–2,

354, 356–7, 369–70, 373–7,385 n. 45, 388–9 and passim

myth 171–95

narratees 136–7 n. 25, 172, 189, 203–5, 238, 244–9, 261–2,

267–82, 337 n. 108, 383 n. 17

narrative history 157–8, 167–8 n. 72,267–8

narratorial authority 267–9, 27

New Biography 316–19

new historicism 254

new men at Rome 208, 226 n. 8

notes 1, 22–4, 29–30 n. 3, 42 n. 146,65–95; see also υπόμνημα

old age 373–5 omens 379–81

one-downmanship 322, 336 n. 92

onlookers: see characterization by reaction optimates 217–22, 228

n. 26

oral sources and oral history 18, 61 n. 24, 96, 169–70 n. 93,

268–9, 301,304

ostracism, presentation of 140 n. 52,144

paideia 77, 93, 154, 270, 285–6, 289–91, 293–4, 301–47, 358,

361n. 6, 369, 373–5, 379, 400–2; see also childhood

papyrus rolls: see writing materials

personalia 102–7, 114 n. 58, 259–60;

see also erotics personality (and ‘character’) 283–338

philonikia: see contentiousness

philotimia: see ambition

plausibility 171–95 playfulness 171–95, 277, 278 n. 7

politics, understanding and interpretation of 48, 56, 83, 96–102,

124–34,180–4, 207–36, 241–2, 339, 380, 388–91, 407 n. 2

‘positive’ and ‘negative’ Lives?133, 137n. 28

proems: see beginnings

programmatic statements102–3, 106–7

progressive redefinition 293–4, 299 nn.

36 and 40, 312, 317, 333 n. 60,354–5, 359; see also ‘theme and

variation’

propaganda 183–4, 248, 258

psychology 56, 155–6, 167 n. 68, 169n. 83, 191 n. 21, 202–

3, 294–7, 307–29, 337–8 n. 108, 339–47, 396,398^03, 410–11

n. 39; see also influences

publication 7–10, 194–5 n. 64

quotations 2, 31 nn. 11–12, 35 n. 69, 38 n. 93, 81–2, 123–4,

177–8, 186,197, 268, 275–6

rationalization 174–8, 191 n. 20, 198,368

reader-response theory 248–9, 262; see also moralism,

narratees

reassessment: see terminal reassessment,

progressive redefinition

reciprocity 392–4, 399, 409 n. 20

reinterpretation of sources127–30

relative chronology of works 7–11, 29,188, 234 n. 111, 255,

373

‘relativity’173–8, 188–9

religion 121, 128, 134, 141 n. 63,185–6, 189, 197–206

‘representative’ stories162 n. 2

res gestae 306

‘resistance’ 236 n. 128, 259–60, 264 n. 39

revolution 218–19, 222, 225–6, 238,254

rhetoric and presentation of rhetoric 134, 138 nn. 37 and 39,

145, 154, 163 n. 14, 339–47, 388–91,406, 408 n. 7

ring composition 374–5, 383 n. 15

Roman historical commonplaces 224–5

Roman institutions 219–20, 270–1,279 n. 13

Roman women 396

second-person statements 270–8; see also dedicatees

self-destruction 181–2, 201–3, 398–9

self-imitation? 160

self-praise 249, 271

self-presentation x–xi, 30 n. 9, 136–7 n. 25, 177, 237–9, 248–9,

267–82, 305–7, 353–4, 361, 367–8, 383 nn. 13 and 17

silence 398, 410 n. 29

silent reading 43 n. 158

simultaneous preparation 1–44, 79–81,91

society and self 322–9; see also cities soldiers, treatment

of 212–14, 217,221–2, 240–1, 256–7; see also military men

and their limitations

sources11–19, 25–6, 45–9, 117–22, 165 n. 36, 168 nn. 76–7,

174–8, 183–4, 192–3 n. 37, 210–11, 214–17,223–4, 234–5 n.

113, 268, 278 n. 6, 298 n. 24, 299 n. 40, 301–4, 309–10,346 n.

15, 367–8, 387–411; see also method of work

spatium historicum, spatium mythicum? 188

speeches 50–1, 54, 61–2 n. 28, 75,78–9

speed of production xi, 24–5, 66

stereotypes 286–7, 293, 315, 334–5 n. 77

style 57–8, 75, 78, 81, 84, 88 n. 29,157, 271–2

sycophancy 276–7, 281 n. 40

synkrisis xi, 132–3, 144–5, 184–8, 194 n. 62, 200, 203, 215,

218, 224–6, 236 n. 128, 258–60, 273–5, 311–13, 336 n. 97,

342–6, 349–63, 365–7, 370–82, 390, 406

synkritic epilogues 349–50, 352–5,359–61, 363 n. 45, 365,

367, 370,376–82, 386 n. 64; see also synkrisis

technical vocabulary 74

terminal generosity 368–78

terminal modification or

reassessment 186–9, 200, 353, 359–61, 365, 368–71, 381–2

terminal recall of great moments180–2,375, 405–6

theatre: see tragedy

‘theme and variation’ 229 n. 43, 357–9, 363 n. 35; see also

progressive redefinition

‘timelessness’ 225–6, 237–51, 253–65

topicality: see contemporary texture?

tragedy and tragic texturing 6, 97–8,101–2, 106, 111 n. 27,

113 n. 53, 130–1, 171–2, 181, 187, 197–206, 238–9, 246, 248,

261, 296–7, 300n. 52, 327, 337 n. 104, 355, 358,370–1, 387–

411

transfers of material 7, 94–5, 107–8, 110 n. 9, 120–1, 135–6

n. 14, 136n. 15, 228 n. 23

tribunate 219

truth and fiction 91–6, 143–70, 173–8,187–9, 304

tyrants and tyranny 5–6, 104, 150, 207–8, 218–19, 222–3,

225–6, 240–2, 254, 256, 261–2, 313, 351, 357, 405, 411 n. 46;

see also freedom, monarchy

uncertainty 171–95, 198, 206 n. 13,267–9

υπόμνημα 23–4, 52–3, 65–90

varying texture of Lives 5–6, 53–9, 91,96–107, 125–30, 139

n. 41, 150–2, 156, 185–6, 207–11, 260, 296–7,299–300 n. 43,

349–50, 382

vengeance 365, 370, 381–2

visuality 97–8, 111 n. 24, 121–2, 387

‘voice’ 282 n. 42, 383 n. 17

wealth 224, 242, 292–6, 299 n. 40,309, 324–5, 376, 384 n. 23

will, moral 284–5, 297 n. 7, 322–9

wine 197–206

working methods: see method of work

writing materials 21, 52, 90 n. 62

 Index II

INDEX OF PLUTARCH PASSAGES

All passages mentioned in the text are included. Passages

mentioned in notes are included where their content is discussed,

but not always when they form part of a list of supporting

citations.

Plutarch’s Lives are ordered alphabetically. This causes difficulty

in the many cases where a pair is referred to (e.g. Demosthenes–

Cicero): there the reference is included under both Lives. Passages

in the Comparisons are given under the second Life in the form

Crass. 35(2).3.

Plutarch’s Moralia are ordered in the traditional sequence, and

references are given by Wyttenbach-pages.

LIVES

Aemilius Paullus 248, 313, 349, 386 n. 64

1 44 n. 170, 102, 250 n. 27, 273, 286,357,359

1.1 273

1.2 273

1.5 273

1.6 273

1.8 273

2.5–6 114 n. 62, 308

10.2 219

11.3–4 208

28.9 90 n. 59

28.11–1290 n. 59

30.1 34.3–4 90 n. 59 35–6 87 n. 26

38.3 38.6 39.8–9 220

Agesilaus 11, 153, 242, 284, 300 n. 43,

302, 304, 307–8, 312, 349, 360, 365,411 n. 40

1.5 242, 295, 308, 312

2 85 n.7

2.1 295

2.2–3 347 n.24

15.4 277

19.10–11 164 n. 19, 269

36 85 n. 7

Agis–Cleomenes 232 n. 83, 242, 269, 274, 284, 299 n. 39, 311,

313–14, 357, 363 n. 35, 366, 376

2 219, 242

2.7–11215, 274

2.7 273

4.1–2153, 309

6.7 309

7.2–4 309

7.5–7 309

14.3–4309

19–20 309

22.3 283, 311

22.4–5308

23.3–6 311

25.9 298 -9 n. 26

37.8 335 n. 81

44–6 163 n. 16

45.4–8 167 n. 65

46.1 1 63 n. 16

46.5 163 n. 16

Alcibiades 117–41, 287, 305, 314–17, 321, 325, 334 n. 69, 349,

357–9, 376, 390, 398, 406

2.1 311, 347 n. 24

2.2–3 302, 330 n. 8

3.2 145, 148

6.3–4 123–4, 140 n. 52

8.3 314

10.1–10.3–4 140 n. 52, 343

13.4 136 n. 22

14 123

14.8–9126, 138 n. 32, 141 n. 62

16 126, 138 n. 35

16.2 127 - 8

17.1 126

17.4 122, 124

18.4–8 128

19.5–7 343

20.6–21.6 117-18

22.1 325

23 126

25.5–6 133

25.13 344

26 126

26.1 133

30.7 347 n. 24

34.3–7 138 n. 33

35.2 344

36.2 344

36.4 344, 346-7 n. 21

40 385 n. 44, 386 n. 68

40(1).1 383 n. 13

40(1).3 138 n. 35
41(2).2 123

41(2).4 401

41(2).4 353, 376

41(2).8 275

Alexander 8, 110 n. 27, 147, 186, 188, 201–3, 258–60, 287,

302, 304, 321, 331 n. 12, 377–82, 398, 407 n. 5

fragment from proem 380–1

1.1–2 102–3, 105, 207, 226 n. 2,

2–3 380

2.7–9 201

3.3 331 n. 26

3.6 331 n. 26

4.4 331 n. 26

5.4 302, 330 n. 7

5.7–8.5 331 n. 26

8 379

8.2 331 n. 26, 331 n. 25

13.3–5 202

14.9 257, 337 n. 107

17.9 202

23 202

26.14 347 n. 24

46 176 - 8

48.5 202

52.9 347 n. 24

61 331 n. 26

63.12 379

64 379

65 331 n. 25
67 201 - 2

68.1–2 263 n. 15, 264 n. 32

69 379

69.6 202, 379

72.1 202

72.2 202

74.2–6 379, 281 n. 40

75.5–6 202

Antony 1–44, 79, 91, 105–6, 110 n. 27, 148–9, 153, 156, 197–

8, 203–5, 207, 238–9, 241, 247–9, 269, 285, 287, 302, 312–13,

315, 325, 353–9, 366–7, 369–71, 376, 384 n. 28, 396, 398

1 –30 17–18

1 356, 384 n. 28

2 13, 17, 154

2.2–3 165 n. 40

2.4–8 166 n. 62

2.6 140 n. 61

2.8 105, 340

3 17, 406

4 203-4, 241

5 107-8

5.1 228 n. 26

5.2 154, 156

5.8–9 108, 109 n. 2, 232 n. 86

5.10 33 n. 41, 93, 154, 156, 219

6.1 165 n. 40

6.7 11, 105, 259, 385 n. 56

7 355

8.1–3 40 n. 115
8.5 270

9–13 165 n. 40

9.6 94, 153

10.5–6 17, 154

10.8–9 94

11–15 5, 14, 17

11 94

11.6 14

12 194 n. 54

12.3 233 n. 88

12.6 14, 37 n. 88, 109 n. 8

13 94–5, 110 n. 14, 153

13.4 33 n. 41

14.2–4 37 n. 90, 44 n. 173, 109 n. 2

16.1 28

16.3 356

16.6–8 264 n. 28

17.4 356-7

19–20 105

19.1 25, 44 n. 163

19.3 3

20.2 22

20.4 237-8

21 18, 109 n. 8, 165 n. 40

22 17-18

22.6–7 315

23.2–4 362 n. 26

23.2 19

24.1–5 197, 204

24.3 275

24.9–12 362 n. 24

25–6 18, 39 n. 101

25.1 105

26–8 105

26 355

26.5 197, 204

26.6–7 356

27.2–5 31 n. 11

27.4 346 n. 2

28.1 105

28.3–12 18, 269

29.1 31 n. 11, 105

29.4 204, 355

30.1 105

30.6–31.3 221, 234 n. 101

31–2 356

31.4 105-6

32 355

33–50 15-16

33.2–4 142 n. 145, 110 n. 18, 149, 165 n. 4

33.6–34.1 362 n. 26

33.7 19

35.5 355

36.1–2 31 n. 11

41 38 nn. 97 and 98

45.4 355

45.12 38 nn. 97 and 98

46–7 38 n. 98
49 16, 38 nn. 97 and 98

50 356

53.5–9 42 n. 145, 106, 110 n. 18

53.8–11 362 n. 24

54 354

54.5 204, 355

56.6–10 31 n. 11

56.7 204

58.4–59. 1 148, 151

59.6–7 16, 39 n. 101

59.8 270

60.5 204

62 19, 31 n. 11, 356

62.1 275, 362 n. 26

63 356

64.2–4 356

66.3 122-3, 136 n. 20

66.5–8 18, 31 n. 11, 203

66.12 32 n. 39

67.1–6 203, 315

67.1 356

68 19, 269

68.3 32 n. 39

68.5 106

68.6–8 362 n. 26

69.1–2 11

72.1 19, 362 n. 26

75 203-4

76 315
76.1–2 356

77.4 136 n. 20

77.7 315

78.1 106, 366

82.4 16, 106

84.3 106

86.7 106

86.8–9 106, 369

87 370, 384 n. 28

87.8 384 n. 29

87.9 367, 370

88(1).1 273

89(2) 354

90(3) 203, 356

90(3).4 280 n. 24

92(5).3 354, 376

93(6).4 106, 115 n. 71, 204, 353, 355,

370, 376, 384 n. 31, 385 n. 52

Aratus 288–91, 296–7, 315, 317, 367, 373, 383 n. 11

1 270

1.5–6 291

9.7 291

10 120, 289-91, 298 n. 24, 315

17.7 291

19.4 291

25.7 291

26.4–5 291

29.7–8 298 n. 26

30.2 291
31.2–4 290

35–6 290

35–6 298–9 n. 26

38.5–12 291

38.12 146, 298 n. 24

44.6 291

47–8 298 n. 24

54 373, 378

54.7–8 270, 367

Aristides 153, 247–8, 269, 357, 367–8,

1 40 n. 120, 144-6, 156, 269, 383 n. 18

6 144

6.5 280 n. 24

26.2–5 145

27 145,367

27.6–7 269, 367-8

Artaxerxes 284, 383 n. 11

2.1 308

Brutus 1–44, 79, 91, 106, 149, 188, 248, 258–9, 313, 322, 357,

365–8,

2.1 24–5

2.4 15, 37 n. 92

5.2–4 51, 54-5, 114 n. 58, 260

7–23 5–7, 14-15

7.1 14

8 6, 14, 37 n. 89

9–10 37 n. 86

9.1–4 149, 165 n. 41

9.9 8–9, 33 n. 48
10.6 114 n. 62

11–12 95

13 14, 24-5, 34 n. 64, 329 n. 1, 396

15.1 6

15.6–9 14

16.1 6

17.2 7

17.6 32 n. 39

18.3 34 n. 66

19 5, 14, 44 n. 173

19.4–5 37 n. 90, 110 n. 18

20.1 5

20.9 32 n. 39

21.2–3 212

21.4 264 n. 28

22 21, 38 n. 93, 42 n. 140

22.1 256

22.3 256, 264 n. 28

23 396

23.1 221

23.4–7 14

24.3 31 n. 12

24.7 110 n. 9

26.6 38 n. 93

27.6 22

28 11, 38 n. 93

29.3 38 n. 94

29.5 218, 232 n. 79

33 10
35.4 11, 34 n. 65

39 15

40 15

41.7 35 n. 69

46.1–2 375

47 15, 38 n. 94

48 15

50 11

51–2 15

53.5–7 34 n. 64, 329 n. 1, 368, 396

55(2).2 105, 226 n. 57, 258-9, 324, 376, 385 n. 56

56(3).4 254

56(3).6 275

57(4).4 256

Caesar 1–44, 79, 91, 103–6, 149–50, 156, 182, 186, 188–9,

207–11, 218, 241, 248, 253–65, 288, 314, 316,321, 324–8,

337–8 n. 108, 360, 365–6, 377–82, 398

1.7 114 n. 58

1–3 13, 76–7, 88 n. 34, 93, 346 n. 6

3–4 154

3.1 339, 346 n. 4

3.2-4 103–4, 260

4.1–4 77, 154

4.5 226 n. 10

4.6–9 104, 207-8, 226 n. 10

5.2–3 226 n. 4

5.7 211,228 n. 22

5.8–9 104, 207-8

6 104
6.1–3 207

6.7 207

7–8 45 - 63

7.1–4 51, 55

7.5 50, 55

7.7 54, 91

7.8–9 50-1, 61-2 n. 28

8.1–4 39 n. 105, 47-51, 53-5, 57, 67-8, 75, 82, 114 n. 58

8.5–7 50-2, 55, 67

9–10 58, 94

9.2 233 n. 88

9.4–8 42 n. 145, 88 n. 31

9.10 151

10 40 n. 119, 75-6

11 77-8, 90 n. 59, 109-10 n. 8

11.1 226 n. 10, 228 n. 22

11.4–6 257, 328, 349

12.1 90 n. 59, 264 n. 32

13–14 3-5

13.3 226 n. 10

13.4–6 227 nn. 13 and 16

14.2–6 31 n. 20

14.2 4, 109 n. 1, 233 n. 96

14.3 212

14.7–8 36 n. 75, 93, 227 n. 13

14.11–12 32 n. 24

14.16–17 32 n. 24, 99

15.2 275

17 13, 36-7 n. 83, 114 n. 59

17.1–3 335 n. 78

18.1 226 n. 4

19.4 226 n. 4

20.2 113 n. 55

20.3 97, 101

21.2 113 n. 55

21.8–9 92, 113 n. 55, 114 n. 57

22 17, 21-2, 35 n. 69, 88-9 n. 44, 92

22.6 349

23.2 264 n. 32, 349

23.5–7 113-14 n. 55, 226 n. 16

24.3 25

26.7–8 18, 95-6

28–9 264 n. 27

28 227 n. 16, 258

28.1 101

28.2–3 97, 226 nn. 10 and 17

28.4 226 n. 57

28.5–7 100-101, 226 n. 57

28.6 259

29.3 264 n. 27

29.5 96, 104, 264 n. 27

29.6 264 n. 27

30–1 107-8

30.1 104

30.2–3 107, 115 n. 76

30.4–6 93-4, 107, 109 n. 2, 115 nn. 76 and 79

31.2–3 33 n. 41, 93, 107-8

32 63 n. 52, 327-8, 337-8 n. 108

32.8 260

32.9 109-10 n. 8, 337 n. 108

33.4–6 82, 112 n. 34

34.5 109 n. 8

34.7 114 n. 61

35.2 8-9, 34 n. 54, 88 n. 32

35.6–11 88 n. 32, 89 n. 58, 92-3, 104, 232 n. 87

36 93,105

38 84, 114 n. 59

39.8 87 n. 27

39.3 260

43.4 16

44.8 35 n. 69, 79-80

45.9 8

46.1–2 35 n. 69, 36 n. 78, 82-4, 260

46.3 35 n. 69

47 16

48.3–4 114 n. 61

49.1–3 105, 114 n. 58

51 32 n. 31, 40 n. 117, 380

51.3–4 258

54.3–6 114 nn. 61 and 63, 150

57.1 55, 104, 150, 207

57.2–3 263 n. 21

57.4–6 114 n. 61

57.4 263 n. 23

57.6 260

58.3 260

58.6–7 241, 255, 264 n. 32

59 194 n. 55

59.3–4 10

59.6 260

60–61 6, 14, 32 n. 32, 194 nn. 54-5

60.1 194 n. 54

60.3–8 194 n. 54

60.4–5 263 n. 21

60.6 37 n. 88, 109 n. 8

62–6 5-7, 14-15

62 6, 14

63.9 16

63.11 380

64.5 380

65.1–4 14, 37 n. 92

66 7, 21, 24, 381

67–8 264 n. 28

67.4 33 n. 41

67.8 14, 259

68 184, 208

68.7 8

69 11, 378-9

69.1 55, 104, 150, 207, 259-60, 380-1

69.14 382 n. 4

Camillus 8, 13, 132-3, 153, 188, 200, 302, 359, 365-6, 377-8,

386 n. 65

1.1 378, 386 n. 70

5.1 271

15.3-4 200

19.12 33 n. 51
20.2 200

23.6-7 200

33.4 233 n. 88

33.10 8, 33 n. 48

35.4 200

41.2 200

43.2 378, 382 n. 4, 386 n. 70

Cato Maior 74, 200-1, 208, 269, 284, 286, 312, 322, 357, 369,

376, 384 n. 28, 386 n. 64

1.1-3 384 n. 28

1.5 346 n. 2

3.1 233 n. 88

4.2 224, 235 nn. 123-4

5.6 277

7.3 279 n. 17

15 219

16.4 233 n. 88

16.8 208, 235 n. 123

17.1-5 200

20 369

21.3-4 200

22.4-23.2 235-6 n. 124

25.4 200

27.2-4 200-201, 225

27.7 369, 384 n. 28

28(1).2-3 235 n. 123

30(3)-31(4) 163 n. 12, 275, 385 n. 57

31(4).1 275

31(4).4 200
31(4).5 275

32(5).4 219

Cato Minor 1-44, 79, 91, 103, 106, 150, 207, 269, 286-8, 302,

305, 315, 317, 322, 324, 331 n. 12, 349, 360, 363 n. 35, 365-6,

377-9

1.3 103

2.1-5 302, 330 n. 7

4.3 346 n. 2

5.3 340

5.7 212

6.1-4 113 n. 47, 315

11.4 281 n. 40

11.7-8 150

13 10

20.8 232 n. 86

21.3 234 n. 106

22-4 45-63

22.5-6 49-50, 56-7

23.1-4 17, 50-1, 54, 57-8, 62 n. 28

23.5 58

24.1-3 51, 54-5, 57, 114 n. 58, 260

24.4-25 54

25-6 58

25.3 325-6

26 51-2, 67

26.2 228 n. 22

26.4 219

26.5 103

27-9 228 n. 22
27.1 218

30 10

30.9-10 93, 227 n. 13

31-3 3-5, 109 n. 1

31.2 233 n. 96

31.5 233 n. 96

31.6 93, 227 n. 13

32.2 31 n. 20

32.10 32 n. 24

33.1-4 32 n. 24, 233 n. 96

33.6 98

33.5 31 n. 20

33.6 32 n. 24

34 92, 98-9, 112 n. 29

36.5 150

37 103

40 10

41.1 25

42.3-4 44 n. 173, 114 n. 57

42.7 114 n. 57

43 91-2

43.6-7 114 n. 57

43.10 96-7

44.1 103

44.2 113 n. 47, 151

44.3 226 n. 57

44.12-14 114 n. 57

45.2 99

45.7 100, 226 n. 57

46.8 114 n. 62

47.2 226 n. 57

49.1-2 97, 112 n. 34, 114 n. 62

51 22, 92

52.4 112 n. 34

52.8 103

53.3 112 n. 34

54.2 150

54.9 8, 10

58.5 103

59.4-8 103

64.3 103

65 103

70.6-7 103

70.8-10 377

73 11

73.6 34 n. 64, 383 n. 14

73.7 382 n. 4

Cicero 1-63, 74, 79, 81-2, 91, 110 n. 28, 208, 256, 285-6, 305,

313, 322, 326, 349, 360, 368-70, 373, 376, 384 n. 23

2 303, 331 n. 29

3-4 93

4 339

4.5 339, 346 n. 4

6.3-4 21, 39 n. 105, 42 n. 141

8.6-7 63 n. 57

9 63 n. 57

9.7-10.2 231-2 n. 72

10-23 45-63
10-11 46-7, 55-6, 212

10.3-5 60 n. 12, 63 n. 57

11.2-3 63 n. 57, 226 n. 8, 232 n. 72

12-20 46-8

12-13 59 n. 6

12 59

13 57, 59 n. 6, 63 n. 57

14.1 58-9

14.3 56

14.4 59 n. 5

14.6 63 n. 57

14.7-8 59 n. 6

15.1 59 n. 5

15 26-7, 47, 50, 54-6, 59

15.5 109 n. 2

16.3 58

16.6 59 n. 6

17 46, 48, 54, 58, 59 n. 6

18-19 57-8

18.6 59 n. 7

19.1-4 91

19.4-20.3 48-9, 56, 58

20 3, 26-7, 40 n. 119, 44 n. 172, 51

20.4-23.6 47, 91

20.6-7 44 n. 172, 50, 54, 56, 63 n. 57

21.2-5 49-50, 54, 56-7, 63 n. 53

23-4 51-2, 63 n. 57, 67

23.1-4 228 n. 22

23.5 228 n. 22
23.6 256

24-8 58

24 271

25-6 81, 83

26.11 72-3

27.4 83

28-9 94

28.1 233 n. 88

28.4 40 n. 119, 88 n. 31

29.1-2 151

30.1-4 3-5

30.4-5 111 n. 28

32.6 346 n. 2

33.2-4 3

34 10, 27, 92

35.1 27

37.3 326, 337 n. 102

38 81

40.2 39 n. 105, 233 n. 88

42 5

43.8 28

46.5 3

48.2 385 n. 50

49.2 237

49.5-6 368-70

50(1) 272

50(1).1 383 n. 13

51(2) 271

52(3).4 272
52(3).5-6 272, 273

Cimon 129-30, 139 n. 41, 153, 269, 363 n. 35, 371-6

1-2 373-5, 406

1.8 269

2.3-5 54, 239, 374

2.5 335 n. 81

3.1 139 n. 41

4 374

4.4 330 n. 10

4.6-10 114 n. 58, 330 n. 10

10 139 n. 41

14.3-5 139 n. 41

15.1 139 n. 41

15.3 330 n. 10

16.9-10 139 n. 41

17 139 n. 41

19.3-4 139 n. 41, 372-3

Cleomenes: see Agis-Cleomenes

Coriolanus 13, 52, 78, 94, 133, 182, 238-9, 241, 254, 284-6,

298 n. 24, 309-11, 313, 321-2, 324-7, 338 n. 108, 349, 357-9,

365, 376

1.1 34 n. 54

1.2 182, 400, 409 n. 25

1.3-5 340-1, 345, 347 n. 24, 400, 410 n. 35

1.6 400

2.2 153, 309, 405

3 109 n. 2

4 395-6

4.1 310, 321

4.5-8 155-6, 283, 286, 309-11

5-7 388

5 263 n. 11, 389

6.3-5 343

7.4 342

8.3 342, 391

8.5 342, 391

8.6 391

9.1-2 342, 391

9.5 342, 392

10.5 153

10.6 342, 392

10.7-8 405

11.1 342, 392

12-13 263 n. 11, 389

12.5 408 n. 10

13.1 342, 392

13.4 403

13.5 233 n. 90

13.6 405

14.1-2 326

14.1 389, 392

14.2 393-4

15.1 389, 393, 401, 405

15.2 393

15.4-5 344, 347 n. 24, 393, 401, 403, 410 n. 37

15.5-6 393

16 393

16.5-7 342
17.1 401

17.3 342, 392

17.4 393

18 62 n. 34

18.1 390

18.2 403

18.3 342, 391, 405

18.4 390

19.3-4 401

20 343, 405

20.2 405

20.6 343

20.8 390

21 388, 397

21.1-2 399

21.5 326

21.6 347 n. 24, 403

22.2 404

22.3 403

25.3-4 270

26 401

26.2 353, 376

27.5-6 401

29 390, 403, 411 n. 41

31.1-2 404

32.6 280 n. 24

33.8-10 395

34-6 326-7

34.3-4 398
34.3 326

36.1-2 410 n. 29

36.1 327

36.2-3 409 n. 20

39 404-5

39.3 405

39.5 405

39.6 342

39.8 405

39.11 383 n. 14

Crassus 1-44, 79, 91, 106, 110 n. 27, 133, 153, 156, 201, 207-9,

241, 321, 324, 365, 376

1-4 13

1 36 n. 80, 114 n. 58

3.3 346 n. 2

5.6 36 n. 80

7.1 270

7.5 29, 76, 80

7.7 155, 209

13 45-63

13.1-2 54

13.3-4 2-3, 26-7, 39 n. 105, 44 n. 172, 47, 50, 55, 91, 145, 228

n. 22

13.5 10, 55, 63 n. 47

14 2-9

14.3-5 29, 31 n. 20

15 xi, 42 n. 142

15.7 92

17-33 15
33 140 n. 50

33.9 382 n. 4

34(1).1 273

35(2).3 xi, 21, 24, 42 n. 142, 353, 361

36(3).5 164 n. 19, 361

37(4) 376, 385 n. 52

37(4).2 22

37(4).3 275

38(5).4 376, 385 n. 52

Demetrius 11, 269, 285, 353-9, 370, 376

1 105, 114 n. 67, 276

1.5 276

1.6 238, 276

1.8 354

2 203

2.3 356

3-4 35 n. 68

3.5 408 n. 12

5 304

8-13 362 n. 25

9.5-7 203, 356

10-13 362 n. 24

17-18 362 n. 25

18.5 355

19.4-10 203, 356

20.7-8 355

22-4 362 n. 25

23-7 358, 363 n. 37

23.4-6 362 n. 24
24.9-12 362 n. 24

25.9 355

26 362 n. 24

27.1-3 362 n. 25

27.3 356

28-9 358

28.1 355

30 362 n. 25, 363 n. 37

32.1-3 356

33-4 362 n. 25

33 358

33.7-8 355

34.4 355

35 357

36 354, 376

36.12 354,376

39 358

40.7-8 362 n. 25

41.5 355

42.2 362 n. 25

42.8-11 358

43 358

43.5-7 355

44.8 203, 356

44.9 355

46-47.1 356

48 358

52 357-8

53 355
53.1 204, 355

53.8-9 385 n. 43

53.10 204, 355, 382 n. 5, 383 n. 13, 385 n. 43

Demosthenes 256, 302, 331 n. 12, 349, 360, 365, 373, 376

1-3 271-2

1.1 270

1.2-3 271

1.4 272

2.1 18, 22, 271

2.2-4 61 n. 19, 271-2

3 272

3.1 2, 271-2, 276

4.4 313

5.4-7 339

11.7 62 n. 39

22.5 280 n. 24

31.6 373, 385 n. 43

31.7 367

Dion 6, 8, 11, 188, 259, 357, 376, 386 n. 64

1.1 270

2.7 188, 273

58.10 8, 33 n. 48, 367

Epaminondas 270, 373

Eumenes 302, 304, 349, 357, 359, 365, 376

9.2 357

19.6 35 n. 68

21(2).7-8 376, 385 n. 52

Fabius 2, 13, 133, 153, 188, 224-5, 269, 313, 357, 360, 386 n.

64
1 235 n. 113

1.7-8 340

3.1 235 n. 113

3.3 234 n. 113

3.4 234 n. 113

3.6-7 138 n. 38, 223, 235 n. 115

4.4 223, 235 n. 116

6.2 138 n. 38

6.4 234 n. 113

7.5-9.1 223, 235 n. 117

7.5-8 235 n. 120

8.1 235 n. 113

8.4 218, 223-4, 235 n. 113

9.2 271

10.7 347 n. 24

13.6 220

15 235 n. 113

16.6 207, 226 n. 1

16.7 233 n. 88

18.4 138 n. 38

20 235 n. 113

22.8 235 n. 120

25.3-4 224, 235 n. 120, 375

26 235 n. 113

26.1 235 n. 120

29(2).3-4 139 n. 46

30(3).1 134 n. 4

30(3).5-6 130
Flamininus 153, 243-7, 261, 274, 299 n. 42, 302, 322, 350-4,

365-6

2.3-5 361 n. 10

5.1-2 361 n. 10

7.1-2 219, 242

7.2 361 n. 9

7.6 362 n. 29

10-11 243-4, 350-1

10.3 362 n. 29

10.7 362 n. 29

11 182, 193 n. 48

11.3-7 243-4

11.3 362 n. 29

11.5-6 275

12 244

12.4 362 n. 29

12.6 361 n. 10

12.8-10 361 n. 11

13 90 n. 60

13.1-4 351

13.2 219, 361 n. 9

13.3-9 361 n. 11

13.3 362 n. 29

16.5-17.2 361 n. 11

16.5 40 n. 120

16.6 34 n. 54

17.7-8 74-5, 81

19.8 362 n. 29

20-1 243, 375

20.1-3 351-2

20.7-8 352

21.1-6 352

21.7-13 351-2

21.14 382 n. 4

21.15 382 n. 5, 383 n. 13

22(1).3 351

22(1).4 244, 347 n. 24, 350

22(1).6 353

22(1).7 347 n. 24, 353, 376, 385 n. 52

23(2).1-2 362 n. 13

24(3) 353

24(3).4 362 n. 13

24(3).5 274, 362 n. 29, 386 n. 64

Galba 31 n. 13, 188, 195 n. 68, 201, 383 n. 11

1 233 n. 100, 346 n. 10

2.5 112 n. 38

3.1 233 n. 88

Gracchi 114 n. 56, 149, 208, 210, 214-18, 232 n. 83, 269, 274,

307, 313, 357, 363 n. 35, 366, 396

1 219, 329 n. 1, 396

1.1 273, 382 n. 5

1.7 307

5.4-5 220

7.3-4 214

8 214-15, 396

8.1 230 n. 48

8.4 230 n. 47

8.10 214
9.2 230 n. 48

9.3 215

9.5 230 n. 47

10.1 214

10.3 232 n. 86

11.4 229 n. 42

14.3 229 n. 42

15.1 214

16.1 233 n. 93

16.2 229 n. 42

18.3 220, 229 n. 42

20-1 229 n. 42

20.1 229 n. 34

21 214, 229 n. 42

22.6-7 151, 230 n. 44

24 396

24.1-2 230 n. 50

24.5 230 n. 44

25.1 230 n. 44

25.4 230 n. 44

26 215, 230 n. 44

26.2 233 n. 93

27.1 218, 230 n. 44, 232 n. 79

27.5 230 n. 44

28.1 230 n. 44

30.7 230 n. 44

31.3 230 n. 50

33.1 230 n. 50

36-8 230 n. 44
39.2-3 230 n. 44

40 396

42(2) 215

42(2).4 275

44(4) 215

44(4).2-3 376, 385 n. 52

45(5).2 376, 385 n. 52

45(5).5 333 n. 67

45(5).7 274, 386 n. 64

Heracles 173, 190 n. 9

fr.2190 n. 9

Lucullus 1-44, 81, 269, 305, 363 n. 35, 365, 371-6

1.4-8 303, 331 n. 29

1.6 374-5

4.1 385 n. 47

7.1-3 385 n. 47

18 385 n. 47

19.8-9 385 n. 47

20 385 n. 47

20.5 220

21.3-5 385 n. 47

22 385 n. 47

23.1-3 385 n. 47

24.6-7 385 n. 47

26.7-8 71

27.2 71

27.8-9 71

28 87 n. 27

29.3-4 385 n. 47
33.4 385 n. 47

35.9 212

36.4 3

38-43 374-5

38.2-5 374

38.5 74, 374

39.5-6 31 n. 12, 89 n. 58

40-1 243

40 374

41.2 374

41.3 89 n. 58

42.1-2 374

42.3-4 374

42.4-8 3-5

43 406

43.2 375

43.3 375

43.4 375

44(1).4 303, 331 n. 29

46(3).6 386 n. 64

Lycurgus 8, 188, 242, 269, 299 n. 39, 302, 366, 384 n. 25

1.1 146

2.2-4 242

Lysander 110 n. 27, 182, 242, 274, 292-7, 302, 304, 307-8, 312,

315-16, 349, 360, 363 n. 35, 367-9, 384 nn. 23 and 25

2 292-4

2.2-4 293

2.4 295, 308, 312, 324

2.5 294
2.6-8 294, 299 n. 35, 384 n. 23

3 293

4.1-6 295

4.6-7 293

5.5 ff. 293, 300 n. 43

5.7-7.6 293-4

5.7-8 296

7.2 296

7.6 300 n. 50

8.5 293

13.5 ff. 293

14.3 295

15.7-8 293

17-18 384 n. 23

17 300 n. 46

17.11 33 n. 50

18 294

18.3 300 n. 43

18.4-19.1 293

19.1-2 295

19.3 295

19.4 293

19.7 ff. 295, 300 n. 44

20 295

21.2-7 295-6

22.1-5 293-4

22.10 300 n. 49

23.3 295

23.5-11 295
23.6 296

23.13 296

24-5 375

24.3-6 293

25.2 296

26.2 296, 300 n. 49

26.6 296

28.1 294

28.7 296

28.12 295

29.5-12 296

30 367-9, 375

30.3-5 293

30.8 383 n. 13

Marcellus 153, 236 n. 125, 285, 290, 312-13, 322, 324, 334 n.

74, 365, 369, 373, 385 n. 52

1 182, 283

1.2 334 n. 74

1.3-5 242, 309, 312-13, 341, 400

2 219

2.1 406

6.2 212

7 406

21.6 225

22.9-10 224

28 322, 336 n. 90, 406

29-30 385 n. 52

30.10-11 365, 369

31(1).1 367
31(1).11 347 n. 24

33(3).6-8 336 n. 90

Marius 208, 210, 217, 238-9, 241,

284-6, 290, 313, 322, 324, 365-6, 377-8

2 24

2.2-4 340-1, 400

4.7 212

6 226 n. 8

6.3 34 n. 57

9.1 221

9.3-4 341

16-17.1 346 n. 12

16.7 190 n. 4

20.7-10 346 n. 12

24.1-2 300 n. 49, 346 n. 12

28-30 217

28.1 220

28.3-6 346 n. 13

28.7 217, 221, 231 n. 65

29 231 n. 63

29.6-7 346 n. 13

29.7 217

29.9 217

29.11 217

29.12 9

30 220

30.1 232 nn. 79-80

30.2-5 346 n. 13

30.2 217
30.5 217

30.6 346 n. 14

31.2 217

34.2 228 n. 25

34.7 346 n. 14

35.2 233 n. 92

36.7-9 346 n. 12

43.2-4 346 nn. 13-4

43.7 151, 166 n. 56

44.8 346 n. 13

44.9-10 151, 166 n. 56

45.8-9 346 n. 13

45.12 346 n. 13

46 377-8, 385 n. 43

46.9 382 n. 4

Nicias 117-41, 146, 153, 287, 302, 304, 321, 324, 361, 373,

376

1 102, 117, 134 n. 5, 146, 276

1.1 276

1.2-3 119

2 125, 131

2.1 137 n. 29

3.1-2 138 n. 36

3.3 164 n. 19

3.7-8 164 n. 19

4.2 164 n. 19

4.5-8 164 n. 19

6.1-2 125

6.4 164 n. 19
7.1-6 125

7.2 151

8 131, 164 n. 19

9.5 124

10.1 164 n. 19

10.8 126

11.2 125, 127

11.3 124

11.5 140 n. 52

11.6 125

11.7 164 n. 19

11.9 131

11.10 140 n. 52, 164 n. 19

12-29 119

12.1 122, 124

12.3 124

12.5 131

12.6 118

13 118-19, 128

14.1-2 119

14.5-7 118

15.1 135 n. 14

15.2 118

15.3-4 120

15.4 118

16.2 135 n. 14

16.7 119

16.9 119

17.2 119
17.4 118

18.1 120

18.2-3 120

18.7 135 n. 14, 136 n. 15

18.11-12 119, 136 nn. 14 and 15

19.3-7 118, 125

19.4-5 135 nn. 6 and 14

20.5-6 121, 135 n. 14

20.8 123, 135-6 n. 14

21.3-6 122

21.11 118-19

22.2-3 125

23 118-9

23.7-8 118-19

24.2 118

24.6-25.1 118

25 122-3, 136 n. 20

25.4 119

26.4-6 120-1, 136 nn. 15-16

28-9 118-19

28.2 119, 135 n. 6

28.3-5 118

28.6 269

29 140 n. 50

30.3 373, 385 n. 43

Numa 8, 10, 18, 41 n. 131, 188, 269, 321, 365

9.3 281 n. 40

9.15 8

12.13 8
19.6 253

25(3).4-5 275

26(4).7 275

26(4).12-13 242

26(4).14 273

Otho 31 n. 13, 188, 195 n. 68, 383 n. 11

2.1-2 237-8, 277-8

5.1 233 n. 88

14 40 n. 120

14.2 268-9

18.2 40 n. 120

18.3-4 383 n. 11

Pelopidas 302, 365-6, 373, 385 n. 52

2 336 n. 90

8 406

32 406

35 385 n. 52, 406

Pericles 2, 74, 124, 128-34, 188, 218, 224, 269, 305, 313-14,

357, 360, 386 n. 64

1-2 113 n. 40

1.4-5 280 n. 24

2.3 280 n. 24

2.5 33 n. 50, 188

3.2 130

4-6 303, 331 n. 29

4.3-4 313, 330 n. 10

4.6 130, 313

5.1 130

5.3 313
6 313

6.2-3 139 n. 44

7-14 129-30

7.3 129, 314, 325, 334 n. 68

7.5-8 139 n. 45

8.1 313

8.2 138 n. 39

8.9 280 n. 24

9-10 139 n. 41

9.1 138 n. 39, 139 n. 43

9.2 139 n. 41, 313

9.3 138 n. 39

10.1-4 139 n. 41

10.6 139 n. 41

10.7 151

11.1-4 138 n. 40

11.3 129, 139 n. 44

11.6-12 139 n. 45

12 134

12.1 139 n. 44

13.16 146

14.1 139 n. 44

14.3 139 n. 44

15 130

15.1 129, 139 n. 44

15.2 138 n. 39

15.3-16.9 130

17 129, 138 n. 38

18.1 137 n. 26
20.4 139 n. 46

22.4 33 n. 50

24.12 2, 30 n. 9

25.1 134 n. 4

28 151

28.3 145-6

29-33 118

29.1-2 151

30.1 134 n. 4

30.3 134 n. 4

30.4 269

31 151

31.1-2 134 n. 4

32 330 n. 10

32.6 139 n. 46

33.4 129

33.5-6 124

33.7-8 139 n. 46

34.2 129

35.3-5 139 n. 46

37.1 139 n. 46

37.6 139 n. 46

39 281 n. 32, 385 n. 42

39.2 280 n. 24

39.3-4 139 n. 46

Philopoemen 25, 153, 243-8, 261, 274, 296, 302, 304-5, 331 n.

12, 350-4,368-9, 376, 384 n. 23

1.5-7 362 n. 13

3-4 331 n. 21, 341, 346 n. 8, 361 n. 6, 400

3.1 244, 347 n. 24, 350

5 163 n. 16

5.3-4 167 n. 65

8.3 361 n. 12

10 361 n. 12

11.1-4 362 n. 29

11.3-4 243

12.2 361 n. 12

12.4-6 361 n. 12

15.1-3 361 n. 11

15.1 362 n. 29

16.4-9 246, 250 n. 23

16.5 361 n. 12

16.7-8 375

17 244-5, 362 n. 13

17.2 246

17.3 243

17.6 250 n. 23

17.7 244, 347 n. 24, 350

18-21 352

18 353

18.2 246, 362 n. 13

19.4 352

21.1-2 352

21.10-12 362 n. 13, 368-9, 373

Phocion 11, 153, 269, 302, 304, 313, 349, 360, 363 n. 35, 377-

1-3 377

3.1-2 39 n. 107, 62 n. 37, 324

3.3 235 n. 123

3.6-8 362 n. 16

3.6 273

4.1-2 145

Pompey 1-44, 91, 102-3, 111 n. 27, 186, 210-11, 221, 226-7 n.

11, 260, 314, 321, 349, 360, 365, 398

1 88 n. 32, 313

2.5-10 100, 114 n. 58, 313

2.10 281 n. 40

6.1 220

8.6-7 62 n. 39, 259

10.3 82

10.7-9 10, 36-7 n. 83, 145

10.11-13 72

10.14 90 n. 60

13.10-11 224

14.11 233 n. 92

15.1 234 n. 106

16.8 8, 10-11

20.1 233 n. 95

20.7-8 89-90 n. 58

21.5-7 233 n. 95

21.7 212

22.2 234 n. 106

22.3 209, 212, 233 n. 93

23.5-6 237-9, 241

25 90 n. 61

25.8 228 n. 22

28.5 113 n. 43
29.5 113 n. 43

30.7-8 82, 112 n. 33, 232 n. 81

31.8-13 3

33.8 73, 83-4

35.3 176

40 10

42.13 39 n. 107, 62 n. 37

43.1-3 233 n. 95

43.5 218

44 10

46.1-4 99

46.7-8 98-9

47.3-4 227 n. 13

47.4 227 n. 13

47-8 3-5

47.5-8 31 n. 20, 82, 99-100, 151, 233 n. 96

47.9 227 n. 13

47.10 93

48 98

48.2 233 n. 96

48.7 73-4, 84

48.8-12 92, 99, 110 n. 8

49.1-4 100-1

49.6 3, 27

50 100

51-3 114 n. 57

51.1 97, 101

51.2 226 n. 57

51.7-8 82-3, 100

52.4 92

53 313, 326

53.1 99

53.9-10 97, 101, 112 n. 33, 113 n. 43, 226 n. 57

54.2-3 97, 100-1, 226 n. 57

54.4-5 100

54.7 226 n. 57

54.8 112 n. 33

54.9 100

55.1-5 99-100, 152

55.10 82

55.11 152

57 313

57.5-6 97-8, 227 n. 13

57.6 111 n. 23

57.7-8 96, 100, 104, 112 n. 35, 226 n. 10

57.9 82

58-9 107-8

58.5 104

58.6 40 n. 117, 93-4, 108, 115 n. 79

58.9 115 n. 82

58.10 108, 115 n. 79

59.1-4 107-8

60.1-2 115 n. 82

60.6-8 100, 112 n. 35

61 100

61.6-7 112 n. 35

62 92-3, 100

63-4 112 n. 35
63.2 62 n. 38, 81-2

64.5 109 n. 8

65.3 105

65.6-7 101

65.8 87 n. 27

66.1 101

66.6 101

67.2 101

67.4-5 101

67.7-10 101, 106, 137 n. 26, 243

68.7 1 01

69.4-5 102

69.6-7 35 n. 69, 79-80

70 101, 113 n. 43, 235 n. 123, 375

71.7-8 102

72-3 89 n. 55

72.1 102

72.4 35 n. 69

72.5-6 102

73.11 113 n. 43

74-5 313, 326

75.5 259

77-80 39 n. 102, 90 n. 61, 98, 111 n. 24

77 10

81(1).1 273

82(2).2 273

83(3).6-8 112 n. 35

84(4) 101

84(4).6 112 n. 36
84(4).11 273

Poplicola 41 n. 131, 153, 366

1.1 273

15.4 271

18.3 233 n. 88

24(1).1 383 n. 13

Pyrrhus 25, 110 n. 27, 206 n. 11, 304, 313, 377-8, 407 n. 5, 411

n. 40

3.6 304

Romulus 8, 41 n. 131, 171-95, 302, 360, 366-8, 376, 386 n. 64,

411 n. 48

1.1 194 n. 55

2-6 41 n. 131

2.5-6 194 n. 57

4.3 175, 185

6.3 308

7.5 186

8.9 149, 165 n. 41, 185-6

12.3-6 194 n. 55

12.6 281 n. 32

14.5 194 n. 57

15.3 269

15.7 33 n. 51

17.3 194 nn. 55 and 57

20.8 194 n. 55

21.1 8, 194 n. 55

21.2-3 176

21.4-10 194 n. 55

22.1 194 n. 55
22.2 194 n. 57

23.5 186

26.1 184

26.2 194 n. 57

27-8 184-5, 386 n. 76

27.1 184

27.2 184

27.3 194 n. 54

27.4 194 n. 55

27.5 194 n. 55

27.6 184-5

28.1-3 184, 267

28.4 267

28.7-10 179, 185

28.7 267

29 367-8

29.4 194 n. 57

29.5 194 n. 55

29.7 194 n. 57

30(1).1 186

30(1).3 192 n. 23

30(1).6-7 198, 205 n. 2

32(3).1-2 199, 276

35(6).7 186-7, 198-9

Scipio 270, 367, 373

Sertorius 35 n. 68, 106, 333 n. 67, 349, 357, 365-6

8.2-9.2 149, 165 n. 41

10.6 357

25.2 233 n. 88
25.6 357

Solon 366-8, 386 n. 64

1 383 n. 18

2.6-8 242

6-7 268

7.1 268

8.2 406

19.4-5 280 n. 26

20.8 280 n. 26

21.7 280 n. 26

27-8 267-8

27.1 143, 146, 149

27.3 267

27.9 268

28.4-6 268

30.6 406

31.6 190 n. 4

Sulla 208, 274, 283, 300 n. 52, 307, 333 n. 67, 335 n. 77, 349,

358-60, 363 n. 35, 367-8

1.1 232-3 n. 88

1.5 235 n. 123

2.2-7 114 n. 58

6.5 89 n. 58

6.14-15 316

12.8-14 208, 221, 233 n. 95, 235 n. 123, 257

14.9 151

19.9-10 40 n. 120

24.2 89 n. 58

24.9 89 n. 58
26.7 89 n. 58

31.7 162 n. 2

32.3 162 n. 2

32.4 162 n. 2

34.4 40 n. 120, 269

38 367-8

39(1).2-7 208

40(2) 293

40(2).6 299-300 n. 43

41(3).2 300 n. 43

41(3).2 300 n. 50

43(5).5 362 n. 26

43(5).6 274, 386 n. 64

Themistocles 8, 25, 74, 132, 137 n. 28, 149-50, 153, 156, 166 n.

49, 188, 248, 284, 302, 359, 366-9, 377-8, 386 n. 65

2 303, 331 n. 29

2.5 145

2.6 330 n. 10

2.8 330 n. 10

3.1-3 132

3.2 330 n. 10

4.4-6 132

5.7 132

6.4-6 178-9, 185

11.1 132

17-22 132

17.2 132

19.3-6 132

27.2 162 n. 1
31.5 151

32.4 145

32.6 269, 367-9

Theseus 8, 110 n. 27, 156, 171-95, 198-200, 284, 311-13, 360,

367-8, 376, 386 n. 64, 411 n. 48

1 146, 149-50, 171-3, 189 n. 1, 189-90 n. 3, 383 n. 19

1.1 270

1.3 190 n. 3, 199

1.4 8, 33 n. 50, 44 n. 170

1.5 182, 194 n. 55, 198, 277, 368

2.1 192 n. 32

2.2 179

2.3 199

3.2 179

3.5-6 199

6-11 176

6.1 175

6.8-8.2 283, 286

6.8-9 191 n. 21, 311

8.2 311

10 176

11.2 283, 286, 311

12.2-6 199

15.2 199

16.3-4 179, 187, 192 n. 29, 199

19-23 177, 198

19.8 176-7

20.1 198

20.3-7 198
20.8-9 198

23.1 179, 192 n. 30

23.2-5 198

24.1 192 n. 35

24.2 180

24.3-4 192 n. 35

24.4-6 199

25.1-3 180-1, 193 n. 42

27.2 177

27.3 176-7

28-9 199

28.1 176

28.3 199, 275-6

29.1 311

29.4 199

29.5 173, 190 n. 9

30.3 176

31 198, 375

31.4-5 175

31.7 176

32-4 181

32.1 181

33.1 183

35.1 175

35.4 184

35.5 183

Timoleon 8, 25, 153, 284, 302, 304, 321, 349, 357, 359, 386 n.

64

2.4 300 n. 49
2.5-6 308

3.4-5 153

13-15 357

13.10 8, 25, 34 n. 53

15.11 275

16.1 175

19.3-7 175

23.5 175

33.4 8

39.7 384 n. 25

MORALIA

How to Listen to Poets (14d-37b) 297 n. 2, 332 n. 43

16e 337 n. 100

28d-e 297 n. 3

31b-c 297 n. 8

On Lecture-going (37c-48d)

37d-e 297 n. 3

How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend (48e-74e)

58b-9a 67, 86 n. 9

61a-b 42 n. 145

On Progress in Virtue (75a-86a) 270, 297 n. 2, 332 n. 43

76d-e 297 n. 3

77d-8e 285

77f-8a 337 n. 100

82b-c 285, 297 n. 3

83e-f 297 n. 3

85a-b 337 n. 100

Keeping One’s Health (122b-37e)

122e 337 n. 100

Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum (172a-208a) 22, 68-90

172c 70

Cyrus the Younger (173e-f )

1 89 n. 47

Philip (177c-9c)

11 89 n. 47

Alexander (179d-81e) 78

23 89 n. 47

Pericles (186c)

1 89 n. 47

Phocion (187e-9b) 79

Agesilaus (190f-1d) 78

Epaminondas (192c-4c)

18 89 n. 47

Flamininus (197a-d)

2 90 n. 60

4 -5

Aemilius (197f-8c)

6-8 90 n. 59

9 n. 26

Cato Maior (198c-9e) 79

23 9 n. 47

Lucullus (203a-b)

1 -1

2 n. 27

Pompey (203b-4e)

1 n. 32

2 n. 60
3 , 87 n. 20

4 n. 59

5 n. 59

5a 0 n. 61

6 nn. 59 and 61

7 89-90 n. 58, 90 n. 59

8 , 83-4

9 -4

11 0 n. 61

12 2-3, 87 n. 20

15 0 n. 61

Cicero (204e-5e) 79

4-13 81

5 n. 49

6 n. 49

7 -3, 87 n. 20

14 9 n. 49

15-19 81

15 2 n. 38, 81-2, 88 n. 43

17 9 n. 49

2 n. 60

4 -5, 86 n. 20

Caesar (205e-6f )

1 -7, 87 n. 26

3 -6

4 -8, 90 n. 59

5 n. 59

7 n. 59

8 n. 26, 88 n. 32, 89 n. 58, 90 n. 59

9

10 7 n. 27

11 9-80, 87 nn. 20 and 26

12 3

18 9 n. 49

Apophthegmata Laconica (208a-42d) 22, 68-9, 76, 78, 84-5, 90

n. 64

Roman Questions (263d-91c) 33 n. 51, 173, 190 n. 9

268d-e 42 n. 145

276c-d 409 n. 17

283c 232 n. 86

Virtues of Women (242e-63c)

243b-d 351

On the Fortune of the Romans (316b-26c) 1, 30 n. 5, 84, 90 n. 63

318e-f 30 n. 6

319b-d 84

319d-20a 42 n. 145

325f 30 n. 6

326a-c 263 n. 15

326a 146, 167 n. 69

On Alexander’s Fortune or Virtue (326d-45b) 147

On the E at Delphi (384d-94c)

392b-e 297 n. 3

On the Decline of Oracles (409e-38e)

433b 190 n. 6

Can Virtue be Taught? (439a-40c) 297 n. 2, 332 n. 43

On Moral Virtue (440c-52d) 283, 325, 332 n. 43, 336-7 n. 99

441e-2c 337 n. 99

443d 297 n. 8
446f-9a 336-7 n. 99

450f 297 n. 3

451b ff. 297 n. 8

On Controlling Anger (452e-64d) 407 n. 4

453a 297 n. 3

457d 29 n. 3, 65

463d-f 337 n. 100

Tranquillity of Mind (464e-77f )

464f-5a 23, 29 n. 3, 65-6

467f 297 n. 8

468b-c 86 n. 9

471b 86 n. 9

471c 337 n. 100

471d-2b 67

473a-b 86 n. 9

474c-5a 86 n. 9

Talkativeness (502b-15a)

514e-f 337 n. 100

On Self-Praise (539a-47f )

547f 249

God’s Slowness to Punish (548a-68a)

551c-2d 297 n. 3

567a 384 n. 30

Socrates’ Sign (575a-98f )

584e 297 n. 3

Table Talk (612c-748d) 270

735a 190 n. 6

A Philosopher Should Particularly Converse with Princes (776a-9c)

777b 346 n. 2
Should an Old Man Take Part in Politics (783a-97f ) 373-4

783e 300 n. 49

785f-6a 74, 373-4

792b-c 373-4

Advice on Public Life (789a-825f ) 243-8, 261, 299 n. 31

801b-c 329

801c-2e 346 n. 2

802d 114 n. 62

805a 242

811d 347 n. 24

813a-c 242

813d-e 244, 337 n. 100

814a-c 245

814c-16a 244

815e 72

821f 114 n. 62

822c-3e 114 n. 62

824c 240, 244

Avoid Debt! (827d-32a) 114 n. 62

On Herodotus’ Malice (854d-74c) 144, 150-2

855a-6d 150-2

856a 347 n. 24

866b 9

The Intelligence of Animals (959a-85c)

969a-b 337 n. 100

971a 347 n. 24

Epicurus makes a Pleasant Life Impossible (1086c-107c )

1093c 238, 282 n. 43

Against Colotes (1107d-27e)

1119a-b 337 n. 100

On the Time of the Iliad (Lampr. cat. 123) 173

How We Are To Judge True History (Lampr. cat. 124) 144, 173
 Index III

INDEX OF PASSAGES IN OTHER AUTHORS

Aeschines

2.99 303

2.146 332 n. 37

2.167 332 n. 37

Aeschines Socraticus

POxy. xiii.1608 330 n. 10

Aeschylus

Oresteia 287, 296, 317

Agamemnon 327

218 327

222–3 327

Seven against Thebes

395–6 171–2

435 171–2

686–719 337 n. 105

Ammonius

CIAG iv.1887 43 n. 153

Antiphon

fr. 66 303

For the Pallantidae against Menestheus 183

Tetralogies 322, 336 n. 93

Appian

Proem

4 263 n. 17 6 253
BC

1 214–17

1.1. 1–6. 25 213, 229 nn. 30 and 35

1.1.1 213, 229 n. 30

1.2.4 213, 229 n. 34

1.7. 26–31 214

1.10.41 215

1.14.58 215

1.21.229 n. 36

1.27.231 n. 58

1.28.149 217

1.29.231 nn. 63 and 65

1.30.133 217

1.31.217

1.38.169 229 n. 36

1.55.240 229 n. 36

1.60. 229 n. 36

1.69. 229 n. 36

1.107.502 229 n. 36

2.1.1–3 263 n. 22

2.4.7

2.6. 20 44 n. 172, 60 n. 14

2.7. 25 263 n. 22

2.10.35 31 n. 21

2.14.51 36 n. 75

2.15.54 36 n. 76

2.17.62 226 n. 57

2.19.69–70 226n. 57

2.19.71 100, 226 n. 57

2.20.72 213, 226 n. 57, 229 n. 38

2.20.73 100, 226 n. 57

2.28.110 n. 22

2.30.116 104

2.30.117 96

2.33.133 93

2.62.260 87–8 n. 27

2.79.330 35 n. 69, 79–80

2.82.89 n. 55

2.82.346 35 n. 69

2.84.352–85.360 34 n. 62

2.106.442 256, 263 n. 20

2.107.444–109.458 32 n. 32

2.110.459 255, 263 n. 18

2.111.462–5 37 n. 89

2.112.467 37 n. 89

2.113.472 32 n. 33

2.113.473–114.475 89 n. 55

2.113.474 32 n. 37

2.116.486 14

2.117.490 7, 33 n.40

2.119.500 33 n.41

2.120.503–7 32 n.37,229 n.38

2.121.510 229 n.38

2.125.523 229 n.38

2.126.527 229 n.38

2.127.530–3 37 n.90

2.142.594 37 n.90

2.144.602 256, 263 n.20

2.149.618–154.649 36 n.75

3.9.30 28

3.25.93 255, 263 n.18

4.7.28 22

4.12.45 31 n.16

4.32.136–34.146 329 n.1

4.110.463 35 n.69

5.12–14 231 n.59

5.17 229 n.36, 234 n.103

5.23.90 231 n.59

5.27.106 231 n.59

5.63–4221, 234 n.102

Celtica

fr. 1.12 22

fr. 18 22, 35 n. 69, 88–9 n. 46

Illyrica

13.7 255, 263 n. 18

Mithridatica

85. 328 71

Aristophanes

Acharnians

524–7 269

Frogs

1425 127–8

Knights

∑ Knights 1368 191 n. 18

Aristotle

Ath. pol. 144

13.2 28.5 137 n. 29

fr.3 Kenyon 193 n. 39

NE 284–8

1.10.1100a10–11b9382

2.1.1103a14 ff. 286

2.7.1107b27–1108a1 232 n.84

2.9 286

3.1.1110b9 ff. 3.3.1111a21 ff. 322,336 n.93

3.3.1111a21 ff. 322,336 n.93

3.12.1119b5–7 286

4 286

10.3.1174a1–4 286

10.6.1176b21–33 286

10.9 286

Poetics 98 110 n. 26

1451a16–19 382

1452a4 98

1454a27–8 334 n. 77

Rhetoric 341

1.1363b1 347 n. 24

1.1368b21 347 n. 24

1.1370b32–3 347 n. 24

2.1389a12–13 347 n. 24

Arrian

Anabasis

7.1 263 n. 15

Athenaeus

Deipnosophistae

12.543b 300 n. 44

Augustine
Confessions

1.8–1.9 307, 332 n. 42

1.13 307, 332 n. 42

2.4–8 307, 332 n. 42

3.3–4 307, 332 n. 42

9.8 332 n. 42

Augustus

Autobiography305–6

fr. 3 M. 332 n. 35

fr. M. 332 n. 35

fr. 7 M. 332 n. 35

Res Gestae 1.1 305

Caesar

BC

1.7 33 n. 41, 93

3.9. 2 80, 88 n. 44

3.46 40 n. 115

3.65 40 n. 115

3.99 35 n. 69

BG

4.11–13 88–9 n. 46

4.15.3 42 n. 143

7.66–7 95–6

Cato

Origines

frs. 9–11 P = 9–11 Ch. 168 n. 73

Cicero

ad Atticum

1.14(14.6)40 n.119
1.16(16).3 40 n.119

1.19(19).10 46

2.1(21).3 59 n.6

2.17(37).1 93

7.3(126).5 326,337 n.102

7.11(134).3 62 n.38,81

7.12(135).3 326,337 n.102

7.13(136).1-2 326,337 n.102

8.7(155).2 326,337 n.102

8.11(161).2 222,234 n.11010.

8(199).462 n.38,81

12.21(260).1 47

ad Brutum

1.16–17 ( 24–5) 37–8 n. 93

ad Familiares

1.5b(16).2112 n. 32

5.12(22) 59 n. 7

7.3(183).1 –3 326, 337 n. 102

ad Quintum Fratrem

2.3( 7). 2 110 n. 8

Brutus

309 73, 313

De Consiliis Suis 2 44 n. 172, 50–1

De Lege Agraria

2.10 234 n. 108

2.81 234 n. 108

De Officiis

2.78–81 234 n. 108

De Provinciis Consularibus
28 109 n. 4

De Re Publica

2.31–2 169 n. 80

In Catilinam

4.7 60 n. 14

4.8 60 n. 14

4.84.10 60 n. 14

In Verrem

2.2. 110–13 71

Laelius

101 332 n. 34

περί ύπατείας 16, 19, 39 n. 105,

45–63, 68

Philippics

2 13, 17–18, 89 n. 52, 94–5, 148

2.34 5,95

2.44–8 17, 166 n. 62

2.63 94

2.67–9 18

2.77–8 94

2.79–8494

Pro Plancio

64–5 21

Pro Sestio

96–143 222–3

97–8 222–3, 234 n. 112

103 234 n. 108

132–9 222–3, 234 n. 112

Cleidemus FGrH 323

frs. 17–18 176–7

Curtius, Quintus

1.17–19 263 n. 15

Dellius, Q. FGrH 197

fr. 1 16, 38 n. 97

Demon FGrH 327

frs. 5–6 175

Demosthenes

18.257 332 37.

18.258–9 303

19.199 303

Dio, Cassius

36.43.2–4 228n.22

37.9.1–2 59 n. 5

37.1–37.6

37.3 213, 229 n. 39

37. 25–35 46

37.8 59 n. 6, 60 n. 9

37.1–2 59 n. 5, 60 n. 8

37.2 59 n. 5

37.5 37.2–3 59 n. 6

37.4 59 n. 5

37.137.3–4 59 n. 5, 60 n. 9

37.1 60 n. 14 37. 38 61 n. 17

37.8, 37.4–5, 12

37.3 213–14, 229 n. 40

37.2 213–14, 229 n. 40

3.2–3 32 n. 24

38.1–2 4
39.139.8

39.139.2–60.1 39.3 28

3.14.4 256, 263 n. 20

7.15.1 303

6.1 31 n. 16

47.3 213, 229 n. 39

53.19 167 n. 69

56.19–21 169 n. 89

56.7 371

65.2 229 n. 39

68.3 263 n. 26

4.1 263 n. 24

5.4 263 n. 26

72.5 20, 41 n. 135

Dio of Prusa

1–4 257 - 9

1.12–14 264 n. 33

1.28–32 264 n. 33

2.72 264 n. 33

3.45 ff. 264 n. 33

3.51–7264 n. 33

3.86–118264 n. 33

4.39–45 264 n. 33

Diodorus Siculus

4.1 191 n. 15

4.8 191 n. 15

4.59.1 333 n. 58

13.10.1 135 n. 14

13.10.2 119
13.11.5 119

13.12.4 121

13.14.4 118

13.18.1 121

13.19.4 119

18.4 263n. 15

34(35).6.1 230 n. 49

34(35).33.4–5 236 n. 126

Diogenes Laertius

1.50 162 n. 2

1.51–1.62 162 n. 2

1.70. 2–3 168 n. 73

3.2–5 168 n. 79

6.84 165 n. 30

6.94 301, 330 n. 5

6.96–8 329 n. 1, 330 n. 5

10.2 301, 330 n. 5

10.4 331 n. 17

10.8 331 n. 17

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

AR

1.7. 2 20, 41 n. 135

2.75. 3 347 n. 24

6.22 390

6.83–7 388

6.92–3 347 n. 24, 388

6.92. 5 391

6.96 388

7 410 n. 31
7.21 388

7.21. 2 392

7.21. 3 393, 410 n. 32

7.23. 1 410 n. 31

7.23. 4 410 n. 31

7.33–6 62 n. 34

7.34. 2 399

7.34. 3–4 410 n. 31

7.34. 5 410 n. 32

7.45. 3 410 n. 32

7.62. 3 393

7.66. 5 407 n. 2

7.67 399

8.2. 2 410 n. 31

8.22. 1 410 n. 32

8.24. 4–5 395

8.25. 1 395

8.28. 1–3 395

8.29. 1 395

8.40. 1 310, 396

8.42. 2 395

8.50. 1 410 n. 32

8.50. 3 410 n. 32

8.51. 3 396

8.51.52.1 310, 395

8.54. 3 399, 410 n. 31

8.57 404

8.57. 2–3 411 n. 46

8.58. 2 411 n. 46
8.58. 4 411 n. 46

8.60–1 399

8.61. 1 410 n. 32

Euripides

Bacchae 204–5

Heracles

1250 275

Hippolytus 199, 296, 371

1422–30 371, 384 n. 33

Medea 323–5, 371, 398

847–50 371, 384 n. 34

Suppliant Women 180

Trojan Women

860–1059 322, 336 n. 93

Fenestella

fr. 11 P. 36 n. 80

Florus

2.13. 91 256, 263 n. 20

2.20. 7 38 n. 98

Galen

On his Own Books

116 306–7, 332 n. 40

On the Order of his Own Books

88 306–7, 332 n. 40

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Hist. Reg. Brit. 4.3–4 40 n. 121

Gellius, Aulus

1.1 190 n. 9

Gorgias
Helen 183, 322, 336 n. 93

4 347 n. 24

Palamedes 183

Hermogenes

Prog. 19. 14–19 Rabe 386 n. 64

Herodotus

1 359

1.29.30.1 162 n. 2, 267–8

1.59. 1 162 n. 2

1.86. 5 268

2.56–7 174

2.112–20 161

6.43 281 n. 30

9.122 368, 371, 383 n. 21

Hesiod

fr. 258 MW 161

Homer

Iliad 160, 181, 239, 317, 329, 335

n. 83, 379, 388, 398, 406, 407 n. 5

1 329, 388

2.212–77 329

6.389 102

6.433–9 409 n. 25

6.429–30 409 n. 25

9 323–5, 388

16.152-4 386 n. 71

16.467–9 386 n. 71

22.460 102

22.477–514 409 n. 25
Odyssey 287, 316–17, 341

Horace

Odes

2.1. 1 13, 31 n. 18, 36 n. 76

2.1. 3–4 210

Satires

1.3. 1–19 334 n. 77

1.6. 67–92 306

Idomeneus FGrH 338 330 n. 11

fr.2 330 n. 11

fr. 9 331 n. 11

fr.12 331 n. 11

fr.13 330 n. 11

fr.15 330 n. 11

Isocrates

Evagoras ( 9) 303

21–2 331 n. 20

Helen ( 10)

23 333 n. 58

Antidosis ( 15) 305

Josephus

Against Apion

1.50 24, 43 n. 153

Autobiography 306–7

7–9 306, 332 n. 38

Juvenal

10.1 264 n. 29

Life of Pindar

2 301
Livy

praef. 6–7 149

1 183

1.1–3 158

1.3. 1 168 n. 73

1.3.1.10.1.23.2.21.2.32. 8–12 408 n. 6

2.414.61 6.1 167 n. 69

7.418.40 3.10 22.8 223, 235 n. 115

9.7 223, 235 n. 116

22.8 235 n. 113

22.5–7 223, 235 n. 117

22.25. 12 223, 235 n. 117

22.1–35.3 234 n. 107, 235 n. 113

22.9 223, 235 n. 118

22.1–4 234 n. 107

22.55–61 371

2.3 234 n. 107

4.2–4 234 n. 107

2.8 234 n. 107

25.2 236 n. 125

30.45 383 n. 17

6.4 234 n. 107

6.5–8 41 n. 128

32.5–8 232 n. 82

33.13. 15 232 n. 82

33.5–7 193 n. 48, 350

34.1 234 n. 107

35.3 234 n. 107

9.4 37.2–3 234 n. 107

45.6 87 n. 26

per. 116 256, 263 n. 20

Lucan

1.183 ff. 337 n. 108

Lucian

Dream

1–3 306–7, 332 n. 39

How to Write History

47–8 23–4, 66

Lysimachus FGrH 170

Paideia of Attalus 304

Marcellinus

Life of Thucydides 44 43 n. 153

Marcus Aurelius

To Himself 1.6–17 307

Marsyas of Pella FGrH 135

On the Education of Alexander 304

Memnon FGrH 434

fr. 57.4 87 n. 23

Nepos

Eumenes 8.2–3 240

Lysander

4 300 n. 44

Nicolaus of Damascus FGrH 90

Autobiography 306–7

fr. 131.1 132.2–3 306

Life of Augustus 234 n. 103, 306

4–11 306, 332 nn. 35 and 38

68–79 32 n. 32

80 256, 263 n. 20

103 229 n. 40

105 229 n. 40

Onesicritus FGrH 134

How Alexander Was Brought Up 147,

303–4

fr. 17 147, 331 n. 25

fr. 20 331 n. 26

fr. 38 303, 331 n. 25

Ovid

Metamorphoses

13–14 136 n. 20

Tristia

4.10. 23–6 306–7

Paulinus

Life ofAmbrose 3.2–5 301, 330 n. 3

Pausanias

1.27. 7 333 n. 58

Philistus FGrH 556

fr. 23 118

Philochorus FGrH 328

frs. 17–18 175

fr. 135 118

Philostratus

Life of Apollonius

1.3 271

Lives of the Sophists

Proem 271
Phlegon FGrH 257

fr. 12. 10 87 n. 23

Piso

fr. 10 P = 17 F. 170 n. 80

fr. 13 P = 20 F. 170 n. 80

Plato

Gorgias

464b–6a 341, 346 n. 11

483c–d 178

488b5 178

490a ff. 178

523a 190 n. 4

Laws

2.666d–7a 192 n. 29

5.731b 345

Letters

7 305

Minos

319d 192 n. 29

320d–1b 192 n. 29

Phaedo

61b 190 n. 4 68d 186

Phaedrus 344

Philebus

14b6–7 347 n. 24

Protagoras

320c 190 n. 4

322c 178

324d 190 n. 4
Republic 345–6

1.343d6 178

1.349b ff. 178

2 178

2.376 345

3.391d–e 187

3.401b–12a 345

3.410d 345

4.441e–2c 345

8.548c 345

8.550b 345

8.557c–8c 180

9.581a–b 345, 347 n. 24

9.582e4–6 347 n. 24

9.586c9–d1 347 n. 24

596c 345

Timaeus

26c–e 190 n. 4

Pliny the Elder

NH

4.80 255 , 263n.16

9.143 253

Pliny the Younger

Letters

1.17 253

3.5 23, 42 n. 148, 43 n. 151

8.12. 4 253

Panegyricus 253–7

6–8 256
9.2 256

21 255

52 264 n. 33

55 254

57.4–5254

85–7 264 n. 33

88.6254

Polybius

2.55. 8 163 n. 16

2.61–2 163 n. 16

3.33. 17 191 n. 22

4.8.9.12 289–91, 298 n. 24, 315

6.10. 13–14 229 n. 33

6.11–18 212–13, 228 n. 27

6.17 213

6.43–58 212–13, 228 n. 27, 229 n. 32

6.51. 5 229 n. 33

9.10 236 n. 125

10.5–6 303, 331 n. 21

18.4 18.6 193 n. 48, 350 24. 12–14 250 n. 22

Quintilian

6.35 89 n. 50

1.128 3.51 6.4 37 n. 92

Sallust

BC

5 334n. 77

16.5 46 - 7

23.5–24. 146

25 329 n. 1
37–8234 n. 104

38.346

51.43 60 n. 14

61 385 n. 40

BJ

41 234 n. 104

65.4 234 n. 105

65.5 223, 234 n. 112

73.6–7 234 n. 105

84.1 234 n. 105

95 334 n. 77

114 371-2

Histories 36 n. 78

1.6–13 M. 234 n. 104

ad Caes.

2.5. 1 234 n. 104

Scriptores Historiae Augustae

Marcus Aurelius 303

4.9–10 331 n. 14

Commodus 303

1 303, 331 n. 15

Elagabalus 303

Gord. I 303

3 303, 331 n. 15

Gord. II 303

18 303, 331 n. 15

Gallienus 303

Seneca the Elder Suasoriae

1.7 39 n. 101
Seneca the Younger

Letters

24.4 332 n. 34

Septuagint

Ezek.

3.7–8 347 n. 24

Prov.

10. 12 347 n. 24

Sextus Empiricus

Against the Professors 10 301, 330 n. 5

Shakespeare, William Antony & Cleopatra 204

Coriolanus 254, 263 n. 12, 326

I.i 389, 393, 409 n. 19

I.i. 35–8 396–7

I.i. 37 405

I.i. 50–161 343

I.i. 74–6 389

I.i. 152–61 389

I.i. 168 403

I.i. 195–8 401

I.i. 203 389

I.i. 210–12 392

I.i. 223–4 408 n. 10

I.i. 226–30 404

I.ii 404

I.ii. 34–6 404

I.iii. 1–17 402

I.iii. 2–5 404

I.iii. 34–5 402

I.iii. 40–6 402

I.iii. 47–8 405

I.iii. 58–66 402

I.iv 401 I.iv. 30 ff. 391

I.iv. 40 ff. 391

I.iv. 46–9 392

I.iv. 61 392

I.v. 1–8 391

I.vi. 24 392

I.iv. 29–32 404

I.vi. 42–4 391

I.vi. 66–85 392

I.vi. 75 392

I.viii 404

I.ix. 40 392

I.x 404

I.x. 24–7 404

II.i 389

II.i. 23–42 403

II.i. 140–2 397–8, 402

II.i. 190–6 397

II.i. 258–9 392

II.ii. 76 394

II.iii 389

II.iii. 17 394

III.i. 93 394

III.i. 237–42 401

III.i. 318 401

III.ii 326, 397

III.ii. 7–18 397, 402

III.ii. 24 402

III.ii. 46–51 398

III.ii. 59 398

III.ii. 64–5 409 n. 25

III.ii. 81–4 401

III.ii. 110–23 398

III.ii. 123–30 398

III.ii. 128–9 402

III.iii. 137 392

IV.i 391, 399–400

IV.i. 3–11 402

IV.i. 9 404

IV.i. 30 400

IV.i. 51–3 400

IV.i. 1–2 394

IV.i. 9 404

IV.ii 402

IV.ii. 48–51 408 n. 8

IV.iv 387

IV.iv. 1 403

IV.iv. 132–3 392

IV.v 404

IV.v. 116–21 403–4

IV.vi. 130–40 389

IV.vi. 141–59 389

IV.vii. 56–7 404

V.i. 3 408 n. 8

V.ii. 67 408 n. 8
V.iii 387, 409 n. 25, 411 n. 47

V.iii. 10 408 n. 8

V.iii. 70–5 409 n. 25

V.iii. 122–4 406

V.iii. 127–8 409 n. 25

V.iii. 172–82 398

V.iv 389, 408 n. 8

V.vi. 114–17 405

V.vi. 116 391

V.vi. 131 405

Julius Caesar 113 n. 53, 254, 337–8 n. 108

II.ii. 48 254

III.i. 111–6 328

King Lear 406

Richard III 406

Timon of Athens 406

Troilus and Cressida 407 n. 5

Silius Italicus

Punica

1.329 263 n. 17

Sophocles

Ajax 296, 323–5, 398, 403, 406

646–92 403

Antigone 239, 296, 398 1347–53 239

Oedipus Coloneus 371, 398

Oedipus Tyrannus 239, 296, 398

4–5 197, 275 Philoctetes 287, 371

Trachiniae 371
Stesimbrotus FGrH 107 302, 330 n. 9

fr. 1 330 n. 9 fr. 4 330 n. 9 fr. 7 330 n. 9 frs. 10–11 330 n. 9

Strabo

5.1–5 (503–5) 177

5.3 (504) 1.63–1.5 (790) 41–2 n. 139

Suda

Z 73 Adler s.v. Z ηνόβίος 36 n. 78

L 604 Adler s.v. λίσποί 191 n. 18
Suetonius

Divus Iulius31 n. 12, 104–5, 288, 316

2–4 77, 93, 109 nn. 5–6

6.2 228 n. 21

7 77–8, 109–10 n. 8, 257

11.226 n. 4

11.2 227 n. 20

14.1–2 51, 60 n. 15, 67

17.1 62 n. 32

20–1 4–5

30.1 35 n. 69 36

87–8 n. 37

44.3 249 n. 10, 255, 263 n.

45.1 335 n. 78

53 36–7 n. 83

76.1 256, 263 n. 20

78–9 32 n. 32

85 256, 263 n. 20

Divus Augustus 288, 302

8.1 332 n. 35

8.2 263 n. 16
Tiberius

4.1 37 n. 90

Caligula 302–3

24.1 303

Divus Claudius 288

33.2 335 n. 78

35 335 n. 78

39 335 n. 78

Vitellius

8.2 40 n. 121

Divus Vespasianus 288

Divus Titus

1 309

Lucan

pp. 178–9 Rostagni 301, 330 n. 3

Tacitus

Annals

1.5.4 159

1.9–10 159

1.61–2 159–60

1.61.2 169 n. 89

1.63.7 159–60

1.63.4–64.3 169 n. 89

1.67 1 169 n. 89

4.32–3 234 n. 109

6.51 371, 384 n. 37

12.68.3 159

3.2 253

Dialogus
2–3 253

36.3 222, 234 n. 109

Histories 20

1.10 334–5 n. 77

1.16 256

2.70 159–60, 169 n. 87

5.14–15 159–60

Theon

Prog. 2.112.20 ff. Sp. 386 n. 64

Theophrastus

Characters

26.7 181–2

Theopompus FGrH 115 330 n. 11

frs. 85–100 330 n. 11

fr. 89 139 n. 41

Thucydides

1 322, 336 n. 93

1.9 174–5

1.9.2 179–80

1.9.4 166 n. 43

1.10 166 n. 43, 281 n. 30

1.21.1 149, 174

1.22.4 172, 189–90 n. 3, 262

1.93.4 140 n. 55

1.8 359

1.135.3 346–7 n. 21

1.138 137 n. 28, 140 n. 55

2.15.1–2 179–80, 182, 192 n. 35

2.35–46 127
2.40.1 194 n. 56

2.47–58 170 n. 98

2.60.5 130

2.65.8 130

2.65.9 138 n. 39

3.37.2 338 n. 112

3.40.4 338 n. 112

3.51 164 n. 19, 361

3.52–68 322, 336 n. 93

3.4 407 n. 2

4.21 151

4.27.5 151

4.28 125

4.4 164 n. 19

4.105.1 138 n. 36

4.129.4 164 n. 19

5.43.2 127

5.5

6.9.3 127, 341

6.13.1 124

6.4, 127–8

6.18.6 124

6.19.2–24.2 125

6.24.3–4 124, 140 n. 55

6.27.3 128

6.64.1–2 135 n. 14

6.68.3–4 138 n. 36

6.70.4 119

6.2 120
7.2.1 119

7.3.1–2 135 n. 14

7.8.1 138 n. 36

7.11–15 125

7.14.1 138 n. 36

7.18.2 136 n. 14

7.40.2 123

7.41.4 135 n. 14

7.42.2 136 n. 14

7.43.1 122

7.48.3–4 125, 138 n. 36

7.64 138 n. 36

7.7 120–1

7.75.2 120

7.75.6–7 120

7.77.2–4 121, 138 n. 36

7.78.1 121

7.86.4 138 n. 36

7.86.5 121, 136 n. 16

Timaeus FGrH 566

fr. 24 118

fr. 100a 118

Valerius Maximus

5.10.2 87 n. 26

6.2.6 83

8.3.3 329 n. 1

Velleius Paterculus

2.9.6 332 n. 34

2.42.3 109 n. 5
2.43.4 226 n. 4

2.59.4 255, 263 n. 18

Virgil

Aeneid 407 n.5

1.148–53 408 n. 7

8.185–275359

12.887–952 359

Xenophon

Cyropaedia 147, 303–4

1.3 8.8. 27 383 n. 13

Hellenica 300 n.51

7.5. 27 383 n. 13

Lacedaimonion politeia

15.9 383 n. 13

Memorabilia

4.2.2 330 n. 10

Zonaras

4.14 p. 304 386 n. 73

 Index I

INDEX OF NAMES

See also Index II for persons who were the subjects of Plutarch’s

Lives: references here are to passages dealing with them as

historical figures, those in Index II to passages dealing with

Plutarch’s treatment of them, but the distinction is inevitably

blurred. Romans are here given under the name most familiar to

modern readers, which will normally be the name used by

Plutarch. Modern scholars are included only when their views are

discussed in the text. Footnotes are included when their material

includes points of substance which are tangential to the main

text.

Abydus 344, 378

Achaea 351

Achilles 102, 113 n. 43, 323, 325–6, 329, 335 n. 83, 379, 386

n. 71, 388,398, 406, 407 n. 5, 408 n. 8

Acilius Glabrio, M’. 221

Actium 105–6, 122–3, 203, 241, 315,356–7

Aegeus 180, 187, 199, 205 n. 2, 376

Aegina 271

Aemilii Lepidi 211

Aemilius Paullus, L. (cos. 219, 216) 223

Aemilius Paullus, L. (cos. 181, 168) 90 n. 59, 208, 212, 219,

220–1, 273,286, 308, 313, 333 n. 67, 357

Aeneas 158, 359

Aeschines 303, 306, 330 n. 11, 331 n. 17

Aeschylus 171–2

Aetolia 350

Afranius, L. (cos. 60) 105

Agamemnon 174–5, 323, 325, 327–9

Agesilaus 69, 153, 242–3, 274–5, 284,295–6, 300 nn. 43 and

49, 302, 304,307–8, 312, 350, 368, 372

Agis III 153, 215, 218, 274, 283,308–9, 311, 357, 366, 384 n.

25

Aidoneus 175

Ajax 296, 323–5, 398, 403, 406

Alba 159, 184

Albert, Prince 319

Alcibiades 117–18, 122–8, 131, 133–4,140 n. 52, 145, 148,

183, 243, 250 n. 21, 275, 287, 302–3, 305, 310–11,314–17,

321, 325, 334 n. 69, 335 n. 77, 341–5, 351, 354, 357–9,

390,398, 406

Alesia 95

Alexander the Great 69, 77–8, 147,176–8, 201–3, 239–40, 255,

257,277, 287, 302–4, 312, 321, 328, 349, 355, 378–82, 398

Alexander, regent of Macedonia 354,377

Alexandria 204, 354–6, 406

Allobroges 58

Alopekos 300 n. 50

Amazons 176–8, 189, 199, 311

Ambrose 301

Amen-hotep II 305

Ammonius 269

Amulius 175, 185

Anaxagoras 145, 313, 330 n. 10

Anaxenor 197

Anaxo 311

Andocides 117, 145

André, Prince 287

Andromache 102, 409 n. 25

Annalius, L. 353

Antemna 158
Antigone 387

Antigonus I 355–6

Antigonus Gonatas 291

Antioch 103

Antiochus (Athenian) 344

Antiochus III 74–5

Antiochus IV Epiphanes 335 n. 77

Antiope 176

Antiphon 145, 148, 183, 322

Antium 326, 402–6

Antonia (grandmother of Gaius and Drusilla) 303

Antonius Creticus, M. 356

Antonius Hybrida, C. (cos. 63) 77, 93

Antony (M. Antonius, triumvir) 3–7, 15–18, 25, 93–5, 105–8,

110 nn. 9 and 14, 133, 148–50, 153–6, 197–8, 203–5, 221–2,

237–9, 241, 247,251 n. 27, 258, 269, 285, 287, 302,312–13,

315, 317, 325, 340, 351, 353–9, 366, 368–71, 376, 379,

396,398, 406

Apelles 67

Aphrodite 197–8, 204, 384 n. 33

Apollo 205 n. 2, 335 n. 83

Apollonius Molon 13, 93, 339

Appian 12–14, 27–9, 65, 148, 208, 210–11, 213–17, 220–2,

229 n. 43,253, 255–6

Aratus 270, 288–91, 296, 305, 315,317, 378

Arausio 71

Archidamus 129, 245

Areopagus 280 n. 26

Argos 245

Ariadne 177, 198–9, 205 n. 2

Ariminum 328

Aristaenus 244, 250 n. 22

Aristeas 267

Aristides 132, 144–5, 200, 219, 247,269, 357, 367, 376

Aristobulus 128

Aristocletus 292

Aristodemus 355

Ariston of Corinth 119, 123

Aristophanes 127–8, 133, 149, 269, 333 n. 60

Aristotle 98, 144, 174, 180–1, 192–3 n. 37, 193 n. 42, 283–8,

292, 306, 322, 329, 331 n. 17, 334 n. 77, 341, 367, 379, 382

Aristoxenus 331 n. 26, 367

Arnold, Dr 316

Artaxerxes 284, 308

Artemidorus 6, 14, 381

Artemis 335 n. 83, 364 n. 33

Artists of Dionysus 204

Arverni 18, 95–6

Ascanius 158

Ash, Rhiannon 201

Asia 109 n. 5, 197–8, 240, 296,339–40, 372

Aspasia 2, 30 n. 9, 134 n. 4, 269, 329–30 n. 1

Assurbanipal 305

Astyages 303

Astyanax 409 n. 25

Athens 17, 19, 89 n. 58, 117–41, 151,171–95, 199, 245–6, 269,

276–7, 292, 314, 324, 329 n. 1, 341, 343–4,354, 358–9, 371,

398

Attica 180

Atticus, T. Pomponius 81
Attius: see Tullus

Aufidius: see Tullus

Augustine 307–8, 332 n. 42

Augustus 3, 105–6, 149, 159, 194 n. 55, 221–2, 248, 253, 256,

305–6, 332 n. 35, 368–71, 376, 379

Aulis 327

Aurelia 94

Aurelii 211

Aurelius, Marcus 303, 306–8, 330 n. 6

Babylon 260, 379

Badian, E. 215–16

Bagoas 202

Baldwin, Stanley 157

Beck, Mark 70

Bedriacum 268

Bernstein, A.H. 215–16

Bezukhov, Pierre 317

Bibulus, M. Calpurnius 4, 11, 14–15, 22

Bismarck, Otto von 319–21

Bithynia 109 n. 5

Biton 267

Black Sea 255

Blair, Tony 305

Bona Dea 18, 40 n. 119, 49, 58, 75–6,94, 99, 111 n. 28

Bosworth, A.B. 359

Bowersock, G.W. 253

Bradley, A.C. 390

Braund, David 201

Brundisium 93, 100

Brutus Albinus, D. 6–7, 21, 24, 380

Brutus, L. Iunius 183

Brutus, M. Iunius 5–7, 11, 14–18, 28,69, 84, 106, 110 n. 9,

183, 188,207–8, 212–13, 218, 221–2, 253–4, 270, 286, 313,

315, 324, 357, 365–6, 375–6, 378–9, 396

Bucephalas 379

Bucher-Isler, B. 240

Burma 320 Cacus 359

Cadiz 78, 257, 264 n. 31

Cadmeia 406

Caecilius 272

Caecina Severus, A. 159–60

Caenina 158

Caepio, Q. Servilius (cos. 106) 371

Caesar, C. Iulius 2–25, 28, 35 n. 69, 45–63, 67–8, 75–84, 88–9

n. 46, 91–108, 145, 148–51, 154–6, 160–1, 170 n. 95, 182,

184–6, 188, 207–14,218, 241–2, 253–65, 288, 302, 314, 316,

321, 324–8, 330 n. 1, 335 n. 78, 339, 349, 355–6, 376, 378–

82, 398

Cairo 316

Calanus 379

Callibius 293

Callicrates 120

Callicratidas 293, 296, 300 nn. 43 and 51

Callisthenes (freedman of Lucullus) 375

Callisthenes (historian and companion ofAlexander) 260, 367

Callistratus 339

Calpurnia 6, 16, 380

Calvisius Sabinus, C. 151

Camillus, M. Furius 132–3, 153, 194 n. 57, 302, 386 n. 70

Cantarelli, F. 182
Carmania 201

Carmenta 176

Carrhae 15

Carthage 200–1

Caspian Sea 255

Cassander 245, 379

Cassius Longinus, C. 6, 14–15, 93, 106, 149–50, 207–8, 212–

13, 218,253–4, 378, 381

Cassius Vecellinus, Sp. 408 n. 6 C

atilina, L. Sergius, and Catilinarian conspiracy 2–3, 16, 18–19,

45–63, 67,91, 114 n. 58, 211, 218, 334 n. 77

Cato, M. Porcius (cos. 195) 145, 168n. 75, 199–200, 205 n. 8,

219, 224–5, 275, 279 n. 17, 284, 286, 312–13, 322, 342, 351,

357, 369–70, 376, 391

Cato Uticensis, M. Porcius 3–5, 8, 10, 17, 45–63, 69, 84, 91–2,

96–100, 103–4, 108, 109 n. 4, 112 n. 33, 114 n. 57, 147, 151–

2, 205 n. 8, 209–10, 212–13, 245, 253, 256, 281 n. 40, 286–8,

302, 305, 315, 317, 322, 324, 325–6, 334 n. 75, 340, 366,

369–70,377, 384 n. 28

Cato, M. Porcius (son of Uticensis) 366

Catullus 2, 368

Catulus, Q. Lutatius (cos. 78) 50–1

Caucasus 155

Centaurs 176

Cerberus 175

Cethegus, C. Cornelius 58

Chaeronea 261, 269, 271, 373–5, 406

Chalcis 74

Chamaeleon 301

Chapman, George 407 n. 5, 409 n. 25

Chekhov, Anton 317

Chrysippus 336–7 n. 99

Churchill, Sir Winston 157–8, 305,317

Cicero, M. Tullius 2–5, 10, 16–19, 25, 45–63, 67–8, 72–3, 81–

3, 93–5, 98–9, 112 n. 35, 145, 148, 151–2, 154, 165 n. 36, 194

n. 57, 212, 218,230 n. 55, 237, 256, 260, 270–2, 283,285–6,

303, 305–7, 313, 322, 326,330 nn. 1 and 6, 332 n. 34, 339,

368–9, 373, 376, 385 n. 50

Cicero, M. Tullius (son of theorator) 368–70

Cimbri 241

Cimon 130, 139 nn. 41 and 44, 153,218, 243, 275, 302, 330 n.

10, 351,372–5

Cinna, C. Cornelius 151, 208, 218

Cinna the poet 184, 208, 214, 380

Claudii 219

Claudius (emperor) 159

Claudius Pulcher, Ap. (cos. 143) 212

Claudius Pulcher, Ap. (either the cos. 54or the cos. 38) 96

Claus, Santa 173

Cleidemus 174, 176–7, 191 n. 22

Cleisthenes 130

Cleitus 202, 239, 260

Cleobis 267

Cleomedes 267

Cleomenes III 146, 163 n. 16, 215,218, 274, 283, 308, 311,

313–14, 357, 366, 376, 384 n. 25

Cleon 122, 125, 131, 133, 141 n. 61,149, 151–2

Cleopatra 2, 17–18, 105–6, 114 n. 58, 148, 150–1, 154, 197–8,

203–5, 238–9, 247, 269, 302, 312–13, 315, 317, 330 n. 1,

354–8, 366, 369, 396

Clodia 329–30 n. 1

Clodius Pulcher, P. 4, 10, 58, 76, 78, 83, 92, 94, 98–100, 133,

141 n. 61, 151, 155, 209–10, 226–7 n. 11

Clodius (deserter in Philippi campaign) 15

Cluilius 159

Clytemnestra 296

Coelius Antipater 235 n. 113

Cohn, Dorrit 276

Cominius Auruncus, Postumus 387,401

Commodus 303

Considius, Q. 4

Corcyra 151

Corcyra 407 n. 2

Corfinius (?) 258

Corinth 244, 368, 373

Coriolanus, C. Marcius 133, 153,155–6, 182, 238, 240, 250 n.

21, 283, 285–6, 309–10, 313, 321–2, 324–7,340–6, 353, 357–

9, 376, 387–411

Corioli (Corioles) 342, 387–8, 391–3, 397, 405–6

Cornelia (mother of Gracchi) 307, 329 n. 1, 396

Cornelia (wife of Pompey) 100, 111 n. 24, 151–2

Crassus, M. Licinius 2–4, 15, 17, 28, 47, 50, 53–6, 76, 80, 82–

3, 91–2, 97, 103, 145, 156, 207–13, 273, 321,324, 353, 374,

376

Crassus, P. Licinius 10, 63 n. 47

Craterus 145 Crates 301

Cratesipolis 203, 356

Cremona 169 n. 87

Creon (Antigone) 296

Crete 198

Croesus 67, 86 n. 9, 143, 149, 162 n. 2,267–8

Crommyonian boar 176

Crustumerium 158
Cuff, P.J. 216

Curio, C. Scribonius (cos. 76) 50

Curio, C. Scribonius (trib. 50) 17,107–8, 154, 156, 315

Curius Dentatus, M’. 200

Cyprus 92, 98, 162 n. 2, 243, 275

Cyrus the Great 268, 303, 332 n. 33

Cyrus the Younger 295, 299 n. 40, 308

Cythera 164 n. 19

Dacia 241, 255, 261–2

Damon 144, 313, 330 n. 10

Darius I 359 Darius III 277

de Romilly, Jacqueline 130–2, 134

Dellius, Q. 16, 20, 24

Delos 179

Delphi 199

Demaratus of Corinth 277

Demetrius of Antioch 10–11, 103

Demetrius of Phalerum 144, 367

Demetrius Poliorcetes 203, 285, 304,353–9, 376–7

Demiourgoi 180

Democritus 190 n. 6

Demon 174–5

Demosthenes (Athenian general) 118,122, 135 n. 14

Demosthenes (orator) 256, 270–2, 303,306, 309, 313, 331 n.

17, 339, 343, 367, 373

Demostratus 118, 122

Descartes, René 322–4, 328–9

Dido 307

‘Diggers’ 254
Dihle, Albrecht 284–8

Dillon, John 262

Dio of Prusa 257–9

Dio, Cassius 12, 19–20, 23, 28, 35n. 69, 148, 210, 213, 220,

222,256–7, 335 n. 78, 371

Diocleides 134 n. 3

Diodorus Siculus 118–19, 121, 135nn. 7 and 8, 136 n. 18, 191

n. 15

Diodotus, teacher of Cicero 73, 313

Diogenes Laertius 42 n. 146, 303–4,324, 329 n. 1

Diognetus 307

Dion 218, 270, 313, 357, 376

Dionisotti, A.C. 240

Dionysius I of Syracuse 292

Dionysius II of Syracuse 357

Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1, 20, 23, 30 n. 6, 52, 78, 155, 165

n. 41, 166 n. 49, 168 nn. 76 and 79, 186, 194 n. 57, 213, 310,

346 n. 15, 353,387–411

Dionysus 197–206, 296

Dioscuri 155, 181, 183

Dodona 174

Dolabella, Cn. Cornelius (cos. 81) 77,93, 109 nn. 5 and 6

Dolabella, P. Cornelius (cos. 44) 94,258

Domitian 253, 256

Dorandi, T. 66

Dostoevsky, Fyodor 383 n. 14

Dover, Sir Kenneth 156–7, 173

Dragon School 320

Drusilla 303 Duff, Tim 360–1

Duris of Samos 145–6, 151

Dyrrhachium 101, 260

Ecbatana 202

Egypt 161, 174

Elagabalus 303

Eleusis 138 n. 33

Elizabeth I 254, 319, 321

Elpinice 374

Empylus of Rhodes 11, 14–15

Ennius 2

Epaminondas 144, 200, 373

Ephesus 197, 204, 299 n. 40

Ephialtes 151

Epicurus 301, 331 n. 17, 381

Eratosthenes 331 n. 26

Erbse, Hartmut 349, 352–4, 359, 377

Erikson, E. 167 n. 68, 298 n. 11, 310,319–20

Essex, Earl of 254

Eteocles 337 n. 105

Eumenes 304, 357, 359, 376

Eupatridae 180

Euphrates 73, 380

Euripides 19, 118, 149, 164 n. 19, 180,199, 204, 275, 322–3,

371, 398

Eurymedon (battle) 243, 245, 275, 351

Eurymedon (general) 122

Euthydemus 121–2, 136 n. 18

Evagoras 303

Fabii 275

Fabius Maximus, Q. 133, 138 n. 38,153, 223–4, 313, 340, 357,

375
Fabricius Luscinus, C. 200

Farrar, Cynthia 179

Fascism 157

Favonius, M. 113 n. 55

Fenestella 16

Flamininus, L. Quinctius 200–201

Flamininus, T. Quinctius 74–5, 140n. 60, 153, 182, 201, 208,

219, 221, 242–7, 274, 302, 322, 350–3, 366, 375, 382 n. 5

Florus 256

Forster, E.M. 224

France, Anatole 235 n. 121

Frazier, Françoise 325

Freud, Sigmund 285, 298 n. 12, 309–10, 319

Frontinus 137 n. 26

Fukuyama, F. 262 Fulvia 17, 94, 105, 154, 315

Fulvius Flaccus, M. (cos. 125) 215

Gabba, E. 216

Gabler, Hedda 287, 317

Gaitskell, Hugh 147, 320

Gaius (emperor) 159, 194 n. 55, 302–3

Galba (emperor) 256

Galen 306–7

Gallienus (emperor) 303

Gaul 18, 95–6, 101, 154, 167 n. 68,210, 241, 255, 257, 302,

328, 371–2

Geiger, Joseph 9, 147, 253, 359

Genette, Gérard 282 n. 42

Geomoroi 180

Germanicus 159–61

Germany 241, 255

Getae 255

Gianfrancesco, L. 183

Gill, Christopher 297 n. 7, 308–12, 321–9

Glaucia, C. Servilius 217

Gomme, A.W. 130, 146, 218

Gongylus 118

Gordian I 271, 303

Gordian II 303

Gordian III 303

Gordon, General 316–17

Gorgias 322

Gracchus, C. 69, 148, 151, 213–20, 222–3, 242, 273–4, 307,

309, 313, 333 n. 67, 357, 366, 396

Gracchus, Ti. 148, 213–20, 222–3,242, 273–4, 307, 309, 313,

333 n. 67, 357, 366, 396

Gylippus 118, 135 n. 6, 135–6 n. 14, 293

Gymnosophistae 304, 379

Hadrian 239–40, 253

Halieis 89 n. 58

Hamilton, J.R. 147

Hamlet 287, 317

Hammon 380

Hannibal, Hannibalic War 194 n. 55,201, 218, 243, 322, 351–

2, 366, 375, 382 n. 5

Harpalus 245

Harrow 318, 320

Hector 102, 317

Hegesias of Magnesia 331 n. 26

Helen of Troy 161, 181, 198, 311, 375

Helicon 301
Hellanicus 174

Helvidius Priscus 229 n. 39, 253

Hephaestion 202, 379

Hera 380

Heracleides Ponticus 162 n. 2

Heracles, Hercules 78, 176, 178–9, 204, 241, 257, 264 n. 31,

275, 283, 286, 292, 311, 333 n. 58, 359, 371

Herennius, C. 220

Hermae 128, 134

Hermes 335 n. 83

Herodotus 25, 158, 160–1, 174, 281 n. 30, 299 n. 36, 359, 368,

371, 382 n. 1, 398

Hesiod 161, 301

Hieronymus of Rhodes 367

Hillard, T.W. 26, 28–9

Himera 72

Hipparchia 329 n. 1

Hippolytus 199, 276, 296, 371, 376, 384 n. 33

Holmes, Sherlock 259

Homer 102, 160–1, 181, 239, 280 n.25, 280–1 n. 30, 281 n.

35, 287,301, 323, 335 n. 83, 341, 379, 386 n. 71, 388, 398,

406, 407 n. 5, 408 n. 8, 409 n. 25

Horace 31 n. 12, 210, 249, 306–8, 334n. 77

Hortensia 329 n. 1

Hortensius Hortalus, Q. 326

Hydra 394

Hyllus 371

Hypatia 330 n. 1

Hyperbolus 125, 131, 136 n. 22, 140 n. 52

Hypsaeus 82, 152

Hyrcania 255

Ibsen, Henrik 287

Idomeneus 144, 330–1 n. 11

Indi 202

India 157

Ion 180

Ion of Chios 2

Ionia 126, 344, 372

Ioulis 271

Iphitus 178

Ipsus 355, 358

Isaeus 339

Ismenias, flute-player 238

Isocrates 299 n. 33, 303, 306, 339

Ister 301

Isthmia 182, 243, 246, 350

Ithaca 301

Iunius Iuncus, M. 109 n. 5

Jason 323

Jerusalem 316

Johnson, Samuel 335 n. 82, 394

Jones, C.P. 224, 240

Josephus 24, 306–7

Juba 103

Jugurtha 372

Julia (daughter of Augustus) 329 n. 1

Julia (wife of Pompey) 99–100, 210,227 n. 13

Julia Domna 271

Jupiter Feretrius 158

Jupiter Stator 58

Kant, Immanuel 297 n. 7, 322–4, 328–9

Karenina, Anna 317

Kore 175

Labienus, T. 109 n. 8

Lacan, Jacques 338 n. 108

Lacedaemonius 151

Lacratidas 368 Laïs 118

Lamachus 120, 122

Lamia 355–6

Lamprias (Plutarch’s grandfather) 269

Lapiths 176

Lartius (Larcius), T. 392, 401

Lavinia 158

League of Nations 157

Lendle, O. 45

Lentulus: see Marcellinus Lentulus Crus,

L. Cornelius (cos.49) 94, 107–8, 109 n. 2

Lentulus Sura, P. Cornelius 46, 48, 54,57–8

Leo, Friedrich 339

Lepidus, M. Aemilius (triumvir) 3, 5,25

‘Levellers’ 254

Licinius Macer 152

Livius Drusus, M. (trib. 122) 214

Livy 2, 16, 19–20, 23, 24, 47, 149, 158–9, 161, 183, 186, 194

n. 57, 222–4, 256, 350, 371, 408 n. 6

Luca 82–3, 109 n. 4, 114 n. 57

Lucan 39 n. 102, 301

Luce, T.J. 9–20

Lucian 306–7

Lucretius 384 n. 22

Lucullus, L. Licinius 2–4, 70–4, 89 n. 58, 212, 220, 243, 269,

275, 283, 305, 373–5, 406

Lucullus, M. Terentius Varro 275, 375

Ludwig, Emil 319–20

Lupercalia 6, 95, 110 n. 14, 155, 194 n. 54, 208, 211, 259

Luther, Martin 167 n. 68, 310, 320–1

Lycurgus 171, 242, 273, 302, 384 n. 25

Lydia 143, 178–9

Lysander 146, 182, 242–3, 274–5,292–7, 302, 304, 307–8,

311–12,315–16, 324, 351, 368–9, 375, 384n. 25

Lysias 279 n. 17, 299 n. 33

Lysimachus (author) 304

Lysimachus (king) 176, 355

Macaulay, Thomas Babington 238

Macedonians 202–4, 351, 355

Machanidas 243

Major, John 336 n. 94

Mallius Maximus, Cn. (cos. 105) 371

Mamertines 72, 82

Manning, Cardinal 318–9

Manuwald, B. 19

Marathon 243, 245, 351

Marcellinus, Cn. Cornelius Lentulus (cos.56) 83, 114 n. 57

Marcellus, C. Claudius (cos. 50) 93–4,108, 109 n. 2

Marcellus, M. Claudius (cos. 214 etc) 153, 182, 211, 219, 225,

241, 283, 285, 290, 309, 312–13, 322, 324, 334 n. 74, 341,

367, 369, 373, 400, 406

Marcellus, M. Claudius (nephew of Augustus) 369

Marcia 103

Marius, C. 151–2, 207–8, 210, 217–23, 226 n. 4, 231 n. 65,

238, 240–1, 250–1 n. 27, 274–5, 284–6, 290, 313, 322, 324,

340–2, 366, 372, 378, 400

Marius, C., the younger 378

Mars 149, 175, 185 Marsyas of Pella 304

Martius, C.: see Coriolanus

Martius, son of Coriolanus 402, 406

Medea 199, 323, 325, 398

Media 356

Megabyzus 67, 86 n. 9

Megalopolis 163 n. 16

Megara 269

Megarian decree 118, 134 n. 4, 269

Melissus 145

Melos 164 n. 19, 361

Menander (Athenian general) 121–2,136 n. 18

Mende 164 n. 19

Menelaus 161

Menemachus of Sardis 245

Menenius Agrippa 254, 343, 387–91, 403, 406, 408 nn. 6–8

Menestheus 181–3

Messala Corvinus, M. Valerius 15, 22

Messenia 352–3

Mestrius Florus, L. 268–9

Metelli 219, 275

Metellus Nepos, Q. Caecilius (trib. 62)72–3, 211

Metellus Numidicus, Q. Caecilius (cos. 107) 217, 220

Metellus, L. Caecilius (trib. 49) 87n. 26, 92–3, 104

Metilius, M. (trib. 217) 223

Metrocles 301

Metrodorus 197

Mewaldt, J. 7–8

Mezentius 168 n. 75

Miletus 245

Millar, Fergus 148

Minos 187, 199

Minotaur 175, 186

Minucius Rufus, M. (mag. eq.217) 133, 223

Misenum 355

Mithridates 89 n. 58, 212

Moles, J.L. 256, 360

Molossians 175

Momigliano, A.D. 143–70, 173

Monica 332 n. 42

Mossman, Judith 201–2, 407

Mucianus, C. Licinius 334 n. 77

Mucius 220

Mummius, L. 368–9, 373

Munatius Rufus 10, 13

Mutina 356–7

Nabis 351

Naevian Meadow 109 n. 2

Narbo 95

Nemean games 243

Neoptolemus (Philoctetes) 371

Nepos 61 n. 19, 147, 165 n. 38, 240, 375

Nero 159, 244, 253, 370

Nerva 256–7, 262 n. 1, 263 n. 24

Nicias 117–41, 151, 153, 218, 243, 245, 269, 273, 275, 287,

299 n. 27, 302, 304, 321, 324, 341, 351, 373, 376

Nicolaus of Damascus 32 n. 32, 34 n. 64, 222, 256, 306–7, 332

n. 35

Nicomedes IV Philopator of Bithynia, 13,93, 109 n. 5

Nightingale, Florence 157, 317–19

Nigidius Figulus, P. 49

Nola 228 n. 25

North, Thomas 387–407, 409 n. 28,410 nn. 33 and 35, 411 n.

41

Numa 171, 186, 321, 365

Numitor 186

Ocean 255, 257 Octavia 105, 355–6, 396

Octavian: see Augustus

Octavius, M. (trib. 133) 214

Odysseus 287, 295, 316–17, 341

Oedipus 296, 371, 398

Oenopion 198

Olympias (mother of Alexander) 201,380–1

Olympieion 119

Olympus (Cleopatra’s doctor) 16

Omphale 178–9

Onesicritus 147, 303–4, 331 nn. 12 and 25–6, 332 n. 35

Oppius, C. 10, 13, 20, 24, 34 n. 57, 145

Orestes 317

Orneus 181

Orodes 365

Otho (emperor) 237

Otho, ‘Marcus’ (perhaps L. Roscius Otho) 57 Ovid 136 n. 20,

306–7
Oxford University 320

Pallantidae 180, 183

Panaetius 144, 367

Panthea 238

Paris 161

Parr, Catherine 319

Parthia and Parthian Wars 15–16, 20, 73, 208, 241, 255, 357

Pasiphon 164 n. 19

Patroclus 379

Paullus, L. Aemilius (cos. 50) 3, 27

Pausanias, author 331 n. 21

Pausanias, king of Sparta 293, 296

Pedasus 386 n. 71

Peden, Robert 368

Peirithous 175, 181, 187

Peisistratus 162 n. 2, 406

Peleus 408 n. 8

Pelopidas 302, 367, 373, 406

Peloponnese 289

Pelops 179

Pentheus 203

Pericles 81, 118, 124, 126, 128–34,137 n. 26, 151, 182–5, 188,

194 n. 56, 224, 244–5, 269, 281 n. 32, 283, 302, 305, 313–14,

317, 325, 330 nn. 9–10, 357, 359

Persephone 175

Perseus 90 n. 59, 357

Persia, Persian Wars 126, 132, 143, 372, 398

Peru 170 n. 95

Peteus 181

Petreius, M. 105
Phaeax 140 n. 52

Phaedra 176, 199, 276

Phanias of Ephesus 162 n. 2

Pharsalus 16–17, 82, 101–3, 106, 112 n. 36, 137 n. 27, 260,

375

Pheidias 134 n. 4

Phemius (schoolmaster) 301

Phila 356

Philagrus 73

Philip II 302

Philip V 219, 242

Philippi 15, 19, 110 n. 9, 155, 197,315, 366, 378–9

Philistus 117–18, 135 n. 7, 136 n. 18,146

Philochorus 118–19, 164 n. 19, 174–5

Philoctetes 287

Philodemus 29 n. 3, 42 n. 146, 68

Philologus 385 n. 50

Philopoemen 140 n. 60, 182, 243–8, 261, 274, 296, 302–3,

305, 341, 350–3, 361 n. 6, 368–9, 373, 376, 400

Philostratus 271

Philotas (son of Parmenion) 202

Philotas of Amphissa 269

Philotis 194 n. 57

Phocion 140 n. 60, 145, 302, 304, 313,330 n. 11, 377

Phraates 73, 83–4

Phryne 329 n. 1

Phylarchus 145–6, 163 n. 16

Picenum 220, 243

Pindar 301

Piso, C. Calpurnius (cos. 65) 50–1

Pittheus 175, 199

Plancus Bursa, T. Munatius 152

Plancus, L. Munatius 5

Plataea 243, 245, 275, 351

Plato 2, 130, 138 n. 39, 139 n. 43,171–2, 178–81, 183, 185–7,

205 n. 7, 272, 292, 301, 306, 336 n. 99,339–41, 344–6, 346 n.

10

Pliny the Elder 23, 42 n. 148, 43 n. 151,253, 255

Pliny the Younger 253–7

Pollio, C. Asinius 2–3, 7, 12–24, 28–9, 31 n. 18, 33 n. 40, 34 n.

62, 35–6 n. 73, 65–6, 79, 81–2, 89 n. 55, 95, 100, 104, 110 nn.

15 and 22, 112 n. 32, 208, 210–11, 222–3, 226 n. 57

Polyalces 134 n. 4

Polybius 1, 20, 30 n. 16, 74, 120, 146, 158, 163 n. 16, 191 n.

22, 213, 223,235 n. 113, 236 n. 126, 243, 246, 288–91, 298 n.

24, 303, 315–16, 331 nn. 12 and 21, 350

Polycrates of Sicyon 270, 291, 297

Pompeia 75–6, 78, 94, 211

Pompey 3–4, 10, 28, 46, 52, 70, 72–4, 79–83, 90 n. 61, 91–3,

96–105, 106–8, 145, 149, 151–2, 155, 161, 176–7, 209–13,

218–21, 239–40, 243, 245, 253, 258–60, 264 n. 27, 273, 281

n. 40, 313–14, 321, 326, 363 n. 37, 374–5, 378, 380–1, 398

Pompey, Sextus 355–6

Pontus 255

Poplicola, P Valerius 386 n. 64

Poppaedius Silo, Q. 103, 302

Porcia 6, 11, 14, 366, 396

Poseidon 175, 185, 187

Posidonius 236 n. 126

Priam 371, 408 n. 8

Procrustes 176

Proculus Iulius 184–5, 267

Protagoras 178–9

Proust, Marcel 285

ps.–Callisthenes 162

Ptolemy Auletes 103

Pylos 125

Pyrrhus 304, 313, 355

Quirinus 267

Raaflaub, Kurt 107–8

Regillus 109 n. 2, 155

Remus 186, 308, 376

Rhine 256

Rhodes 77, 93, 154, 339

Richardson, J.S. 216

Romulus 149, 158, 161, 171–95, 198,267, 308, 311, 376, 386

n. 76

Roosevelt, Franklin D. 157

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 238

Roxane 380–1

Rubicon 63 n. 52, 90 n. 61, 93, 108,325, 327–8

Rugby School 320

Rullus, P. Servilius 59

Russell, D.A. 78, 94, 249, 251 n. 28,311, 387, 394

Rutilius Rufus, P. 332 n. 34

Sabines 186–7, 198

Sacra Via 58

Salamis 132, 243, 275, 301, 351, 406

Sallust 2, 16, 46–7, 222–3, 279 n. 15,334 n. 77, 371–2, 385 n.

40

Samos 126, 134 n. 4, 151

Sardis 162 n. 2
Saturninus, L. Appuleius 217–18, 221,231 n. 65

Scardigli, Barbara 26

Schama, Simon 167 n. 72

Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, P.Cornelius 212, 367, 373

Scipio Africanus, P. Cornelius 194n. 55, 224, 375

Scipio Nasica, P. Cornelius 200–1, 225

Scipio, Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius (cos.52) 93, 152

Scipiones 219, 275

Sciron 176

Scriptores Historiae Augustae 147–8

Scythia 255

Seleucus 356

Sempronia 329 n. 1

Sempronii 219

Seneca the Younger 43 n. 161

Septimius 90 n. 61

Sertorius, Q. 89–90 n. 58, 90 n. 59,149–50, 161, 165 n. 41,

309, 357,366

Servilia 51, 54–5, 57, 260

Seymour, Thomas 319, 321

Shakespeare, William 113 n. 53, 204,254, 287, 310, 326, 328,

335 n. 82,337–8 n. 108, 343, 380, 387–411

Sicily 343

Silanus, D. Iunius (cos. 62)49–50

Sisenna, L. Cornelius 158

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein 366–7, 375

Socrates 179, 292, 301, 305, 314, 347 nn. 22–3, 377

Solon 67, 86 n. 9, 143, 149–50, 267–8,280 n. 26, 386 n. 64,

406

Sophocles 197, 239, 275, 301, 323–4,371, 398, 403, 406

Sosius Senecio, Q. 171, 270–3, 367

Spain 220, 257, 263 n. 24

Sparta 123–6, 183–4, 230 n. 51, 244, 246, 292–7, 307–9, 312,

315, 324–5, 329, 332 n. 50, 350–1, 353, 368–9, 375, 411 n. 40

Spartacus 208–9

Sphacteria 126

Sphaerus 311

Stadter, Philip 68–85, 129–30, 238,359–60

Staphylos 198

Steidle, W. 26–8

Stesichorus 161

Stesimbrotus 145, 280 n. 25, 302, 330 n. 11

Sthenius 72

Stone, L. 167 n. 72

Strabo 24, 177

Strachey, Lytton 298 nn. 12 and 20,316–20

Suetonius 12, 148, 208, 211, 239–41, 253, 255–7, 260, 288,

303, 309, 316, 324, 335 n. 78

Sulla, Faustus Cornelius 149

Sulla, L. Cornelius 13, 56, 58, 76, 89 n. 58, 93, 149, 151–2,

208, 211, 218, 221, 269, 274, 300 nn. 44 and 47, 305, 307,

334–5 n. 77, 366, 372

Sulla, Sextus, of Carthage 269

Sulpicius Rufus, P. (trib. 88) 220

Swain, Simon ix, 75, 339

Syme, Sir Ronald 225, 253–4, 256, 349

Syracuse 118–22, 135 n. 6, 137 n. 30, 225, 269, 292, 309, 343

Tacitus 20, 158–61, 222, 253, 255–6, 334 n. 77, 371, 384 n. 37

Tanusius Geminus 35 n. 69

Tarpeia 194 n. 57
Tatius, T. 186

Taurus 175

Taylor, A.J.P. 157–8

Tellus 267

Tencteri 21–2

Terentia 49, 111 n. 28, 151

Teucrus 134 n. 3

Thais 202

Thales 268

Thatcher, Baroness (Margaret) 305

Thebe 238

Thebes 202, 245, 295, 371

Themistocles (friend of Plutarch) 269,369

Themistocles 81, 132–3, 137 n. 28, 140 n. 55, 145, 148, 151,

160, 245, 247, 269, 284, 302, 305, 330 n. 10, 359, 369

Theodectes 202

Theodotus of Chios 10–11

Theophanes 13

Theophrastus 2, 164 n. 19, 181, 192 n. 37, 286, 343

Theopompus 50, 133, 146, 163–4 n. 14, 238, 330 n. 11

Theramenes 137 n. 29

Thermae 72

Thermopylae 243, 275, 351

Thersites 329

Theseus 161, 171–95, 198–200, 275–7,283, 286, 311–13, 333

n. 58, 375–6

Thrace 126

Thrasea Paetus 13, 34 n. 60, 147, 253

Thrasybulus 344
Thucydides 25, 43 n. 153, 57, 102, 117–41, 146, 149, 151,

158, 162, 166 n. 43, 171–84, 194 n. 56, 276, 281n. 30, 299 n.

36, 317, 322, 340–1, 346–7 n. 21, 359, 398, 407 n. 2

Thucydides son of Melesias 129, 139n. 44

Tiberius 159–60

Tigellinus, Ofonius 237, 277–8

Tigellius 334 n. 77

Tigranes 71–3

Timaeus 102, 117–19, 135 nn. 6 and 7,146, 158, 164 n. 19,

276

Timocleia 238

Timoleon 153, 273, 284, 302, 304, 308, 321, 331 n. 28, 357,

367

Timon of Athens 105

Timotheus 243

Tiro, M. Tullius 16, 61 n. 19, 81

Titinius Capito, 253

Titus (emperor) 309

Tolstoy, Leo 287, 317

Trajan 70, 75, 82, 84–5, 241–2,253–65

Trebatius Testa, C. 326

Trebonius, C. 5–7, 21, 24, 91–2, 95,110 n. 14

Troezen 176, 311, 371

Tullus Hostilius 159, 365

Tullus, Attius or Aufidius 182, 326,387–8, 403–5, 411 n. 42

Turnus 359, 407 n. 5

Usipetes 21–2

Utica 103

Valeria 402

Valerius Antias 152, 158, 235 n. 113

van der Stockt, Luc 23, 65–8, 71, 75,78, 84

van Meirvenne, Birgit 23, 65–6, 68, 71,75, 78

Varro, C. Terentius (cos. 216) 133,223–4

Varro, M. Terentius 194 n. 55

Varus, P Quinctilius 159–60

Velitrae 263 n. 11, 389

Velleius Paterculus 27–8, 165 n. 36, 255

Vercingetorix 18, 95

Vergilia 155–6, 310, 394–6, 399, 406

Verres, C. 81

Vettius, L. 3

Veturia 394

Veyne, Paul 173–8, 187–9

Victoria, Queen 319

Virgil 2, 136 n. 20, 169 n. 90, 307, 359,407n. 5, 408 n. 7

Voconius 83 Volkmann, R. 70

Volsci 182, 327, 353, 398–9, 403–5,408 n. 10, 411 n. 46

Volumnia 155–6, 283, 286, 309–10,326–7, 387, 394–400,

402–6, 409 nn. 20 and 25, 411 nn. 40 and 47

Volumnius, P. 15, 22

Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew 239–40

Wardman, Alan 240

White, Hayden 163 n. 14, 168 n. 74

Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, U. von 287

William IV 319

Williams, Bernard 282 n. 45, 329

Williams, Philip 320

Wilson, Baron (Harold) 305

Winchester 320
Wiseman, T.P. 152–62

Woodman, A.J. 143–70

Woolf, Virginia 316

Xanthippe 329 n. 1

Xenocrates 340

Xenophon 15, 147, 238, 281 n. 30, 299 n. 40, 300 n. 51, 303,

332 n. 33, 383 n. 13

Xerxes 132, 161, 359

Xuthus 197

Zadorojnyi, Alexei 201

Zeno 313

Zeus 187, 205 n. 2, 335 n. 83, 371

Ziegler, K. 179