Plutarch and History

Much of ancient history can only be written thanks to evidence supplied by Plutarch. The historical methods and qualities of this vital source were for long subjected to little systematic analysis. However, over the last two decades an authoritative and profoundly influential set of studies has appeared in the field, the work of Christopher Pelling. Dispersed until now in a wide range of international journals and symposia, these fifteen studies are here published in a single volume, revised by the author with up-to-date annotations and bibliography. Together with three new studies, they form an essential reference-work for serious students of classical Greece and Rome.

Much of ancient history can only be written thanks to evidence supplied by Plutarch. The historical methods and qualities of this vital source were for long subjected to little systematic analysis. However, over the last two decades an authoritative and profoundly influential set of studies has appeared in the field, the work of Christopher Pelling. Dispersed until now in a wide range of international journals and symposia, these fifteen studies are here published in a single volume, revised by the author with up-to-date annotations and bibliography. Together with three new studies, they form an essential reference-work for serious students of classical Greece and Rome.

Preface Acknowledgements 1. Plutarch's method of work in the Roman Lives 2. Plutarch and Catiline 3. The Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum and Plutarch's 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 passages in other authors Index of topics