Plutarch (in ancient Greek Πλούταρχος / Ploútarkhos), born in Chaeronea in Boeotia around 46 AD. J.-C., died in the same place in 125, is a biographer and moralist of ancient Greece.
The years of the life of Boeotian Plutarch are fixed between 46 and 125 AD. He was born in Chaeronea (a small town to the east of Phocis, near Delphi. Unfortunately, historians have little information on the life of the illustrious biographer, only Souda (10th century) and a note of Eusebius of Caesarea refer to his life. The most significant testimonies remain those that the writer himself slipped into his work. We know that he was the son of a good family, who saw fit to send him to the Platonic school in Athens where Ammonios taught him science and philosophy around 66. He obtained Athenian citizenship.He then traveled to Alexandria and then to Rome where he taught Greek and moral philosophy under the reigns of Vespasian and Titus He will stay again in Rome under Domitian in the 90s. He acquires Roman citizenship there and adopts the gentile Mestrius, in homage to his friend Florus public life (he organized religious festivals s), he was appointed priest of Apollo at Delphi for life. He is a monumental and very fertile author of several treatises on morality, philosophy, theology, politics, a scholar endowed with encyclopedic knowledge. In his biographies, he studies virtue through his hero characters and adopts a position that is not that of the historian. Plutarch adheres to the facts he presents, he permeates his story. He is a moralist and an observer, a Platonist. Nevertheless, he is at the same time the enemy of the Stoics and the Epicureans.
Work
The Parallel Lives of Illustrious Men (in Greek Βίοι Παράλληλοι / Bíoi Parállêloi) brings together fifty biographies, 46 of which are presented in pairs, opposing a famous Greek and a Roman[1] (for example Theseus and Romulus, Alexander the Great and Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero). At the end of each doublet, most of the time, a short text (σύγκρισις / súnkrisis) compares the two characters. We have lost the first pair, devoted to Epaminondas and Scipio. We date the writing of these biographies between 96 and 115.
Among the separate biographies are that of Artaxerxes II, Aratus, and the eight biographies of Caesars, from Augustus to Vitellius. It is Plutarch's most famous work. It was admired by Montaigne as well as by the Grand Condé, and Shakespeare drew subjects for tragedy from it.
The Moral Works are more than 230 treatises devoted to many and varied subjects. Only 79 have come down to us:Curiosity, Tranquility of the soul, Moral virtues, The genius of Socrates, etc.
He also wrote Pythian Dialogues and Table Talks, imitated from Plato.
Influences
Plutarch's writings had a huge influence on European literature, especially French and English. Shakespeare built some of his historical tragedies from the canvas of some of the Parallel Lives, translated by Thomas North. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by Morality. Among his English-speaking admirers we can mention Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Alexander Hamilton, John Milton, and Sir Francis Bacon, but also Cotton Mather, Robert Browning. The Essays of Montaigne, the works of La Boétie, Erasmus, Rabelais, later the work of Rousseau are deeply inspired by his moral works and the Parallel Lives. The sumptuous translation into French of the Parallel Lives by Jacques Amyot in the middle of the 16th century, constantly republished until today, has reinforced its dissemination and made Plutarch a ferryman from antiquity to modern times, even a monument. French letters.
Moreover, in the novels of Maurice Leblanc, the "Parallel Lives" are the bedside book of the hero Arsène Lupin, which is indicative of the ambitions of both the main character and its author.