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Plutarch
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Plutarch was not a profound philosopher but a popularizer in the best and most enduring sense of the word. He did not establish a philosophic system but was eclectic in his use of various systems. He warmly admired Plato and knew Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers. He severely criticized Epicureanism and stoicism but used these systems as it suited him. One critic finds him a humanist par excellence; others see him inclined toward mysticism and monotheism. He was an author of uncommon common sense who influenced Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, John Dryden, John Milton, Robert Herrick, George Chapman, Jonathan Swift, Walter Savage Landor, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Mary Shelley, and H.G.
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Although generally moderate in tone, Plutarch could be a severe critic. In “On Herodotus’ Spite,” which has been called the “first instance in literature of the slashing review,” he takes the historian to task for all manner of prejudice and misrepresentation. He makes some palpable hits, catching Herodotus out in various errors. But as the Plutarch scholar R. H. Barrow observed, Herodotus’ real failing in Plutarch’s eyes was to advance any criticism at all of those states that saved Greece from Persia. “Plutarch,” he concluded, “is fanatically biased in favor of the Greek cities; they can do no wrong.”
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Plutarch's writings had enormous influence on English and French literature. Shakespeare occasionally quoted — and extensively paraphrased — Thomas North's translation of several of the Lives in his plays. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Trancendentalists were greatly influenced by the Moralia (Emerson wrote a glowing introduction to the 5-volume 19th century edition of his Moralia). Boswell quoted Plutarch's line about writing lives, rather than biographies in the introduction to his own Life of Samuel Johnson. His other admirers include Ben Jonson, John Dryden, John Milton, and Sir Francis Bacon, as well as such disparate figures as Cotton Mather, Robert Browning and Montaigne (whose own Essays draw deeply on Plutarch's Moralia for their inspiration and ideas).
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Plutarch's interest in history had a definite character. In the opening paragraph to his life of the Roman Aemilius Paulus, he describes his purpose at some length: “I began the writing of my ‘Lives’ for the sake of others, but I find that I am continuing the work and delighting in it now for my own sake ... using history as a mirror and endeavoring in a manner to fashion and adorn my life in conformity with the virtues therein depicted. For the result is like nothing else than daily living and associating together, when I receive and welcome each subject of my history in turn as my guest, so to speak, and observe carefully ‘how large he was and of what mien,’ and select from his career what is most important and most beautiful to know. ‘And oh! what greater joy than this can you obtain,’ and more efficacious for moral improvement.” (Plut., Aemilius Paulus 1-2, transl. Bernadotte Perrin, in the Loeb Classical Library edition).
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Plutarch occupies a unique place in literature as an encyclopaedia of Greek and Roman antiquity. Whatever is eminent in fact or in fiction, in opinion, in character, in institutions, in science - natural, moral, or metaphysical, or in memorable sayings, drew his attention and came to his pen with more or less fulness of record. He is, among prose writers, what Chaucer is among English poets, a rep ertory for those who want the story without searching for it at first hand, - a compend of all accepted traditions. And all this without any supreme in tellectual gifts. He is not a profound mind ; not a master in any science ; not a lawgiver, like Lycurgus or Solon not a metaphysician, like Parmenides, Plato, or Aristotle; not the founder of any sect or community, like Pythagoras or Zeno : not a naturalist, like Pliny or Linnaeus; not a leader of the mind of a generation, like Plato or Goethe. But if he had not the highest powers, he was yet a man of rare gifts.
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Plutarch's general procedure for the Lives was to write the life of a prominent Greek, then cast about for a suitable Roman parallel, and end with a brief comparison of the Greek and Roman lives. Currently, only nineteen of the parallel lives end with a comparison while possibly they all did at one time. Also missing are many of his Lives which appear in a list of his writings, those of Hercules, the first pair of Parallel Lives, Scipio Africanus and Epaminondas, and the companions to the four solo biographies. Even the lives of such important figures as Augustus, Claudius, and Nero have not been found and may be lost forever.
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Plutarch