Robin Waterfield - Plutarch: Greek Lives: A Selection of Nine Greek Lives

Page i

Greek Lives

OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS

PLUTARCH was born about AD 45, and lived most of his life in the small town of Chaeronea in central Greece, dying some time after 120. In the first decades of the second century AD, when he did much of his writing, the Roman Empire was in its most prosperous and peaceful period. Plutarch wrote a large number of dialogues, treatises, and essays covering diverse subjects, such as the oracle at Delphi, vegetarianism, and the nature of love, which are loosely classified as his Moralia or Moral Essays. Alongside these essays, Plutarch created a collection of 46 biographies of ancient Greek and Roman statesmen, arranged in pairs ('parallel'), a Roman matching a Greek. These Parallel Lives were written when he was at the height of his powers, and are his major and enduring achievement. Drawing upon earlier histories, anecdotes, inscriptions, and his own researches and broad acquaintance, he shaped masterful portraits of the most famous figures of the classical world. The value of the Lives as a historical source, questioned in the nineteenth century, has been reaffirmed by recent scholarship.

ROBIN WATERFIELD was born in 1952. After graduating from Manchester University, he went on to research ancient Greek philosophy at King's College, Cambridge. He has been a university lecturer (at Newcastle upon Tyne and St Andrews), and an editor and publisher. Currently, however, he is a self-employed consultant editor and writer, whose books range from philosophy to children's fiction. He has previously translated, for Oxford World's Classics, Plato's Republic, Symposium, and Gorgias, Aristotle's Physics, and Herodotus' Histories.

PHILIP A. STADTER, Falk Professor in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of A Commentary on Plutarch's Pericles (Chapel Hill, 1989) and editor of Plutarch and the Historical Tradition (London, 1992). He has written The Public Library of Renaissance Florence: Niccol Niccoli, Cosimo de' Medici andthe Library of San Marco (Padua, 1972, with B. L. Ullman) and Arrian of Nicomedia (Chapel Hill, 1980), as well as numerous articles and reviews on Plutarch and other ancient historians, including Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Arrian.

Page ii

OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS

For almost 100 years Oxford World's Classics have brought readers closer to the world's great literature. Now withover 700 titlesfrom the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century's greatest novelsthe series makesavailable lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.

The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene,and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading.

Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama andpoetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential backgroundinformation to meet the changing needs of readers.

Page iii

Greek Lives

A Selection of Nine Greek Lives

Oxford World's Classics

Plutarch

Translated by

Robin Waterfield

With Introductions and Notes by

Philip A. Stadter

Page iv

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, Scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogot Buenos Aires Calcutta

Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai

Nairobi Paris So Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Translations Robin Waterfield 1998

Introductions and Explanatory Notes Philip A. Stadter 1998

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published as an Oxford World's Classics paperback 1998

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Plutarch.

[Lives. English. Selections]

Greek lives / Plutarch; translated by Robin Waterfield; with

introductions and notes by Philip Stadter.

Oxford world's classics (Oxford University Press)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

1. GreeceBiography. I. Waterfield, Robin, 1952

II. Stadter, Philip A. III. Title. IV. Series.

DE7.P7213 1998 920.0495dc21 98-17490

ISBN 0-19-282501-1

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

y

Cox & Wyman Ltd.

Reading, Berkshire

Page v

To the people and village of Theologos

Page vii

CONTENTS

General Introduction

viii

Translator's Note

xxvii

Select Bibliography

xxviii

Chronology

xxxi

Maps

xxxiii

Greek Lives

Lycurgus

Solon

Themistocles

Cimon

Pericles

Nicias

Alcibiades

Agesilaus

Alexander

Appendix: Measures of Money, Weight, Capacity, Length

Explanatory Notes

Textual Notes

Index of Literary and Historical Sources Cited by Plutarch

Index of Proper Names

Page viii

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Of all the ancient writers, Plutarch is in many ways the most accessible. Readers as diverse as Beethoven, Rousseau, and Harry Truman have admired the vividness of his narrative and the immediacy of his anecdotes in the Parallel Lives.

When he wrote in the first decades of the second century AD, the Roman empire was in its most prosperous and peaceful period. While the emperor Trajan drove back the barbarian tribes of eastern Europe and the Parthians in Asia, expanding the empire to its greatest extent, Plutarch and his friends in Athens, Corinth, and his home town of Chaeronea met, dined, discussed philosophy, and considered the lessons of history. Yet the edge of chaos was not far off. Plutarch was about 23 in 68, when insurrection and civil war ended the reign of Nero: three emperors whirled on and off stage in one year before Vespasian established himself upon the throne. Plutarch later toured the battlefield of Bedriacum in northern Italy with a Roman friend who had fought there, and was told of piles of corpses higher than the tops of the eagle standards: in civil wars no prisoners are taken (