Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~190,000 words · 894 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlutarch. (n.d.). Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/plutarch-s-lives-volume-1-of-4
- MLAPlutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/plutarch-s-lives-volume-1-of-4.
- ChicagoPlutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1 (of 4). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plutarch/plutarch-s-lives-volume-1-of-4.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The primer volume of a four-volume edition of the Parallel Lives.
Context and history
The catalogue holds TWO presentations of the Lives, this one in four volumes and another in a single one: it is the same text, not different or complementary works. The division is the publisher's. Plutarch wrote independent pairs — a Greek and a Roman, with a comparison at the end — which is why the reference that works everywhere is the subject's name and the chapter.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
preparing their burdens for a second, the welcome news arrived that Marcus Antonius had lost the battle of Actium, whereupon both the officers and soldiers of his party stationed in Chaeronea at once fled for their own safety, and the provisions thus collected were divided among the inhabitants of the city. When Plutarch was born, however, no such warlike scenes as these were to be expected. Nothing more than the traditions of war remained on the shores of the Mediterranean. Occasionally some faint echo of strife would make itself heard from the wild tribes on the Danube, or in the far Syrian deserts, but over nearly all the world known to the ancients was established the Pax Romana. Battles were indeed fought, and troops were marched upon Rome, but this was merely to decide who was to be the nominal head of the vast system of the Empire, and what had once been independent cities, countries, and nations submitted unhesitatingly to whoever represented that irresistible power. It might be imagined that a political system which destroyed all national individuality, and rendered patriotism in its highest sense scarcely possible, would have reacted unfavourably on the literary character of the age. Yet nothing of the kind can be urged against the times which produced Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom and Arrian; while at Rome, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Martial, and Juvenal were reviving the memories of the Augustan age. From several passages in Plutarch's writings we gather that he studied under a master named Ammonius, at Athens. For instance, at the end of his Life of Themistokles, he mentions a descendant of that great man who was his fellow-student at the house of Ammonius the philosopher.…