Plutarch and his Roman Readers

Plutarch's focus on the great leaders of the classical world, his anecdotal style, and his self-presentation as a good-natured friend and wise counsellor have appealed over the centuries to a wide audience, persons as diverse as Beethoven and Benjamin Franklin, Shakespeare and Harry Truman. This collection of essays on Plutarch's Parallel Lives examines the moral issues Plutarch recognized behind political leadership, and relates his writings to the audience of leading generals and administrators of the Roman empire which he aimed to influence, and to the larger social and political context of the reigns of the Flavian emperors and their successors, Nerva and Trajan, during which he wrote. The essays explore Plutarch's considered views on how his contemporaries could - and we ourselves can - learn from the successes and failures of the great men of the past.

Philip A. Stadter is Eugene H. Falk Professor in the Humanities Emeritus in the Classics Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Introduction
Part I: Two Worlds - or One?
1. Friends or Patrons?
2. Plutarch's Lives and their Roman Readers
3. Revisiting Plutarch's Lives of the Caesars
4. Plutarch: Diplomat for Delphi?
5. Plutarch and Apollo of Delphi
6. Drinking, Table Talk, and Plutarch's Contemporaries
7. Leading the Party, Leading the City: the Symposiarch as Politikos
Part II: Writing for Romans
8. Before Pen Touched Paper: Plutarch's preparations for the Parallel Lives
9. Plutarch's Latin Reading: Cicero's Lucullus and Horace's Epistle 1.6
10. Plutarchan Prosopography: the Cursus honorum
11. Plutarch and Trajanic Ideology
12. The Justice of Trajan in Pliny Epistles 10 and Plutarch
13. Plutarch's Alexandrias
14. The Philosopher's Ambition: Plutarch, Arrian, and Marcus Aurelius
Part III: Statesmen as Models and Warnings
15. Plutarch's Lives: the Statesman as Moral Actor
16. The Rhetoric of Virtue in Plutarch's Lives
17. Mirroring Virtue in Plutarch's Lives
18. Paidagogia pros to theion: Plutarch's Numa
19. Paradoxical Paradigms: Plutarch's Lysander and Sulla
20. Competition and its Costs: Φιλονικίa in Plutarch's Society and Heroes
21. Parallels in Three Dimensions
Part IV: Post-Classical Reception
22. Cato the Younger in the English Enlightenment: Addison's Rewriting of Plutarch
23. Alexander Hamilton's Notes on Plutarch in his Paybook
24. Should we Imitate Plutarch's Heroes?
Bibliography
Index of Plutarchan passages
Index of names and topics