Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch

Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch

When the Greek historian PLUTARCH (c. 46 A.D.-120 A.D.) set out to tell the tales of the famous figures from Greek and Roman history, he was more concerned with illuminating their characters than enumerating their deeds, more interested in exploring their moral failings and triumphs than in listing their conquests. The result: Plutarch's Lives. Though Plutarch is known to have taken some liberties with his Lives-his comparisons of certain Greek and Roman figures are often more fanciful than strictly accurate-his words are, in many instances, the only sources of information that have survived for some personages. And in the aggregate, his radical approach to biography exerted a profound influence on the literature to come, particularly throughout the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Shakespeare lifted some passages verbatim from the Lives, and other writers inspired by Plutarch range from James Boswell to Alexander Hamilton to Cotton Mather. Ralph Waldo Emerson called the Lives a bible for heroes. Across the five volumes, Plutarch explores the stories of such notables as: Romulus - Pericles - Coriolanus - Pyrrhus Lysander - Pompey - Alexander Caesar - Cicero - Antony and others. Cosimo is proud to present these handsome new editions, based on the classic 17th-century translations by English poet and playwright JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700), and revised and edited in the 19th century by Oxford scholar ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH (1819-1861).

Plutarch (c.50-c.120 AD) was a writer and thinker born into a wealthy, established family of Chaeronea in central Greece. He received the best possible education in rhetoric and philosophy, and traveled to Asia Minor and Egypt. Later, a series of visits to Rome and Italy contributed to his fame, which was given official recognition by the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. Plutarch rendered conscientious service to his province and city (where he continued to live), as well as holding a priesthood at nearby Delphi. His voluminous surviving writings are broadly divided into the moralworks and the Parallel Lives of outstanding Greek and Roman leaders. The former (Moralia) are a mixture of rhetorical and antiquarian pieces, together with technical and moral philosophy (sometimes in dialogue form). The Lives have been influential from the Renaissance onwards.

Richard Talbert was born in England in 1947. He was a scholar of The King's School, Canterbury, and of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he gained a Double First Class Honors in Classics, followed by a doctorate which was the basis of his first book, Timoleon and the Revival of Greek Sicily. After his appointment in 1970 to teach ancient history at Queen's University, Belfast, his research extended into Roman history and the production of his major work, The Senate of Imperial Rome, which won the Goodwin Award of Merit. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. After three years as Professor of History at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, in 1988 he moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor. He currently directs an international project to produce what will be the first major classical atlas since the last century.

Christopher Pelling is professor of classics at Oxford University and a fellow of Christ Church.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781605202662
ISBN 10	1605202665
Title	Plutarch's Lives
Author	Plutarch
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Cosimo Classics
Year published	2013-01-01
Number of pages	464
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.