Plutarch And His Contemporaries

The volume puts into the spotlight overlaps and points of intersection between Plutarch and other writers of the imperial period. It contains twenty-eight contributions which adopt a comparative approach and put into sharper relief ongoing debates and shared concerns, revealing a complex topography of rearrangements and transfigurations of inherited topics, motifs, and ideas. Reading Plutarch alongside his contemporaries brings out distinctive features of his thought and uncovers peculiarities in his use of literary and rhetorical strategies, imagery, and philosophical concepts, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the empire’s culture in general, and Plutarch in particular.

Plutarch's writings, for long treated in a fragmentary way as a source for earlier periods, are now increasingly studied in their own right. The thirteen original essays in this volume range over Plutarch's relations with his contemporaries and his engagement in philosophical debate, his views on social issues such as education and gender, his modes of expression and his construction of argument. Also treated here are Plutarch's understanding and use of his antecedents, literary and historical, and the sophisticated techniques with which he conveyed his own vision. It is a theme of the present book that the writings of Plutarch should be seen as the product of a single, extraordinarily capacious, intelligence.

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. -- Dust jacket

Plutarch's writings, for long treated in a fragmentary way as a source for earlier periods, are now increasingly studied in their own right. The thirteen original essays in this volume range over Plutarch's relations with his contemporaries and his engagement in philosophical debate, his views on social issues such as education and gender, his modes of expression and his construction of argument. Also treated here are Plutarch's understanding and use of his antecedents, literary and historical, and the sophisticated techniques with which he conveyed his own vision. It is a theme of the present.

Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries explores the crucial role of Roman female characters in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. While much has been written on male characters in the Roman plays as well as on non-Roman women in early modern English drama, very little attention has been paid to the issues of what makes Roman women ‘Roman’ and what their role in those plays is beyond their supposed function as supporting characters for the male protagonists. Through the exploration of a broad array of works produced by such diverse playwrights as Samuel Brandon, William Shakespeare, Matthew Gwynne, Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Thomas May, and Nathaniel Richards under three such different monarchs as Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries contributes to a more precise assessment of the practices through which female identities were discussed in literature in the specific context of Roman drama and a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which accounts of Roman women were appropriated, manipulated and recreated in early modern England.

An orator turns to an actor for advice, citizens expect assemblies to unfold like dramas, and a theater-goer cries at a play thinking of his fallen enemy: no Life escapes the mention of theatrical imagery in Plutarch’s paralleled biographies. And yet this is the first book not only to examine Plutarch’s consistent and coherent use of this imagery but also to argue that it is systematically employed to describe, explore, and evaluate politics in action. The theater becomes Plutarch’s invitation for us to question and uncover key moments of Athenian, Spartan, and Roman history as it unfolds.

Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the second century A.D., is a brilliant social history of the ancient world by one of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In what is by far his most famous and influential work, Plutarch reveals the character and personality of his subjects and how they led ultimately to tragedy or victory. Richly anecdotal and full of detail, Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus and Theseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many more powerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome. The present translation, originally published in 1683 in conjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in 1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes and preface are also included in this edition. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plutarch offers the first comprehensive analysis of Plutarch’s rich reception history from the high Roman Empire, Late Antiquity and Byzantium to the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the modern era, across various cultures in Europe, America, North Africa, and the Middle East.