The focus of my thesis is this question: in what ways are Plutarch's <i>Lives</i> moralising texts? My contention is that the <i>Lives</i> are moralistic, but it is a moralism which does not simply affirm the norms of Plutarch's society and Plutarch's own value-system; rather it is, in some <i>Lives</i> at least, exploratory and challenging. A second contention is that the Lives must be read in the pairs in which they were published. The first part of my thesis includes a theoretical analysis of the place of moralising within the ancient historiographical tradition, and an exposition of Plutarch's own statements as regards his work - key passages for our understanding of ancient conceptions of historiography and biography. The central chapters contain close readings of three problematic Plutarchan texts, the <i>Phocion Cato Minor, Lysander-Sulla</i> and <i>Coliolanus-Alcibiades</i>. The second part of my thesis seeks to place Plutarch's work within the context of the second-century world. In this section, I examine Plutarch's <i>Lives</i> of Julius Caesar, Galba and Otho alongside the biographies of the same figures by Suetonius: even when dealing with Roman sources, Plutarch brings to bear upon his material a moral outlook which is drawn, partly at least, from the age of Classical Greece, in particular from Plato. Throughout the <i>Lives</i>, Roman figures are evaluated by means of Greek ethical concepts. This self-confident response to Rome is seen also in the very structure of the <i>Lives</i>, in which Greek figures are paired with Roman; a final chapter analyses this paired structure and demonstrates, by a detailed study of the <i>Pyrrhus-Marius</i> that no <i>Life</i> can properly be understood without its partner.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:598667 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Duff, T. E. |
| Publisher | University of Cambridge |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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