The Open Curriculum

The Past · Level 2

Greek Lives + Roman Lives

Plutarch · c. 100 CE

Thesis

Character, more than circumstance, decides the course of a public life, and it shows most clearly in small actions and choices; by studying the lives of great Greeks and Romans, their virtues and their vices side by side, a reader can learn what to imitate and what to avoid in their own conduct.

The main ideas

Lives, not histories

Plutarch, a Greek writer and priest at Delphi who lived from about 46 to after 119 CE, wrote biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen and generals, usually in pairs, one Greek matched with one Roman. The Oxford World's Classics editions, translated by Robin Waterfield, select nine Greek lives, from Lycurgus to Alexander, and eight Roman ones, from Cato the Elder to Antony.

He sets out his method at the opening of his life of Alexander: he is writing lives, not histories, and in the most famous deeds there is not always a revelation of virtue or vice; a small thing like a phrase or a jest often shows character better than battles in which thousands die. He leaves the great campaigns to historians and concentrates on the signs of the soul.

He is open about his priorities. In the life of Nicias, he declines to compete with Thucydides's account of the Athenian expedition to Sicily and collects instead the lesser-known details that reveal Nicias's character. In the life of Solon, he admits that some reject Solon's famous meeting with the Lydian king Croesus on grounds of chronology, but keeps it because it is well attested and fits Solon's character too well to discard.

Implication: to understand a person, look at small, unguarded choices as well as public achievements.

History as a mirror

Plutarch states his purpose in the life of Aemilius Paullus: he began writing lives for the sake of others, but continued for his own, using history as a mirror in which to fashion and adorn his own life according to the virtues it shows.

In the life of Pericles he explains why virtue, unlike other admirable things, inspires imitation. We may admire a perfume or a purple dye without wanting to be a perfumer or dyer; no well-born young man, seeing the statue of Zeus at Olympia, longs to be its sculptor. But virtuous action, simply described, produces both admiration for the deed and a desire to imitate the doer.

The pairing of lives serves the same purpose. Setting a Greek beside a Roman, Plutarch compares them, and most pairs end with a formal comparison weighing which man showed greater virtue in which respect.

Implication: read about the lives of others as a way of examining your own conduct, asking which of their choices you would imitate and which you would avoid.

Lawgivers

The Greek volume opens with two founders whose character shaped their cities. Lycurgus, in Plutarch's account, remade Sparta: he redistributed land, replaced gold and silver with heavy iron money that could not easily be hoarded or traded, established common meals, and imposed a hard upbringing on Spartan boys. Plutarch begins by admitting that nothing about Lycurgus is undisputed, but presents the Spartan system as the work of one man's design and discipline.

Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, cancelled debts and reformed the constitution. Plutarch's best-known story about him is his meeting with Croesus, the fabulously rich king of Lydia, who asked who was the happiest of men. Solon named an obscure Athenian, Tellus, who had lived decently, seen his children grow up and died honorably in battle. He explained that human life is subject to chance, and that happiness could only be judged once a life was complete. Croesus, Plutarch relates, later lost his kingdom.

The mechanism common to both is that institutions reflect the character and judgment of those who design them, and endure when they shape the habits of citizens.

Implication: judge a life or an enterprise by how it ends and what it leaves behind, not by its wealth at its peak.

The gifts that destroy

The Athenian lives show how a statesman's strengths become his undoing. Themistocles built the Athenian navy and won the battle of Salamis against Persia, but his ambition and self-promotion led to his ostracism, and he ended his life in exile under the Persian king, where, Plutarch says, he took poison rather than lead a Persian army against Greece. Pericles, who led Athens at its height, rebuilt the Acropolis and governed through his authority with the people, died in the plague early in the war with Sparta, and Athens lacked his restraint afterward.

Alcibiades is Plutarch's study in brilliance without principle. Charming, talented and adaptable, he changed his manners to suit wherever he was, Spartan austerity in Sparta, luxury in Ionia, and Plutarch compares him to a chameleon. He switched sides repeatedly, from Athens to Sparta to Persia and back, and was trusted by none of them for long.

Nicias, by contrast, was cautious and pious. Commanding the Athenian army at Syracuse, he delayed its retreat because of an eclipse of the moon, which he and his seers took as an omen. The delay led to the destruction of the army.

Implication: ask of any talented leader what their strengths might lead them to do under pressure. Ambition, adaptability and caution each have a characteristic way of failing.

Alexander

The Greek volume ends with Alexander the Great, whose life Plutarch fills with the small revealing episodes his method calls for. As a boy, Alexander tamed the horse Bucephalus, which no one else could ride, by noticing that it was afraid of its own shadow and turning it toward the sun; his father, Philip, told him to seek a kingdom worthy of himself, since Macedonia was too small. He met the philosopher Diogenes, who asked only that he stand out of his sunlight, and said that if he were not Alexander he would wish to be Diogenes.

Plutarch also records his decline. Late in his campaigns, after a drunken quarrel, Alexander killed Cleitus, an old companion who had once saved his life in battle, and was overwhelmed by remorse. Plutarch shows a man whose self-control and generosity gave way, as his power grew, to anger and suspicion.

The mechanism is that unchecked power and success erode the restraint that made a person admirable.

Implication: watch for the moment when success removes the checks on a person's temper and judgment, including your own.

The fall of the Republic

The Roman volume traces, life by life, how the Roman Republic came apart. Cato the Elder embodies its old austerity, and added to his vote on every question in the Senate that Carthage should be destroyed. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus tried to redistribute public land to the poor and were killed in violence led by their opponents in the Senate; Plutarch calls Tiberius's death the first civil strife in Rome to end in bloodshed since the kings were expelled. Marius recruited soldiers from among the poor, creating armies loyal to their generals. Sulla marched on Rome with his army and drew up lists of enemies to be killed. Pompey and Caesar each commanded such armies.

Caesar's life is full of the signs of character Plutarch looks for. Captured by pirates as a young man, he joked that he would crucify them, then did. Reading about Alexander in Spain, he wept that he had achieved nothing at an age when Alexander had conquered much of the world. Crossing the Rubicon into Italy with his army, he said, in Greek, let the die be cast. Antony's life ends the volume with his love for Cleopatra, whose arrival on a gilded barge on the river Cydnus Plutarch describes.

The mechanism is precedent. Each man broke a rule the last had bent, and the Republic's norms gave way.

Implication: watch for the first breach of a norm that holds an institution together, because later breaches build on it.

Limits

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