7/2/2023 0 Comments Plutarch's![]() TWO EARLY ATHENIANS: Solon & Themistocles This SDG will examine a selection of the Lives both for the historical content and the moral lessons Plutarch was trying to teach. Hence he can almost be said to have “invented” in his Life of Antony the image of Cleopatra, later used so powerfully by Shakespeare. Plutarch’s Lives became especially important for periods or personalities for which other historical sources are lacking. The 1579 century English translation was used by Shakespeare as his source for his Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. (Some of the lives and the comparisons are lost.) His book has been used since the Renaissance for moral instruction. ![]() He believed history should be studied for its ethical lessons, so he placed the lives of famous Greeks and Romans beside each other – like Demosthenes and Cicero – and then wrote a brief comparison of their virtues and vices. ![]() He was devoted to antiquities and traditional religion, and served for decades as a priest at Delphi.Īmong his many books, Plutarch is best known for his Lives which has been at the center of European education for five centuries. Plutarch was born in Greece about 50 c.e. One of the most important surviving texts from the Greco-Roman world is Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans, which has provided material about Greek and Roman leaders to writers and thinkers from Shakespeare to the present day. ![]()
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