Commentary
[in chronological order]
Plutarch’s Politics: Between City and Empire by Hugh Liebert
- Liebert, Hugh. Plutarch’s Politics: Between City and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.Plutarch’s Lives were once treasured. Today they are studied by classicists, known vaguely, if at all, by the educated public, and are virtually unknown to students of ancient political thought. The central claim of this book is that Plutarch shows how… More
Plutarch and His Roman Readers
- Stadter, P. (2015) Plutarch and His Roman Readers. Oxford.In his Parallel Lives, Plutarch presented to educated Greek and Roman readers, but especially to leading men of the Roman imperial administration, the moral issues he recognized behind political leadership. The chapters in this book examine his presentation… More
A Companion to Plutarch
- Beck, M., ed. (2014) A Companion to Plutarch. Chichester, West Sussex.From the publisher: A Companion to Plutarch offers a broad survey of the famous historian and biographer; a coherent, comprehensive, and elegant presentation of Plutarch’s thought and influence Constitutes the first survey of its kind, a unified and… More
The Passionate Statesman by Jeferey Beneker
- Beneker, Jeffrey. The Passionate Statesman: Eros and Politics in Plutarch’s Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.From the publisher: An analysis of Plutarch’s method of interpreting history through the lens of moral virtue, and then using those interpretations to create ethical biography Includes a detailed reading of the Lives of Demetrius and Marc Antony as a… More
Alexander the Great and the History of Globalization
- Liebert, H. (2011) “Alexander the Great and the History of Globalization.” The Review of Politics 73: 1-28.Abstract: Alexander the Great is often understood to be the first statesman to attempt a “universal state,” owing in large part to his philosophical education under Aristotle. This picture of Alexander informs many of his depictions in popular… More
Hôsper en esoptrôi: The Rhetoric and Philosophy of Plutarch’s Mirrors
- Zadorojnyi, A. V. (2010) “Hôsper en esoptrôi: The Rhetoric and Philosophy of Plutarch’s Mirrors.” In Humble (2010) 169-95.Excerpt: It will be argued that the programmatic self-referential announcement in Aemilius 1.1-3 is mooted as a ‘readerly’ solution to the deeply entrenched controversy about the epistemological and paideutic value of the mirror. In the last… More
A Partial Cure for the Political Epicurean: Plutarch’s Advice to the Statesman’s Friend
- Shiffman, M.(2010) “A Partial Cure for the Political Epicurean: Plutarch’s Advice to the Statesman’s Friend.” Polis 27: 308-31.Abstract: Plutarch’s epistolary essay, “That a Philosopher ought to Converse especially with Men in Power”, has been neglected because not recognized for what it is: an attempt to persuade an addressee attached to Epicurean principles that… More
Plutarch’s ‘Tale of Two Cities’
- Pelling, C. B. R.(2010) “Plutarch’s ‘Tale of Two Cities.’” In Humble (2010) 217-35.Excerpt: One Life is not enough. A Plutarch Life is always a rounded and carefully structured work, but that is not the only artistic unit that matters. The most obvious larger unit is the pair: this whole volume is testimony to how much synkrisis matters… More
Plutarch’s Lives: Parallelism and Purpose
- Humble, N. (2010) Plutarch’s Lives: Parallelism and Purpose. Swansea.From publisher: Plutarch’s Parallel Lives were written to compare famous Greeks and Romans. This most obvious aspect of their parallelism is frequently ignored in the drive to mine Plutarch for historical fact. However, the eleven contributors to the… More
Plutarch among the Postcolonialists
- Shiffman, M. (2008) “Plutarch among the Postcolonialists.” Perspectives on Politics 37: 223-30.Abstract: Postcolonial interpreters of Plutarch attempt to resolve apparent contradictions between the rhetoric of the Lives and Plutarch’s attitudes toward Roman dominion by invoking conscious and unconscious tensions incident to the identity politics… More
Multimedia
Why Study Plutarch
- Judith Mossman, “Why Study Plutarch”From the publisher: Plutarch (A.D. 46 – after 120), from Chaeronea in Boeotia, was one of the most prolific Greek writers of antiquity and his work is exactly contemporaneous with the period of the earliest writings of Jesus’ followers (many of which… More
An Introduction to the Political Philosophy of Plutarch
- Hugh Liebert, “An Introduction to the Political Philosophy of Plutarch”Hugh Liebert is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and is visiting this year at Harvard, teaching Government 1043 on Civil-Military Relations. His book Plutarch’s Politics is forthcoming, and he has… More
Who Would Plutarch Write About Today?
- David Brooks, “Who Would Plutarch Write About Today?”David Brooks, Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs Senior Fellow lecture “Who Would Plutarch Write About Today?”