03-05-2013, 10:14 PM
Quote:Hi, to me Plutarch was more of a biographer than a historian. Sorry I have to quote Wikipedia here
"Plutarch was not concerned with history so much as the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of men."
No Grecoroman historian was a historian per se. Plutarch, in his Lives, was interested mainly in presenting his view on the character and life of the subjects of his work and this is where one has to be careful, since he obviously has his own personal criteria when judging "worth" and "character". However, this does not mean that he was not interested in being historically accurate. He used many sources and was kind enough to often give them to us, which is very useful when studying him, sometimes even criticizing them. What is also interesting is that he often gives multiple, differing sources on the same piece of information, a rare, syncretic approach. Plutarch is a good source as long as the reader understands where the subjectivity of morality invades his work. To me, this is interesting in its own, because he thus gives us insight on at least an aspect of the moral code of his era.
