Plutarch
PlatonistEclectic
He believed character is destiny, and proved it by writing the lives of famous men side by side.
Plutarch lived his whole life in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, served for decades as a priest at Delphi, and wrote the most widely read prose of the ancient world. His Parallel Lives pairs a Greek with a Roman and asks not what they did but who they were, because a single jest or gesture can reveal a soul more than a won battle. A Platonist by training and a moralist by temperament, he wrote essays on everything from anger to the silence of the oracles. Shakespeare built three plays on his pages.
Places
Ideas
Words
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Chaeronea
Born in the small Boeotian town that he would make his lifelong home.
The Moralia
Wrote essays on anger, friendship, oracles, and how to listen: philosophy as daily self-examination, not school doctrine.
Priest at Delphi
Served for decades as a priest of Apollo at Delphi, tending the most famous oracle of the Greek world through its long decline.
The Parallel Lives
Paired Greek and Roman statesmen to ask what character looks like in action. Shakespeare would later build plays on his pages.
Death in Chaeronea
Died in the town he never left, having turned a provincial home into one of antiquity's great workshops of moral biography.
Influence
Influenced
- Montaigne
Montaigne quarried Plutarch endlessly; the Essays are steeped in his Lives and his morals.
