Plutarch wrote biographies to study character, not to record history
A small-town Greek who served as a priest at Delphi, Plutarch paired famous Greeks with famous Romans to see what virtue and vice did to their lives. He said plainly he cared more about character than events, yet his Lives are now a main source for Alexander, Caesar and a lost stretch of Roman history.
Plutarch was born before 50 AD in Chaeronea, a Boeotian town about 30 kilometres east of Delphi, to a long-established family; he wrote warmly of his brother Timon. He studied mathematics and philosophy in Athens under Ammonius in 66 to 67, attended the Delphic games at which Nero competed, and later became a Roman citizen through the sponsorship of Lucius Mestrius Florus, taking the name Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus. He visited Rome around 70 and counted several consuls among his friends.
He nonetheless spent most of his life in his home town, serving as a magistrate and archon. Around 95 he became one of the two priests of Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi, then in decline, and the Delphians honoured him with a portrait for helping revive it. From 107 to 127 he managed the Amphictyonic League at least five times, organising the Pythian Games. A surviving letter consoles his wife Timoxena after the death of their two-year-old daughter.
The Parallel Lives survive as 23 pairs, each matching a Greek with a Roman, plus four single lives; others, including Scipio Africanus and Epaminondas, are lost. His Alexander, set beside Julius Caesar, holds anecdotes found nowhere else and probably the most accurate physical description of the conqueror, drawn from the sculptor Lysippos; admiration fades as the story reaches the killing of Cleitus. His Pyrrhus is the main account of Roman history from 293 to 264 BCE, a period for which Livy and Dionysius are missing.
The Moralia gather 78 essays and speeches of startling range: why the Moon shows a face, a work Galileo drew on; Egyptian worship of Isis and Osiris; peace of mind; and a comic dialogue between Odysseus and one of Circe's pigs. Some pieces once credited to him are now assigned to an unknown Pseudo-Plutarch. He died after 119, perhaps around 125.
Source: Plutarch
