Plutarch (Ploutarchos), a prolific writer of the Græco-Roman period, was born about 46 A.D. at Chæroneia in Bæotia, where his family was one of good standing. Nothing is known of his personal history but what may be gathered from his own writings. His higher education was commenced at Athens under the academic philosopher Ammonius in 66, the year of the Emperor Nero's progress through Greece. He paid more than one visit to Rome, the then metropolis of the world—on the first occasion in the reign of Vespasian as chargé d'affaires of his native town. There he enjoyed the friendship of several men of mark, such as Gaius Sossius Senecio, who was four times consul, while he devoted himself to a course of study and gave public lectures in philosophy, so that he had but little leisure left for learning the Latin language, and never attained a full knowledge of its niceties and idioms or a correct notion of Roman institutions. The story that he became Trajan's preceptor, and was raised by that emperor to the consulship is a legend of doubtful credit. Life at Rome, however, was not altogether to his taste; he preferred the quiet of his native place, and there he spent all his mature life until his death about 120, discharging the civil and religious duties which fell to his station, liberally disbursing his stores of learning, and offering himself as a sort of spiritual guide and physician of the soul to those who needed moral hygiene and desired to rule their lives by some higher standard in a corrupt and effete age, when the old faiths were dead and the objects of modern life as yet below the horizon. The extant writings of Plutarch fall into two principal classes—(a) his historical works, (b) those which are grouped under the general head of Opera Moralia (ἠθικά). To the former belong his Parallel Lives—the work by which he is best known. These contain a gallery of portraits of the great characters of the ages preceding his own. They were published in successive books, each pair forming one book (biblion), a Greek and Roman, with some resemblance between their respective careers, being chosen for the subject of each. The forty-six extant Lives were contained in twenty-two books, probably in the following sequence (that in which they are usually arranged being purely arbitrary): (2) Sertorius—Eumenes, (3) Cimon—Lucullus, (4) Lysander—Sulla, (5) Demosthenes—Cicero, (6) Agis and Cleomenes—Græchi, (7) Pelopidas—Marcellus, (8) Phocion—Cato mi., (9) Aristides—Cato ma., (10) Pericles—Fabius Maximus, (11) Nicias—Crassus, (12) Dion—Brutus, (13) Timolcon—Æmilius Paulus, (14) Philopæmen—Titus Flaminius, (15) Themistocles—Camillus, (16) Alexander—Cæsar, (17) Agesilaus—Pompeius, (18) Pyrrhus—Marius, (19) Solon—Valerius Publicola, (20) Demetrius—Antonius, (21) Alcibiades—Coriolanus, (22) Thæseus—Romulus, (23) Lycurgus—Numa. The first series, which includes (2) to (9), was written at the suggestion of some personal friends. The biographies in this series partake more of a historical than of an ethical character. The second, (10) to (19), was composed for the writer's own satisfaction and moral improvement; the third, (20) and (21), professed to teach virtue by painting its opposite; the fourth, (22) and (23), dealt with prehistoric characters. The single biographies of Aratus, Artaxæxes, Galba, and Otho do not come under the category of Parallel Lives. The sequels which comes after most of the Lives, giving a detailed comparison (synkrisis) of each warrior, statesman, legislator, or hero, as the case may be, and of the exact points of resemblance between them, hardly accord with the design of Plutarch, and are therefore regarded as spurious by some critics.
Plutarch's Biographies are not merely popular compilations, but monuments of great literary value for the precious materials which they contain, based as they are upon lost records. The author adheres throughout to his professed purpose—viz. portraiture of character; he either omits or briefly touches upon the most famous actions or events which distinguish the career of each subject of his biography, holding that these do not show a man's virtues or failings so well as some trifling incident, word, or jest. 'C'est la vérité morale,' says Gréard, 'non la vérité historique, qu'il poursuit; l'une n'est pour lui que le moyen, l'autre est le but.' For this reason the Parallel Lives are and will remain the book of all ages, for no book of classical antiquity has had more influence upon the leading men of the world, so that Plutarch may almost be called the interpreter of Greece and Rome to modern Europe. They form indeed a complement to the other and less known half of his writings—the Morals—a collection of short treatises, sixty or more (though certainly not all from Plutarch's hand), upon various subjects—Ethics, Politics, History, Health, Facetiae, Love-stories, and Philosophy. The last comprise dissertations On the nature of the unseen world and spiritual beings, On the creation and government of the Universe, On the human soul, and similar speculations, classed by the ancients under the head of Theosophy. 'The treatise upon Isis and Osiris in this series,' says its most recent translator, Mr C. W. King, 'is the only complete account of the religion of Egypt that has come down to us—written too by one who had been initiated in its deepest mysteries. The three treatises upon the Oracles also are of the highest value, and that on Superstition is one of the most eloquent and closely reasoned compositions of antiquity.' Some of the essays, especially those On Brotherly Love, On gradual advance in virtue, On the benefit to be got out of enemies, breathe quite a Christian spirit, although the writer probably never heard of Christianity or its divine founder. One of the most interesting is that On the apparent delays in divine justice; another, On the conduct proper to young men at Lectures, which is partly moral, partly social in its tone. The nine books of his Symposiaca or Table-talk on a variety of topics exhibit him in the light of the most amiable and genial of boon companions, who appreciated good conversation; while his dialogue Gryllus reveals a remarkable sense of humour.
Though not a profound thinker, Plutarch was a man of rare gifts, and occupies quite a unique place in literature as the encyclopædist of antiquity. He was not master of any science, but whatever was noticeable in natural, moral, or metaphysical science did not come amiss to him, and he had a universal sympathy with genius and nobility of character. As a moralist he is, as Professor Mahaffy well describes him, the spokesman of the better life that still survived in the Greek world in the 'Martinmas summer' of its history; not the exponent of any system, and only occasionally an opponent, as in the Dialogue against Colotes, the disciple of Epicurus, and that Against the Stoic first conceptions, but a man of practical views and sober judgment, a chief example of the illumination of the intellect by the power of morals. His kindly sympathy and tender-heartedness, a leading feature in his character, is well shown in his Consolation addressed to Apollonius on the early death of his son, and the beautiful Letter to his wife on the death of their only daughter. As a stylist he is picturesque, realistic and varied; his chief fault is a tendency to diffuseness and redundancy of expression. He does not, like his contemporary Lucian, affect the Attic purity and clearness of diction, and he is too fond of crowding his sentences; but occasionally he rises into eloquence, and he is almost always happy in the novelty of his illustrations and similes and the point of his anecdotes.
The best editions of Plutarch's entire works are those of J. J. Reiske (12 vols. 1774-79) and Dübner-Döhner in Didot's Bibliotheca (5 vols. 1846-55). The best text of the Lives is that of Sintenis in the Teubner series (5 vols. 1874-81); of the Moralia, that of D. Wytttenbach (15 vols. Oxford, 1795-1830; unfinished), and that in the Teubner series by G. N. Bernardakis (6 vols., published in 1888-95). Separate annotated editions of the Lives have been published by Held, Leopold, Siefert-Blass, Sintenis-Fuhr in Germany, and in England by the present writer, with elaborate commentaries (Sulla, Demosthenes, Gracchus, Nicias, Timoleon, and Themistocles), and by E. G. Hardy (Galba and Otho). There are translations of the Lives in English by the brothers Langhorne and by Dryden and others (the latter re-edited by A. H. Clough, 5 vols. 1874)—neither so scholar-like and correct as the French of Jacques Amyot (Paris, 1559), from which Sir Thomas North's version (1579; new ed. by Wyndham, 6 vols., 1895 et seq.) was made; also of the Roman Lives by G. Long. The best translation of the Moralia is that by several hands, corrected and revised by W. W. Goodwin (Boston, U.S., 1874-78).