The Portrait of a Greek Gentleman

Abstract

‘I never looke upon an author’, says Montaigne, ‘be they such as write of vertue and of actions, but I curiously endevour to find out what he was himselfe.… Plutarke's compositions, if they be well savored, do plainly manifest the same unto us: and I am perswaded I know him inwardly: yet would I be glad we had some memories of his owne life.’ What we know of the externals of Plutarch's life can in fact be put in a few sentences. Born shortly before the middle of the first century a.d., a member of an old Boeotian family in easy circumstances, he combined with the ordinary occupations of a country gentleman the profession of lecturing, though it is improbable that he charged any fees for his courses. His devotion to the municipal affairs of Chaeronea involved him in various missions, one of which took him to Rome while still a young man, in the principate of Vespasian. Here his days were occupied by lecturing and what he grandly calls ‘political business’, his evenings by dinner parties; so that he had no time, he tells us, to practise himself in the Roman tongue. In his youth he visited Alexandria also, perhaps for his studies; and we find him at Rome again under Domitian, perhaps collecting materials for the Roman biographies. But his later years were passed, so far as our knowledge goes, between Chaeronea, where he kept a sort of school for gentlemen's sons and held a succession of municipal offices, and Delphi, where he was a member of the priestly college. He married the daughter of a fellow citizen; begot five children (two of whom died in childhood); and himself lived to a ripe age. Practically the whole of this meagre curriculum vitae has been constructed out of scattered references in Plutarch's own writings. Almost the only piece of extraneous evidence is Suidas' statement that Trajan made him consul in his old age: this I have some difficulty in crediting, for there is no hint anywhere in his writings of his having held high office or of any personal relations which could explain Trajan's act—and Plutarch was hardly the man to leave his honours unmentioned. If he has told us little of the outward tenor of his life, I suspect that there was little to tell. He likens it himself to a well-written manuscript, wherein are few erasures.