Hellenistic/Roman
Plutarch
c. 46–120 AD
“And the disparity of fortune between the rich and the poor, at that time, also reached its height; so that the city seemed to be in a truly dangerous condition.”
Plutarch of Chaeronea wrote under the early Roman Empire. His pair Greek and Roman statesmen so that character displays what ruling excellence looks like and how it fails. Theory alone cannot do that work. Lycurgus, Coriolanus, Aristides, and the rest supply the Renaissance and early modern world with its chief images of classical virtue and classical pathology. Machiavelli and Montesquieu draw freely on these portraits for their own political arguments. Biography becomes political education.
In the Conversation
6 of the Great Ideas
Ethics
Politics
Citizen
Through biography, Plutarch shows citizenship as a practice of character: the statesman is the citizen at his fullest.
Aristocracy
Biography rather than theory reveals what the aristocratic type actually is; Plutarch's Lives show both the excellence the form demands and the pathology it breeds.
Oligarchy
The lives of lawgivers and statesmen show how concentrated wealth corrupts republics and how wise legislation can prevent it.