Plutarch was born around the year 46, in Chaeronea, a small city in central Greece, and died there, around 120. Between these two points, he became one of the most read authors of Antiquity, and continues to be so, almost two thousand years later.
Biographer and priest
Plutarch was not just an armchair writer. He served as a priest at the oracle at Delphi, the most important sanctuary in the Greek world, dedicated to Apollo. He traveled through Greece, Egypt and Italy, taught philosophy and received, according to tradition, public honors in Rome. He was, at the same time, a man of civic action and a man of study.
His best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies that compares, pair by pair, an illustrious Greek and an illustrious Roman, Alexander and Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero, looking for the moral character behind each trajectory. I didn't write story by story. He wrote biography as an ethical mirror, so that the reader could see, in the example of others, a lesson about his own life.
The Moralia, philosophy for everyday life
Alongside the biographies, Plutarch left a set of texts gathered under the name Moralia, treatises on practical philosophy on everyday topics, friendship, raising children, controlling anger, curiosity. Among them is a little gem, How to Listen (in Greek, Peri tou akouein), written for the young Nicandro, newly arrived at adulthood.
There, Plutarch does not teach the boy to speak well or to impose himself. First, teach how to listen, because all paideia, human formation for the Greeks, begins with the ear. It is this brief text, almost a listening manual, that continues to instruct readers two thousand years later.
Between Greece and Rome
Plutarch lived at a time when Greece was already a Roman province, and his work reflects this bridging position. He wrote in Greek, for an audience that read both Greek and Roman authors, and treated the two traditions as parts of the same moral heritage. Centuries later, Christian authors such as Saint Basil the Great would turn to him as a model of how to read pagan classics without losing Christian discernment, proof that his work crossed not only languages, but also religions.
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Who was Plutarch?
Plutarch (c. 46-120) was a Greek biographer, philosopher and priest, born in Chaeronea. He served as a priest at the oracle at Delphi and wrote the Parallel Lives, comparative biographies of Greeks and Romans, in addition to the Moralia, a collection of treatises on practical philosophy.
What are Plutarch's Moralia?
They are a set of practical philosophy texts on everyday topics, including the short treatise How to Listen (Peri tou akouein), written for the young Nícandro about the art of listening well to a speech.
What is Plutarch's best-known work?
Parallel Lives, in which he compares, side by side, the biography of an illustrious Greek and an illustrious Roman, looking for the moral character behind each trajectory.
Continue: How to Listen, by Plutarch · What is paideia, the Greek human formation? · Plato's dialogue Meno
Source class (YouTube): Como Ouvir, de Plutarco (NousCast)