From BBC4 “In Our Time”)
Listen at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00260s5
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work ‘Parallel Lives’ which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world. Plutarch was clear that he was writing lives, not histories, and he wrote these very focussed accounts in pairs to contrast and compare the characters of famous Greeks and Romans, side by side, along with their virtues and vices. This focus on the inner lives of great men was to fascinate Shakespeare, who drew on Plutarch considerably when writing his Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and Antony and Cleopatra. While few followed his approach of setting lives in pairs, Plutarch’s work was to influence countless biographers especially from the Enlightenment onwards.
With
Judith Mossman
Professor Emerita of Classics at Coventry University
Andrew Erskine
Professor of Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh
And
Paul Cartledge
AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson
