Product Description

Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the second century A.D., is a brilliant social history of the ancient world by one of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In what is by far his most famous and influential work, Plutarch reveals the character and personality of his subjects and how they led ultimately to tragedy or victory. Richly anecdotal and full of detail, Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus and Theseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many more powerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome.

The present translation, originally published in 1683 in conjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in 1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes and preface are also included in this edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22191 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-10
• Released on: 2001-04-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 816 pages

Review
"A Bible for heroes."

Review
"A Bible for heroes."

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Greek

Customer Reviews

Dryden, Clough and Others
First off, let me clarify that what follows is a review of a particular edition of Plutarch's Lives, the current (2001) edition from Modern Library Classics. It is not a review of the book itself and will not provide any information on the relevance of this wonderful classic or the many lives it includes or the ingenious structure of paralleling the lives of Greeks and Romans or the importance of this text to the history of biography. Several other reviews here do a fine job of that and I see no reason to cover the same ground. Moreover, I've noted rather a lot of confusion about this edition in reviews here on Amazon (see particularly the reviews associated with the hardbound Modern Library volumes). I am still researching the Dryden edition, but thought I might offer a few comments to provide clarity and a better understanding of this edition for those whose buying decisions are based on the nature and quality of a particular translation.

"The Dryden Translation" - this unusual phrasing (which appears on the cover) has become the traditional descriptor for this version of the Lives. In fact, Dryden is not, properly speaking, the translator of this book. In one article in Wikipedia he is described as an overseer for the edition and in another as editor-in-chief, but he is also described as having simply "lent" his name to the enterprise. I am still researching this, but I should not be surprised if Jacob Tonson, the publisher, was not more involved in editing than was Dryden. [Update: My research to date has been inconclusive on the full nature of Dryden's role in this undertaking, but none of the more detailed resources I have turned to suggest that Dryden actually participated in this book as a "translator." Very possibly, this is one of those many little facts of history that have gone unrecorded and for which we shall have to content ourselves with the conjecture of scholarly experts. What is most surprising, however, is how often Dryden is given as the translator of this volume in various less detailed references to the book. Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, has Dryden as the translator; Wikipedia, much to my surprise, does not -- and thus, arguably, the amateurs get it right over the professionals.]

Dryden's primary involvement in the project seems to have been his "Life of Plutarch" which is included in this edition only by way of a two short excerpts in Clough's Preface.

Arthur Hugh Clough's Preface and Revisions - Clough was a nineteenth century poet. Clough's preface was, for me, a major reason I became interested in the Modern Library edition. I found the preface quite intriguing. It is a solid piece of work from an individual who was neither a full time scholar, nor a particularly notable prose writer. In a couple of cases, the argument at the very beginning of the preface for example, he seems to drop his thoughts without fully completing them. But this is a minor problem in an otherwise well thought out and informative discussion of Plutarch and his book.

The text itself - One of the reviewers here on Amazon calls this Clough's "train wreck" assuming that the difficulties in the text must lie with Clough because, concludes the reviewer, Dryden is a much better prose writer. Few would doubt that Dryden was a better prose writer, but I strongly suspect that the translation in this case (not Dryden's as I have already pointed out) was aided by Clough's hand. I am having trouble getting a copy of the original (pre-Clough) "Dryden" translation, although I should very much like to do a comparison. Once Clough's version came out, publishers seem to have had no reason to go back to the original which provides at least some indication that Clough had resolved some of the problems with the text. As a result, the pure "Dryden" editions are older and more expensive.

I find the text quite readable. It is not a "modern" translation (I hate using the word "modern" here because I think of Clough as a modern, perhaps I should say it is not a twentieth or twenty-first century translation). This text is clearly more given to complex clausal structures than we would expect in a popular translation today. I think it more than has its merits. I'm not sure but that the complex clausal structures might not have their own virtue in a text like this. Certainly one of the interesting qualities in Plutarch is a kind of questioning of sources that the syntax of this edition brings out rather nicely. I say that, however, as a non-classicist with little or no Greek, so I cannot be sure whether it really does reflect the original.

Notes - My chief concern with the text would be that it lacks annotation or other textual apparatus beyond an index. This is particularly peculiar given that the cover states that it includes notes by Clough! I am trying to get my hands on an earlier edition of the Clough revision to see what it might contain in the way of notes. Nonetheless, I'm not quite sure what to make of the Modern Library advertising notes on the cover, but providing none. Until I know better what these notes might entail, I'm loath to make any judgment. [Update: I am currently in dialog with Random House trying to understand why they did not include the notes; I have frankly had to struggle to get them to understand that I am not referring to the notes in the Preface, but to notes to the main body of the text. Nonetheless, I am hopeful, that I will eventually get an understanding from them, and, perhaps, may be able to report here that future editions will either remove the erroneous "Notes" on the cover, or, even better, will include the missing "Notes." I have located an online copy with Clough's Notes. These appear to be rather thin by modern standards, perhaps one note to every three or four pages. Nonetheless, it would be nice to see them restored. Although, a more fully annotated version would be a very nice thing to see, indeed.]

Introduction by James Atlas - I wish I could speak more highly of the Modern Library introduction, but I am afraid I felt it was lacking on many levels. It fails in anyway to clarify the nature of the translation. One would think that it would at least contain some mention of the relevance of this particular text (why reprint it now?), of the curious assignment of Dryden's name as translator to a book that he did not translate, and of the role that Clough played as a nineteenth century editor of a seventeenth century text.

Additionally, and perhaps most warranting concern, Atlas's introduction covers such similar ground to Clough's Preface (even using many of the same quotations) that it feels rather curiously redundant.

The cover - I cannot close without commenting on the cover. It looks like wallpaper for a nineteenth century classicist's study. Quite honestly, I like it.

I've given the book four stars because I see no reason to visit the sins of this particular edition upon the text as a whole, and the text has plenty of merits both as a translation and as a classic of literature.

A Timeless Classic By One Of The Best Biographers In History
Plutarch in his "Lives Of The Noble Grecians And Romans" written around 100 C.E., sheds new light on Greek and Roman history from their Bronze Age beginnings, shrouded in myth, down through Alexander and late Republican Rome. Plutarch is the lens that we use today to view the Greco-Roman past; his work has shaped our perceptions of that world for 2,000 years. Plutarch writes of the rise of Roman Empire while Gibbon uses his scholarship to advance the story to write about its decline. He was a proud Greek that was equally effected by Roman culture, a Delphic priest, a leading Platonist, a moralist, educator and philosopher with a deep commitment as a first rate writer. Being a Roman citizen, Plutarch was afforded the opportunity to become an intimate friend to prominent Roman citizens and a member of the literary elite in the court of Emperor Trajan.

Plutarch's influence and enormous popularity during and after the Renaissance is legendary among classicist. Plutarch's "Lives", served as the sourcebook for Shakespeare's Roman Plays "Julius Caesar", "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus". By the way Plutarch is even the only contemporary source of all the biographical information on Cleopatra, whom he writes about in his biographies of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian. Thomas Jefferson wrote to his nephew that there were three books every gentleman had to have familiarity with; Plutarch's "Lives", Livy's "History of Rome" and Virgil's Aeneid. In fact all the founding fathers of note had read Plutarch and learned much from his fifty biographies of noble men of Greece and Rome. When Hamilton, Jay and Madison write "The Federalist Papers" they use many examples of good and bad leadership traits that they read in Plutarch's work. His biographies are a great study in human character and what motivates leaders to decide and act the way they do, this masterpiece has proven to be still prescient today.

If you are truly interested in a classical education, put this book on the top of your list! I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in political philosophy, and history.

An Overlooked Classic
This is one of the most incredible pieces of literature in human history, yet is one of the most often overlooked.
Plutarch is not as much a historian as he is a moralist, and it is his examination of the lives of some of the most important historical figures of the ancient world for their moral roots that is so incredibly engaging.
Oddly enough, I was first introduced to the works of Plutarch through the fictional novels of Louis L'Amour, who often has one charcter encouraging another to read various classical authors.
For a interesting peek at the lives and morals of some of history's most intriguing figures, Plutarch is a great place to begin.