Author: Hillard, T.W.
Title: Plutarch’s Late-Republican Lives: Between The Lines
Review/Collection: Antichthon, Volume 21
Year edition: 1987
Pages: 19-48
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy, Histoire - Storia - History
Description: A great deal of modern scholarship has been expended on the subject of Plutarch’s sources and on the manner in which he composed his Lives. As a result of the painstaking analyses of the fifty or so cross-references in the Lives, a rough order in which they were probably written can now be descried and this has been a great boon for those who would use the information therein for historical purposes. As regards those Lives dealing with the luminaries of the late Republic, it can be said that the Lucullus and probably the Sertorius were among the first four sets to be written, that the Cicero appeared with the Demosthenes in the fifth set, then came the Sulla, the Brutus, the Caesar, the Pompeius, and subsequently the Crassus, Cato minor, Antony and Marius. (The order of the last four cannot be fixed, nor can the place of the Lives of the Gracchi.) A knowlege of this sequence explains the differences and occasional contradictions between individual Lives by exposing Plutarch’s earlier unfamiliarity with certain traditions and suggesting divergent source traditions which surfaced only when Plutarch was researching a particular character. (This, of course, makes the material even more valuable.) In the Cicero there are references to numerous Ciceronian works: speeches, philosophical works and letters. Whether he had read them can only be conjectured. Much possibly came from Tiro's De vita M. Tulli Ciceronis cited at Cicero 41, though when referring to Cicero's general characteristics he adds that this can be seen by anyone in his (i.e. Cicero's) writings. [Author]
Author initials: Hillard 1987
Title: Plutarch’s Late-Republican Lives: Between The Lines
Review/Collection: Antichthon, Volume 21
Year edition: 1987
Pages: 19-48
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy, Histoire - Storia - History
Description: A great deal of modern scholarship has been expended on the subject of Plutarch’s sources and on the manner in which he composed his Lives. As a result of the painstaking analyses of the fifty or so cross-references in the Lives, a rough order in which they were probably written can now be descried and this has been a great boon for those who would use the information therein for historical purposes. As regards those Lives dealing with the luminaries of the late Republic, it can be said that the Lucullus and probably the Sertorius were among the first four sets to be written, that the Cicero appeared with the Demosthenes in the fifth set, then came the Sulla, the Brutus, the Caesar, the Pompeius, and subsequently the Crassus, Cato minor, Antony and Marius. (The order of the last four cannot be fixed, nor can the place of the Lives of the Gracchi.) A knowlege of this sequence explains the differences and occasional contradictions between individual Lives by exposing Plutarch’s earlier unfamiliarity with certain traditions and suggesting divergent source traditions which surfaced only when Plutarch was researching a particular character. (This, of course, makes the material even more valuable.) In the Cicero there are references to numerous Ciceronian works: speeches, philosophical works and letters. Whether he had read them can only be conjectured. Much possibly came from Tiro's De vita M. Tulli Ciceronis cited at Cicero 41, though when referring to Cicero's general characteristics he adds that this can be seen by anyone in his (i.e. Cicero's) writings. [Author]
Author initials: Hillard 1987
