roman lives · plutarch

Plutarch, a Greek priest and philosopher writing around 100 AD, paired Greek and Roman statesmen in parallel biographies meant to show character through action. The lives of Cato the Elder, the Gracchi and Sulla trace the Republic's slide from stern virtue into land crisis, factional violence and dictatorship, with the moral life of the individual always the real subject.

Plutarch, Roman Lives: A Selection of Eight Lives, translated by Robin Waterfield (Oxford University Press, 2008). Read in Freshman Spring at Torrey Honors: the lives of Cato the Elder, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and Sulla.