Table Of ContentPLUTARCH
The Age of Alexander
Ten Greek Lives by Plutarch
Artaxerxes • Pelopidas • Dion • Timoleon
Demosthenes • Phocion • Alexander • Eumenes
Demetrius • Pyrrhus
Revised edition
Translated by
IAN SCOTT-KILVERT and TIMOTHY E. DUFF
Introductions and Notes by
TIMOTHY E. DUFF
With Series Preface by
CHRISTOPHER PELLING
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Penguin Plutarch, by Christopher Pelling
Preface to the Revised Edition
Abbreviations
General Introduction
List of Surviving Lives by Plutarch
Further Reading
THE AGE OF ALEXANDER
ARTAXERXES
Introduction to Artaxerxes
Life of Artaxerxes
PELOPIDAS
Introduction to Pelopidas
Prologue to the Lives of Pelopidas and Marcellus
Life of Pelopidas
DION
Introduction to Dion
Prologue to the Lives of Dion and Brutus
Life of Dion
TIMOLEON
Introduction to Timoleon
Life of Timoleon
Comparison of Aemilius and Timoleon
DEMOSTHENES
Introduction to Demosthenes
Prologue to the Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero
Life of Demosthenes
PHOCION
Introduction to Phocion
Prologue to the Lives of Phocion and Cato the Younger
Life of Phocion
ALEXANDER
Introduction to Alexander
Prologue to the Lives of Alexander and Julius Caesar
Life of Alexander
EUMENES
Introduction to Eumenes
Life of Eumenes
Comparison of Sertorius and Eumenes
DEMETRIUS
Introduction to Demetrius
Prologue to the Lives of Demetrius and Antony
Life of Demetrius
PYRRHUS
Introduction to Pyrrhus
Life of Pyrrhus
Notes
Chronology
Historical Events After the Death of Alexander (323–301 BC)
Biographical Notes on Alexander’s Generals and Successors
Maps
1. Attica and Boeotia
2. Greece and the Aegean
3. Empire of Alexander
4. Southern Italy and Syracuse
5. Asia Minor
PENGUIN CLASSICS
THE AGE OF ALEXANDER
PLUTARCH (c. AD 45–120) was a Greek philosopher from the small town of
Chaeronea in Boeotia. He lived at the height of the Roman Empire and is
author of one of the largest collections of writings to have survived from
Classical antiquity. His work is traditionally divided into two: the Moralia,
which include a vast range of philosophical, scientific, moral and rhetorical
works, and the Lives or biographies. Almost fifty such biographies survive,
most from his collection of Parallel Lives, in which biographies of Greek and
Roman statesmen are arranged in pairs. Plutarch’s philosophical and moral
interests are apparent in the Lives, as are his considerable literary talent, his
vast knowledge of the ancient world and his careful research. Both the Lives
and Moralia have been extremely influential since they were first translated in
the Renaissance.
IAN SCOTT-KILVERT was Director of English Literature at the British Council
and editor of Writers and Their Works. He also translated Cassius Dio’s The
Roman History as well as Plutarch’s The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek
Lives and Makers of Rome for Penguin Classics. He died in 1989.
TIMOTHY E. DUFF is Reader in Classics at the University of Reading. He is
author of Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (1999) and the Greek
and Roman Historians (2003) and has published extensively on Plutarch.
CHRISTOPHER PELLING is Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University. He
has published a commentary on Plutarch’s Life of Antony (1988) and a
commentary on Plutarch’s Life of Caesar (2011). His other books include
Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (2000). Most of his articles on
Plutarch were collected in his Plutarch and History (2002).
Penguin Plutarch
The first Penguin translation of Plutarch appeared in 1958, with Rex Warner’s
version of six Roman Lives appearing as Fall of the Roman Republic. Other
volumes followed steadily, three of them by Ian Scott-Kilvert (The Rise and
Fall of Athens in 1960, Makers of Rome in 1965 and The Age of Alexander in
1973), and then Richard Talbert’s Plutarch on Sparta in 1988. Several of the
moral essays were also translated by Robin Waterfield in 1992. Now only
fourteen of the forty-eight Lives remain. It is planned to include these
remaining Lives in a new edition, along with revised versions of those already
published.
This is also an opportunity to divide up the Lives in a different way,
although it is not straightforward to decide what that different way should be.
Nearly all Plutarch’s surviving biographies were written in pairs as Parallel
Lives: thus a ‘book’ for Plutarch was not just Theseus or Caesar but Theseus
and Romulus or Alexander and Caesar. Most, but not all, of those pairs have
a brief epilogue at the end of the second Life comparing the two heroes, just
as many have a prologue before the first Life giving some initial grounds for
the comparison. Not much attention was paid to this comparative technique at
the time when the Penguin series started to appear, and it seemed natural then
to separate each Life from its pair and organize the volumes by period and
city. The comparative epilogues were not included in the translations at all.
That now looks very unsatisfactory. The comparative technique has come
to be seen as basic to Plutarch’s strategy, underlying not only those brief
epilogues but also the entire pairings. (It is true, though, that in the last few
years scholars have become increasingly alert to the way that all the Lives,
not just the pairs, are crafted to complement one another.) It is very tempting
to keep the pairings in this new series in a way that would respect Plutarch’s
own authorial intentions.
After some agonizing, we have decided nevertheless to keep to something
like the original strategy of the series, though with some refinement. The
reason is a practical one. Many, perhaps most, readers of Plutarch will be
reading him to see what he has to say about a particular period, and will wish
to compare his treatment of the major players to see how the different parts of
his historical jigsaw fit together. If one kept the pairings, that would
inevitably mean buying several different volumes of the series; and if, say,
one organized those volumes by the Greek partner (so that, for instance,
Pericles– Fabius, Nicias– Crassus and Coriolanus– Alcibiades made one
volume), anyone primarily interested in the Roman Lives of the late Republic
would probably need to buy the whole set. That is no way to guarantee these
finely crafted works of art the wide reading that they deserve. Keeping the
organization by period also allows some other works of Plutarch to be
included along with the Lives themselves, for instance the fascinating essay
On the Malice of Herodotus along with the Lives of Themistocles and
Aristides and (as before) several Spartan essays along with the Spartan Lives.
Of course the comparative epilogues must now be included, and they will
now be translated and printed along with the second Life of each pair, just as
the prologues are conventionally printed before the first Life. Each volume
will now also usually include more extended introductions to each Life,
which will draw attention to the importance of the comparison as well as
other features of Plutarch’s technique. This is a compromise, and an
uncomfortable one; but it still seems the better way.
The volumes will, however, sort the Lives into more logical groups. The
early Roman figures will now be grouped together in a single volume entitled
The Rise of Rome; the life of Agesilaus will migrate from the The Age of
Alexander to join the rest of the Spartan Lives, and the Life of Artaxerxes will
join the The Age of Alexander collection; the rest of the new translations of
Roman Lives will join those of the Gracchi, Brutus and Antony in a new
Rome in Crisis volume. The introductions and notes will be revised where
necessary. In due course we hope to include the Moral Essays in the project as
well.
In a recent bibliometric study (Ancient Society, 28 (1997), 265–89), Walter
Scheidel observed that the proportion of scholarly articles devoted to most
classical authors had remained more or less constant since the 1920s. The one
author to stand out with an exceptional rise was Plutarch. That professional
pattern has been matched by a similar surge in the interest in Plutarch shown
by the general reading public. The Penguin translations have played a large
part in fostering that interest, and this new, more comprehensive project will
surely play a similar role in the future.
Christopher Pelling
2004
Preface to the Revised Edition
This volume was first published in 1973. In that first edition Ian Scott-Kilvert
was responsible for the translations and notes and G. T. Griffiths for the
Introduction. For the new edition I have completely rewritten the General
Introduction and the explanatory Notes (now printed as endnotes), added new
introductions and bibliographies to each Life, and partly revised the
Chronology, Historical Events and Biographical Notes. I have also added
translations of two Lives which were not included in the original collection:
Artaxerxes and Eumenes. To make way for them, Agesilaus has now been
moved to Penguin’s Plutarch on Sparta.
All the Lives included here except Artaxerxes are from Plutarch’s
collection of Parallel Lives. In that collection the Lives are arranged in pairs,
one Greek figure with one Roman; many pairs are preceded by a prologue,
which introduces both men, and most are followed by a brief comparison of
the two. This and other Penguin volumes do not reproduce this ‘parallel’
structure, but instead arrange Lives according to historical period. In the 1973
edition the comparisons were simply discarded and the prologues printed, as
they usually are, as part of the first Life. In this new edition, I have added
translations of the comparisons which follow the two second Lives included
here (Timoleon and Eumenes); I have numbered the chapters of these
comparisons separately, though giving the conventional numeration in
brackets. I have also attempted to distinguish more clearly between the
prologues and the start of the Lives which follow them, though in this case I
have retained the conventional chapter numbering system, as to do otherwise
would have meant interfering with the numeration of the whole Life. Finally,
I have deleted the prologue to Aemilius and Timoleon, which in the first
edition was wrongly placed at the start of Timoleon; it now appears in its
rightful place at the start of Aemilius in Penguin’s The Rise of Rome.
