Bibliography
| Title: Plutarch and Rome Pages: XIII, 158 Type: Book Year: 1971 Abstract: "20-22 -- Pl made a number of visits to Rome in various capacities, expected of elites to serve as embassies, also to visit friends, lecture, philosophize.
-- seems to have been there soon after 92 (I SAY: may have been in Josephus' audience for the AJ/V, also on earlier trips for the BJ).
23-- once Arulenus Rusticus was in his audience for a lecture, must be shortly before his execution in 93.
-- and there is a description of Domitian's new palace of cold and stone, not completed until 92 (Publ. 15.5).
-- seems that he was in Rome ca. 92-93.
24 -- Plutarch had connections with the group that Dommitian punished in late 93-94, followed by his expulsion of philosophers.
-- 25 -- there is a chance that Plutarch himself was affected by Dom's banm even if not forced to leave Rome like Epictetus.
-- even if protected by friends in favour there, Avidius Quietus and Sosius Senecio, he may have felt it wiser to leave voluntarily.
25 -- attitude to the Flavians is hostile: Amat. 771 (Vespn), Numa 19.7; Quaest. Rom 276E, Publ. 15.3-6 (Dom),
-- his lit. output blossoms after Flavian period; may be coincidental, but may be because he felt it dangerous to write, when one could be executed for a declamation against tyrants (Maternus the sophist, Cass.Dio 67.12.5; Helvidius Priscus Suet. Dom 10.4).
48-64: Plutarch's society, E. and W.
88-102 -- Parallel Lives: view of Roman history.
122-130: Rome.
124 (contrast Swain): sees Rome not so much as a Greek but as a Greco-Roman.
-- doesn't see Rome from the outside, really
124-25-- does not observe, except in quotations or allusions, the old distinction between Greeks and barbarians
"The word 'barbarian' denotes for him any nation beyond the frontiers of the empire, in the east or in the west. In place of the old distinctin, he now employs a three-fold one, barbarians, Greeks, and Romans. The transference of teh term 'barbarian to those outside the emperor is accompanied by a transference of values. Once Greeks regarded barbarians as savages or effeminates, a threat to civilization or a worthy subject of conquest. So too Pluatarch now regards with apprehension the Celts and Germans who had once threatened to destroy Rome, and regrets that the strife of the late republic had wasted the strength that might have turned on teh Parthians and otehr enemies".
-- Celts and Germans: Aem. 12.4; Caes. 26.2; Mar. 11, Sull. 16.8; Regret about Parthians: Luc. 36.5; Pomp. 70.3-5.
125 "Plutarch's attitude to Rome is ina sense both Greek and Roman: Greek, in that he saw himself as a Greek by birth and language, Roman, in that his interests and sympathies are bound up with the empire. It is now possible to approach teh questions posed earlier. Granted that he speaks as one of an itnernational society, how respresentative is a Greek in that society of wider Greek opinion? The class from which Plutarch comes, which he depicts in his dialogues and looks to for his Greek readership, is of course not a large portion of the Greek-speaking inhabitants of the empire. But that is unimportnat: it was this this class that wealth and power resided. What matters is to determine whetehr Pl. and his friends are representative of it, or whether they epxtres only one side of educated Greek opinion".
126 -- rejects view of MacMullen (Enemies, 189) and Ewen Bowie, article (now Swain, I guess), that the SS was inherently, implicitly (not explicitly) anti-Roman. Finds Plutarch pro-Roman and other like him". |