The age of Alexander : ten Greek lives

560 Pages·2011·3.19 MB·English

by  Duff

PLUTARCH
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