The impact of classical literature in Spain during the so-called Golden Age ("Siglo de Oro") of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries among intellectuals (not only theologians but also other men and women linked to the imperial court and to the major universities) was to a large degree contingent upon the dominant influence of the Catholic Church. Plutarch (in particular, his Moralia) was viewed by the Spanish Renaissance as one of the more “legitimate” authors from ancient Greece. This chapter will deal with translations of Plutarch’s works into Spanish and look at the intertextual footprint of the Lives and Moralia in Spanish theological and philosophical thinking in scholarship and historiography. Finally, Plutarch’s role in the discourse of visuo-textual allegorism of the Spanish Renaissance will be addressed.

Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) credited his contemporary Jacques Amyot’s (1513–93) translations of Plutarch (Lives, 1559; Moralia, 1572) with lifting him out of the mire of ignorance and inspiring him to write the Essays.1 Together, Amyot and Montaigne ensured the tremendous cultural importance of Plutarch in France from the late sixteenth century onwards.2 After a decline during the Enlightenment when the Encyclopédistes deemed his ideas obscure, Plutarch again rose to prominence at the close of the eighteenth century thanks to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) and the revolutionaries. A republican Plutarch had replaced Plutarch as the “mirror for princes” whose works the playwright and historiographer Jean Racine (1639–99) had read to an ailing Louis XIV.

Plutarch is commonly viewed as a major exponent of a shared Greco-Roman culture among the imperial elite to which he belonged. However, while dealing with the Greek and Roman worlds on fairly equal terms, he essentially expects the protagonists of his Lives, both Greek and Roman, to display virtues grounded in Greek culture and conforming to Greek role models. Thus, Philopoemen–Flamininus analyzes the Roman conquest of Greece with a strong focus on Greek historical experience; Marius shows the adverse consequences of anti-Hellenism and lack of paideia in a Roman statesman; and Lucullus presents a Roman career shaped by philhellenic benefactions on the one hand and barbarian luxury on the other. Beyond the Lives, the Roman Questions frequently invoke Greek concepts and traditions to explain Roman customs and institutions, whereas Advice on Statesmanship is predominantly concerned with the autonomy of the Greek cities and the power of the local aristocracy, thus epitomizing the Hellenocentric perspective that characterizes Plutarch’s oeuvre as a whole.

Though a priest at Delphi, Plutarch resolutely refuses to give us what we would most like to have: an insider’s view of the oracular shrine and an account of the religio sacerdotis. What he does tell us about varieties of religious belief is largely negative (On Superstition), and the corresponding positive account is difficult to reconstruct. He has, however, a commitment to inquiry and to the interrogation of the polyvalent symbols of religion and of myth. Reductive solutions are rejected, along with any interpretations that would lead to a decrease of piety. In the myths that he creates for his own dialogues, in imitation of Plato, he generates his most characteristic and memorable rhetorical exercises in the sublime.Once misleadingly branded "theosophical essays," these myths are in fact virtuoso display pieces that show Plutarch at his best as a writer and educator.

Plutarch considered content infinitely more important than style. He deprecated excessive attention to words by writers or by readers and believed that the right way to read classical poetry was to concentrate on its moral lessons and not so much on information (historia) or brilliance of language. Nevertheless, he was himself a master of the formal prose (Kunstprosa, in the idiom of German philology) of his day, and had enough versatility to vary his style not only according to genre but sometimes even within a work, especially in dialogue. At the same time, his writing always shows two very marked characteristics: abundance, and richness of imagery and allusion.

Plutarch’s biographies often – not always – come close to modern expectations of a “biography,” so much so that it is easy to lose track of how many choices he had to make and how many alternative paths he might have chosen. This chapter compares those choices with those made by other ancient life-writers and measures them against “ten rules for biography” outlined for modern authors by Hermione Lee: (1) The story should be true. (2) The story should cover the whole life. (3) Nothing should be omitted or concealed. (4) All sources used should be identified. (5) The biographer should know the subject. (6) The biographer should be objective. (7) Biography is a form of history. (8) Biography is an investigation of identity. (9) The story should have some value for the reader. (10) There are no rules for biography.

This chapter explores the depictions of the barbarians, and indeed the very concept barbaros, in Plutarch’s works. It reviews Plutarch’s rhetoric dealing with non-Greeks, which was circumscribed on the one hand by the Roman imperial political reality and on the other by memories of the old Hellenic valor, which was filtered only through texts and oratory. The chapter examines Plutarch’s play with the established stereotypes in a way that shows ethnic labeling to be elusive. It studies Plutarch’s ethnic taxonomic schemes (i.e. a twofold arrangement of barbarians vs. Greeks/Romans and a threefold scheme of Greeks vs. Romans vs. barbarians), and the subtle moral and political implications thereof. It also looks into the literary significance of the use of barbarians in the narrative and of the mismatch between Greek and barbarian practices as presented mostly in the Lives.

Plutarch the philosopher is present in all his texts. His allegiance is not in doubt: he is a follower of Plato, who is open-minded to other schools, as far as their views are reconcilable with Plato’s. He is above all committed to the dialogical spirit pervading Plato’s works. In several more technical treatises, he develops the core of his philosophical views. These have to do with the composition of the world-soul and its image, the human soul. From there, Plutarch develops his views on moral psychology: it is the task of reason, the divine presence in us, to control the irrational passions. This idea forms the basis of various texts in which the therapy of the soul and the development of character are the central goals. Plutarch’s concept of philosophy and his doctrinal stance are quite different from what we find in later Platonism. Later doxographical reports on Plutarch are not always reliable.

Our modern age has modified somewhat the definition of “family” as a way of thinking about relationships between men and women, parents and children, and brothers and sisters. Plutarch did not imagine these relationships in terms of sexuality and gender. Rather, affection, love, marriage, and the family were the key concepts in his study of “private life.” He also lived, however, during an era of change. This change had consequences for the idea of marriage, justifying a more in-depth analysis of Plutarch’s view of the subject. In order to distinguish between contemporary attitudes and original ideas in his works, we will clarify the notion of “private life,” the philosophical tradition, and contemporary idea(s) of the family before reintegrating familial relations into Plutarch’s view of human nature and code of ethics.

Plutarch is well known as a generally even-tempered expositor of the great tapestry of Greek history, literature, and philosophy, and a benign counselor on questions of ethical conduct and social mores, but there is another side to him, that of the accomplished polemicist, primarily in the area of philosophy, but also concerning his predecessors in the craft of history, and on occasion the poets as well. In all of Plutarch’s polemics, we can discern common threads. While historians (especially Herodotus) and poets are criticized primarily for their flawed socioethical views, the Stoics, Epicureans, and even Plutarch’s predecessors in the Platonic tradition have the inconsistencies in their positions relentlessly skewered, and the most absurd consequences of their misguided arguments teased out. This essay surveys a selection of Plutarch’s critiques of previous historians, then casts a brief glance at his censure of the poets, before turning to an examination of his polemics against rival philosophical schools, and lastly rival views within the Platonist tradition.

This chapter assesses the cultural and broader symbolic significance of the symposium in Plutarch’s biographical and philosophical works. It begins by situating Plutarch’s references to the symposium in their cultural context, by examining the symposium/convivium as a key social institution in the Roman imperial period. Next, the chapter discusses the symbolic dimension of conviviality in Plutarch’s oeuvre, through characteristic examples from the Lives and Moralia. It underlines that, for Plutarch, the symposium serves as a tool for evaluating moral character, as well as for conducting cross-cultural comparison. In addition, Plutarch’s interest in philosophical dietetics turns consumption patterns and behaviour at symposia into an important point of focus and concern. The last two sections look closely at Plutarch’s two surviving sympotic works, the Banquet of the Seven Sages and Table Talk. It discusses their genre and literary techniques, their relationship to the philosophical tradition of sympotic writing initiated by Plato and Xenophon, and the central role they both assign to philosophical enquiry.

A central concern of Plutarch’s works is what constitutes a good and honorable life, and they commonly claim to “improve” the character and behaviour of their elite readers, especially in politics and leadership. This chapter assesses this educational approach across the whole corpus, paying particular attention to works of literary criticism, works of practical morality, political texts, and the Parallel Lives. It highlights, among other themes, the importance both of comparison (syncrisis) and of examples (paradeigmata) drawn from history, literature, or everyday life to stimulate reflection. Though profoundly influenced by Plato, Plutarch is particularly concerned with the practical application of philosophical principles to real-life situations, whether faced by the statesmen of the past or by his own readers. Indeed, rather than preaching simplistic lessons, many of Plutarch’s texts bring out how complex moral judgments can be in practice and invite readers to think deeply about morality, literature, and politics.