The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives (Penguin Classics)

Plutarch in his "Lives Of The Noble Grecians And Romans" written around 100 C.E., sheds new light on Greek and Roman history from their Bronze Age beginnings, shrouded in myth, down through Alexander and late Republican Rome. Plutarch is the lens that we use today to view the Greco-Roman past; his work has shaped our perceptions of that world for 2,000 years. Plutarch writes of the rise of Roman Empire while Gibbon uses his scholarship to advance the story to write about its decline. He was a proud Greek that was equally effected by Roman culture, a Delphic priest, a leading Platonist, a moralist, educator and philosopher with a deep commitment as a first rate writer. Being a Roman citizen, Plutarch was afforded the opportunity to become an intimate friend to prominent Roman citizens and a member of the literary elite in the court of Emperor Trajan. Plutarch's influence and enormous popularity during and after the Renaissance is legendary among classicist. Plutarch's "Lives", served as the sourcebook for Shakespeare's Roman Plays "Julius Caesar", "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus". By the way Plutarch is even the only contemporary source of all the biographical information on Cleopatra, whom he writes about in his biographies of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian. Thomas Jefferson wrote to his nephew that there were three books every gentleman had to have familiarity with; Plutarch's "Lives", Livy's "History of Rome" and Virgil's Aeneid. In fact all the founding fathers of note had read Plutarch and learned much from his fifty biographies of noble men of Greece and Rome. When Hamilton, Jay and Madison write "The Federalist Papers" they use many examples of good and bad leadership traits that they read in Plutarch's work. His biographies are a great study in human character and what motivates leaders to decide and act the way they do, this masterpiece has proven to be still prescient today. If you are truly interested in a classical education, put this book on the top of your list! I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in political philosophy, and history.

Though he lived in the Roman Empire, Plutarch was a classical Greek scholar. He was born in Chaeronea in central Greece and spent most of his life there. He studied in Athens as a young man and later wrote on a variety of subjects, including natural science, metaphysics and morals. He also served in various civic capacities during his life, received a high government appointment in Greece from Hadrian, and traveled widely.Plutarch's interest in writing his "Lives" is the character of the individual, the effects of education and status, the drama of successes and failures, and moral lessons that can be drawn from them. His focus on character and the moral lessons to be learned from history is much like Livy, but Plutarch chose to pursue his purpose more directly by writing biographical sketches of his subjects. These sketches were actually written in pairs, matching what Plutarch saw as a Greek and Roman whose lives were comparable. For example, he paired Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. To most modern readers, this pairing seems rather artificial, and Penguin has chosen to group the "Lives" by historical period.Plutarch was not an eyewitness to the events he records. The six men covered in this book lived 150 to 200 years before these "Lives" were written. Plutarch is relying on tradition and other historians for his information. Being a Greek writing after 100 A.D. allows him to be more detached, but his work necessarily reflects the biases and excesses of his sources. Was Sulla, for example, as thorough a monster as portrayed?The "Lives" make wonderful reading. Plutarch had a simple, straightforward style and an superb eye for the dramatic. The six lives included in "The Fall Of The Roman Republic" are especially well-suited to his style. If you have any interest in Roman history, or if you just enjoy fascinating stories, this is not to be missed.

I loved Plutarch's detailed accounts of the lives of these great Romans. I especially liked his life of Julius Caesar although I don't agree with him that Caesar, from the beginning, sought to overthrow the Republic. It might not be politically correct to admire Caesar but I do. He was a man of careful thought and decisive action. He was a leader of the first order. The other biographies are equally fascinating.

Like the bloke below, I read this book for school, but for the purposes of ancint history. Yes, indeed, Marcus Tullius Cicero is the most outstanding life Plutarch saw fit to write of. For an aspiring lawyer like myself, Cicero embodies desireable traits and wit (although I wouldn't repeat his joke about the Sphinx being in one witness' house!). Penguin's edition features: Marius, the dictator Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, and, of course, Caesar. These men are all fascinating by themselves, but the men of the triumverate stand head and shoulders above the rest. The first such "triarch" was Pompey. The contemporary reader will find some amusement and eyebrow raising pleasure at the lively sex lives of these two men. Pompey bit his lovers, while Crassus lived every single man's dream: in a cave with two slave girls. What Plutarch sets out to accomplish is to display these men as models--how the lust for ultimate and absolute power was the undoing of each man. And I'm not being ironic; all these men were destroyed by the enemies they created, the wars they spawned, or pride they chained themselves to.

Rex Warner's translation of six fascinating Roman personalities is amazingly clear and vibrant. The biographies of Marius and Sulla at the beginning are a little depressing, but the Life of Crassus begins an amazing collection of biographical sketches that impresses you on every page. I first read Rex Warner for a high school English class (we read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, so we read Plutarch's biography as a supplement) and I immediately noticed his crisp 1950's-1960's dignified style. I've also heard that Warner was quite a talented novelist and poet. It seems that both Plutarch and Warner promoted concise writing on a small-scale that allowed them many options while writing. Plutarch and Warner were doing things that many were doing at the same time (there were so many Roman historians, there are so many translators in America), but it is no wonder why their collaborative material was chosen as THE ONE VOICE.The biography of the Roman orator Cicero (the Roman version of Clarence Darrow) is probably my favorite. But Julius Caesar's is certainly the most painstaking, as Plutarch really goes all-out to capture the good points and bad points of the greatest Roman general of them all. His description of Caesar's decisive victory in Gaul is particulary harrowing and insightful.