R. undertook a daunting challenge in this volume: to survey one of antiquity's most prolific and polymathic authors in a mere 166 pages of text. The last English-language monograph to attempt such a survey was published 20 years ago (R. Lamberton [2001]), during which time research on all aspects of Plutarch's work has only increased. R., however, has more than met the challenge, presenting his reading with a compelling unified theory of Plutarch's thought and a thorough demonstration of its manifestation in text. Not only that, but R. accomplishes this feat with a lively and engaging style that invites readers to take pleasure in thinking with Plutarch as much as R. himself does. The result is an invaluable resource for students of Plutarch at all levels, from advanced undergraduates and graduate students preparing for exams to specialists in any niche of Plutarchan studies who are seeking to contextualise their work within the larger corpus.
The success of this work is due to R.'s approach to Plutarch as a thinker, who looked upon all aspects of his world with an open-minded curiosity, gentle humanity and desire for the truth. The first chapter, ‘Plutarch's Life’, does an admirable job of combining the sure evidence we have about Plutarch's upbringing, career and personal life with our current understanding of the historical and social milieu of the first and second centuries ce. In this way R. fills in any gaps in Plutarch's biography with what we could reasonably expect for a man of his time, place and status. The chapter therefore serves as a reconstructed portrait of Plutarch as an individual as well as a likely model of the lives of his Greek and Roman elite contemporaries about whom less is known for certain.
In the rest of the volume R. eschews an expected Lives vs Moralia structure for a more integrative and scaffolded series of six chapters, taking the reading from the foundations of Plutarch's philosophical perspective in Middle Platonism, to his ecumenical search for truth in any field in his dialogic works, to his understanding of character and ethical development, to his use of historical figures as fodder for philosophical reflection in the Lives, and finally upwards to Plutarch's theology. The thread that ties these chapters together is a focus on Plutarch's consistent attitude of zetesis or a seeking or searching approach to the truth: for Plutarch ‘a good philosopher raises an interesting question and then comes up with different answers’ (p. 22). Through a careful reading of texts including Platonic Questions and On the E at Delphi, R. demonstrates that Plutarch does not simply designate one right answer among the many options he presents, but rather that each solution has ‘a relative value on [its] own, and omitting them would mean a clear loss in our attempt to reach the truth’ (p. 23). This concept of a zetetic approach becomes the key to unlock many of Plutarch's mysteries and a warning to readers that attempting to determine which answer is truly ‘Plutarch's’ is an inaccurate oversimplification of a much more complicated picture.
In turning to Plutarch's dialogic works in Chapter 3, ‘Learning in Abundance: the Ramifications of Plutarch's Erudition’, R. examines how zetesis, combined with a strong grasp of traditional knowledge, becomes situated in lively social settings. Plutarch's sympotic and other dialogic literature includes a diverse array of Greek and Roman interlocutors, united by a shared interest in having a good time while seeking for the truth of whatever topic they may alight upon. These interlocutors do more than allow Plutarch to show off his network of elite contacts; they also give him the opportunity to present an even wider array of approaches to a particular problem, whether it is that of the doctor, grammarian, historian, philosopher or statesman. R. deftly demonstrates that these texts are models of syzetesis, a collective search for the truth, which is constructive, rather than degrading, in its friendly mode of intellectual competition. The following chapter, ‘The Complicated Path to Virtue: Plutarch's Ethical Thinking’, again illustrates the centrality of zetesis, rather than prescriptiveness, in Plutarch's writings on virtue. R. shows the consistency in approach between Plutarch's theoretical ethics, his practical ethical writings and his political ethics, which are all grounded in a sense of human reality, psychological insights and Platonic metaphysics. Throughout, Plutarch acknowledges the autonomy of his readers to make their own choices towards moral development.
R. commits two chapters to the Lives: the first being an overview of Plutarch's mode of writing (and reading) biography as a philosophical practice enacted on material from the past, and the latter consisting of case study readings of the Themistocles–Camillus and Sertorius–Eumenes pairs. R. is careful to highlight the multidirectional dialogues that Plutarch creates in the Parallel Lives: Greeks and Romans; authors, subjects and readers; present and past; and from one pair to another. As in all of his works, Plutarch's open-minded spirit of zetesis is present in the Lives, and his many modes of parallelism in their composition invite his readers into the search for the truth, just as he models it for them. The two case studies presented in Chapter 6 are exemplary of the way in which Plutarch scholars have been reading the Lives since the groundbreaking work of C. Pelling, P. Stadter and T. Duff (among many others). R. uses the case study mode to illustrate efficiently the variety of outcomes that can result from Plutarch's consistent general approach.
In the final chapter R. traces Plutarch's upward gaze towards God, which combines a deep respect for traditional Greek polytheistic beliefs with a critical spirit and zetetic mind-set. The priest of Apollo at Delphi neither fell into superstition, nor did Plutarch's philosophical inquiries drive him to atheism. Instead, as R. shows through a careful synthesis of several essays, Plutarch adopted an attitude of eulabeia, ‘caution’, towards the gods.
In the end matter R. helpfully includes a list of Plutarch's works with abbreviations and Stephanus numbers. Yet the greater service to his readers, and an indication of his own erudition and deep study of Plutarch, is the 35 pages of bibliography, including an impressive and international array of works on Plutarchan matters large and small. The footnotes in the chapters are comprehensive without distracting from R.'s presentation. Overall, the volume appears error-free and well produced.
Critical yet earnest, detail-oriented yet concise, lively and scholarly at once: R.'s slim volume has captured not only Plutarch's works, but his spirit as well.
