Parallel Lives
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| - | The '''Greco-Roman world''', '''Greco-Roman culture''', or the term '''Graeco-Roman''' when used as an adjective, as understood by modern scholars and writers, refers to those geographical regions and countries who culturally (and so historically) were directly, protractedly and intimately influenced by the language, culture, government and religion of the [[ancient Greeks]] and [[Ancient Rome|Romans]]. In exact terms the area refers to the "Mediterranean world", the extensive tracts of land centered on the [[Mediterranean]] and [[Black Sea]] basins, the "swimming-pool and spa" of the Greeks and Romans, i.e. one wherein their cultural perceptions, ideas and sensitivities were dominant. | + | [[Plutarch]]'s '''''Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans''''', commonly called '''''Parallel Lives''''' or '''''Plutarch's Lives''''', is a series of [[biography|biographies]] of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving ''Parallel Lives'' (in [[Greek language|Greek]]: ''Bioi parallèloi''), as they are more properly and commonly known, contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one [[ancient Greece|Greek]] and one [[ancient Rome|Roman]], as well as four unpaired, single lives. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals biographized, but also about the times in which they lived. |
| - | ==Signification of term== | + | As he explains in the first paragraph of his ''Life of Alexander'', Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character—good or bad—on the lives and destinies of famous men. The first pair of Lives—the [[Epaminondas]]-[[Scipio Africanus]]—no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious [[Lacuna (manuscripts)|lacunae]] and/or have been tampered with by later writers. |
| - | This term, rather broad in superficial signification, is given a more precise, historic and determinate meaning by an understanding of political and cultural developments in ancient history. Historically, the entire expanse of land and sea between the [[Pillars of Hercules]] ([[Strait of Gibraltar]]) and the River [[Indus]] (excluding the [[Arabian peninsula]]) were at one point in time or another subordinated to the authority of the Greeks and Rome. Those regions which were but briefly or nominally subjugated to the civilisations of these two cultural preceptors, i.e. [[Asia]] between the [[Tigris]] and the [[Indus]] for the Greeks following [[Alexander the Great]]'s conquests, and [[Germany]] between the [[Rhine]] and the [[Elbe]] by the arms of [[Augustus]], are for this reason normally discounted. There are, of course, slight exceptions to this open rule. The ill-defined but strongly characteristic Asian region of Bactria was one of the few formerly Persian [[satrapies]] beyond the Tigris wherein [[Hellenistic civilization|Hellenism]] was so devotedly embraced by the natives, as was the [[Punjab region|Punjab]], that the culture and thought survived the waning and ultimate disappearance of the administration of Alexander's Successors (the [[Diadochi]]). In both areas, long after direct communications with the traditional Hellenistic world cores of [[Egypt]], [[Syria]], [[Mesopotamia]], [[Asia Minor]] and [[Macedon]]ia had been terminated by the interposition of "uncouth" [[Barbarians]] (i.e. [[Parthians]]), Hellenism not only flourished but in indigenous kingdoms found a vibrant and powerful expression. Moreover, these exceptions often, even after their practical establishments had been subverted and destroyed, still transmitted the knowledge of Hellenism as intermediaries to new states, i.e. the Bactrian and Indian Greeks "Hellenizing" the Scythic [[Kushans]], and the [[Armenians]], later reinforced through the facility of Christianity, disseminating Greek ideas to the Caucasian kingdoms of [[Colchis]], Asiatic [[Caucasian Iberia|Iberia]] and Asiatic [[Caucasian Albania|Albania]] (all of which escaped the yoke of the Macedonians but fell before the armies of [[Republic of Rome|Republican]] and then [[Imperial Rome]]). | + | |
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| - | ==Exact definition and scope of term== | + | |
| - | As mentioned, the term ''Greco-Roman world'' describes those regions who were for many generations subjected to the government of the Greeks and then the Romans and thus accepted or at length were forced to embrace them as their masters and teachers. This process was aided by the seemingly universal adoption of [[Greek language|Greek]] as the language of intellectual culture and at least Eastern commerce, and of [[Latin]] as the tongue for public management and forensic advocacy, especially in the West (from the perspective of the Mediterranean Sea). Though these languages never became the native idioms of the rural peasants, the great majority of the population, they were the languages of the urbanites and at the very least intelligible, often as corrupt or multifarious dialects, to those who lived outside of the Macedonian settlements and the Roman colonies. Certainly, all men of note and accomplishment, whatever their ethnic extractions, spoke and wrote in Greek and Latin. Thus, the celebrated Roman jurist and Imperial chancellor [[Ulpian]] was Phoenician, the Greco-Egyptian mathematician and geographer [[Claudius Ptolemy]] was a Roman citizen and the famous Christian expounders [[John Chrysostom]] and [[Augustine of Hippo|Augustine]] were pure [[Demographics of Syria|Syrian]] and [[Berber people|Berber]] respectively. The eminent and learned Jewish historian [[Josephus Flavius]] was a Jew by religion, wrote and spoke in Greek and was a Roman citizen. | + | |
| - | Properly speaking, the term "Greco-Roman World" signifies the entire realm from the [[Atlas Mountains]] to the [[Caucasus]], from northernmost [[Roman Britain|Britain]] to the [[Hejaz]], from the [[Atlantic coast]] of [[Iberian Peninsula|Iberia]] to the Upper Tigris River and from the point at which the [[Rhine]] enters the [[North Sea]] to the northern [[Sudan]]. The Black Sea basin, particularly the renowned country of [[Dacia]] or [[Romania]], the ''Tauric Chersonesus'' or the [[Crimea]], and the Caucasic kingdoms which straddle both the Black and [[Caspian Sea]]s are deemed to comprehend this definition as well. As the Greek Kingdoms of Western Asia successively fell before the reputedly invincible arms of Rome, and then were gradually incorporated into the universal empire of the [[Caesar (title)|Caesars]], the diffusion of Greek political and social culture and that of Roman "law and liberty" converted these areas into parts of the Greco-Roman World. | + | |
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| - | ==Cores of the Greco-Roman world== | + | |
| - | Based on the above definition, it can be confidently asserted that the "cores" of the Greco-Roman world were [[Italy]], [[Greece]], [[Asia Minor]], [[Syria]], [[Egypt]] and [[Africa]] Proper ([[Tunisia]] and [[Libya]]). Occupying the periphery of this world were "Roman Germany" (the Alpine countries and the so-called [[Agri Decumates]], the territory between the [[Main]], the Rhine and the [[Danube]]), [[Illyria]] and [[Pannonia]] (the former [[Yugoslavia]] and [[Hungary]]), [[Moesia]] (roughly corresponds to modern [[Bulgaria]]), Dacia (roughly corresponds to modern Romania), [[Nubia]] (roughly corresponds to modern northern [[Sudan]]), [[Mauretania]] (modern [[Morocco]] and western [[Algeria]]), [[Arabia Petraea]] (the Hejaz and [[Jordan]], with modern Egypt's [[Sinai Peninsula]]), Mesopotamia (northern [[Iraq]] and Syria beyond the [[Euphrates]]), the Tauric Chersonesus (modern [[Crimea]] in the [[Ukraine]]), Armenia and the suppliant kingdoms which swathed the Caucasus Mountains, namely Colchis, and the Asiatic Albania and Iberia. | + | |
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| - | ==Greco-Roman Culture== | + | |
| - | In the schools of [[art]], [[philosophy]] and [[rhetoric]], the foundations of [[education]] were transmitted throughout the lands of Greek and Roman rule. Within its educated class, spanning all of the "Greco-Roman" era, the testimony of literary borrowings and influences is overwhelming proof of a mantle of mutual knowledge. For example, several hundred [[papyrus]] volumes found in a Roman villa at [[Herculaneum]] are in Greek. From the lives of [[Cicero]] and [[Julius Caesar]], it is known that Romans frequented the schools in Greece. The installation both in [[Greek language|Greek]] and [[Latin]] of [[Augustus]]' monumental eulogy, the [[Res Gestae Divi Augusti|Res Gestae]], is a proof of official recognition for the dual vehicles of the common culture. The familiarity of figures from Roman legend and history in the "[[Parallel Lives]]" composed by [[Plutarch]] is one example of the extent to which "[[universal history]]" was then synonymous with the accomplishments of famous Latins and [[Names of the Greeks|Hellenes]]. Most educated Romans were likely bilingual in Greek and Latin. | + | |
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| - | ==Politics== | + | |
| - | Rome became the superpower of its age in the political and legal spheres, and by its military might, the enormous Roman state created an enduring amalgam of disparate peoples and bestowed relative peace and prosperity on those. | + | |
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| - | Caesar plundered and enslaved without apology. However, he also invited many [[Gaul|Gallic]] leaders to join him in Rome as members of the [[Roman Senate]]. The requirements of manpower in arms meant that citizenship was extended to non-Romans who served in Roman legions. By 211 AD, with [[Caracalla]]'s edict known as the ''[[Constitutio Antoniniana]]'', the general populace came into citizenship. As a result, even after the [[Decline of the Roman Empire|city of Rome fell]], the people of what [[Byzantine Empire|remained of the empire]] (referred to by many historians as the [[Byzantine Empire]]) continued to call themselves Romans ("Romaioi" in the Greek language which eventually became the empire's official language). | + | |
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| - | The imperial Roman state was a vast social experiment in hybridization. Imperial Rome is identified with the cultural legacy of its forebears; it sustained that tradition without innovation, until Constantine broke away from the attenuated [[religion]] of the Greco-Roman past and transformed Rome's cultural matrix by embracing [[Christianity]], which was the faith of a persecuted minority. The life of [[Constantine I|Constantine]] is arguably a better terminus of the Greco-Roman age than any other; it may equally be considered as the herald of the [[Middle Ages]]. | + | |
| + | His ''Life of Alexander'' is one of the five surviving [[secondary source|secondary]] or [[tertiary sources|tertiary sources]] about [[Alexander the Great]] and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of [[Numa Pompilius]], an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early [[Roman calendar]]. | ||
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Revision as of 20:44, 20 June 2009
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Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving Parallel Lives (in Greek: Bioi parallèloi), as they are more properly and commonly known, contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals biographized, but also about the times in which they lived.
As he explains in the first paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character—good or bad—on the lives and destinies of famous men. The first pair of Lives—the Epaminondas-Scipio Africanus—no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers.
His Life of Alexander is one of the five surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Parallel Lives" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
