Description

The vast and varied work of Plutarch naturally allows an approach from different perspectives, with a variety of intentions and plural purposes. However, it is also important to identify common lines of approach, because they demonstrate, both formally and in terms of content, that there are many customary elements underlying his work. The thirteen contributions to this volume are linked by the names of three cities: Sparta, Athens and Rome. They represent diverse political and institutional spaces because of their geographical extension and chronology, and they symbolize as well different models of social organization through which Greece can be contrasted with Rome, or Athens compared to Sparta — but perhaps their most interesting feature in Plutarch's work is that they are paradigmatic places where men live and coexist together. Therefore, the Plutarchists who contributed to this volume analyze for each of these cities, by assimilation or contrast, the way the author from Chaeronea envisages the connection between individual and community as reflected in the exercise of power and the living of religious experiences; the role played by education and private affairs in the public image of Plutarch’s protagonists; or the extent to which the image of the first lawgivers and mythical founders was conditioned by the historical development of these cities.