Plutarch
Plutarch of Chaeronea, a priest at Delphi and master of moral biography, wrote the Parallel Lives that set figures like Pericles beside Roman counterparts. Writing five centuries after the Athenian plague, he reworked Thucydides’ stark chronicle into character portraits that influenced European thought for millennia. In this timeline, Plutarch is the after-voice: the interpreter who preserved tales of Pericles’ fines, family grief, and steady leadership amid pestilence, giving later readers a human frame through which to weigh Athens’ wall-bound strategy against its invisible enemy.
Biography
Plutarch was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia around 46 CE, long after the Peloponnesian War had ended but near enough to its sites to feel their presence. He studied philosophy and rhetoric in Athens and later served as a priest of Apollo at Delphi. Traveling to Rome and mingling with senators, he wrote in Greek for an empire-wide audience. His Parallel Lives paired Greek and Roman statesmen—Pericles with Fabius Maximus, for example—using history as a mirror for morals. In his Moralia, essays range from Platonic musings to practical ethics; in both, the human character at the center of events mattered most.
Plutarch's Timeline
Key events involving Plutarch in chronological order
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