Plutarch's The Life of Crassus and Caesar
Plutarch presented history through biographical stories of the people that were important and influential during the time period he wished to address. However, after having read some of his work, one realizes that Plutarch inserts his own personal opinion and views of the people at hand into the factual documentation of their lives. For example, in The Life of Crassus, Plutarch expresses a general dislike and negative view of the man, but in The Life of Caesar he portrays the life through a lens of praise. It also seems that he uses his opinions of the people that he writes about to subtly extend moral lessons to the reader. What follows is a further isolation of Plutarch's opinions and lessons from within The Lives of Crassus and Caesar.
"Certainly the Romans say that in the case of Crassus many virtues were obscured by one vice, namely avarice; and it did seem that he had only one vice, since it was such a predominant one that other evil propensities which he may have had were scarcely noticeable." Beginning the Life of Crassus with this statement, Plutarch starts the reader off with a negative feeling of who Crassus was. This statement is very strong because it not only points out Crassus's largest shortcoming, but also implies that it was so prevalent that it outweighed all his virtues as well as his other faults. One can read between the lines and in order to see that Plutarch did not favor Crassus. If Plutarch had wanted to, he could have conveyed the same information about Crassus's faults in a much gentler manner. He wants the reader to see how horrible greed is and that it has the ability to destroy people no matter how wonderful their other characteristics may be....
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...m in his life, even after his death remained active as an avenger of his murder, pursuing and tracking down the murderers over every land and sea…"
After reading the Life of Crassus and the Life of Caesar carefully, Plutarch's opinion of these men, and the messages to the reader are plainly seen. He had very contrasting views of Crassus and Caesar, holding one as a model and the other as a negative example. Granted Crassus did have his positive points, but his greed consumed and destroyed him, exemplifying how Plutarch though people should not be. Caesar through moderation, skill, and popularity was able to rise to the top of Rome, personifying Plutarch's vision of what a ruler and person should be.
Bibliography:
Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic: Six lives by Plutarch, Translated by Rex Warner (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1972)
Sulla’s earlier career had not been that of an orthodox Optimate. Though he belonged to an old patrician family, it had long slid into obscurity and poverty. Plutarch suggests that a legacy from his step-mother and another from a mistress helped him, somewhat late, to a public career (Plutarch, p. 327). Plutarch was a Greek historian who wrote more than a century after Sulla’s death. Some of his pieces are polemical, that is, his writings possibly arise from scurrilous tracts, written by political adversaries of his subjects. As Marius’ quaestor, he had captured Jugurtha and won the loyalty of his fellow soldiers, sparking a later brutal animosity between the pair. This talent for winning the loyalty of soldiers never deserted Sulla, and that fact would have terrible consequences for Rome (Williams, p.139).
Plutarch paired Theseus and Romulus because they were both men of divine ancestry that showed bravery and did whatever it took for their cities to grow. They both had their flaws, like Romulus ruling as king and killing his brother, while Theseus had trouble with kidnapping women that kept him away from governing Athens properly. From the readings, there are no clear passages of favoritism by Plutarch because no man was really better than the other. They were just men who went from being bastard children to legends in ancient history.
The drive for excellence, in all areas of life, such as honesty was prevalent in both Brutus and Creon. Based upon the fact that each was open with the citizens in their cities and the way they dictated their decisions. When Brutus comes to the people with the body of Caesar he never claims innocence, but asks the plebeians if he has offended anyone. The law that Creon provides for his people is straightforward; do not disturb the body of Polyneices. The citizens of each play were torn between accepting the truth of what each man offers to the country and justice for murder.
Julius Caesar, even though he is considered great, turns out to contain many flaws. He believes himself to be untouchable, and has a confidence that he cannot be harmed, even though that is not the case. He says so when he says, “Caesar shall forth. The things that threatened me ne’er looked but on ...
His character traits are listed in three main accounts by authors A.J. Koutsoukis, Erik Hildinger, who are both current impartial historical non-fiction writers and, Plutarch. Plutarch was a Greek historian, biographer and essayist, who is most famous for his work Parallel Lives, where he focuses on all of the contributing rulers of the Roman Republic. Plutarch is very even handed and focuses on the influence of character and moral lessons that can be learned from these emperors, good or bad.
The Roman Republic (Res Pvblica Romana) was a form of republican government that was established in 509 BCE to replace the monarchy government that had reigned over Rome since the founding in 753BCE (Steele, 2012). The Failure of the Roman Republic was inevitable as it was an unjust system of government and it was left vulnerable after the attempted changes instigated by the Gracchi, as the Gracchi exposed the weaknesses in the political structure allowing future politicians to manipulate the system. The sources used throughout the essay, which include Plutarch, Appian, Florus and Velleius, will need to be examined closely as each source will demonstrate different views on the Gracchi, as the authors purpose of writing will differ. The Gracchi had set out to change Rome for the better, however in the process; they exposed the internal flaws of the government which resulted in the beginning of the decline of the Roman Republic.
...for success, he robs his audience of the right to make certain determinations about characters such as Tarquin Superbus and Romulus because of his bias toward the motivation behind their actions. Livy’s The Rise of Rome was a grand effort and an amazing undertaking. Cataloguing the years of Roman history consolidated rumor and legend into fact, creating a model for Rome to follow. Livy’s only error in this vast undertaking was in imprinting his own conception of morality and justice onto his work, an error that pulls the reader away from active thought and engaging debate. In doing so, Livy may have helped solidify a better Rome, but it would have been a Rome with less of a conception of why certain things are just, and more of a flat, basely concluded concept of justice.
3)Gwynn, David M. The Roman Republic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.
Scarre, Christopher. Chronicle of the Roman Emperors: The Reign-by-reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Rome. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995. Print.
Caesar and Brutus were truly noble people. Caesar was a dignified and courageous man. He gained his power through hard work and courage. However, Caesar was marked by a weakness: he wanted too much power. This weakness proved to be fatal in the play. Brutus, on the other hand, was a strong leader throughout the whole play. People listened to him easily and he showed his nobility by always being open to others. Despite his good character, he did make one fatal mistake in judgment. He killed Caesar thinking he would gain too much power, yet it was truly his friend Cassius’s jealously of Caesar that truly snared him into the conspiracy.
Sosius Senecio who was a consular , which could mean that people who had an education and were of a higher status were to read his work. Since people who were in the higher levels of government would be reading his piece Plutarch would need to ensure that he wrote in a way that wouldn’t offend who was reading it. He was educated and studied in Athens , which may have helped him with his writing career. An issue that arises from Plutarch’s written piece is that Sulla lived around 138-78 BCE . This means that when Plutarch wrote The Life of Sulla, Sulla had been dead for several decades. This creates problems regarding his piece because the information that Plutarch used from other writers could be incorrect or over exaggerated to make things more interesting. Another issue is that Plutarch’s style of writing was to include himself in the story as though he were present during the events this creates more problems because some of the things that Plutarch wrote sounded very vivid. For example, when people were being slaughtered in Cerameicus Plutarch describes it with great detail as a horrible blood bath . This is an issue because he was not there when the event occurred and could have made up how the events transpired and looked that day. Plutarch also includes specific numbers throughout the text. For example, when Sulla’s army went to battle, Plutarch listed how many men had been lost in battle, he said that Sulla lost 23 men and killed twenty thousand of the enemy . It is skeptical to believe these numbers are correct because how were they able to keep track of how many were slain since the battle had occurred several decades beforehand. These problems mean that the information that we are reading today could be incorrect and can be misconstrued. We could be portraying people who lived centuries before us as someone completely
To begin with, Appian and Plutarch had altered motivation to write their accounts. As historian, Appian was more likely to apprise what was actually occur in the Roman history. He covered the background of the agrarian controversy in 133 BC (Appian, Civil Wars ex. 7) and the troubles behind law construction in tribunes’ voting along the report. It is also important to highlight that the subjects of his writing were varied, including the citizen of Roman, Tiberius Gracchus and Marcus Octavius. From this fact, while Appian knew everything about all characters, the readers can conclude that Appian used third person omniscient viewpoint to describe the characters. Meanwhile, in the case of his job to break down someone life, Plutarch was more concerned
The ambition possessed by each character, leads Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius to power. It will be the same ambition, that quest for power, that makes each one susceptible to their own weakness. For Caesar, it will be his ego and inability to heed warnings, Brutus his love of Rome, and Cassius his dedication to power. These qualities prove that although intentions may be noble, ambition can make a person ruthless and blind them to their original goals. Ambition kills those who lose sight of their conscience and although it may prove beneficial in many instances, in this case, it leads the characters to lose all that they
Brutus’ tragic flaw was his perception that all men were identical to him in their motives. This factored allowed his decisions to be easily influenced by others whose motives were devious. Cassius was able to convince Brutus to join the conspiracy because Brutus thought the only reason behind the conspiracy was to prevent one man from becoming “Rex.” He allowed Antony’s speech to occur because he was sure that Antony was motivated by the same “honor” which motivated himself.
Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes [c. 100 C.E.]. Trans. Sir Thomas North (1579). Ed. Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. V. Columbia UP, 1964.