Plutarch also wrote one of the first hatchet-jobs in all of literature.
Izaak Walton, better known now as the author of The Compleat Angler (1653), wrote his own Lives in the 1670s, in imitation of Plutarch.ĥ. But Plutarch’s influenced extended to writers like Rabelais (who quotes a good deal from him) as well as Renaissance essayists like Montaigne and Francis Bacon. Indeed, the Bard (who encountered Plutarch in a translation by the English writer Thomas North) even plundered whole lines from Plutarch’s Lives for his play Antony and Cleopatra. His writings influenced a host of English dramatists, including Shakespeare. (In total, he is estimated to have written over 200 works.)Ĥ. But Plutarch was there first: he wrote some 60 essays on a range of topics, including religion and literature. As a literary form, the essay would not really come into its own until around 1,500 years later, during the Renaissance.
He would also prove to be a trailblazer in the field of history, and have a considerable influence on the genre of the essay. His Greek Lives and Roman Lives (of which there are two very good selections by Oxford World’s Classics) show the individual personalities of the great statesmen and cultural figures he discusses, their quirks and foibles, their eccentricities.ģ. And this is why we at Interesting Literature admire Plutarch so much: he saw the importance of trivia, and the fact that it isn’t always as trivial as it might first appear. Plutarch loves to home in on an individual story that sheds some light on his subject – an anecdote, a moral tale, a quirk or distinctive character trait. As well as being a serious biographer, though, he was also something of a gossip.
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