Greek biographer and moralist whose Parallel Lives and Moralia shaped European ethics and political imagination. He wrote as a moral psychologist, reading character through anecdote, habit, and civic action rather than through abstract theory alone.
Read by Emerson (see Emerson's Reading), Thoreau (see Thoreau's Reading & Library) & Alcott (see Alcott's Library)
2 titles in the Cabinet
Full title: Plutarch's Lives
The Dial's edition: London, 1821
A multi-volume English edition of Plutarch's paired biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen, designed to illuminate character and public virtue by comparison, and supplied here with critical/historical notes plus 'a new life of Plutarch.' Translated by John Langhorne and William Langhorne.
Read by Thoreau (see Thoreau's Library) & Alcott (see Alcott's Library)
Full title: Plutarch's Morals
The Dial's edition: London, 1694
A five-volume collection of Plutarch's Moralia—the essays, dialogues, and occasional pieces traditionally gathered under 'Morals,' i.e., everything except the Lives—ranging across ethics, religion, education, politics, and practical moral psychology.
Read by Emerson (see Emerson's Library) & Alcott (see Alcott's Library)
