Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans (Modern Library Series, Vol. 1) [Hardcover]

Plutarch (Author), Arthur Hugh Clough (Editor), John Dryden (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Modern Library | Publication Date: September 5, 1992

Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the second century A.D., is a brilliant social history of the ancient world by one of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In what is by far his most famous and influential work, Plutarch reveals the character and personality of his subjects and how they led ultimately to tragedy or victory. Richly anecdotal and full of detail, Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus and Theseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many more powerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome.

The present translation, originally published in 1683 in conjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in 1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes and preface are also included in this edition.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A Bible for heroes."


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Latin

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 800 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library (September 5, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679600086
• ISBN-13: 978-0679600084
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #742,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Plutarch enlightens as well as informs., June 25, 2000

By 

Lance Kirby (Portsmouth, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans (Modern Library Series, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)

As well as being a great historian Plutarch was a philosopher who used the examples of good and infamous men alike to reinforce his conception of morality and what the best in a man can truly be. Unlike other classical historians, he doesn't just accept stories about individuals at face value but always mentions conflicting facts in the historical record. He often digresses in mid narrative, but never to the reader's frustration, as it is always with an eye to the social practice's and political environment of the people of whom he writes, analyzing deeply with an anecdote here or an quotation there the merits and demerits of that society, and leaving us with a clearer picture of the classical mind-set as well as we might know it. As for the translation of Dryden which my fellow reviewer below much bemoans, I can only say that as a classic of English prose style it ranks only second to Gibbon and reminds us that Plutarch means not just to educate, but to delight and entertain as well; such an achievement is not easily matched without the advantage of genius.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for Western culture, March 13, 2001

By 

Donald Steiny (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans (Modern Library Series, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)

These writings are 100% essential to have as a basis for understanding Western civilization. The description of Sparta here is the benchmark. Understanding the modern issues of culture and development can be made much richer by reading the laws of Solon (who laid down the groundwork for Democracy) and Lycurgus (Sparta - the ultimate egalitarian state) you can see the seeds of a dichotomy that has lived to this day.

This two volume set contains the lives of many of the people that you hear about again and again. If you plan to study the classics and read Plato, the Histories or other of the great books, these books are a perfect companion. Instead of reading them straight through, you can read about people as you come across them.

With much soul searching I gave the books 4 stars instead of 5. The reason for this is that the translations are challenging. They are not terrible and they are better than other tranlations I have seen, but they have endless sentences and word choices that are not common in modern American English. If you are into personal growth, this may not be a bad thing, because you can look up the words and expand your vocabulary, but it does make it somewhat more slow going than it could be.

36 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A rough read, December 12, 2001

By 

El Cholo Invisivel (Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans (Modern Library Series, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)

Plutarch's Lives is one of my all time favorite books. I especially enjoy the "gay windows" in Alcibiades life and the description of Archimedes defense of Syracuse. My three star rating has nothing to do with Plutarch and everything to do with the terribly outdated translation "update" by Sir Clough. Sure, as another reviewer points out, it is vocabulary enhancing, but Plutarch was not a Victorian English gentleman. If you like Victorian prose, read a Victorian novel or something. I would actually prefer to read Dryden and company's undoctored original than wade through Clough's train wreck, as I find 18th century prose an easier read, and Dryden was a better writer.

If someone were to do a modern translation of the Lives, more people would be able to enjoy it. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that you can probably count the number of good classical translators on one hand, and how many of them have the time to translate Plutarch?