Plutarch was born around 46 CE at Chaeronea in Boeotia, the town where Philip of Macedon defeated the Greeks in 338 BCE and Sulla defeated Mithridates' allies in 86 BCE. The place gave him a lifelong attachment to Greek history and a sense that great events passed through ordinary landscapes. His father, Autobulus, and his grandfather, Lamprias, appear in his works. His brothers Timon and Lamprias recur in the Table Talk and the dialogues. The family belonged to the local elite, with the wealth and leisure necessary for education, travel and public service.

He studied in Athens with the Platonist teacher Ammonius. Athens gave him the philosophical language and literary models that shape the Moralia: Plato, Aristotle, the Stoa, Epicurus, the sceptical Academy and the long tradition of Greek dialogue. Plutarch remained a Platonist, but not a dogmatic one. He read poetry, history, rhetoric and natural philosophy and used philosophical schools as conversation partners rather than enemies.

He travelled to Rome, probably more than once, and lectured there. He describes the difficulties of teaching and writing in Rome, where audiences were often pressed for time. His Roman friends included Quintus Sosius Senecio, consul under Trajan and dedicatee of the Parallel Lives, as well as other senators and equestrians. Through Lucius Mestrius Florus, a Roman notable under Vespasian, Plutarch received Roman citizenship and took the name Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus. Later tradition inflated his imperial honours, claiming that Trajan made him a procurator and Hadrian appointed him to govern Achaea. Those claims are doubtful, but the inscriptions at Delphi and Chaeronea confirm his local and religious offices.

He married Timoxena and mentions their children in the Consolation to My Wife. Their young daughter Timoxena died before she was three, and the essay responds to the mother's grief by balancing parental affection with philosophical endurance. Another son, Chaeron, died young. His sons Autobulos and Plutarch appear in dialogues, while the identification of a third adult son, Soclaros, remains probable rather than certain. The family life behind the Moralia was real, though Plutarch presents it through literary forms.

He held civic office in Chaeronea, served as an ambassador and taught locally. From approximately 95 CE he held a lifelong priesthood at Delphi, where Apollo's oracle remained a living religious institution. He participated in the intellectual life of the sanctuary, wrote dialogues set there and took part in the rebuilding of its monuments. A bust found at Delphi and traditionally identified as Plutarch shows a bearded, thoughtful man. Inscriptions honour him and members of his family.

He died after 119 CE. The exact date and cause are unknown. Later biographies tell improving stories, but the secure terminus comes from works and inscriptions belonging to the end of Trajan's reign or the beginning of Hadrian's. His descendants continued in Greek literary and philosophical life, and Apuleius' Golden Ass gives its hero a fictional family connection to Plutarch.

The largest body of his work is now called the Moralia. The title is misleading because it suggests a single collection devoted to ethics. In fact, the name arose from a medieval manuscript containing eleven ethical works. Editors later added the rest of Plutarch's surviving essays, dialogues and treatises, retaining the title Moralia even though the collection includes metaphysics, psychology, natural philosophy, religion, rhetoric, music, politics and literary criticism. The works are Plutarch's, but the Moralia is an editorial corpus, not a title he gave to one book.

The Moralia begins with works on education and young people: The Education of Children, How the Young Man Should Study Poetry, On Listening to Lectures, How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend and How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue. The first work's attribution has been questioned because it may be a later Plutarchian treatise, but its place in the corpus reflects the school tradition around him. Plutarch teaches that literature must be read morally, that friendship requires discrimination, that progress in virtue can be measured and that young men should learn to listen before they speak.

His practical ethics include How to Profit by One's Enemies, On Having Many Friends, On Chance, On Virtue and Vice, Consolation to Apollonius, Advice about Keeping Well, Advice to Bride and Groom, The Dinner of the Seven Sages and On Superstition. These works move between household advice and philosophical reflection. A man can learn from enemies, friends must be few enough to be real, health requires moderation, marriage is a partnership and superstition is worse than atheism because it invents terror where reason sees none.

A group of works preserves sayings and examples: Sayings of Kings and Commanders, Sayings of the Romans, Sayings of Spartans, Ancient Customs of the Spartans, Sayings of Spartan Women and The Bravery of Women. These texts belong to the tradition of moral exempla and preserve material about women as well as men. Plutarch's interest in female courage and speech expands the conventional field of Greek moral history.

His antiquarian works include Roman Questions, Greek Questions, Greek and Roman Parallel Stories, On the Fortune of the Romans, On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander and Whether the Athenians Were More Famous in War or in Wisdom. These treatises compare customs, stories and institutions. Plutarch asks why Romans do certain things, what Greek stories lie behind Roman practices and whether Alexander succeeded through fortune or virtue. The works belong to the same comparative impulse that drives the Parallel Lives.

His religious and Delphic works are among the most important: On Isis and Osiris, The E at Delphi, Why the Pythia No Longer Prophesies in Verse, On the Decline of the Oracles and On the Delay of Divine Vengeance. On Isis and Osiris interprets Egyptian religion through Greek philosophy and comparative mythology. The Delphic works take the form of dialogues among learned men at the oracle. They discuss divine providence, the meaning of Apollo's symbols, the change in oracular language and the relationship between ancient wisdom and contemporary religious practice.

His ethical treatises continue with Can Virtue Be Taught?, On Moral Virtue, On the Control of Anger, On Tranquillity of Mind, On Brotherly Love, On Affection for Offspring, Whether Vice Is Sufficient to Cause Unhappiness, Whether the Affections of the Soul Are Worse than Those of the Body, On Talkativeness and On Being a Busybody. These works analyse the passions and social behaviour with a mixture of anecdote, philosophical argument and practical advice. Anger, gossip, curiosity, envy, talkativeness and family discord become subjects for philosophical medicine.

Further works treat wealth and reputation: On the Love of Wealth, On Compliancy, On Envy and Hate, On Inoffensive Self-Praise, On the Delays of Divine Vengeance, On Fate, On the Sign of Socrates, On Exile and the Consolation to His Wife. The Sign of Socrates is a dialogue about divine guidance and the daimonion. On Exile transforms political displacement into philosophical freedom. The Consolation joins private grief to arguments about mortality.

The Table Talk, or Symposiacs, fills nine books. It records learned conversations at dinner parties in Chaeronea, Delphi and elsewhere. The participants discuss why some meats are more filling than others, whether the host or the guests should choose the order of courses, why Plato said god geometrises always, whether the sea or land animals are cleverer and hundreds of other questions. The work preserves social ritual, natural speculation, literary quotation and the atmosphere of Plutarch's circle.

The love stories and political treatises include Love Stories, That a Philosopher Ought to Converse Especially with Men in Power, To an Uneducated Ruler, Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs, Precepts of Statecraft and On Monarchy, Democracy and Oligarchy. Plutarch does not withdraw from politics into pure contemplation. He advises rulers, teachers and statesmen on how philosophy can discipline power. Politics is ethical action practised in public.

His literary and historical criticism includes the Lives of the Ten Orators, a Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander and On the Malice of Herodotus. The Lives of the Ten Orators is now generally considered pseudo-Plutarchian rather than authentic. The comparison of Aristophanes and Menander asks which comic poet is more useful for education and public life. The attack on Herodotus accuses him of malice toward Thebes, Corinth and other cities. Modern readers find the essay unfair but valuable as evidence of ancient debate over historical method.

The natural philosophy of the Moralia includes Natural Causes, On the Face in the Orb of the Moon, On the Principle of Cold, Whether Fire or Water Is More Useful, Whether Land or Sea Animals Are Cleverer, Beasts Are Rational, On the Eating of Flesh and a dialogue between Odysseus and Gryllus, one of Circe's transformed companions. These works combine Platonist metaphysics, Aristotelian observation, Stoic debate and literary myth. The Face in the Moon discusses the moon's appearance, the possibility of lunar landscapes and the relationship between the earth and the heavens. The dialogue on animals asks whether creatures possess reason and challenges human arrogance.

The philosophical polemics include Platonic Questions, On the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus, On Stoic Self-Contradictions, That the Stoics Talk More Paradoxically than the Poets, Against the Stoics on Common Conceptions, That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible, Reply to Colotes, Is Life Unknown a Wise Precept? and On Music. Plutarch defends Plato against Stoic and Epicurean criticism, attacks inconsistencies in rival schools and argues that pleasure without virtue cannot produce happiness. His philosophy is combative, generous and literary rather than systematic.

Not every item in the Moralia is authentic. The Education of Children and Lives of the Ten Orators are widely treated as pseudo-Plutarchian. Some other works may have been written by followers, students or later imitators. The Moralia is a corpus of surviving Plutarchica, not a uniform collection in which every title has equal authority. Modern editions and translations must distinguish Plutarch's secure works from the pseudo-Plutarchian tradition.

The Parallel Lives form the other half of his reputation. The complete surviving corpus contains forty-six individual lives in twenty-one ordinary pairs, plus the double set in which Agis and Cleomenes are compared with the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. The lost opening pair of Epaminondas and Scipio would have made forty-eight lives in the parallel project. Four single Lives also survive: Artaxerxes, Aratus, Galba and Otho. Aratus and Artaxerxes lie outside the paired series; Galba and Otho belong to Plutarch's separate Lives of the Roman emperors.

The surviving paired lives are Theseus and Romulus, Lycurgus and Numa, Solon and Publicola, Themistocles and Camillus, Pericles and Fabius Maximus, Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Timoleon and Aemilius Paullus, Pelopidas and Marcellus, Aristides and Cato the Elder, Philopoemen and Titus Quinctius Flamininus, Pyrrhus and Marius, Lysander and Sulla, Cimon and Lucullus, Nicias and Crassus, Eumenes and Sertorius, Agesilaus and Pompey, Alexander and Julius Caesar, Phocion and Cato the Younger, Agis and Cleomenes with the Gracchi, Demosthenes and Cicero, Demetrius and Antony, and Dion and Brutus.

Plutarch's method is explicit. In the Life of Alexander he says that he writes not histories but lives. A battle in which thousands die may reveal less about character than a word, a gesture, a joke or a private decision. The biographer is a painter of the soul. He selects details that illuminate virtue and vice, then arranges them into a coherent portrait. The goal is not exhaustive chronology but ethical insight.

Each paired Life normally presents the Greek subject first, then the Roman, followed by a formal comparison. Not all comparisons survive. Plutarch sometimes reverses the expected order, digresses into another life or leaves the pairing loose. The present manuscript order is not necessarily the order of composition. He wrote Lives over many years, beginning with the imperial Lives and turning to the parallel project later in life. The dedicatee Sosius Senecio appears in Demosthenes, Theseus and Dion.

The Lives draw on a vast library. Plutarch read Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Theopompus, Ephorus, Polybius, Livy, Sallust and countless local histories, memoirs, letters and inscriptions. His citations are often general rather than precise. He sometimes repeats stories he doubts, sometimes corrects earlier writers and sometimes combines incompatible traditions without noticing the contradiction. His facts must be checked against other sources, but his evidence remains indispensable.

The Life of Alexander is not a history of Alexander's campaigns. It follows the formation of his character from childhood through tutelage under Aristotle, his ambition, self-control, temper, clemency, violence and transformation after conquest. The Life of Caesar gives a portrait of political genius, ambition, clemency and the fatal crossing of the Rubicon. The Life of Demosthenes compares the Athenian orator with Cicero and asks whether political eloquence can preserve freedom. The Life of Antony is the great source for Antony and Cleopatra, combining Roman politics with erotic tragedy.

The Lives of Heracles, Epaminondas, Scipio, Philip II of Macedon and many others are lost. The Life of Heracles may have opened the parallel series, but even its position is uncertain. The Life of Scipio, paired with Epaminondas, is known only through references. The Lives of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Vitellius survive only in Galba and Otho and in fragments of Tiberius and Nero. The lost Lives of Hesiod, Pindar, Crates, Daiphantus and others would have enlarged Plutarch's treatment of Greek literary and civic culture.

The Lamprias catalogue lists two hundred and twenty-seven titles. It survives in a mutilated form, omits some works we possess, includes doubtful works and cannot be treated as an accurate inventory. The attribution of the catalogue to Plutarch's son Lamprias is itself uncertain; Plutarch mentions a brother named Lamprias, not a son. The catalogue is an ancient attempt to organise an enormous oeuvre, not a reliable publication record.

Plutarch's philosophy belongs to Middle Platonism. He defends Plato, attacks Stoic and Epicurean rivals, interprets myth allegorically and believes in divine providence, prophecy and moral responsibility. His ethics focus on character rather than abstract systems. Virtue must be practised in friendship, marriage, household management, politics and ritual. Vice is not merely intellectual error but a disorder of desire. The passions can be educated but not ignored.

His religion joins Greek philosophy to cult practice. At Delphi he does not treat Apollo as a dead poetic symbol. He asks why the oracle changed from verse to prose, how divine inspiration works and what the sanctuary's traditions mean. In On Isis and Osiris he compares Egyptian myths with Greek philosophy. His gods are not simple metaphors, but neither are they crude anthropomorphic beings. They occupy the space between philosophy and cult.

His style is conversational, anecdotal and humane. He prefers dialogue to treatise, example to definition and character sketch to systematic argument. He quotes poetry constantly, tells stories about Spartans, Romans, philosophers and athletes and moves easily between private life and public action. The table, the schoolroom, the temple, the battlefield and the home all belong to his philosophy.

His limitations are clear. He repeats anecdotes whose improbability he recognises. He can be careless with numbers and chronology. His moral purpose sometimes distorts historical proportion. He compares Greeks and Romans in ways that reflect the cultural politics of the Roman Empire rather than neutral analysis. His attitudes toward women, foreigners, animals and non-Greek cultures belong to his time. None of these limitations cancels the value of the evidence he preserves.

Ancient reception began with his family, students and local honours. Apuleius' Golden Ass makes its hero a descendant of Plutarch. The Suda preserves the Lamprias tradition. Byzantine scholars copied and excerpted the Lives and Moralia. Manuel Tzycandyles and Maximus Planudes helped preserve Plutarch for the Greek-reading world. His Lives became one of the ancient works most widely read in the Middle Ages.

The Renaissance transformed his influence. A Latin translation of the Lives circulated around 1470. Jacques Amyot's French translation of 1559 made Plutarch a European classic. Thomas North's English translation of 1579, based on Amyot, became Shakespeare's principal source for Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. John Dryden's later English translation became the standard literary version, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough in the 19th century.

Montaigne absorbed Plutarch into the modern essay. Rousseau read him as a moral teacher. Emerson admired his range and humanity. American statesmen studied the Lives as a school of political character. Nietzsche, despite criticising Plutarch's moralising, acknowledged his narrative power. Modern biographers still quote his claim that a small action may reveal more than a great battle.

His works survive through a strong but uneven manuscript tradition. The Lives circulated widely because they were copied as history, rhetoric and moral instruction. The Moralia survived in numerous manuscripts containing groups of essays, dialogues and treatises. Maximus Planudes edited portions of the Moralia. Modern editions by Xylander, Stephanus, Wyttenbach, Reiske, Sintenis, Bernardakis and the Loeb editors gradually established the text. New critical editions and translations continue to reassess attribution and chronology.

The most accurate summary of his works is vast but divisible. Plutarch's surviving corpus consists of the Lives and the Moralia. The surviving Lives include forty-six paired biographies, the Agis-Cleomenes and Gracchi set, and four single Lives. His lost Lives include the imperial biographies and the opening Epaminondas-Scipio pair. The Moralia contains roughly seventy-eight surviving essays and dialogues, with several items of disputed authorship. The Lamprias catalogue attributes 227 works to him, but it is incomplete and not wholly reliable. Plutarch did not write two neat books called Lives and Moralia; modern readers inherit an enormous body of biographies, essays, dialogues, polemics, antiquarian inquiries and religious works.