Happy Sunday everyone thanks to be here on Alessandro III di Macedonia- Alexander the Great and Hellenism, I’m Elena and here’s an announcement of a new publication that will be of interest to some of you!
The Cambridge Companion to Plutarch
by Frances B. Titchener and Alexei V. Zadorojnyi (Editors)
Cambridge University Press, 2023
Paperback edition!
Plutarch is one of the most prolific and important writers from antiquity. His Parallel Lives continue to be an invaluable historical source, and the numerous essays in his Moralia, covering everything from marriage to the Delphic Oracle, are crucial evidence for ancient philosophy and cultural history. This volume provides an engaging introduction to all aspects of his work, including his method and purpose in writing the Lives, his attitudes toward daily life and intimate relations, his thoughts on citizenship and government, his relationship to Plato and the second Sophistic, and his conception of foreign or ‘other’. Attention is also paid to his style and rhetoric. Plutarch’s works have also been important in subsequent periods, and an introduction to their reception history in Byzantium, Italy, England, Spain, and France is provided. A distinguished team of contributors together helps the reader begin to navigate this most varied and fascinating of writers.
Frances B. Titchener is Distinguished Professor of History and Classics at Utah State University. Involved with the International Plutarch Society since 1987, she is co-editor of Ploutarchos, the journal of the IPS. She is also a co-editor of Fame and Infamy (2015) and of Plutarch’s Cities (2022).
Alexei Zadorojnyi is Senior Lecturer in Greek Language and Culture at the University of Liverpool. He has published numerous articles and chapters on Plutarch as well as other Greek and Roman authors of the imperial period.
Paperback edition
ISBN: 978-0521176569
502 pages
Cambridge University Press
£ 29.99 – $ 39.99 – 36,40 €
Publication date: February 28, 2023 (on Amazon.com, .uk, .fr, .es) but on Amazon.it and .de there’s the date of January 31, 2023. Since the most of Amazon put the date at the end of February I think it will be that too (if you want to save a reminder on your Google Calendar check THIS LINK out), but if it comes out sooner I’ll update the article!
Table of Contents:
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction
- Plutarch and Biography – Christophe Pellingr
- Romanness and Greekness in Plutarch – Manuel Tröster
- Plutarch as moral educator – Timothy Duff
- In the spirit of Plato – Jan Opsomer
- Plutarch as a Polemicist – John Dillon and Alexei Zadorojnyi
- Religion and myth in Plutarch – Robert Lamberton
- Plutarch at the symposium – Katerina Oikonomopoulou
- Language, style, and Rhetoric – Donald Russell
- Plutarch and classical Greece – Philip Stadter
- Great men: leadership in Plutarch’s lives – Mark Beck
- Thinking ‘Private Life’: Plutarch on gender, sexuality, family – Françoise Frazier
- Wealth and decadence in Plutarch’s lives – Christopher Pelling
- Plutarch and the Barbarian ‘Other’ – Eran Almagor
- Plutarch and Animals – Judith Mossman and Alexei Zadorojnyi
- Plutarch in Byzantium – Noreen Humble
- Plutarch in the Italian Renaissance – Marianne Pade
- Plutarch and the Spanish Renaissance – Aurelio Pérez Jiménez
- Plutarch and Shakespeare: Reviving the dead – Julia Griffin
- Plutarch in France: sixteenth to eighteenth centuries – Katherine MacDonald
Bibliography
Hardback first edition is very expensive (more than 100 €) but this paperback is more affordable for us. We all know how much Plutarch is an important author for the information we have about Alexander but also for Hellenism, without forgetting that even in the Moralia he speaks of Alexander in particular in On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Great but also and not only of him in the work of Moralia in general, so in my opinion this is an important text for deepening the figure and literary production of a fundamental author.
I open a parenthesis but it is important for me: Italian readers deserve a commented translation of On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Great in italian La fortuna o la virtù di Alessandro Magno (Περὶ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου τύχης ἢ ἀρετῆς – De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute) because we only have Bompiani’s Tutti i Moralia which is a little too expensive and distracting for the Alexander’s passionate reader. It would be great if a version came out with only the two orations on Alexander the Great with a good critical apparatus (like the series Classici Greci e Latini published by Rusconi).
Thanks and keep following me for more updates, have a great day,
Alessandro III di Macedonia 