This volume presents the first half of the proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the International Plutarch Society (2002). The selected papers are divided by theme in sections concentrating on political, philosophical, and literary aspects of Plutarch's presentation of statesmen and their activities, and on the aftermath of this Plutarchan heritage. The volume bears witness to the ongoing, wide-ranging interest in the work of Plutarch.

The papers in this volume concentrate on political, philosophical, and literary aspects of Plutarch's presentation of statesmen and their activities, and on the aftermath of this Plutarchan heritage.

The volume puts into the spotlight overlaps and points of intersection between Plutarch and other writers of the imperial period. It contains twenty-eight contributions which adopt a comparative approach and put into sharper relief ongoing debates and shared concerns, revealing a complex topography of rearrangements and transfigurations of inherited topics, motifs, and ideas. Reading Plutarch alongside his contemporaries brings out distinctive features of his thought and uncovers peculiarities in his use of literary and rhetorical strategies, imagery, and philosophical concepts, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the empire’s culture in general, and Plutarch in particular.

Noting previously unrecognised allusions to literary works and contemporary events, this book presents an original portrait of the miscellanist Aulus Gellius ("Attic Nights") as a satirical writer and a Roman intellectual working within the cultural milieu of Antonine Rome.

In the Parallel Lives Plutarch does not absolve his readers of the need for moral reflection by offering any sort of hard and fast rules for their moral judgement. Rather, he uses strategies to elicit readers’ active engagement with the act of judging. This book, drawing on the insights of recent narrative theories, especially narratology and reader-response criticism, examines Plutarch’s narrative techniques in the Parallel Lives of drawing his readers into the process of moral evaluation and exposing them to the complexities entailed in it. Subjects discussed include Plutarch’s prefatory projection of himself and his readers and the interaction between the two; Plutarch’s presentation of the mental and emotional workings of historical agents, which serves to re-enact the participants’ experience at the time and thus arouse empathy in the readers; Plutarch’s closural strategies and their profound effects on the readers’ moral inquiry; Plutarch’s principles of historical criticism in On the malice of Herodotus in relation to his narrative strategies in the Lives. Through illustrating Plutarch’s narrative technique, this book elucidates Plutarch’s praise-and-blame rhetoric in the Lives as well as his sensibility to the challenges inherent in recounting, reading about, and evaluating the lives of the great men of history.

A fundamental reappraisal of Plutarch’s attitude towards rhetoric. Plutarch was not only a skilled writer, but also lived during the Second Sophistic, a period of cultural renaissance. This book offers new insights into Plutarch’s seemingly moderate attitude towards rhetoric. The hypothesis explored in this study introduces, for the first time, the broader literary and cultural contexts that influenced and restricted the scope of Plutarch’s message. When these contexts are considered, a new perspective emerges that differs from that found in earlier studies. It paints a picture of a philosopher who may not regard rhetoric as a lesser means of persuasion, but who faces challenges in openly articulating this stance in his public discourse.

This volume of collected essays explores the premise that Plutarch’s work, notwithstanding its amazing thematic multifariousness, constantly pivots on certain ideological pillars which secure its unity and coherence. So, unlike other similar books which, more or less, concentrate on either the Lives or the Moralia or on some particular aspect(s) of Plutarch’s œuvre, the articles of the present volume observe Plutarch at work in both Lives and Moralia, thus bringing forward and illustrating the inner unity of his varied literary production. The subject-matter of the volume is uncommonly wide-ranging and the studies collected here inquire into many important issues of Plutarchean scholarship: the conditions under which Plutarch’s writings were separated into two distinct corpora, his methods of work and the various authorial techniques employed, the interplay between Lives and Moralia, Plutarch and politics, Plutarch and philosophy, literary aspects of Plutarch’s œuvre, Plutarch on women, Plutarch in his epistemological and socio-historical context. In sum, this book brings Plutarchean scholarship to date by revisiting and discussing older and recent problematization concerning Plutarch, in an attempt to further illuminate his personality and work.

The volume explores how Greek and Latin authors perceive and present their own (real or metaphorical) exile and employ exile as a powerful trope to express estrangement, elicit readerly sympathy, and question political power structures.

In September 2002, the University of Coimbra hosted, for the first time, a conference of the Réseau Thématique Plutarque, a research network created by several European universities in order to promote regular annual meetings of junior and senior scholars who share a common interest in Plutarch's work. The Coimbra meeting of 2002 was devoted to the fragments of Plutarch, and the results of that event were published one year later, in a volume edited by José Ribeiro Ferreira and Delfim Leão, under the title Os fragmentos de Plutarco e a recepção da sua obra (Coimbra, 2003). During the following years, many other universities organized conferences of the Réseau on a rotating basis, until the event came back to Coimbra, where the Portuguese section of the International Plutarch Society (SoPlutarco) hosted, from 16 to 18 June 2011, the twelfth meeting of the network, devoted this time to the subject "Nomos, kosmos and dike in Plutarch". The present volume comprises most of the contributions presented during the Coimbra meeting, after having been submitted to a process of revision, which involved the direct collaboration of the several regional sections of the Réseau. Although the volume kept the multilingual diversity of the participants in the conference, its structuring elements were composed in English, in order to reinforce the coherence of the book and to enlarge the number of potential readers.

In the Hellenistic period (c.323-31 BCE), Greek teachers, philosophers, historians, orators, and politicians found an essential point of reference in the democracy of Classical Athens and the political thought which it produced. However, while Athenian civic life and thought in the Classical period have been intensively studied, these aspects of the Hellenistic period have so far received much less attention. This volume seeks to bring together the two areas of research, shedding new light on these complementary parts of the history of the ancient Greek polis. The essays collected here encompass historical, philosophical, and literary approaches to the various Hellenistic responses to and adaptations of Classical Athenian politics. They survey the complex processes through which Athenian democratic ideals of equality, freedom, and civic virtue were emphasized, challenged, blunted, or reshaped in different Hellenistic contexts and genres. They also consider the reception, in the changed political circumstances, of Classical Athenian non- and anti-democratic political thought. This makes it possible to investigate how competing Classical Athenian ideas about the value or shortcomings of democracy and civic community continued to echo through new political debates in Hellenistic cities and schools. Looking ahead to the Roman Imperial period, the volume also explores to what extent those who idealized Classical Athens as a symbol of cultural and intellectual excellence drew on, or forgot, its legacy of democracy and vigorous political debate. By addressing these different questions it not only tracks changes in practices and conceptions of politics and the city in the Hellenistic world, but also examines developing approaches to culture, rhetoric, history, ethics, and philosophy, and especially their relationships with politics.