Vies parallèles (Plutarch, Parallel Lives)
Βίοι Παράλληλοι (Bíoi Parállēloi)
Také známý jako: Vies parallèles, Les Vies des hommes illustres, Vies des hommes illustres, Plutarque, le vieux Plutarque, lisons Plutarque, mon bon ami Plutarque, mon gentil Plutarque, Plutarch
Overview
Plutarch of Chaeronea's Parallel Lives (Bíoi Parállēloi) are 48 biographies of famous men, written in Greek around the beginning of the second century AD and arranged in pairs, one Greek and one Roman, to compare their virtues and failings; 23 pairs survive (Alexander and Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero, and so on). (Wikipedia, "Parallel Lives".) In French the work was known above all in Jacques Amyot's sixteenth-century translation (Les Vies des hommes illustres) and in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century versions of Ricard and others. It was the standard model of how a great man should be remembered, and a staple of an educated girl's reading.
Plutarch is also the author of the Moralia, an essay collection; Marie's long discussion of divine justice in March 1876 comes from there, not from the Lives, and is treated in Plutarch, Moralia.
Marie and this work
- August 1875 - December 1875. On 2 August 1875, after a day of shops and dressmakers, she puts on a dressing-gown and reads "mon bon ami Plutarque" (038.0028), and next day: "Miserere ! Je vais lire Plutarque et puis prier Dieu" (038.0095). On 14 November she tells Godard, who has "des réminiscences classiques", about "Plutarque et d'Offenbach" (049.0385). On 8 December, packing for Rome, she delights in "mes chers livres, mes classiques adorés, mon gentil Plutarque" (050.0576). (None of these names a particular work.)
- Etymology of Rome (11 March 1876, 055.0557). "Plutarque donne l'étymologie de Rome, romo ou rumo, mamelle." This is from the Life of Romulus (the wolf who suckled the twins). The existing footnote says so.
- Plutarch with Dumas and the ancients (3 May 1876, 059.0686). Back in Nice she finds nothing "aussi amusant que les romans de Dumas et les œuvres du vieux Plutarque"; the eighteenth-century writers disgust her, and the ancients put her to sleep over the first pages, but if she gets past that she cannot put the book down.
- Plutarch as consolation (6 May 1879, 085.0051). After a daydream of Naples and music: "Voilà des choses qui troublent... lisons Plutarque."
- On her desk (25 November 1879, 086.0584). In the description of her Paris study, the desk is "chargé de quelques livres tels que Montesquieu, Platon, Plutarque, de la haute pédanterie qui m'amuse et m'intéresse".
- The murder of Caesar (28 November 1883, 102.0345-0346). Having come across an old sketch of Caesar's murder in her albums, she goes home and "saute sur Suétone et Plutarque", comparing Plutarch's account of the death, "arrangé et éloquent", with Suetonius's, which is "un procès verbal qui fait froid dans le dos". (She adds that Montesquieu loved the story as Plutarch tells it. The passage is from the Life of Caesar, but she does not name the Life.)
- The last year (14 September 1884, 106.0046). In the carnet of her final months: "Éternelle misère, avoir rêvé d'être l'égal d'un grand homme, de Plutarque et souffrir pour des infamies aussi plates !!" The wording ("l'égal d'un grand homme, de Plutarque") means: to have dreamed of being equal to the great men of Plutarch's Lives.
Notes
- Marie never says which French translation she read. Amyot is the most likely, but this is a guess.
- The inventory listed the March 1876 paragraphs (055.0060-0072, 055.0099, 055.0884) under Parallel Lives; they belong to the Moralia (see the linked entry) and are split off here.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Parallel Lives".
- fr.wikisource, Les Vies des hommes illustres (trad. Ricard) and Vies parallèles (list of translations).
- Diary paragraphs as cited above.
Supersedes (author-type stub): `people/mentioned/PLUTARQUE.md`. Duplicate to merge: `culture/literature/VIES_PARALLELES.md` (written in parallel by another batch, covering Lives and Moralia together; its extra mentions are folded in here and in Plutarch, Moralia).