This study focuses not on individual Lives or pairs of Lives, but on the book as a whole and its articulation across the full corpus. It argues that the Plutarchan book consists of up to four distinct sections: prologue, first Life, second Life, synkrisis. Each of these sections has a fairly consistent internal structure, and each has a distinct set of strategies for opening, for closure, and for managing the transition from one section to the next. Prologues provide an introduction (...) to both Lives, and are clearly delineated from them, even though in our manuscripts they appear as part of the first Life; in fact, there is often a stronger break between prologue and first Life than there is between the two Lives themselves. Prologues usually begin with generalized reflections, to be followed only later by the naming of the subjects and a statement of their similarities. Most Lives begin with a thematically organized section , which surveys the subject's life as a whole, not just their youth, and which is marked off with varying degrees of distinctness from the narrative that follows. Crucially, proemial openings do not narrate and the logic of their structure is not chronological. Closure in many Lives is signalled by ‘circularity’ and sometimes by a closural or transitional phrase, though first Lives are different here from second Lives. Synkriseis are structured both by a series of themes on which the two subjects are compared, and by a two-part, agonistic structure in which first one of the subjects is preferred, then the other. Synkriseis may also recall the prologue; both prologue and synkrisis operate at the level of the book, and between them frame and weld together the two Lives. (shrink)

That only those who have mastered language can be virtuous is something that may strike us as an obvious truism. It would seem to follow naturally from, indeed simply restate, a view that is far more commonly held and expressed by philosophers of the virtues, namely that only those who can reason can be virtuous properly said. My aim in this paper is to draw attention to this truism and argue its importance. In doing so, I will take the starting (...) point for my reflections from a couple of concrete occasions in which the desire to offer a foothold to the language of the virtues encounters an obstacle that might be described as a recalcitrance of language: certain intuitions that seem decidedly linguistic get in the way to suggest that this vocabulary is out of place or out of order. Taking my cue from the discomfort of our linguistic intuitions, what I will be suggesting is that certain difficulties do indeed attend our use of the vocabulary of the virtues, and that there is a particular way of understanding their inevitability, one which is closely connected to the context of moral education. My hope is that reflecting on these difficulties and on the task of moral education with which they are associated can help us illuminate and recover the insight that a mastery of language may be indispensable for a mastery of virtue. (shrink)

L’article examine le rôle de la personnalité dans la biographie ancienne et sa relation avec la le concept de personnalité dans la biographie ancienne et sa relation avec la physionomiee les traits somatiques et psychiques héréditaires.