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Durham E-Theses Historiography in Lives: Plutarch's Use of Thucydides in the Lives of Pericles and Nicias BISHOP, PAUL,BERNARD How to cite: BISHOP, PAUL,BERNARD (2016) Historiography in Lives: Plutarch's Use of Thucydides in the Lives of Pericles and Nicias, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11538/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 HISTORIOGRAPHY IN LIVES: PLUTARCH’S USE OF THUCYDIDES IN THE LIVES OF PERICLES AND NICIAS Paul Bernard Bishop Ustinov College This Thesis is submitted for a Master of Arts by Research Department of Classics and Ancient History University of Durham 2015 2 Table of Contents Table of Contents........................................................................................................................................................... 2 Statement of Copyright .................................................................................................................................................. 3 Abstract.......................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Limitations ................................................................................................................................................................ 7 Organisation ............................................................................................................................................................. 8 CHAPTER 1: Biography as Historiography, Historiography as Biography ................................................................ 11 Navigating Genre in Ancient Literature ................................................................................................................ 11 The development of bios ......................................................................................................................................... 15 Greek historiographical method ............................................................................................................................. 21 Moral purpose in historiography............................................................................................................................ 31 Points of contact and separation between historiography and biography ............................................................ 36 Historiographical theory, ancient and present ...................................................................................................... 39 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................. 47 CHAPTER 2: Plutarch’s Intellectual Influences and Paradigms of Historiography .................................................... 48 Plutarch’s Situation and Intellectual Background ................................................................................................ 48 Plutarch’s Idea of History and Historiographical Method ................................................................................... 61 CHAPTER 3: Thucydides in Plutarch’s Life of Pericles ............................................................................................. 80 Plutarch and Thucydides ........................................................................................................................................ 81 Solving conflicting sources from Thucydides: Pericles’ character development ................................................. 83 Chapter 19 and 21 quotations: moving down the scroll of Thucydides ................................................................ 91 Chapter 29 analysis: Explaining the start of the Peloponnesian War .................................................................. 94 Chapter 33: Sparta against Pericles and Pericles’ control of Athens ................................................................. 101 Chapter 34: Pericles’ management of Athenian displeasure .............................................................................. 115 Chapter 35: Pericles falls to fortune .................................................................................................................... 119 Conclusions on Pericles........................................................................................................................................ 125 CHAPTER 4: Thucydides in Plutarch’s Life of Nicias .............................................................................................. 128 Plutarch and Thucydides in Nicias ...................................................................................................................... 130 The assessment of Nicias by Thucydides and Plutarch ....................................................................................... 131 Characterization of Nicias, Kleon, and the demos............................................................................................... 135 The general’s debate – compression and characterization in chapter 14 ........................................................... 142 Characterization of Nicias: superstitious and cautious general. ........................................................................ 145 Conclusions on Nicias .......................................................................................................................................... 154 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................. 158 3 Summary ............................................................................................................................................................... 158 For future research ............................................................................................................................................... 160 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................. 162 Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 4 Abstract This dissertation argues that Plutarch’s biographical method falls within the realm of historiography, offering Plutarch’s handling of Thucydides’ History as a source for the Pericles and Nicias as test cases. The first chapter discusses the relationship between historiography and biography. History was among the influences in biographical literature’s development into a genre of its own. The genre of biography had the capacity for critical inquiry into what the individual in focus was truly like. The chapter also explores their similarities in methodology and purpose, and argues that historiography is broad enough to include biographical models of interpretation. The next chapter establishes Plutarch’s philosophical framework, examining what theories would influence his interpretation of the historical record. While taking Plutarch’s statements of separation between history and biography seriously, we can still see that his methods of interpretation are not substantially different from historiography, and he displays a rigorous critical inquiry in the Lives. The third and fourth chapters examine Plutarch’s engagement with Thucydides for the Pericles and Nicias. Where Plutarch quotes Thucydides, he preserves the main facts yet uses vocabulary and style of his own. We place particular focus, however, on Plutarch’s divergences from Thucydides, and theorize that these differences are due to Plutarch’s own historical reasoning about what happened. We argue ways in which Plutarch was making inferences and deductions from the text before him based upon his philosophical paradigms and broader knowledge of the history. Plutarch also makes deductions based upon his theory of character types, especially evident in the Nicias. His judgment of the character of every individual is formed by the historical record, and he makes further predictions of what individuals did for felt where the source is silent drawing from his philosophical understanding of character. 5 Introduction Greek literary endeavours underwent significant changes when the supremacy of the Mediterranean world swung from the Hellenistic kingdoms to Imperial Rome. Despite the hegemony of Latin-speaking Rome over the Mediterranean region, Greek