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The passionate statesman : Eros and politics in Plutarch's Lives / Jeffrey Beneker.
LIBRA PA4385 .B46 2012
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Beneker, Jeffrey.
- Language:
- English
- Greek, Ancient (to 1453)
- Subjects (All):
- Plutarch. Lives.
- Plutarch.
- Plutarch--Criticism and interpretation.
- Politics in literature.
- Eroticism in literature.
- Criticism and interpretation.
- Greece--Biography--History and criticism.
- Greece.
- Rome--Biography--History and criticism.
- Rome.
- Rome (Empire).
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- xii, 258 pages ; 23 cm
- Edition:
- First edition.
- Place of Publication:
- Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Language Note:
- Includes some text in Greek.
- Summary:
- The Passionate Statesman explores the intersection of passion and politics in Plutarch's Parallel Lives, with special emphasis on how Plutarch represents the influence of eros, or erotic desire, on the careers of some of the most prominent statesmen from Greco-Roman antiquity.
- Beneker examines how Plutarch combined Aristotle's notion of friendship with Plato's conception of the soul to describe the ideal marital relationship as based on a mutual love of character (philia) supported by an enduring erotic attraction, and how Plutarch generally applied his system of ethics both to his reading of history and to his writing of biography.
- With close readings of three pairs of biographies that match Greek Kings with Roman statesmen (namely, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Demetrius 'the besieger' and Mark Antony, and Agesilaus and Pompey), the book draws a general conclusion about how Plutarch uses the narration of his subjects' private erotic affairs to interpret their historical deeds. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- 1 Eros and Marriage 7
- The Parts of the Soul 9
- Philia and Marriage 17
- Eros, Philia, and Marriage 31
- Brutus and Porcia 39
- Pericles and Aspasia 43
- Idealism and Realism 54
- 2 Moral Virtue, Eros, and History 58
- Historical-Ethical Reconstruction in the Lives 59
- Moral Virtue in the Pelopidas-Marcellus 64
- Dion, Dionysius, and Plato's Tyrannical Man 87
- 3 Eros and Ambition in the Alexander-Caesar 103
- Building an Empire: Alexander's Sophrosyne and Ambition 105
- Xenophon's Cyrus and Plutarch's Alexander 113
- Eros in the Alexander 128
- Thymos, Ambition, and Sophrosyne 133
- Eros and Ambition in the Caesar 140
- Limits to Eros and Ambition 150
- 4 Eros and the Fall of Mark Antony 153
- Eros in the Demetrius 157
- Antony's Women 171
- The Early Years 173
- Fulvia 177
- Fulvia and Cleopatra 181
- Octavia and Cleopatra 185
- Cleopatra 190
- 5 Eros and the Statesman 195
- Sophrosyne in Xenophon and Plutarch 195
- Eros in the Agesilaus-Pompey 207
- Concluding Remarks 222.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [226]-241) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780199695904
- 0199695903
- OCLC:
- 764348610
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