Writing Biography at the Edge of History: Plutarch's Vita Caesarum

This study examines Plutarch's Lives of the Caesars, the collection of the Roman imperial biographies. Plutarch's Lives of the Caesars were a series of lives of the Roman emperors ascended to the imperial throne from Augustus to Vitellius. This series covered 100 years from Octavian's victory over Antony in 31 BCE to the death of Vitellius in 69 CE. Unfortunately, of this period it is known about nine months form June 68 to April 69 because only two short lives of Galba and Otho have survived from this lost collection. The references in Plutarch's Galba and Otho enable us to think that Plutarch did not deal closely with emperors' private lives, but rather he focused how they were proclaimed emperor, how they ruled and how they were overthrown in turn. Since the individuals in question were emperors, biography remained close to the political and military history of the period. Plutarch's narrative was very close to the actual events and reflected the real atmosphere of the year of the four emperors like his near contemporaries Tacitus' and Suetonius' narrations. However Tacitus' and Suetonius' narrations had some differences, such as the historical approach of Tacitus in describing the events in a continuum and element of gossip in Suetonius. Plutarch focused primarily on leaders' character, actions and military deeds especially those changed the fate of the events in the Roman Empire and he emphasized that the ruler and ruled needed philosophical education. All these show that he preferred to narrate the events/characters belonged to the contemporary history with the Greek intellectual/cultural tradition and turned the Lives of the Caesars into also a moral history.