ANTIQUARIANISM AND ITS USES. PLUTARCH'S ROMAN QUESTIONS AND HIS LIVES OF EARLY ROMANS

In his biographies of early Romans, Plutarch deploys antiquarian material in various ways. Its presence evokes and in some degree imitates the literary texture he found in his Roman sources when they dealt with early Roman history. Plutarch also exploits antiquarian material to insinuate that early Rome was truly ancient, despite its relative modernity from a Greek perspective. It also has a structural purpose: like clusters of anecdotes, antiquarian digressions can isolate significant moments in Plutarch's narratives. Finally, in his engagement with antiquarian material both in his Lives and his Roman Questions, Plutarch underscores the extent to which the Romans' knowledge of their origins is indebted to Greek scholarship.