Profiling great men to bring them to history in a new way — Plutarch and [the intersections of] genres

Abstract

This paper analyzes the genres biography and history through some passages of Lives (Plutarch), in order to establish if they constitute distinct genres or ― under the author's perspective ― the same one, therefore positioning him in the history of historiography. With this purpose, we search the origins of biographies highlighting elements of the Greek tradition that remain in Plutarch, performing a case study of a fragment from Life of Alexander. The discussion proposes that Plutarch’s purpose was not establishing clear boundaries between history and biography, but rather to make great men more evident to history in a new way, revealing less glorious and even ludicrous passages of their lives, taking off their armors and giving them the garb of common men, sometimes virtuous, sometimes nasty, and ultimately ambiguous.