The Semiotics of Plutarch's Συγκρίσεις: The Hellenistic Lives of Demetrius- Antony
and Agesilaus-Pompey
George W.M. HARRISON
The recent publication of the first Plutarch volume in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (II. 33. 6) (') has greatly advanced Plutarchan studies. Two studies especially, that of Brenk on the 'Life of Antony' (4347-4469; 4895-4915) and that of Hamilton on the 'Life of Agesilaus' (4201-21), have distinguished themselves by the acuity of their observations on the nature and purpose of Plutarch's characterizations. They have amply demonstrated the truth, too often over-looked, that if Plutarch's 'Lives' were written to a format as part of an over-all preconceived plan, they were not nevertheless churned out to some semi-automated, facile formula. The amount of variety of patterns, details, and selectivity (2) shows just how very much Plutarch was the master of his material.
As for the synkriseis (3), one can argue persuasively for a thesis that, just as there is no one pattern for the Lives, each synkrisis is shaped by two factors : first, the contribution a synkrisis is expected to make to an understanding of a pair of Lives and, second, the ethical position each pair of Lives holds in the interconnected over-all plan of the Lives, a plan which never-
(1) Ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992). A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 1991 Annual Meetings of the American Philological Association in Chicago. I should also wish to thank Rebekah McComb for her advice and suggestions. Greek quotations and translations are adapted from the Loeb series. The Alexander-Caesar, Agesilaus-Pompey, and Demetrius-Antony pairs were all translated by Bernadotte Perrin.
(2) On Plutarchan selectivity, see two articles by David H. Larmour, "Plutarch's Compositional Methods in the Theseus and Romulus", ΤΑΡΑ 118 (1988) 366-68, 371-72 and "Making Parallels: Synkrisis and Plutarch's 'Themistocles and Camillus'", ANRWll. 33. 6 (1992) 4162-74.
(3) For an overview and discussion of the scholarship on the synkriseis, see Larmour (1992) 4154-74.
