Theater and Politics in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives

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An orator turns to an actor for advice, citizens expect assemblies to unfold like dramas, and a theater-goer cries at a play thinking of his fallen enemy: no Life escapes the mention of theatrical imagery in Plutarch’s paralleled biographies. And yet this is the first book not only to examine Plutarch’s consistent and coherent use of this imagery but also to argue that it is systematically employed to describe, explore, and evaluate politics in action. The theater becomes Plutarch’s invitation for us to question and uncover key moments of Athenian, Spartan, and Roman history as it unfolds.
Copyright Year:
2024
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978-90-04-68174-3
Publication:
07 Nov 2023
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ISBN:
978-90-04-68173-6
Publication:
09 Nov 2023
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Raphaëla Dubreuil, Ph.D. (2017), University of Edinburgh, publishes on different aspects of Imperial Greek literature, including forthcoming articles on Dio Chrysostom. She is a recipient of an IRC fellowship (Trinity College Dublin) and a DAAD (the Freie Universität zu Berlin).
"Dubreuil succeeds in showing that the theatrical is important to Plutarch’s political thinking in the Lives and that it deserves treatment independent of the tragic, which she does acknowledge where appropriate. [...] Overall, Dubreuil’s treatment is rich, thorough, closely reasoned, and contributes significantly to our understanding of Plutarch. Scholars interested in the role that theater and theories of theater, as well as spectacle and oratory, play in Plutarch’s intellectual and conceptual world as well as in his literary art will find Dubreuil’s work valuable." Peter Hunt, BMCR2024.09.10.
Acknowledgements Ix

Introduction: Plutarch, Theater and Politics
 0.1 Plutarch of Chaeronea
 0.2 The Theatrical in the Parallel Lives
 0.3 Demetrius–Antony
 0.4 The Political Plutarch
 0.5 Plutarchan Exceptionalism?
 0.6 Readers, Theaters, and Cultures
 0.7 The Scope of This Book

1 Demosthenes: Between Oratory and Acting
 1.1 Voice, Delivery, and Morality
 1.2 The Triumph of Oratory over Theater

2 Phocion: Democracy in the Theater
 2.1 The Theater as Locus for the Statesman’s Virtue
 2.2 Choregoi and Civic Values
 2.3 Condemned in the Theater

3 Sparta: Performance in Foreign and Domestic Politics
 3.1 Greek Theater and Spartan Victory in Agesilaus, Cleomenes, and Lysander
 3.2 Poetry and Poets at Sparta
 3.3 Lysander’s Revolutionary Theater

4 Roman Warfare: Violence and Conflict as Spectacle
 4.1 Roman Spectacle of War
 4.2 Triumph in Aemilius Paullus

5 Roman Politics: Sponsors and Audiences
 5.1 Roman and Greek Statesmen in the Theater
 5.2 Seating in the Theater
 5.3 Theatrical Sponsorship and Political Character

6 Cicero: Roman Orator on Display
 6.1 Roscius the Comedian and Aesopus the Tragedian
 6.2 Cicero Contra Antony: Competing Models of Emotional Politics
 6.3 Cicero’s Demise

Conclusion
 7.1 Athens, Sparta, and Rome
 7.2 The Theater as Destruction and as Reparation
 7.3 Plutarch, Dio, and the Alexandrians
Bibliography
Index Rerum et Nominum
Index Locorum
This monograph is aimed at academic audiences, including researchers, lecturers, undergraduate and graduate students. It is intended for classicists, scholars of ancient Greek literature (especially Plutarch, ancient biography, and Imperial literature), and ancient historians (Athenian, Spartan, and Roman Republican history). It will also interest scholars of ancient philosophy (Platonic and Aristotelian thought). Since Plutarch was widely read after antiquity, those working on his afterlife will also find this book useful (Renaissance scholars, Shakespearean studies, reception studies).
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