Biography
is thus made to cast an incidental light upon history. The successes
of Alexander give evidence of the lowering of the Greek spirit, and
illustrate the immemorial weakness of Oriental tyrannies. The victories
and the defeats of Pyrrhus alike display the vigor of Republican Rome.
The character and the fate of Mark Antony show that vigor at its ebb,
and foretell the near fall of the Roman liberties. Thus in his long
series of lives of noble Grecians and Romans, the motives and principles
which lay at the foundation of the characters of the men who moulded the
fate of Greece and Rome, the reciprocal influences of their times upon
these men and of these men upon their times, may all be traced with more
or less distinctness and certainty. It was not Plutarch's object to
exhibit them in sequent evolution, but, in attaining the object which he
had in view, he could not fail to make them manifest to the thoughtful
reader. His book, though not a history, is invaluable to historians.
But the character of Plutarch himself, not less than his method of
writing biography, explains his universal popularity, and gives its
special charm and value to his book.
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