He says that he
knew Latin imperfectly, and he lived under the Empire, when many of the
educated Romans had but a superficial acquaintance with the earlier
history of their state. We must therefore expect to find him imperfectly
informed on Roman institutions; and we can detect him in some errors.
Yet, on the whole, his Roman Lives do not often convey erroneous
notions; if the detail is incorrect, the general impression is true.
They may be read with profit by those who seek to know something of
Roman affairs, and have not knowledge enough to detect an error. They
probably contain as few mistakes as most biographies which have been
written by a man who is not the countryman of those whose lives he
writes."
Yet, spite of his general accuracy and his impartial temper, the
representations which Plutarch makes of the characters which he
describes are not always to be accepted as fair delineations.
Unconscious prejudice, or misconception of circumstances and relations,
sometimes leads him into apparent injustice. Thus, for example, while he
bears hardly upon Demosthenes, and sets out many of his actions in too
unfavorable lights, he, on the other hand, interprets the conduct and
character of Phocion with manifest indulgence, and presents a flattered
portrait of a man whose death turned popular reproaches into pity, but
was insufficient to redeem the faults of his life.
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