The Intellectual World of the Early Empire (organized by the International Plutarch Society)

In this paper, I shall try to show how Suetonius played with the concept of Imitatio Alexandri, especially in the Life of Caligula: he did it in different ways which helped him to underline when an emperor was a good ruler or not. Moreover, he used this similarity even to mock – in a very shrewd and subtle way – the emperor he was describing.

In my paper I will illuminate and compare for the first time in which contexts, how, and why Plutarch and his near-contemporary Flavius Josephus, both active in the intellectual world of the Early Empire (Kendra 2012), engaged so intensively with early Greek philosophy, philosophers and the wisdom of the so-called Seven Sages (Solon, Thales etc.).

Plutarch’s Parallel Lives and Moralia are studded with anecdotes on Greek artists such as Polignotus, Pauson, Zeuxis, Pheidias, Nicomachus, Apelles, Protogenes of Kaunos, Nikias, Nealkes, Lysippus. On the other side, it is well known how books 33-37 of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia are rich in stories, anecdotes and information on the lives and carriers of Greek artists. In some cases, the two authors refer the same anecdotes, in other occasions, they select different information on artists.

This paper provides a concise overview of how the Aristotelian Natural Problems were received in the Early Empire (esp. the first two centuries A.D.), an era in which the genre of natural problems revived and gained in popularity beyond the confines of the Lyceum. The evidence shows that the Problems sparked much debate among Greek and Roman philosophers, doctors, sophists and scholars.