Plutarch’s Old World in the Modern Era

Plutarch (c. AD 50; d. Delphi, after 120) is best known as a Greek essayist, philosopher, priest, and biographer. Early exposure to metaphysics led Plutarch to become a Platonist philosopher. Serving in local governmental capacities, as a priest and prolific writer, Plutarch’s extant and lost works span a tremendous array of topics including metaphysics, psychology, natural philosophy, theology and logic. Plutarch’s key contributions include Parallel Lives and Moralia and works focused on physics, as defined broadly during antiquity. A thinker largely preoccupied with knowledge acquisition, his work had lasting influence on later Platonism, genre writing, and philosophical thought and had been widely translated across the world. His body of work has implications for classroom instruction in history, civics, and literature courses and can be used to analyze echoes of the Old World in the modern era.