Witness — the source, profiled; every claim below carries its ground or says it has none

Plutarch of Chaeronea

c. 46 – c. 120 CE · life dates approximate · 144 works served · 4,259 episodes · 1,568,352 words receipt — the witness cards

Reckoned from his own asides scattered through the Lives — a man with pupils and public duties under the Flavians, still writing under Hadrian's rise; no record gives the years themselves.

The vantage — what he could know, and from where

A Boeotian gentleman under the Roman peace: five centuries from Themistocles and Alexander, one generation from the civil war of 69, whose survivors he questioned in person. He read Latin late and imperfectly by his own account, and wrote Greek and Roman greatness as facing pairs — from a small town he refused to leave, for the town's own sake.

The vantage, in his own voice: Chaeronea by choice, Rome on business, and Latin learned late.

But as for me, I live in a small city, and I prefer to dwell there that it may not become smaller still; and during the time when I was in Rome and various parts of Italy I had no leisure to practise myself in the Roman language, owing to my public duties and the number of my pupils in philosophy. Plut. Demosthenes 2 Demosthenes · Plutarch

For the year 69 he questioned survivors on the ground — a consular eyewitness walking him over the field at Bedriacum.

Mestrius Florus, one of the men of consular rank who were at that time with Otho (by constraint, and not of their own will), pointed out to me an ancient temple, and told me how, as he came up to it after the battle, he saw a heap of dead bodies Plut. Otho 14 Otho · Plutarch

Some testimony reached him down the family table: the physician who saw Antony's kitchens told his grandfather.

Philotas, the physician of Amphissa, used to tell my grandfather, Lamprias, that he was in Alexandria at this time, studying his profession Plut. Antony 28 Antony · Plutarch

His method, in his own words — verbatim from the served record; every quote linked to its episode

The genre disclaimer every card in this house must respect: he selects for character, not completeness.

For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives; and in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles where thousands fall Plut. Alexander 1 Alexander · Plutarch

At the legendary edge he states terms: fable submitted to reason where possible, indulgence begged where not.

May I therefore succeed in purifying Fable, making her submit to reason and take on the semblance of History. But where she obstinately disdains to make herself credible, and refuses to admit any element of probability, I shall pray for kindly readers, and such as receive with indulgence the tales of antiquity. Plut. Theseus 1 Theseus · Plutarch

The counter-law the reader must carry: offered a good story or a sound chronology, he keeps the story — and says so, against the calendar-makers by name.

But when a story is so famous and so well-attested, and, what is more to the point, when it comports so well with the character of Solon, and is so worthy of his magnanimity and wisdom, I do not propose to reject it out of deference to any chronological canons Plut. Solon 27 Solon · Plutarch

He audits his predecessors by register: Timaeus' showmanship weighed against Thucydides and found wanting.

in my narration of what Thucydides has inimitably set forth, surpassing even himself in pathos, vividness, and variety, I am so disposed as was Timaeus. Plut. Nicias 1 Nicias · Plutarch

How the record has read him — the reception's words, never the house's verdict

No served author reads him — he stands at the record's near edge, with Tacitus and Suetonius for contemporaries. The reception that made him Europe's schoolroom — Montaigne's bedside book, Shakespeare's Rome — lies beyond the house walls; the house will serve it when it serves the books.

His shelf in the house — the served works; every edition credited

The deeds he witnesses — curated events his works attest; the accounts face each other in each room

the Cylonian affair — c. 632 BCE the meeting of Solon and Croesus — c. 560-546 BCE (chronology disputed) taking of Sardis — 546 BCE battle of Marathon — 490 BCE battle of Artemisium — 480 BCE sea-fight at Salamis — 480 BCE battle of Thermopylae — 480 BCE battle of Plataea — 479 BCE death of Themistocles — c. 459 BCE plague of Athens — 430-426 BCE battle of Delium — 424 BCE the Sicilian expedition — 415-413 BCE battle of Aegospotami — 405 BCE fall of Athens — 404 BCE battle of Cunaxa — 401 BCE trial and death of Socrates — 399 BCE liberation of Thebes — 379 BCE battle of Leuctra — 371 BCE battle of Issus — 333 BCE death of Alexander — 323 BCE battle of Lake Trasimene — 217 BCE battle of Cannae — 216 BCE siege of Syracuse — 213-212 BCE battle of Pydna — 168 BCE destruction of Carthage — 146 BCE crossing of the Rubicon — 49 BCE battle of Pharsalus — 48 BCE assassination of Caesar — 44 BCE (Ides of March) battle of Philippi — 42 BCE battle of Actium — 31 BCE fall of Nero — 68 CE adoption of Piso by Galba — January 69 CE first battle of Bedriacum — April 69 CE murder of Galba — January 69 CE suicide of Otho — April 69 CE

The fights over him — the reception record; the house quotes the fighters and picks no side

attack

Plutarch against Herodotus — 1st–2nd century CE
he reads: Herodotus of Halicarnassus, The Histories

The record here: 166 works · 12,119 episodes served · profiles carry claims, claims carry grounds — episode, page, or an honest open

lives · deeds · times · the shelf · sources & licenses